The First Casualty - Book cover

The First Casualty

Kira Bacal

Chapter 2

Disorientation. Pain. Forms looming over her. Muffled voices raised in inquisition. She knew this could mean only one thing: capture. She must escape.

She lay still, feigning unconsciousness as she struggled to determine her surroundings.

Despite the fog that still enshrouded her mind, she could sense the presence of two, maybe three, figures in her immediate area, approaching and retreating in a constant, dizzying swirl.

She was lying on a narrow, raised platform, unrestrained so far as she could tell.

Then one of the figures bent close with an exclamation of surprise. “Her brainwave scans have changed! She’s coming to!”

They reached toward her, and she made her move.

Her eyes flew open and she snapped one hand up and out, fist clenched. One part of her mind registered the sound of crunching bone and a cry of pain, but all she cared about was that one of the forms had fallen away.

She jackknifed forward and caught the edge of the platform, evading the second one’s attempt to pin her by the shoulders.

Using the platform as leverage, she flipped forward onto the floor. As soon as she was upright, she spun around, unwilling to turn her back on the uninjured figure, but a third lunged from the side, catching her left arm in a tight grasp.

She drove her elbow deeply into his solar plexus, then brought her hand up, fingers rigid in a panther grip. The knuckles would impact on his voice box, and he would drown in his own blood.

“Mithra!” The shout came from the second man, and at the last moment she pulled the blow, robbing it of its lethality.

“Mithra,” he repeated, eyeing her cautiously, “it’s all right. You’re among friends.”

The use of her true name brought back her memory, and suddenly the dark chamber resolved into a dimly lit treatment room in the medical center.

The attacker still trembling in her grasp revealed himself to be a petrified medtech, while the man who had shouted was none other than Captain Tyrose himself.

It took her only a few seconds to adjust to the new situation. Her eyes flickered around the room as she deduced what had happened while she was unconscious.

They had obviously discovered her true identity, and it was pointless to attempt a denial. Her actions had just established her identity beyond any doubt.

The absence of any alarm sirens told her that she and Pilar had been successful in their attempts to save the ship, while her own good health proved that the pipe’s deformation had not caused an explosive decompression within the room.

The only question still remaining was how long it would take her to transfer off the ship.

She stifled a groan at the thought of having to put up with the inevitable stares, then chided herself for her weakness. The concerns of little minds were beneath her.

She released the medtech, who looked as though he were about to faint, and addressed herself to the captain. “I assume you wish to speak with me?”

“You are Mithra Dis?” he asked warily. “Of Edderbee Eight—”

“Obviously you have identified me,” she cut him off. Even the name was enough to trigger the nightmares.

“Goddamn!” A groping hand appeared on the bed, soon followed by the rest of the ship’s surgeon, Abraham Hatch. His shirtfront was a sodden mass of crimson, and his nose still spouted gore. “Woddehell did you do to me?”

“I believe I broke your nose,” she replied calmly. “And perhaps a tooth or—”

“Don’t just stand there, Marks, you bliddering idiot,” Hatch yelled at his technician around the pillow he was holding to his nose. “Gib me a hand here!”

“I’d like an explanation,” Tyrose said coldly, once the doctor’s injuries were being treated.

“Of what?” she asked.

“Your presence here. Your deception.”

“Do you plan to file charges?”

He looked startled. “No.”

“Then I am under no obligation to accommodate you,” she stated calmly. “Unless you intend to subpoena me and question me under oath, I suggest you drop the matter.”

“What?” Tyrose’s color rose. “You board my ship under false pretenses and then refuse to explain?”

“Yes.”

“Now wait—”

“Kindly moderate your tone,” she said icily.

He took a deep breath. “You don’t deny that you came aboard using a false name?”

“To do so would be pointless. You are obviously aware of my real identity.”

“Then why the hell was Mithra Dis, sole survivor of the battle of Edderbee Eight and the only Augmented person ever to survive her Mynd, pretending to be some brain-dead scutpup named Tophet?”

“Nice touch,” the doctor wheezed from where the tech was tending to his nose. “The name, I mean.”

Startled, she glanced over at him. No one else had ever picked up the reference.

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “I like to do crosswords. You pick up all sorts of arcane trivia with them.”

