Xander Page 3

  “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Care to join us?” Etherington gestured toward a nearby table.

  “Well…” Xander glanced down at his watch, aware of scrutiny from the table’s occupants. Every eye was on him, but he had enough time to sit with his fellow officers for a few minutes. “Thank you. I’d love to.” He moved up in the line and stacked his tray with a pre-measured bowl of soup and a sandwich, ignoring the crowded dessert line at the end.

  The moment Xander sat down at the table, a young lieutenant leaned forward, eyes shining with enthusiasm. “Is it true you’re qualified to work on the latest series of implants? I heard we’re getting people with tech that hasn’t been released yet for normal distribution among the civilian population or the rest of the military.”

  “I am,” Xander confirmed, a broad grin on his face. “I recently completed a twelve-week course on performing spot maintenance while on Paradiso, too, so I’m also a certified cyberware mechanic. Quicker repairs, no need to send it out.”

  “Holy shit,” Etherington breathed. “No more weeklong turnarounds to receive our shit back from the repair depot?”

  “That’s right. I can manage most repairs myself here and in the field. Including the newest stuff.”

  “And the staff?” another officer asked, wrinkling her nose. “How do you like your fellow doctors?”

  Xander chuckled. “I feel welcome. Oshiro and I have known one another for a very long time. He was my mentor.”

  The same officer raised both brows. “But what about the Sargossan? I still can’t believe they let her onboard.”

  “Should they not?” Xander asked, puzzled.

  Etherington grimaced. “Her kind don’t have any place on our vessels. Don’t you think so, Doc? Hart doesn’t say much about it, but it has to be a nightmare in medical. I mean, aren’t you one needle stick away from infection?”

  Xander sighed. “It doesn’t work that way. It requires prolonged exposure to the organism, over a period of years. One contaminated needlestick won’t be enough. The average human body would fight it off, even an infirm one.”

  “We’re exposed to her every day, aren’t we?” the second officer asked. Her name tag identified her as Lieutenant Porter. “She has no business among us. Especially in medical where things need to remain sterile.”

  “They’ll regret overturning the law as soon as there’s an outbreak on one of our ships. I hope to God it isn’t the Jemison, and that her plague doesn’t spread to the rest of us,” Etherington said, shaking his head.

  When settlers had first colonized Sargossa, no one detected the microscopic organism that lived deep in the soil and rock. After twenty years, colonists fell prey to the first symptoms—sensitivity to sunlight, anemia, and unquenchable thirst. The development of secondary canines wasn’t seen until the first generation of Sargossans were born.

  “Well?” Etherington persisted. “She has no bloody place among the rest of us. It’s a joke that she even received a commission. Sargossans are practically alien.”

  Porter snickered suddenly. Xander followed her gaze, twisting in the seat until he saw Lilibeth at the table behind them. She pushed up from the table to leave.

  Xander lost what remained of his composure, his words spat out with vehemence. “Your fellow marine and peer deserves respect. She’s a fine officer.”

  “Sir—”

  “Finer than any of you,” Xander interrupted. “Doctor Matthews doesn’t gossip about her peers and cares for each of you equally, and in my opinion, that makes her an exceptionally fine human, as well.”

  Lacking the patience to tolerate more of their ignorance, he left his sandwich on the table and hurried after the retreating woman. “Lilibeth, a moment,” he called out. She paused a few feet from the door, her back ramrod straight. Xander offered his arm. “Walk with me?”

  A couple officers gaped at him, as if horrified to see the commander offering unprotected physical contact with the “alien” Sargossan.

  Lilibeth blinked but slipped her arm through his and allowed him to escort her from the room.

  “I want to apologize for the shit you overheard,” Xander began.

  “You have nothing to apologize for. Etherington and his friends will always be jerks, and there’s nothing I can do to change that. They’re no better than high school children, and clinging to anger doesn’t hurt them, it just hurts me,” she explained.

  “You’re a wise young lady.”

