The Hand of Vengeance Read online

  The Hand of Vengeance

  by

  Renee Rose

  The Hand of Vengeance

  Copyright © September 2015 The Hand of Vengeance by Renee Rose

  All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the authors. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s’ rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Formatting by Wizards in Publishing

  Editor: Kate Richards

  This ebook is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Smashwords Edition

  2560 A.D.

  Jesel, a human-populated planet

  Chapter One

  The electricity cut out. Again.

  Dr. Lara Simmons groaned. Performing surgery in the dark wasn’t her forte, but it had been one of the many joys of volunteering on Jesel, a human-populated planet that had been third world even before the earthquake last week, mostly by choice. The original settlers had chosen it a hundred years ago for a “back-to-nature” lifestyle after Earth’s environment had been ruined.

  She straightened her back to stretch and wait for the generator to kick in. It usually took about sixty seconds. The room sounded eerily quiet without the hum of machinery around her. Until the sound of breaking glass from somewhere in the medical center broke it.

  “It’s an ambush,” Dasha whispered.

  Lara whipped her head around to peer through the darkened window in the door. Well, hell. If that was the case, she needed to get this patient out of surgery before the shitstorm broke loose. She’d like to say this was the first time she’d operated while under attack, but her stint on the planet Macomb had groomed her for this tour.

  Jesel had been at war for at least fifteen years. The original settlers from Earth, who were mostly now enslaved, were rising up against the current dictator in a bid for their freedom.

  “Give me a light over here, stat,” she barked as laser fire erupted outside the surgery room doors. Her nurse assistant, Sleig, a young Jeselian woman—a girl, really—with zero medical experience, sprang into action, shining the light of her communication device over the patient’s open cavity. Like most of the Jeselians, Sleig was built of sturdy stock—healthy , strong, and outdoorsy. At age fifteen, she looked like a Nordic milkmaid. Lara had come to depend on the girl for quick thinking and action when needed.

  The metallic clank of doors being barricaded sounded behind her. The rebels were probably here to steal medical supplies. It wouldn’t be the first time a medical bunker—or old schoolhouse, in this case—had been sacked while she was volunteering with the Interplanetary Samaritans. If they were lucky, the rebels would only take the drugs. Sometimes they took equipment, too, which made her job more difficult.

  “They’re here for you, Lara,” Dasha warned in a low voice.

  Lara resisted the shiver that threatened to run through her. Dasha, a humanoid from the Homo sapien planet Varusia, was an auric healer. Her healing abilities included forms of mind reading and mind control, so if she’d picked up on something with her extrasensory perception, Lara had to believe it.

  Pushing back fear, she blinked to focus. If they were here for her, she’d cross that bridge when she got to it. Or when they kicked the damn door in. At this moment, she had a partial nephrectomy to finish on a patient whose kidney had been damaged when he’d fallen twenty feet onto a rock field. She’d been doing trauma surgeries for three months now on victims of the quake and its aftershocks.

  She drew a deep breath and exhaled. Her hand remained mercifully steady while she unclamped the renal artery and vein. Back on Earth, where she’d trained, a surgery like this would be done robotically to prevent error, but years of intricate surgeries performed in primitive locations had taught her to fine-tune the movements of her fingers, even with an elevated heart rate, like now. She closed her mind to everything but her patient.

  A laser cut through the titanium-reinforced doors, and someone screamed.

  Lara removed another clamp before she whirled to face the intruders. Six men dressed in black combat gear carried enormous laser weapons into the room.

  “Not in my operating room,” she snapped, ignoring the artillery trained on her. At least on this planet everyone spoke English—it made confrontations simpler. “You get the hell out of here. The drugs are in the east wing.” She made a shooing motion with her hand. Maybe Dasha was wrong and they weren’t here for her—except the twisting in her gut told her differently. Still, she pulled out her best bravado. “You can’t have any of this equipment—I’m using it. And get my power back on!” She dared to turn her back on them, returning to her surgery.

  “Yes, we’ll take your drugs. But really, we’re here for you, Dr. Simmons,” a tall, wiry Jeselian said, stepping forward. “You have sixty seconds to finish up. The rest of you, start packing all the equipment and supplies necessary for an operating room.”

  She didn’t look up as she used a pair of tweezers to insert thrombogenic material as a bolster to fill the place she’d cut and cauterized. “What’s your name?”

  “Sergeant Donahue.”

  “Well, Sergeant, I don’t work for you or the rebels. I am in the middle of surgery, on a mission to aid the survivors of Jesel’s earthquake. So if you need my services, you may get in line, behind the thirty other Jeselians waiting out there,” she said, lifting her chin in the direction of the schoolyard, where army-green plastic housing huts had been set up to house the injured.

  “I thought Interplanetary Samaritans were non-political,” Donahue said. “Or do you work for Treedle?” His lip curled as if naming the current dictator sickened him.

  Treedle had invaded the small human-colonized planet forty years ago, after diamonds had been discovered in their mountains. He’d turned the original settlers—a peaceful group of Earthlings who had moved to Jesel to live in harmony with nature, into slaves to work his mines.

