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Domine Xanthus, a dizzying apparition in the bright light from the doorway, stood breathing heavily for long moments. "I give you warnings. Beg you to behave. Curse it, Rufus, you force my hand. Fetch me the cat!"
Another terrible silence fell. Rufus didn't move.
"I said, fetch the cat!"
"Yes, Domine," Rufus choked out. Rage and dread trembled in those two, brief words. She got a look at his face and immediately wished she hadn't. Helplessness... a promise of murder...
Domine Xanthus vanished from her awareness. Rufus scraped himself from the floor and disappeared into the light after him. Aelia—she didn't know what else to call herself—tried to rise and fell back with a moan when her head spun traitorously. The voice Domine Xanthus had identified as Sextus' said, "Back to bed, Aelia."
Sextus was an enormous man. When he picked her up, Aelia received the impression he could have lifted her with one hand, but he used two in order to brace her head. When he pressed a cup to her lips, she struggled.
That high, light voice went steely. "You must drink it, girl."
"No..."
Fighting was useless. It only brought on the pain and nausea again. Sextus forced the bitter stuff down her throat, then tied her wrists once more and left her alone in the hot little room. Aelia was still crying as she slid into unconsciousness.
When the phone shrilled in his ear, Francisco Valdez had been asleep for maybe ten minutes. He groaned and tried to ignore the insistent jangling. It kept ringing with the shrill of a vengeful harpy. He finally rolled over and glanced at the glowing clock face to confirm the time. Francisco muttered obscenities. Three-forty a.m. It had better not be another emergency surgery... .
He groped for the receiver and promptly knocked it to the floor. The solid bang woke him up another millimeter or two. Francisco groped along the cold linoleum.
"Yeah?" he finally mumbled. Lieutenant Kominsky's voice boomed at him so forcefully he winced and held the receiver away from his ear.
"Major Valdez, we have a medical emergency, sir." Francisco bit back a groan. "The patrol just radioed in from the perimeter. They're bringing in an intruder. Said he's half dead from frostbite."
Francisco mumbled something about that not being surprising, considering how cold it was. Kominsky asked him to repeat himself. He grunted and managed to say clearly, "Davis is the doctor on call, Kominsky. Shuddup and lemme sleep."
Before he could recradle the receiver, Kominsky said, "Colonel Collins requested you specifically, Major. I'm sorry, sir. I heard about Kruger's spleen."
Great. Kominsky was sorry. Well, so was he. And when he got his hands on Dan Collins—
"Send a hummer. I'm in no shape to drive." Not when he hadn't gotten out of surgery until 2:45.
"It's on the way, sir."
Francisco hung up, reflecting that if he couldn't drive, he certainly shouldn't be seeing patients. Stifling a whole series of groans, he dragged himself out of bed and into the bathroom. The mirror mocked him silently. He couldn't see any whites in his eyes, just red. He splashed cold water into his face until he felt semiconscious. That exercise in futility burned up nearly ten minutes.
"Uniform," he mumbled on the way out of the bathroom. He tripped over a chair. "Ow."
The uniform wasn't in the bedroom. He found it sprawled obscenely over the couch. By the time he'd struggled into it, the hummer had arrived and the driver was banging at the door. And Private Simms, bless his Anglo heart, had brought a thermos of coffee.
"The L-T said you'd need it, sir." Simms gri
If it had been cold before, the air now was bitter. "How much has the temperature dropped?" he asked as he climbed into the hummer's passenger seat.
"Ten degrees this past hour, sir."
Francisco damned the bureaucratic idiot who'd sent them transport vehicles without heaters in them and huddled miserably into his parka.
Simms offered hesitantly, "It's supposed to be below zero by dawn, but I wish the sun would come up, anyway. It just looks warmer in the daytime."
"Yeah." Francisco was from southern California. Alaska's winter weather still left him feeling shell-shocked. One of his ward nurses had taken perverse delight in telling him this winter was much milder than the previous one—a veritable heat wave, she'd said. Francisco shivered. He didn't even want to think about weather colder than this.
Francisco stared glumly out the window toward a glitter of lights which marked the one building he hadn't ever been given access to, a squat concrete bunker of a structure which represented the reason this base existed. Francisco scowled at it and sipped at his second cup of coffee.
One of these days, maybe even later today, he was going to confront Dan Collins with a whole bellyful of questions. He was tired of his commanding officer dodging him while mystery after mystery piled up on this base. Like how Kruger had managed to rupture his spleen in the middle of the night, on guard, with injuries that looked more like a mauling than a fallen tree?
And whoever heard of thunderstorms in January? Yet Francisco had clearly heard the rumble of thunder, not only during that emergency surgery, but off and on again for the past several weeks. And now Collins dragged him out of bed to deal with an intruder, for God's sake. They were literally centered in the smack dab middle of nowhere, up here. Who could possibly be around to intrude?
The patrol beat them to the infirmary by less than a minute. Francisco gulped the last of the coffee, tossed the thermos cup to Simms with a heartfelt "Thanks," rolled up metaphoric sleeves, and waded in.
The patient was middle-aged, pushing fifty. He was unkempt-looking, with thi
"Mother of God, what on earth was this guy doing?" he muttered.
"Dying," was Jackson's laconic reply.
"No kidding? Let's take care of him, Jackson. Put him in the fridge." Francisco motioned for the patrol to carry the man into the treatment room which unhappy troopies had named "the fridge." The room's temperature was set considerably lower than the rest of the clinic, to deal with frostbite victims. Frozen flesh needed to be warmed slowly. Francisco had treated more frostbite in the past few months than during the rest of his cumulative medical career.
Francisco met Captain Davis, the duty physician, halfway there.
"Frank, what are you doing back?"
Francisco scowled. "Dan rousted me out. We've got another frostbite victim."
"Frostbite? I can handle simple frostbite, Frank."
He rubbed his eyes, yawned, and nodded. "I know. When I get my hands on Dan Collins, he'll wish he'd let me sleep. But this guy's an intruder. They caught him camping inside the perimeter."
"Camping? In this weather? Up here? Christ, Frank, not even reindeer go camping up here."
Francisco managed a tired grin. "Tell me about it. Let's see what we've got."
Captain Davis ordered thermal blankets and a blood workup as they passed the night nurse's duty station, then they stepped into the fridge. Davis took the intruder's vitals. The duty nurse arrived a moment later with a Mylar survival blanket and a blood kit.