She turned her attention back to the captain. “What I choose to do with my life is my own affair. My presence on your vessel has caused no harm; quite the reverse, in fact.”

“When a trained killer is wandering my ship, I have a right to know about it.” The captain’s tone was quiet, but it was clear that he was having difficulty restraining his temper.

“I assure you I killed no one while I was onboard,” she said dryly.

“Do you find this amusing?” he snapped.

“I find the preoccupations of little minds entertaining,” she retorted coldly, then was shocked by her own remark.

Since when was she reduced to replying to little minds in kind? Where was her control? She had been trained since the age of seven never to refer to non-Augmented people as “little minds” in their hearing, and here she was, insulting one to his face.

She glanced away, furious at herself.

“I see,” Tyrose said coldly. “You still ally yourself with the Mynds.”

Before she could demand to know what he meant by that, the doctor reentered the conversation.

“You’re a pretty ungrateful young woman,” the doctor, his broken nose now swathed in bandages, remarked. “Do you greet all your doctors this way?”

“Even a battlefield medic knows better than to hover over a Mynd who is regaining consciousness. If you had allowed me to recover my faculties unmolested, this incident could have been avoided.”

“But my dear girl”—the doctor sounded genuinely surprised—“you’re not a Mynd. Not anymore.”

She stiffened as though he had slapped her, then quite deliberately turned her back on him.

“When will the ship next make port?” she asked the captain. “I will be disembarking at the earliest opportunity.”

A brief smile crossed his lips. “No, you won’t.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Explain yourself.”

“We are proceeding directly to Earth, where you are to report to Agency HQ.”

“That is impossible.”

He shrugged, and she was certain he was enjoying his role as the bearer of unwelcome news. “Those are the orders.”

“I am no longer in the Space Agency,” she snapped. “Orders cannot apply to me. I insist that you make for the nearest colony or space station and allow me to leave the ship.”

He turned away from her and lazily seated himself on the bunk she had vacated. “Is there anything you want to tell me? A problem you’d like to share?”

She couldn’t suppress a snort of derision. “I can’t imagine such an occasion ever arising.”

He ignored the comment. “You attract mystery like honey gathers flies, and I don’t happen to like mysteries aboard my ship.”

“Your likes and dislikes can hardly interest me.”

“Why did you come aboard? Why does the Admiralty consider your transport to Earth a matter of the highest priority?”

“What?” Her attention focused sharply on his last comment. “The highest priority?”

He nodded, looking at her calculatingly. “We’d been on a priority two mission, heading for the settlement on Quadrates III, but as soon as I informed the Agency of your presence on the ship, they ordered us to return to Earth at maximum speed.”

“Why did you contact the Agency?”

He raised an eyebrow. “A crippled hero aboard my vessel incognito? Your whereabouts have been a source of speculation for the past five years, ever since you left the hospital and dropped out of sight—”

“So you felt it incumbent upon you to alert the authorities as to my whereabouts? Did you consider me a wanted fugitive?”

Anger lent an unfamiliar edge to her tone. The audacity of the man! Tattling to the PDF as though she were an errant child! “Did it not occur to you that, had the Mynd Strike Force wished to discover my location, it would hardly have taken them five years?”

“I know you were a Striker,” Tyrose replied. “Everyone in the Agency knows that! But the Strike Force might not be interested in your welfare, now that—”

He paused for a moment, then shrugged and completed the phrase, “Now that you’re no longer of use to them. The Mynds’ agenda—”

She clenched her teeth. “I should have guessed you were one of those types.”

Tyrose frowned. “What type?”

“A purist,” she sneered. “One of those narrow-minded, ungrateful paranoids who mutter of Mynd conspiracies and promote xenophobia.”

“If you mean do I view the Mynds with a healthy dose of skepticism, the answer is yes.”

Tyrose’s voice was steady, but he was clenching and unclenching his fists. “Unlike those who embrace them with slavish devotion, I have a hard time believing that the Mynds are helping us purely out of a sense of altruism.”

“Hidden agendas, secret deals.” Mithra rolled her eyes. “You happily ignore all of the good the Mynds have done and darkly predict future betrayals! The Mynds have been nothing but helpful! Without their aid—which was always solicited, I might add—we would never have won the war. Or do you deny that?”

