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?"