Flashpoint (Hellgate) by Keegan Mel

Author:Keegan, Mel [Keegan, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: DreamCraft
Published: 2011-11-16T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Fleet Cruiser Mercury, Borushek

His name was Carson Hume. He had the Afro-Eurasian genetic type, typical of the pure homeworlds human, and Marin was not surprised to hear a clipped, brittle Earth accent.

For three days he had been confined to one of the Infirmary’s five beds. One bed was vacant, and a third was occupied for the first day by Harrison Shapiro, until he checked himself out in sheer boredom. When Shapiro walked out, Hume was still sedated after the surgery to clean up the remains of his left leg, and when the Mercury dropped out of e-space just short of the Borushek system the agent was in a hoverchair to which his left wrist was handcuffed. Tim Inosanto or Reuben Kravitz was with him every waking moment, and what Hume did not yet know was that he had been chipped. Shapiro’s AI could track him – stun or euthanize him, if he somehow got away from Inosanto and Kravitz.

Borushek looked serene, normal, but Marin wore a frown as he watched the globe expand in the forward observation ports. One thought haunted him. They were gone. He had called Riga moments before, and only Joss answered.

A message was waiting on the threedee, and Curtis had already buzzed Travers. Neil was with the rest of Bravo, down on the hangar deck, and though Marin would have been welcome to join them he knew he would have felt like an intruder. He had never really been a part of Bravo, though they would have opened ranks to admit him. But Perlman had called Travers to a private meeting of the old unit, to answer hard questions in terms they would understand, and knew they could trust. There was no more time to deliberate. The moment to choose was now.

The comm loop was quiet but busy, though none of Bravo’s business was being monitored. Marin gave a thread of his attention to Robert Chandra Liang and his ex-wife, who had been talking without pause for the last hour. Madam Deuel was ordering clothes, furniture, personal effects – all the items she apparently deemed the absolute essentials, while anyone else would have called her shopping list absurd frivolity.

She had picked up and run from Velcastra with a change of clothes and her cosmetics bag, and her first demand, as soon as her head cleared, was to know when she and Robert were going back. Neither Liang nor Shapiro could even hazard an answer, and the lady’s eyes widened as she realized she would be aboard the Mercury for an indefinite time.

Officers’ quarters were spacious and comfortable, but the appointments were hardly appropriate for Velcastran royalty. Marin might have been scornful, but in her own way Sonja Deuel was a trouper. She either could not or would not fall in with the rest of the company, wear service clothes, sit on service chairs, eat service food, but not a word of complaint passed her lips until the Mercury dropped out at Borushek. Then the shopping began, and everything conceivable was being crated for shipment to the cruiser.

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