Chapter 1

Produced by Al Haines

+------------------------------------------------------+ | This work is licenced under a Creative Commons | | Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 | | Licence. | | | | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ | +------------------------------------------------------+

THE ALEMBIC PLOT

A Terran Empire Novel

by Ann Wilson

Copyright (C) 1992 by Ann Wilson

CONTENTS

1. Injury 2. Hospital 3. Center 4. Ordination 5. Azrael 6. Tony 7. Dave 8. Ambush 9. Surgery 10. Dream 11. Dinner 12. Flight 13. Chuck 14. Bradford 15. Demon Drops 16. Marriage 17. Family 18. Revelation 19. Invitation 20. Lesson 21. Anguish 22. Sara 23. Raid 24. Revenge 25. Discussion 26. Imperial Contact 27. Interim 28. Aboard the Lindner 29. Arrival 30. Interview 31. Explanation 32. Briefing 33. Discussion 2 34. Transformation

1. Injury

St. Thomas, Monday, 17 June 2571 CE

Captain Mike Odeon cursed in angry frustration as he climbed out of his command van into a late fall New Pennsylvania evening and signalled his Special Operations team forward. They were too late.

Well, too late to catch them in the act, he amended silently. This looked like one of the hit-and-run attacks the so-called Brothers of Freedom specialized in; with local Enforcement men already on-scene, the Brothers would be long gone. But they would catch the bastards who'd attacked this Royal Enforcement Service convalescent hospital, sooner or later. Motioning his second-in-command to him, Odeon gave the routine orders. "Check for anything the attackers might have left. Odds are you'll only find bodies, but do your best while I talk to the locals. Call me on Channel One if you do find anything."

"Yes, sir." Odeon's sergeant led the other three team members into the building; Odeon himself looked around, and was pleased to find he knew one of the locals.

He waved. "Rascal! Over here!"

The local returned his wave, jogged over, and saluted. "Mike! I mean, 'Captain Odeon, sir.'"

"Mike's fine," Odeon said. "You haven't touched anything?"

"Huh-uh. Saw the marks the Brothers'd burned into a couple of the walls inside, and backed off right away to call in the Royals." Rascal spat. "Damn Brothers! Didn't expect Special Ops, though."

"You'll get SO any time the Brothers are involved, from now on," Odeon said. "That came straight from His Majesty not five minutes after we got word they'd hit a hospital. It doesn't look too bad from here, though."

"From here, no. But, Mike . . . I hope your men have stronger stomachs than mine turned out to be."

Odeon scowled. "It's that bad?" Rascal Anderson had been in Enforcement for almost fifteen years, nearly as long as Odeon himself; it would take more than the aftermath of ordinary violence to make him sick.

"Worse," Anderson said. "Mike, it looked like . . . like a cross between a battlefield and a mass third-stage interrogation."

"Dear God." Odeon bowed his head in a brief silent prayer for the victims, then looked up. "We'll find the bastards who did this, and make sure--"

His beltcom interrupted him. "Sir, we've found a survivor. ID says Captain Joan Cortin, Royal Enforcement. Boris is working on her, but he says she'll need a lot more help than he can give."

"She'll get it," Odeon snapped. Anderson was already signalling urgently for the medics, who'd been waiting to bring out what everyone was certain would be only dead bodies. "I'm on my way. Set for homer."

"On homer, sir." The sergeant's voice was replaced by a series of tones, increasing in pitch and speed as Odeon more than half-ran into the hospital and through the corridors.

The scenes he passed were as bad as Rascal had suggested, and Odeon's stomach needed stern control to prevent rebellion. Doctors, nurses, patients, the service staff--all had been bound, then brutally murdered. The stench of gutted bodies was enough, even without the blood and corpses, to stagger anyone.

It wasn't long until he reached his men. Two of them were checking for other survivors while Boris and Sergeant Vincent knelt over the inert form that had to be Joan Cortin. Vincent was giving her Last Rites while Boris tended to her physical needs, his posture evidence of his intense concentration, and Odeon thanked God again that the St. Dmitri exchange troop he'd drawn for his team was so damn competent. He'd love to take his whole team to that world for a bit, he thought irrelevantly. He'd worked with a Dmitrian team once, here on St. Thomas, and thought everyone in SO should have that experience.