  “And you are a kind man, Xander.” They paused outside a stateroom, where she gently extracted herself and leaned up to kiss his cheek. “Remember my words for yourself.”

  Before he could ask what she meant, she smiled and crossed the threshold. The door shut behind her.

  When Xander turned, a dark-haired young man was standing not too far away, features those of a native from one of the many planets colonized by China. Or perhaps Japan. “That was a pretty nice thing you did for her.”

  “I didn’t really do anything at all.”

  “I was working on the communication system in the Wardroom and saw the entire thing. Anyway, I’m Chief Lockhart. Gareth Lockhart. It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

  “Pleasure’s all mine.”

  “You’re also much nicer than the rumors indicated.”

  Xander raised a brow. “Mean isn’t usually on the list of false attributes assigned to me. They must be coming up with new stories to tell.” Crazy perhaps. Psychotic. He’d even accept violent, but mean?

  “You should have heard the tales going around about my brother and me. People were convinced before we ever stepped foot aboard our first command that we’d read every mind on the ship and sell secrets for quid.”

  “You’re a psychic then?”

  “Apt assumption, sir. But, uh, don’t worry. I’d never violate someone’s privacy like that, and I can’t read minds without physical contact. Not anymore.” Gareth’s smile faded. “Anyway, Commodore Bishop wanted me to check on your netlink and guarantee you’d have a stable connection. He says you were always lagging out when he needed to be revived in game, and to make sure your shit was on point here.”

  Xander groaned. “Did he really?”

  “Okay, he didn’t admit it openly, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  The two men laughed and made their way to Xander’s stateroom. Gareth immediately moved to the interface panels and crouched beside them to begin his work. He whistled. “Nice gear, Doctor. Now you’ll have a connection to match.”

  Less than five minutes later, Gareth had made the necessary alterations in the information currents. The chief closed up the panel and slipped his tools away. “There. All finished. You shouldn’t die the next time we’re raiding the Hell level.”

  Xander’s eyebrows rose toward his hairline. “You were there?”

  “Didn’t you gather that much from my comment about reviving Bishop?” Gareth exaggerated a sigh. “You’re on the commodore’s private network now like the rest of us in the guild, so you won’t be dragged down into the laggy abyss again.”

  “Thanks, Chief, I appreciate it.”

  Gareth hesitated at the door with his fingers against the cool metal. “Commander?”

  “Yeah?” he answered absently while unpacking his virtual gear.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  Tension straightened Xander’s spine and locked his shoulders. His fingers clenched around the edge of the case. Better that than the delicate equipment within. “Excuse me?”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Gareth repeated without making eye contact. “I just thought I should say as much. Couldn’t leave without saying it. I don’t see what’s bothering you—it doesn’t work that way… but there’s an aura of guilt surrounding you so deeply that your soul is drowning in it, and I can see that.”

  Words died in his throat, choked back by the upwelling storm of emotions. Xander didn’t think his dry mouth could form them anyway.

  “Things will get be
tter. I know you’ve heard that before. Trust me, I’ve heard it a hundred times myself. But one day, there’ll be a moment when you wake up and realize you can breathe again.”

  “I don’t think…” Xander swallowed and dragged in a breath.

  Although Gareth was already across the room, the impression of a warm palm settled against Xander’s shoulder. Encouraging, and somehow pleasantly supportive. “Give it all the time you need. I think I know why Bishop insisted for me to install your netlink personally. And I’m glad that he did. You and I have something in common, sir… and I’m around any time you need an ear.”

  The psychic excused himself from the stateroom and took the familiar, friendly presence with him. Xander remained seated at the edge of his bed for a while longer, too captivated by his own deep thoughts to do anything else.

  Chapter Three

  The Jemison’s medical suite had to be one of the nicest Thandie had ever seen, but she chalked that up to Lexar ingenuity. Her last ship had been a human made clunker ready to fall to pieces.

  “Got a patient for you, sir,” the on-duty medical technician called, announcing Thandie’s arrival at the examination lab. “Lovely piece of arm work on her.”

