Tinaree: Forged by Crucible (Shadows of Peace Book 2), page 1
Tinaree - Forged by Crucible
Nic Plume
Copyright © 2021 by Nic Plume
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7351536-3-6
Print ISBN: 978-1-7351536-4-3
Cover Designed by Ryan Schwarz
at www.thecoverdesigner.com
Contents
Tinaree - Forged By Crucible
1. Richards
2. Tonee
3. Debriefing
4. Torrents
5. The Hearing
6. Kilrian
7. Reassignment
8. Mason
9. Mannahe
10. Taylor
11. Gym Rats
12. Reunion
13. Sparring Match
14. Recovery
15. Intel
16. Old Mannahe
Chapter 17
18. Sewer Dive
19. Training
20. Hot Wash
21. Complications
22. Deena
23. Boogeymen
24. Camp Forge
25. The Mine
26. Demons
27. WTF
28. Reset
29. Recall
30. Tuscoony
31. Dane
32. AWOL
Epilogue
Dear Reader
Acknowledgments
Tinaree - Forged By Crucible
by Nic Plume
1
Richards
Busy as usual in a combat zone, the Medical Center of the Battle Cruiser Cartage was organized chaos on the fifth day of the liberation of Tinaree. Medical personnel hurried up and down its sterile passageways, some with equipment or patients, others empty-handed. Here and there, troopers stood in groups or alone, waiting on the status of their teammates or to get their own minor or not so minor wounds treated.
Commander Richards followed the Medical Center’s Officer in Charge through the at times crowded passageways. They made room as necessary and weaved around the rest without slowing down. Although, Commander Liegus never missed an opportunity to give advice and instructions to personnel, patients, and visitors alike as he passed by.
They turned down a quieter passageway and stopped by a door. Liegus punched a code into the access panel and motioned Richards to precede him into the small medical bay.
The bay held a single bed and chair. Soft light bathed its cream-colored walls. Coupled with the low rhythmic hum of the ventilation system, it presented a soothing atmosphere.
While the Medical Officer, or MO, went to the terminal, Richards stepped to the bed and studied its occupant.
With his tattered clothing removed and the blood and grime that had covered him, washed off, the Special Forces commando appeared younger than the twenty years his service record indicated. His black hair was longer than Intergal service standards, which added to the impression. His wiry, blanket-covered body was relaxed and his breathing slow and steady.
Had it not been for his skin’s ashen color, he would have seemed comfortably asleep. Mark Taylor looked much better than the day before when Richards brought him and his teammates up from Tinaree.
Richards had spent the last few hours retrieving and studying the service records of Taylor, Kaydeen A’Tourie, Salayla K’Kaya, and Anthony Patonee. Not that there had been much. The four had arrived at their unit a few weeks before their drop.
That alone was highly irregular. Standard procedure called for Academy graduates to receive unit assignments during the training phase of the unit’s deployment cycle. This way, the rookies—or CHiTs as SF liked to call them—had plenty of time to assimilate and get trained up to unit standards before deploying on a mission. Especially when the CHiTs in question had earned the team assignment privilege.
The irregular unit assignment, however, was only one in a string of odd events surrounding this team. The first one that came to Richards' attention was when their names had disappeared from the MIA roster of the three ambushed SF units. At the time, Richards hadn’t known it was them. He’d only noticed while going through MIA personnel files that the list was four names shorter than it should be. Glitches happened, so he’d put it aside.
However, after Doctor Mitalius requested his help to get the team medevaced, events started to stack up. The doctor’s claim that the four had been held in a mine instead of the local Traverse garrison. The mysterious forward observer informing the RV unit of the team's approach. The overwatch support the team received at the RV point and during their subsequent trek to the building where they had made their last stand. The oddities Mason's squad had encountered as they tracked them down. All of them combined was too much to be coincidence.
"He’s been steadily recovering since we purged his body of the X-3," Liegus said as he came to stand beside Richards.
“You purged the serum?” Richards looked at him.
“Not the serum, but the nanobots it carries. The serum is the vehicle we use to get the nanobots into the body, where they use themselves to create a lattice to bridge any critical damage temporarily. They create a series of micro—”
“Doc.” Richards raised his hand. “Give me the wave-top level, not the deep dive. I’ve been on both ends of the injector enough to understand the concept of how X-3 is supposed to work.”
“Well, sir, I was trying to establish a baseline of understanding.”
“Understood. I’ve got the basics. Once administered, the little bots do their thing until they run out of power. After that, they’re either absorbed or leave the body via its disposal system. You don’t purge X-3. You let it run its course. That’s clearly not what happened here.”
“No.” Liegus turned to his computer screen.
“No graphics, doc. No diagrams, and definitely no equations with more letters than numbers. Tell me what happened.”