"How is she?" he asked, joining the medic. If the ID said "Joan Cortin," he'd have to accept that evidence; he certainly couldn't identify the woman he knew so well in this bloody, mangled body.

"Not good, Captain." Boris' English had a heavy Dmitrian accent, but Odeon had no trouble understanding him. "Badly beaten, raped--more than once, I believe--and she appears to have a spinal injury. The Brothers of course burned their mark into her hands, but that is minor." He looked up with a frown. "I regret having to tell you, Captain. She was your protego, was she not?"

"Yes, and she's still my friend." Odeon stood, making way for the other medics who promptly began working on the unconscious woman. So the Brothers had burned their circled-triangle mark into Joanie's hands, had they? That didn't happen often, but he was no more surprised than Boris had been that they'd given her that distinction. Not even all Special Ops officers rated that mark of the Brothers' special hatred, and why Joanie did was something he couldn't guess--she'd never been on an anti-Brotherhood operation, that he knew of--but they'd taken a special dislike to her for some reason none had divulged even under third-stage interrogation, calling her "the damned Enforcement bitch" in a tone Odeon himself reserved for those who had begun the Final War. Maybe they hated her just because she was the only active-duty female Enforcement officer. At any rate, they had marked her--and she was the first he knew about to survive the torture that accompanied the mark's infliction.

He watched the medics work, his thoughts going back. It'd started . . . what, twelve years ago? Yes, that sounded about right. A small town here in New Pennsylvania--and not too far away, if he remembered clearly. He'd been on light duty, wounded in his first fight with the Brotherhood and counting himself lucky to be alive. It had left him with a scar across his right cheek, cutting into his mouth and chin, but it had left five others dead, three disabled.

The scar had upset the young men he was interviewing; most had stared for a few seconds, then looked away. Well, they hadn't been very promising anyway. Recruiting trips to out-of-the-way small towns like that Boalsburg were mostly for show rather than out of any real expectation of finding good Enforcement candidates.

The last applicant's folder had brought a smile. Joan Cortin . . . Not many women applied for Enforcement, and even fewer qualified. He remembered thinking it probably hadn't been a serious application; more than likely, she just wanted to meet the "romantic" Enforcement officer. Odeon hadn't minded; he'd been rather flattered, if anything. He'd opened the folder and scanned it, intending to make it look good before he turned her down.

There'd been only one catch. Grades, psychoprofile, and physical stats said she did qualify--and at well above officer-cadet minimums. He'd wondered if she knew.

She hadn't. Her application had been the ruse he'd guessed; she admitted that immediately, without either staring at or avoiding his scar. She thought it added to his appeal, which hadn't hurt his feelings at all. It'd been rather enjoyable convincing her that she really was Enforcement-officer material, and he'd taken real pleasure in waiting until she was leaving--and her former schoolmates could hear--to tell her when she'd be picked up by an Enforcement trooper who'd drive her to the Royal Academy.

He'd been there for her graduation, too, proud that one of his recruits had been at the top of the class, commissioned First Lieutenant for that achievement. He'd given her her first salute, then staggered as sixty kilos of enthusiastic female officer jumped him for a congratulatory kiss.

Remembering that kiss--and the night that followed, the others later--Mike Odeon rubbed the scar crossing his lips. It hurt to see medics working over her, hear them sounding pessimistic. Her injuries seemed to be even more severe than Boris had said at first, and she'd been weak to begin with, just recuperating from one of the unnamed plagues that had devastated the Kingdom Systems during the Final War. The plagues were no longer common, hadn't been for over a century; Joanie had simply had the bad luck to pursue a gang of horse thieves into a still-contaminated area.

The medics were putting her onto a litter, careful to support her back. As they picked up the litter, her eyes flickered open and she looked in Odeon's direction. "Mike?"

A gesture stopped the medics. "What is it, Joanie?"

"Don't let 'em kick me out . . . while I can't fight back. I've gotta . . . get the bastards who did this . . . Mike, promise . . ."