  “Thanks, O’Reilly. I’ll be right in with her.”

  Thandie peered through the doorway left open by the corpsman. Her unpleasant experiences with military doctors consisted of assholes rushing her in and out of the exam room. Occasionally, one asked about her eyes, questioned her headaches, and prescribed useless pain meds that didn’t even scratch the surface of her migraines.

  When she had been selected for the splicing program, Thandie had leapt at the chance to undergo genetic therapy and become one of the best snipers in the Royal Marines. Youth had clouded her judgment and downplayed the potential negative side effects.

  Her gaze dropped away from the hall and down to her boots. When footsteps announced the arrival of her doctor, she didn’t look up. They all tended to look the same—bland and judgmental. Arrogant.

  “Sergeant Kruger, right? I’m Doctor Vargas. Nice to meet you.”

  The unusually cordial voice drew her gaze upward where it froze on the medical officer’s face. It took her mind a moment to realize the handsome sight in front of her was a doctor and not one of her fellow enlistees. She blinked at the Commander insignia shining against his lab coat collar.

  In all her life, she’d never met a doctor who filled out a lab coat the way he did, with broad shoulders and a chest defined with chiseled muscles under his scrub shirt. The body beneath it had to be rock hard and sculpted as finely as the infantrymen she’d trained alongside. Never mind that the man towered above her and had to be somewhere in the neighborhood of six and a half feet tall, maybe a little more.

  His reassuring smile melted her insides until she recalled their surroundings and that he was her damned doctor. “Uh, hello, sir.”

  His grin didn’t fade. “This says you’re in for shoulder pain. Let’s have a look at you, shall we? What happened?”

  Her mind didn’t want to cooperate with her mouth and it took a moment to shake off the fuzz. “I was throwing punches with Commander Viljoen yesterday in training, and now my arm is all out of whack.”

  “Can you describe it to me? Where is the pain localized? Does it spread? Is it difficult to pinpoint?”

  Thandie raised a hand to her shoulder and kneaded the spot. “It begins right here, like stabs from a knife in the cartilage. Then it radiates into my back.”

  The doctor moved closer and flashed a sympathetic smile. A gorgeous smile below the prettiest set of gray eyes she had ever seen. For a moment, she thought they glowed like the sun behind fading storm clouds. And they were so damned familiar. Had she met him before?

  “All right if I check it out?”

  Thandie jerked her gaze away before she stared too long. “Er, sure thing, Doc.”

  One hand touched her shoulder and the other took her elbow, fingers warm, unlike the usual icy physician’s touch. “Why did you wait so long to come in if this happened yesterday?”

  “Figured that was normal enough at first, all things considered, but it lingered through to today. First it only hurt when I raised my arm. Now it’s constant. I feel it zinging toward my spine.”

  He flexed the joint a few times then lowered the arm to her side again before drawing a nearby screen closer. “I see.”

  When the two most frightening words to ever be spoken by a medical professional left his lips, she winced and waited for his diagnosis.

  “According to your medical history, the entire right arm is a prosthetic?”

  “Yeah, they fit me about two years ago. I took an incendiary round to the bicep. My arm was burned, and they couldn’t save it.” She mumbled the last bit and glanced away. Everything was in her files, but doctors had a nasty habit of making her repeat it aloud. When the request for details didn’t come, she peeked back up. Doctor Vargas smiled warmly.

  God, he looked like a model from Paradiso someone had thrown into a lab coat.

  “Shoulder reconstruction. How’s that working for you?”

  “Great. The doctor who did it was magical, they said. A real wizard with a scalpel and nanogel. It didn’t feel like it at first, but three months later it was tougher than ever.”

  “And some bone plasteel lacing augmentation of your left hip after taking a bullet. You seem to be a magnet for those.”

  Heat raced up her neck. “Comes with the job. But, yeah, that’s it for the implants,” Thandie confirmed.

  His brows raised. “Have you ever had a problem with any of them before? Any sharp stabs, aches, irritation beneath the skin? Grinding?”

