and DeathRay, Nancy, and Sehera pumped railgun rounds through the balls of light to no avail. Thomas and Koodie dove for the President. They covered him until the firing stopped.
'This is Thomas Washington. We have an emergency. The president is critically injured with three rounds to the chest. I repeat. The president has been shot.'
'Daddy!' Dee rushed to his side. There was no blood, as his suit and organogel had sealed it off. Immunoboost had been administered, but the rounds were completely through him in three places.
'I'm alive, Dee. And most important, so are you!' Moore smiled as he tried to open his visor. Then he, the bodyguards, Dee, and Sehera vanished from the Oval Office.
They reappeared in a hospital room in someplace unknown to Dee. Sehera tossed her helmet on the floor and helped Thomas and Koodie pull Alexander Moore out of his armor.
'Leave the seal layer on.' A team of doctors rushed in around them. 'Stand back, we've got this.'
'He was wounded pretty badly. His right lung was collapsed and torn asunder. His intestines were cut in half. And his heart had a hole in it big enough to put your thumb through. We did everything we could, ma'am.' The doctor looked at Sehera and Dee. Then he looked over their shoulders at the bodyguards and politicians.
'No, Daddy!' Tears flowed down Dee's cheeks.
'Come with me,' the doctor told them.
'Dee, shhh. It is okay, baby.' Sehera held her daughter's hand and led her by the hand calmly as she followed the doctor.
He led them down a long white corridor to a double door where Thomas stood in his Secret Service–agent black suit and tie and dark sensor glasses. He nodded to them but didn't say a word as they passed through the doors.
The room they entered was a large private hospital room with a single bed in it. Moore was lying in the bed with a blanket covering him. The blanket had the presidential seal on it. They could only see the foot of the bed, as the head of it was blocked by a wraparound curtain that hung from ceiling to floor.
'It will be okay, Dee,' Sehera comforted her. Dee was trembling and crying, barely maintaining control.
'Of course it will. Why wouldn't things be okay?' Alexander slid the curtain back. Dee's eyes widened.
'What! Daddy?' She rushed to his side and hugged him.
'Ouch, not too tight, princess, and not too loud, either.' He hugged her back.
'Why? Why would you do this to me?' Dee looked angry.
'Shhh, Dee. Listen to your father before you say anything else.' Sehera sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Alexander's leg through the blanket. He smiled back at her.
'We have some very hard decisions to make, Dee,' Alexander started.
'What do you mean, decisions?' Dee interrupted. 'There are no decisions. We go and find Fink and my deranged grandmother and we put about ten bullets into each of their brains. No decision. It is simple!'
'Like father, like daughter.' Sehera smiled again. She rubbed Dee on the back with her other hand.
'Well, yes, Dee, we will do that, if that is the right thing to do. And believe me, I agree with you. But Elle Ahmi controls and inspires millions of people. If she suddenly vanishes, there will be chaos and Tau Ceti will tear itself apart. The power-hungry assholes like Fink, Elise Tangiers, and many others will usurp resources and create a world of factions that will continue to be a war zone for generations.' Moore paused for a breath and adjusted the tube in his nose. For the first time, Dee noticed it.
'Dad, what's wrong?'
'Ha, nothing. They haven't had time to finish printing me a new lung yet, so I'm still only using one of them. The doctors spent all the time so far printing me a new heart and then a new section of intestine. I'll be fine after my surgery in a few minutes, but first we need to talk. The lung will be printed by then, and the surgery is quite routine. With immunoboost, I'll be back to normal in two hours tops.'
'Okay. I love you, Dad.' Dee had never seen her father hurt before. He had tackled giant mechanical monsters with his bare hands and come out without so much as a scratch, but he seemed extremely mortal to her now lying in the hospital bed. The feeling scared the hell out of her. The fact that it was her own grandmother that had shot him just made her more certain that Elle Ahmi was nothing more than raw genetic material. If Dee got the chance, she'd kill Ahmi for doing what she had done to her dad.
'So, the decision we have to make, Dee,' Sehera added, 'is what do we do