"I promise, Joanie. I'll do everything I can, you know that." He waved the medics on, looking after them, then turned to his second. "Find anything useful, Sergeant?"

"Afraid not, sir. They're too damn good at covering up. We won't have a thing, unless Captain Cortin's able to give us some descriptions."

"All right. Call in a specialist squad from New Denver; they may be able to find some kind of evidence. Fingerprints, footprints, identifiable bullets--damn, but I wish we had what the prewars had!"

"Able to identify a culprit from a speck of blood or a hair?" Sergeant Vincent laughed bitterly. "Hell, if we could do that, we'd have the Brothers under control in six months."

"Yeah." Odeon tried to hide his frustrtion. "No use playing what-if, though; we could do that forever. Let's get back to HQ."

Silently, respecting their leader's mood, the Special Operations team returned to their command van for the copter-lift back to their Middletown headquarters. It wasn't until they were landing that anyone spoke. "Captain?"

"What is it, Boris?"

"I spoke with the physician, sir. Captain Cortin will be stabilized at the local clinic, then sent to New Denver for surgery. You are due for leave, are you not?"

"Yeah, and I intend to take advantage of it. Two years' worth of accumulated leave ought to give me time to help her stay in."

* * * * *

Leave arrangements weren't difficult to make. Special Operations teams tended to stay together, but casualties were high; anyone could be replaced quickly. By mid-morning the next day Odeon had finished briefing his temporary replacement, and by noon he'd used his Special Ops identification to get aboard a plane to New Denver.

He'd only flown twice before, with the exception of command-van copter-lifts, so he slept lightly when he did sleep, then took advantage of a rest stop to work the kinks of too much sitting out before the second leg. Back aboard, he listened to the engines and tried to doze off again. The throbbing roar they made was monotonous enough to be dulling, but too loud to be soothing . . .

Rather to his surprise, the second landing woke him up. He hadn't realized he'd managed to sleep again, and he grinned at himself as he exited the aircraft.

The air here smelled as fresh and clean as the newly-fallen snow, so good it'd be a shame to waste it. Odeon waved away the SO car that pulled up, walking to the terminal instead. By the time he'd made arrangements for a room in Visiting Officers' Quarters, his luggage, the single small bag that, with what a command van held, was enough for an SO man for half a month, was waiting. He claimed it, made his way through shift-change traffic to the VOQ, and checked in.

He went to his assigned room, intending to shower and get a few hours' rest. Boris had said Joanie would be brought here once she was stabilized; that could be today, if the doctors decided to fly her in, or up to a week if they decided she could tolerate surface travel.

He'd just gotten the shower temperature right, though, when he heard the four sharp knocks on his door that meant official business. With a muttered "Damn," he turned the water off, wrapped a towel around his waist, and went to the door. Couldn't a man even get a shower without being interrupted? "What is it?" he asked the young man in Medical Corps green when he opened the door.

The medtech looked at the clipboard he held. "Captain Michael Patrick Odeon of Royal Enforcement Service Special Operations?"

"Serial 263819. Yes." Odeon swore to himself. Formal identification meant the leave he'd planned to use helping Joanie was over, in favor of some special duty.

The tech extended the clipboard. "Captain Cortin has asked that you be the one to represent her interests while she is under treatment, sir. Would you sign here, please?"

Chuckling, Odeon took the clipboard and scanned the form it held. He should have expected this; trust Joanie to think of his leave time, have him assigned to what he would be doing anyway. Then he frowned at the length-of-assignment block: Indefinite. That was bad, tended to indicate Boris' field diagnosis of spinal injury was right. He found the signature block, wrote his name in the small precise script he was continually kidded about. "Is there any word on her condition or when she'll be here?"

"She will be on a special medevac flight from Middletown, sir, due in at 1815. I was told nothing of her condition. By your leave, sir?"

"Dismissed, Tech." Odeon closed the door and went to finish his interrupted shower. She wasn't due in for another ten hours; he had time to clean up, nap, and eat before he went in to speak to her doctors. By then, they'd know exactly what was wrong with her, and have some idea of what could be done for her.