  A hulking man with black war-tattoos on his face circled into her line of vision. She had to bite back a gasp; he looked like he’d stepped out of a horror hologram. His hair was trimmed short, and his eyes were as dark as the markings on his face, which gave him a furious look.

  “No, but I don’t take orders from you,” she said, pausing in her work long enough to give the sergeant a level stare. He didn’t need to know her heart had nearly reached tachycardia levels.

  The tattooed man in front of her lifted his laser gun and trained it on the middle of her forehead.

  “I’m no good to you dead.”

  With a speed that belied his size, he snatched up Sleig and pointed his laser at her jugular. Sleig’s eyes popped, and she made a gurgling sound. Dasha edged sideways, but another rebel swung his weapon on her. None of them were foolhardy enough to look the Varusian in the eye and risk her mind control.

  Damn. Lara wasn’t going to risk her colleagues’ lives to save her own. And chances were, the rebels wouldn’t harm her. If they’d come this far to get her, it meant they desperately needed her services. “I need ten minutes.” She lowered her head, moving with swift but precise movements to complete the operation.

  “Five,” Donahue spoke. Lara ignored him as he began to direct the rest of the room, ordering them to pack boxes with equipment.

  Mr. Tattoo eased his grip on
Sleig, but didn’t release her. Nor did he remove his black-eyed gaze from her face. His intimidating presence made it hard to concentrate, but she managed to complete the procedure and stitch up the patient, inserting a drain and giving poor, trembling Sleig post-op directions.

  She peeled off her surgical gloves and turned to Johanna, a Samaritan nurse. “Be sure to keep the guy with the broken leg from walking on it—tie him down if you need to. And the child with the contusions will need to have antibiotics every four hours for the next three days. I want you to—”

  “Move,” Donahue interrupted. He took her arm and guided her forward, out the door.

  She twisted to look over her shoulder at Dasha. “Will I be all right?” She hated herself for asking such a cowardly question, but her friend had surely read them. If they planned to kill her, Lara would rather die fighting.

  “Yes.” Dasha trailed behind the cluster of rebels hustling her out. “They serve a cause, nothing more. They need you to help someone special to their movement.”

  “Shut up, Varu,” one of the rebels growled, whirling on Dasha.

  “Leave her.” Donahue grabbed the muzzle of the rebel’s gun in his fist. “She is of no consequence.”

  They led Lara outside and boarded a small hovercraft. The narrow hull contained a row of seats against each wall. She pulled her hair out of the tight French twist as she always did when she finished operating. Taking her seat, she fastened the buckle on the old-fashioned seat belt. No three-point harnesses here, only simple shoulder straps that ran on a diagonal across the body.

  Mr. Tattoo sat directly across from her. His broad shoulders stretched the fabric of the black combat shirt, leaving his muscled chest to stand out in stark relief. She caught her breath when she saw he bore the markings of a Jesel slave—the black barcode tattooed at the side of his neck. She’d seen them on many of the people she’d treated, but it came as a shock to see it on him. He seemed too aggressive, too assertive to have ever been in captivity. But that was stupid. Where did she think the rebels had come from? They certainly weren’t Treedle’s men, the wealthy members of his “Mining Republic.”

  Something stirred in her. Not pity—certainly a fierce warrior like him didn’t need her pity. No, it was sympathy for his cause or understanding. Of course he should fight for the freedom of his people. Aside from the barcode which showed he’d been nothing more than property, the rest of the ink served as a form of primitive war paint, like the Native Americans wore long ago on Earth. While it made his visage look terrifying, even monstrous, she realized his actual expression was perfectly blank. No emotion showed on his face, nor had it shown since she’d first seen him.

  Despite his size—he must stand over six feet, six—he had moved with the grace of a trained fighter. Sitting now, he didn’t move at all. Not a fidget, not a shift. He appeared ready to spring into action at any moment, his corded forearms and huge hands weapons capable of squeezing the life out of her in about two seconds flat.

  A tingle ran up her spine as she remembered the basic briefing the Interplanetary Sams had given them about the Jeselian culture. Because the lifestyle was so primitive, the human settlers had reverted to ancient gender roles. Men were dominant and took care of the basic needs of the people as hunters, builders, and providers. Women served in subservient, domestic roles, preparing food and raising children.

  The female volunteers had been warned they might find the gender roles on Jesel shocking, although, as Earthlings, they should be respected. She licked her lower lip, wondering just how dominant the men were. Everything about the huge, muscled warrior across from her screamed masculine power. She could imagine him returning from hunting with his shirt off and a bloodied animal draped over his shoulder. Not that she had any interest in such a thing. Her temperature rose.

  The rebel caught her studying him, and she dropped her gaze, cheeks heating.