  “Not until Commander Viljoen kicked my shoulder and wrenched it in a hold,” she grumbled under her breath.

  “You’re in luck. Received my cyberware mechanic cert while on Paradiso this past year, so I’m familiar with these. The Royal Guard seems to be fond of this brand, too…” he mused out loud while reading the specifications. “Newest model. Very nice. It’s not a bad device, until some prick decides to play dirty in a sparring match.”

  Thandie’s lips turned up at one corner. “Some people take losing very seriously.”

  “Guess that means you were winning.”

  “Yeah, ‘were’ being the operative word,” she responded dryly.

  “I need to have a look, Sarge. Mind unfastening your coveralls and lowering them to your waist?”

  She nodded and unzipped her suit to reveal the fitted tank top beneath. The faint surgical scar had diminished over the years, barely a discolored line where lab-grown skin grafted to her natural body.

  “I swore when I signed up for this, I wouldn’t let any of you ship-boys talk me out of my clothes.”

  Her doctor resembled a deer staring into hovercraft headlamps.

  Thandie shifted restlessly and bit her lower lip. “Sorry, I tend to blurt out stuff when I’m nervous.”

  “Understandable. Medical makes everyone nervous.” He recovered and flashed her a grin. “I don’t like undressing for strangers either. Maybe that’s why I’m the doctor.” He guided her back gently against the table. A machine hung overhead, dangling from rails installed in the ceiling. He grasped hold of it, guided it above her body at torso height until the lens was aligned with her shoulder, and he peered into the screen.

  Her booted feet fidgeted, then she crossed one ankle over the other to still their swaying. She tried to stare up at the ceiling, but her gaze drifted toward the dark-haired man peering at her skeleton.

  “You’re probably familiar with this, but I like to talk everyone through what I’m doing anyway. I’ll start by shifting your limb as needed to see if any of your connectors came loose from the nerve plates.”

  He didn’t fill the empty seconds with meaningless conversation, speaking only when necessary. It was during a silent lull that subtle notes of classical music teased past her hearing.

  “Is that your music?”

  “
The ship’s A.I. likes to chase me with music ever since it found out I play the cello.” He chuckled. “You’re going to feel a jolt in a second.” He wiggled the pads of his index and middle fingers against the joint of her shoulder. Then he rotated her arm, stabbing unforgiving lances of pain into the socket, a hot poker sizzling into the core of her bone and sending molten metal down every nerve fiber.

  Thandie bit back a scream, but it was a close thing.

  “Sorry, Sarge. He got you pretty good, but you’re in luck. We won’t need any invasive procedures to go in and surgically adjust it, at least, and the worst of the pain will be over by the time you leave my office.”

  “Good,” she wheezed, quickly clearing her throat afterward. “So, it’ll just settle back in then or…?”

  “No. I’ll nudge it and send you back to your bunk with a sick note. You can have a couple days off for it to heal. Sound good to you?”

  “Not how I’d hoped to make my debut at a new command, but I guess I have little choice in the matter.”

  “Absolutely no choice, really. Unless you’d prefer to go under the knife. I have some new surgical lasers I’m very excited to try.”

  “No!” She flashed a quick, bright grin up at him. “Absolutely no need for you to play surgery with me, Doc.”

  “Are you certain about that? This is only my second week, and I’m dying to do some real work.”

  At least he had a sense of humor. “Rain check.”

  The heel of his right palm pressed flush against her body, effectively pinning her to the table. He stared at the screen, completely unaware of her awkward mood.

  Thandie braced herself for the pain. It hurt. It hurt every bit as much as she’d expected when his fingers pressed bone deep. He kneaded and palpated, until the loosened connectors met with their sockets. Each time, a wild zing of electricity raced down her nerves to her spine.

  “Be still,” he warned her. His voice had changed, husky and thick. Or was it her imagination?

  Thandie gritted her teeth and refused to cry out. As he completed the final pop, sensation exploded beneath the bone and raced down her spine to the tips of her toes.