* * * * *

Two hours before the medevac plane was due to land, Odeon was in one of New Denver Municipal Hospital's briefing rooms. There were half a dozen nurses, twice that many technicians, and several doctors in addition to the one behind the lectern.

By the time the briefing was over an hour later, the only things Odeon was sure of were that he hadn't understood more than one word in three, and that the doctor in charge of Joanie's case was as competent as she was attractive. Bernette Egan, she'd introduced herself--a neurosurgeon.

He went up to her as the others began leaving. "One moment please, Dr. Egan, if I may."

She tilted her head to one side, crisp gray curls contrasting with skin the color of rich chocolate as she looked up at him with a smile. "You would like a summary in plain English, Captain. Correct?"

Odeon found himself returning her smile. "Yes, ma'am, if you wouldn't mind. You'd tell Joanie--Captain Cortin--and she's made me her advocate."

"Indefinitely, yes. I saw the form. Come to the coffee shop, where we can be comfortable, and I'll be happy to tell you everything I can."

"As you wish, Doctor. I'm buying."

"As you wish, Captain." Egan smiled again, gestured him out of the briefing room. "The coffee shop isn't far."

The short walk didn't give them time to talk, but Odeon had understood one key item: Joanie had gotten treatment quickly enough that none of her injuries now threatened her life. Some were serious, yes--maybe damn serious, especially the spinal injury--but she would live!

Mike Odeon didn't understand why he felt so strongly about Joan Cortin and her welfare; all he knew was that he did. He'd recruited her, sure, but he'd recruited others; he'd slept with her, but he'd slept with others; he'd led the team that rescued her, but he'd done that before, too. Maybe it was because the other incidents had all involved different people, maybe it was because none had reacted as positively to him on first meeting . . . he didn't try to analyze it. He was in Special Operations; analysis was for Intelligence. He simply accepted facts as he found them.

Odeon let Egan choose pastries while he drew coffee and paid the cashier. Once they found an empty table and settled themselves, he said, "Okay, Doctor. Tell me."

"To begin with, most of her injuries are what I understand you Enforcement people call minor. Fractured skull, three broken ribs, assorted cuts, burns, and bruises." Egan frowned. "However, her spinal injury is serious even by your standards, and . . . Captain, did she plan to have children?"

'Did,' not 'does,' Odeon thought grimly. "Yes, Doctor." Until he'd met Joanie, Odeon hadn't minded that the red crossed daggers of the SO patch on his sleeve meant he was sterile; his parents had both had plague-derivatives that made it inevitable, and it was a fate he shared with almost a third of the Kingdom Systems' population. That patch also meant he was one of those trusted to protect his Kingdom and the Systems from their most dangerous enemies. No one able to have children was allowed into SO since the average life expectancy was less than a year . . . "As soon as she found a suitable--and fertile--man. What was it, the rape?"

"Multiple rapes, and not all with . . . natural equipment." Egan looked at the grim, scar-faced man across from her, uncomfortably aware that he was both upset and a trained killer. That she knew he was a devout man as well was little help; Church and state both 'overlooked' acts from Enforcement people that they would condemn in anyone else. It seemed reasonable to assume Odeon and Cortin had been lovers, that if he'd been fertile he would have been the father of her children. "Captain, it pains me to have to tell you this, but she was so badly injured by them that the doctors in Middletown were forced to do an emergency hysterectomy, simply to save her life."

"Does she know?" Odeon kept his voice level, but with effort.

"Not yet. She should be stronger before she is given any more shocks."

Odeon nodded; that made good sense. "What about her spine?"

Egan breathed a silent sigh of relief at the change of subject. "You know it has what are called discs?" At his nod, she went on. "Good. According to the medevac doctor, a sharp blow to her back has caused one of those discs to swell and 'float,' or pop out of position from time to time. The swelling may subside, but if it does not--which is most likely--Captain Cortin will be in constant pain. Either way, when the disc pops, she will be in agony to match anything a third-stage Inquisitor can do."

"I gathered from the briefing that you plan to try surgery. What're her odds?"

