The Alembic Plot.

by Ann Wilson.

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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. "d.a.m.n 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 ma.s.s third-stage interrogation."

"Dear G.o.d." Odeon bowed his head in a brief silent prayer for the victims, then looked up. "We'll find the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d again that the St. Dmitri exchange troop he'd drawn for his team was so d.a.m.n 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 b.l.o.o.d.y, 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 d.a.m.ned Enforcement b.i.t.c.h" 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 cla.s.s, 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds 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 d.a.m.n 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--d.a.m.n, 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. "h.e.l.l, 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 acc.u.mulated 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.