In Her Name

of body she had never worked on before. She spliced bone and muscle, fused blood vessels closed. Thankfully there did not appear to be any injuries to the child’s internal organs, the functions of some of which the surgeon wasn’t sure.

“All right,” she said finally, wiping her arm across a brow that had been sweating profusely the entire time, despite the nurse’s best efforts to blot it away, “that’s it. I think he’ll make it.”

There was a burst of applause from the comms terminal as the officers and crew gathered around similar sets throughout the ship offered their congratulations. At first, the warrior was terrified that something had gone wrong. Eustus quickly reassured her that the boy would live, reaching out a hand to hold hers. That, and the smile on his face, was enough to reassure her that the child was safe.

It was perhaps the first victory in the war in which a life from the opposing side had been saved, and Eustus could only hope that what they had accomplished here today would set a precedent for the days yet to come.

Forty-Four

President Nathan slept fitfully, alone in the president’s quarters in the Council Building. His wife slept without him, as she often did, in their home in the country. He missed her and she him, but the affairs of state, as it had so many times in the many years of their marriage, took precedence over their personal lives. It was a sacrifice that very few of his countrymen truly appreciated.

The previous few days had been an unending political nightmare as he sought to fend off repeated attacks by Borge and his growing retinue of virulent supporters. While Nathan agreed that the current situation presented a historic opportunity, the military had not yet given him a plan with which he felt comfortable, a plan that did not expose every single colony – even Earth itself – to possible counterattack and destruction. For probably the first time in his life, Nathan was truly afraid, not for himself, but for his people. The decision he made had to be right. The consequences were simply too awful to contemplate if he was wrong.

But that was not good enough. The Council was rapidly swaying toward Borge’s arguments that the time to strike was now, and that they should strike with everything. Borge was quietly branding anyone who opposed the idea as a traitor, and had come within a word of calling Nathan a coward in the middle of the heated debate. Actually, he had done better than to state it explicitly. He had painted a picture with related words, leaving it to the listener to see the final portrait, false though it might be. Nathan was determined that Borge would not have his way, and so far he had managed to maintain enough support for his administration to thwart the ambitious senator’s machinations.

Imagine, Nathan had thought, mutely horrified, what would become of the democracy that had ruled the Confederation for the last century if this man came to power. Borge had made no secret of his reactionary attitude toward the military and scientific communities, not to mention what he thought – and claimed he would do – with regard to his political rivals. The man was nothing short of a megalomaniac, the kind who is spawned only in times of intense political crisis and in places resonating with corrupting power. In his mind, he had so much to gain by stepping up to Nathan’s position; and in Nathan’s mind, humanity everywhere had so much to lose. He would have arrested Borge if he could, just to shut him away from the power he so craved and would do anything to gain more of. But Nathan could not do that. He had lived his life by the constitution he had sworn to uphold, and he did not feel himself above the laws that guided the common man and woman in this time of perpetual crisis.

And that was the source of Nathan’s frustration: his inability to effectively combat Borge, for the senator was an enemy every bit as tenacious and far more inhuman even than the Kreelans. Nathan vowed to fight him tooth and nail in the Council chambers and wherever else he could claim as a battleground, but he knew that unless something drastic happened very soon, he would lose. It was inevitable. In his dreams, the president of the Confederation hoped for a miracle.

He did not hear the stealthy footsteps of the man who entered his room. The electronic guardian, the eyes and ears located throughout the large apartment, lay dormant, deactivated. The guards downstairs were alert, at their posts, but saw nothing. In the president’s bedroom it was dark, but the intruder had no difficulty seeing. This was what night vision lenses were made for.

The dark form paused for a moment at the president’s bedside. A smile passed across the intruder’s face under the black mask as he considered his next move, one that he had rehearsed numerous times. He silently extracted a wicked looking dagger that had been fashioned by Kreelan hands, but whose most recent owner had been human. It was Reza’s dagger, his most prized possession.

He moved close to the bed. He wanted to see Nathan’s eyes. The intruder nudged the slumbering president. The older man’s eyes snapped open wide.

The blade flashed down in a lethal arc as Nathan’s mouth made an “O” of surprise. He raised his arms in a defensive gesture that was too slow, too late. The knife, which was made of the sharpest and most durable metal known, speared Nathan’s chest directly over the heart, slipping through his ribs to rupture the vital muscle that pulsated beneath. A small ring of blood appeared on the sheet, but that was all.

With a gasp and shudder, the president of the Confederation, and democracy itself, died.

The intruder stood and watched the dead man for a few moments, savoring the feeling of the kill. He was sorely tempted to massage the massive erection in his pants to fruition, but he knew from experience that it would have to wait. This time. There had been others when waiting had been unnecessary. And he was sure there would be still more.

His erection grew harder. It was time to leave.

With the barest sigh of his rubber-soled boots on the plush carpet, the man made his exit. After he left the building through an exit that the guards thought was secure, the electronic guardian reactivated, its internal memory already adjusted to account for the moments it had been fooled: the horrified guards watched as Reza Gard appeared out of thin air, plunged a knife into their president’s heart, and then just as quickly disappeared as the alarms began to sound.

* * *

While she did not realize it at the time, walking home very likely saved Jodi’s life. She normally took the transit shuttle from the government complex to the rural hub four kilometers away that, in its turn, served the outlying areas where Nicole and Tony had their house. But after what she had discovered at the research center, she needed some time to think about what she had learned and had decided to take one of the many nature trails that wound their way through the countryside. It was dark, of course, but the sky was clear, the stars and waning moon lighting the way. Besides, she was not afraid. Even had she not been competent in Aikido and the street-style fighting Tony Braddock had taught her, she still could do more than her share of damage with the pocket blaster she carried under her tunic.

She was actually enjoying the cool smell of the night, the sounds of the crickets chirping and the high chittering of the bats that flew from the trees in search of their evening meal.

Fear did not take hold until she was within sight of the house and saw the three security skimmers pulled up in front.

“Not very subtle, are you?” she murmured to herself as she moved behind a fortuitously positioned hedge to conceal herself from the half dozen Internal Security troops wandering around the front yard. “Shit,” she whispered.

In the doorway, she could see Tony gesticulating angrily at what must have been the head IS man, who gestured back. She could hear their voices, but they were still too far away to make out. But she did not doubt the reason for the IS presence here: her “research” had set off some big alarm bells.

Then she saw the gun. Silence suddenly descended on the house.