  ~~*~~

  Blade watched the beautiful doctor blush as her long lashes lowered. A section of straight blond hair fell across her face and she left it there, as if hoping it might curtain her from his scrutiny. He’d found her tough, no-nonsense demeanor in the operating room all out sexy, but seeing this bit of submission made him go rock hard. What in the name of Universal God had made her color like that? Being caught staring?

  With a mug like his, everyone stared, either with terror, or, if they knew of him and his exploits, with fascination. She hadn’t looked frightened, though. Not in the OR, nor here. He admired the hell out of her composure, especially considering the question she’d asked the Varusian.

  Will I be all right?

  She’d been unsure of her safety yet had agreed to go without a fuss. Or, at least, her only fuss was over her patients. A true Samaritan. He hoped her devotion to the ill and injured would extend to Sheel Black, their rebel leader, the deposed president.

  The old hovercraft they’d rebuilt out of scrap parts lifted off, tilting left to make a shaky arc over the new seven hundred foot fissure in the ground.

  The doctor closed her lids, blanching.

  He understood the feeling. As a native Jeselian, he definitely preferred to stay on solid ground. His parents had settled on Jesel as part of the “back to basics” movement of the 2550’s. Many earthlings wished to return to the land—to eat food they farmed themselves, and live in harmony with nature. Earth had become over-populated, over-polluted, and stripped of all its natural resources. Jesel had been a Garden of Eden for many years, until Treedle arrived and ripped apart their democracy.

  With her eyes closed, he took the opportunity to give the doctor his own examination. She was petite but perfectly proportioned, with perky, firm breasts that stretched the close-fitting shiny synth-fiber of her doctor’s tunic. She had a heart-shaped face with lovely arched brows and extremely kissable lips. Without the commanding bluster, she looked younger than he’d initially thought—maybe even less than thirty, although he knew from Bailey that she was considered one of the best hands-on surgeons in the galaxies. The International Sams provided the ultimate training ground, he supposed. He admired the hell out of her commitment to serve in this way.

  Her eyes flickered open, and this time she caught him staring. She rubbed her berry lips together. “So, what’s the mission?”

  He didn’t answer. Silence was his fallback in most situations. His job was to bring her back to the camp in one piece, not to be her handler. He hadn’t been chosen for his social skills. Bailey could do the smooth-talking and persuasion piece when they got there. If Blade tried, he’d only bungle it, anyway.

  Deanis, the pilot, hit the alarm. “I have three bogeys coming in from the south.”

  Blade leaned forward to peer at the instruments showing the incoming enemy craft. Two of the soldiers scrambled into position in the top of the ship to fire their weapons.

  “Cloaking is impossible at this altitude.”

  “Outrun them,” Donahue ordered, climbing the ladder to the top of the craft to oversee the weaponry. Deanis yanked on the controls, causing the hovercraft to dip and turn sideways to enter the canyon that had opened with the earthquake.

  The doctor clamped her lips together, as if to prevent herself from puking.

  Laser fire pierced the outer hull.

  Donahue cursed, firing back from his position at the top of the airship. Their craft wobbled. They were going down.

  Instinct sent him lunging forward to brace the doctor, but his damn seat belt locked at his sudden movement, trapping him.

  One end of the ship struck the side of the cliff.

  The doctor’s head slammed against the titanium wall behind her. She bit her lips closed on a scream.

  “We’re hit!” Deanis yelled the obvious. By some miracle, he managed to pull the craft out of the canyon. The airship struck solid ground and tumbled, spinning upright as it skipped along the ground until it came to a stop.

  The doctor unbuckled her seat belt.

  One side of the craft burst into flames. He sho
ved past her to force open the emergency hatch. The bolt stuck. He threw his shoulder against it with all his weight. It budged, but only by a centimeter. Darian, another soldier, joined him, the two of them slamming the door open as flames heated the cabin to unbearable temperature.

  No time to be gentle—he picked the doctor up by the waist and swung her out the door, tossing her through the air. She didn’t quite land on her feet, but tumbled to her hands and knees.

  “Help me,” Corporal Jase screamed, yanking on his seat belt, trapped against the flaming hull. Blade whipped a dagger from his belt and cut through the material, sawing until it came free. Both men dived out of the craft even as the hot air and debris blasted out behind them.

  His ears rang from the explosion as he skidded across rocks and gravel.

  When he looked up, he saw the plucky little doctor one hundred yards off, running into the woods.

  Damn it all.

  “The package is on the run. I’m in pursuit,” he barked. Considering how much his ears rang, he doubted anyone heard him.

  Her legs might be shorter than his, but Doctor Lara Simmons ran fast. Nimble little thing. He followed her through the trees, watching as she leaped over fallen logs and climbed small boulders, never slowing. He tried to get his bearings—no small feat while running at a breakneck speed through branches. They hadn’t flown far at all before they’d been shot down—ten miles max. Which meant...fuck.

  “Doctor,” he yelled.

  She didn’t stop.

  “Doctor, wait.” He wasn’t sure of their exact location, but a two hundred foot drop into a canyon lay somewhere in this vicinity. And he had a feeling it was directly in front of her.

  She broke out of the trees.