"Not good," Egan admitted. "I can't be sure until I examine her myself, but we have had little success in correcting a floating disc. There is an alternative procedure, spinal fusion--essentially welding part of the spine together so the disc can't pop. She will still hurt, and it will limit her mobility somewhat; the only advantage is that she'll be spared the agony of the disc moving out of place."

"That sounds like grounds for a disability discharge." Odeon sipped his coffee and made a face, trying to lighten his mood a bit. He wasn't that fond of coffee to begin with, and this certainly wasn't the best he'd had. "Do hospital coffee shops have to boil this stuff?"

"You get used to it," Egan said. "Yes, that is grounds for discharge, and at full pay. I will have to examine her myself, as I said, but if Dr. Franklin says it's a floating disc, that's exactly what it is. I'll send her discharge recommendation in to Enforcement HQ first thing tomorrow."

"No, Doctor, you'll give it to me for endorsement." Odeon saw her beginning objection, and raised a hand to forestall it. "She doesn't want a discharge; my endorsement will request a waiver. And she won't want her mobility limited, since it would hamper her in her work. So no spinal fusion, we'll just have to hope that other operation you mentioned works."

Egan frowned, concern for her patient overcoming her apprehension. "You're a harsh man, Captain Odeon, even harsher than I expected from one of your profession. Do you know what you're condemning her to?"

"I know what you just told me, yes. But I also know the last thing she asked me was to help her stay in. I am her advocate, Doctor; until you release her, my word goes."

"Unfortunately, it does," Egan said with a sigh. "But then she can countermand your orders."

Odeon half-bowed in his seat. "That's right, Doctor, and I hope to God she does. I don't want to see her hurting, but she asked me not to let her get kicked out while she couldn't defend herself. I'm doing for her what she would do for me if our positions were reversed."

Egan looked at him for several moments, silent, then she nodded. She was beginning to understand, she thought. His grim harshness was real, but it concealed equally real concern for the woman he represented. "As you say, Captain. Be sure Captain Cortin will have the best care I can give her."

This time Odeon stood to bow and answer, formally. "My thanks, Doctor Egan. When may I see her?"

"Tomorrow afternoon," Egan replied. "I have her scheduled for surgery--whichever procedure you decided on--at 0800. I assure you she will be given only those drugs which are absolutely necessary."

"My thanks again, Doctor." Odeon gave her a sketchy salute. "If you'll excuse me, I have to pick up some forms." At her nod he left, grateful for her last assurance. It was almost a hundred years since the Final War--not the nuclear holocaust the prewars had dreaded; there had been only a few atomics used, and most of those were relatively clean neutron bombs. The primary weapons had been biological; it was their devastation that had wiped out over fifty percent of the Kingdoms' population, and the passage of time hadn't removed the remainder's sudden overwhelming aversion to "unnatural substances" imposed on the body. Drugs were used, sparingly, by doctors--and not so sparingly by Enforcement Service Inquisitors.

* * * * *

The next morning Odeon woke at dawn as he usually did, but instead of rising at once, he rolled onto his back and laced hands behind his head.

Joanie. She hadn't been beautiful when he first met her, so she never had been. That suited him well enough; he didn't like the prewar standard of beauty that still prevailed in many places. Beauties were too fragile, didn't have the strength of a real woman the way Joanie did. Tall skinniness was fine in a paid-woman, but Joanie's compactness was better. Stronger and more suitable for an Enforcement officer or a mother, anyway-- He pushed that thought aside. Joanie might be able to stay in Enforcement, but she'd never be a mother.

He tried to remember her as she had been, 165 centimeters and maybe 59 kilos, mostly muscle, of vigorous womanhood. But it'd hurt to see her lying broken and bloody on the hospital floor, her short dark hair stiff with drying blood; he couldn't get that image out of his mind, so he made himself study it instead, trying to bring out anything he hadn't consciously noted then.

There wasn't much. The hospital hadn't been all that different from other Brothers of Freedom raid points, except in being a hospital, its occupants even more helpless than most. The only oddity was that they hadn't made sure of the woman they'd marked. Possibly Rascal and his locals had arrived before they were able to.