“Humans were the ones who manned the ship. Humans were the ones who sailed into battle.”

She was rigid with fury now. “You dare tell me,” she breathed, her voice shaking, “that no Mynds fought—and died!—in battle?”

Tyrose cursed himself for the slip. “No, of course not,” he stumbled clumsily. “I didn’t mean to—”

“The construction of those ships you mention was the result of Mynd technology,” she continued, oblivious to his attempts at an apology.

“The strategy which won the war was Mynd. It was the result of Mynd intervention that the world was in a state where it could face the Jannthru with a united force. It was Mynd training which permitted human crews to ‘sail into battle,’ and it was due to Mynd-assisted medical research that so many humans returned from the war!”

“If—” Tyrose tried to interrupt her, but she overrode him.

“And lastly, it was Mynd-Augmented Strikers who actually landed on the planet to obtain vital intelligence. It was Strikers who infiltrated the enemy’s ships as they lay unsuspecting in safe docks, and it was Strikers,” she blazed, “who engaged the enemy at Edderbee Eight! So don’t you dare attempt to disseminate your revisionist history in my presence, Captain, because I am living proof that the Mynds have died for our sakes!”

“Bravo,” Hatch said lightly, applauding softly.

The others spun around. They’d completely forgotten his presence.

He stepped closer to Mithra, nodding encouragingly. “It’s good to let your feelings out like that. Something tells me you don’t vent enough.”

She stared at him in horror. That’s exactly what she had done—displayed her emotions in front of these little minds as though she were no better than they.

Her Mynd training might well have never existed for all that she was making use of it. She must have been more affected by her injuries than she had realized. There was no other excuse for her behavior.

The captain had recovered his composure even as Mithra was losing hers. “I had no idea you held such fiery opinions,” he said sardonically. “I thought that Mynds frowned upon public displays.”

She glared at him. He was mocking her, pointing out her lapse for all to see. “You will drop me at the nearest inhabited planet,” she snapped, trying to change the subject. “The matter is closed.”

“My orders, and yours, say differently.”

She struggled for patience. “As I have told you, I am no longer a member of the Space Agency. I resigned my commission in the Planetary Defense Force while still in the hospital following Edderbee Eight. I am not—”

Tyrose interrupted her. “What you don’t seem to realize is that your resignation was never accepted. You vanished before any official steps had been taken, so you’re still on the rolls of the Agency as a full member of the PDF, and as such, you are subject to Agency orders.”

“That’s absurd!” she snapped. “The Strike Force would never accept me—” she faltered, then forced herself to continue, “—in my present…condition.”

“The Strikers are only one limb of the Agency. There are plenty of others which don’t employ Mynd-Augmented personnel. Your ‘condition’ doesn’t automatically grant you a discharge.”

She gritted her teeth. “I do not consider myself a member of the Agency, nor have I for the past five years.”

“Obviously,” Tyrose remarked coldly. “Nevertheless, the Agency does, and you’ll have to argue the point with them. However, for as long as you’re aboard this ship, you’ll conduct yourself as an officer of the PDF.”

“Which means,” Hatch interrupted, “that you don’t go around assaulting your doctor.”

The ploy worked. He succeeded in drawing their attention to him and away from each other.

As ship’s medical officer, and Tyrose’s friend, he was concerned by the naked hostility which was developing between the two.

Although this was a terribly difficult time for Tyrose, Hatch was acutely concerned with Mithra. He was more than a little worried by her activities over the past five years.

“Esau, I know you need to get back to the Comm Center; a strong presence there is of special importance just now. Besides, I want to give Dis here a complete physical.”

She bridled reflexively. “I am in perfect health! Besides, you certainly had the opportunity to examine me while I was unconscious.”

“You’ll obey orders!” Tyrose rapped out.

“Don’t presume to—”

“Now, now, children,” Hatch chided, playing on his slight advantage in age. In point of fact, he was less than a decade older than Tyrose’s thirty-six years.

“Go ahead, Esau. I know you want to get up to the Comm.” Under the guise of a friendly pat on the back, Hatch reinforced his words with an unequivocal shove toward the door.

Tyrose glanced at him sharply, but finally headed out. “We haven’t finished with this,” he warned Mithra.

“Quite right,” she shot back. “I will determine when the matter is settled.”

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