The MO sighed and turned back to look at Richards. “Let’s go to my office.”
“We designed the X-3 nanobots to be invisible to the body’s defenses, so they can move and bridge the damage—or do their thing, as you called it—without drawing unnecessary attention and cause an energy expenditure the body cannot afford.”
Liegus waited until Richards sat in one of the two guest chairs before settling behind his desk. “Taylor’s body not only recognized the nanobots but saw them as foreign aggressors. His white blood cells actively attacked the nanobots and any latticework they tried to build. The nanobots, in turn, attacked the white blood cells.”
“Why and how would they do that?”
“Well, X-3 is also used against toxic agents like poisons and viruses, which we have to neutralize before damage bridging can be effective. So, the nanobots need a way to attack.”
“You’re injecting bots with the offensive capability to kill the body from the inside out?”
Liegus shook his head. “The nanobots are programmed to attack only toxic agents, not healthy native cells.”
“But that’s what they did.”
“Correct.” The MO nodded.
“Was there a glitch in the nanobots’ programming?”
“Not that I’ve found.” Liegus reached for his terminal but then thought better of it and turned back. “Since his immune system and the X-3 nanobots were in overdrive, they immediately attacked anything else we introduced into his system. That’s why we had to purge the X-3 before we could repair the damage the plasma and the internal battle caused.”
“Did removing the foreign aggressor calm the internal defenses?”
“No.” Liegus shook his head. “His immune system remains in overdrive and continues to attack any substance we introduce. Here’s the kicker. I’ve reviewed Taylor’s records. They’re normal. Healing, injury recovery time, sickness, everything has been normal, until now.”
“They did something to him.”
“Possibly,” Liegus conceded, “but I think this is bigger. This is about how his body reacted to what they did to him and how it continues to react. It’s been only hours since we purged the X-3, but his body shows the progress of multiple days of healing. That’s unheard of.”
“That makes no sense. Why would they increase a prisoner’s ability to heal? Plus, there are no reports of the Traverse having experimental labs on Tinaree.”
“What reports would tell us that?” Liegus studied him. “Still, that’s not my point. I don’t think this is the result of six months of experimentation. His genetic markers haven’t changed that much. I think this is something internal, something that triggered in his genetic makeup.”
“You’re talking about a natural mutation?”
“I don’t know if it was fully natural. I do know that if we can figure out what happened and replicate it, it will change medical history.”
“You want to study him.”
“No.” Liegus paused. “Yes,” he finally admitted.
“You’re not turning him into a test subject.”
Liegus’ eyes widened in shock. “Test subject? No, of course not. He has rights.”
“Until he doesn’t.” Richards frowned. “You realize that the Traverse aren’t the only ones with experimental labs.”
“I do. Still, they cannot touch him without his authorization or infringe on his rights and liberties.”
“There are ways around everything.”
2
Tonee
Tonee wished he could force himself back into blissful oblivion, away from the vertigo and nausea that accompanied his returning consciousness. He had woken multiple times before. Each time, his surroundings twisted and spun as if he tumbled out of control during a Zero-G exercise. Except he wasn’t moving…at least, he didn’t think he was.
It wasn’t as bad this time, but his senses were still offline. As were his eyes. A wash of gray surrounded him. Walls? Or maybe a ceiling? He couldn’t tell if he was lying on his side or back. He could breathe easily, so he wasn’t lying on his stomach, and his face wasn’t pressed into a pillow. Then again, maybe he wasn’t in a bed at all. Perhaps he was still on the floor in the apartment, where he had fallen after the grenade had gone off.
Shit. The grenade.
How long had he been out? Was Taylor still alive? Were Salayla and Kaydeen? Was he? Maybe this was the Universe’s joke of an afterlife. “Welcome, moron. You got yourself killed after sealing off your team’s hiding spot. Now, nobody will find them. You thought you were smart. Instead, you’re an ass. For that, you earned yourself a front-row seat in the never-ending vortex. Forever wanting to vomit but never able to do so.”
Ah, quit your whining, asshole. You’ve never been good at it, Tonee reprimanded himself. You know you made the right choice, and you would do it again if you had to.
He knew he would, but that didn’t ease the pain he’d felt and still felt whenever he remembered it. And he did—it was the first thing that came to mind whenever he regained consciousness.
They thought the attack would come from only one direction. Through the apartment's back door, across the gaping hole where the building's central stairway used to be. The access to the other entrance, the apartment’s front door, had been closed off by the rubble of the building’s southern wall. Who would crawl through the bottom of a pile of debris multiple stories tall when they could climb the ramp-like rubble of the northern wall?
Of course, who would enter the teetering ruin of a building with two collapsed walls to see if somebody was hiding inside? Who would hide in something like that in the first place? Especially in a dead-end apartment.
“You always leave yourself a path of retreat,” the Academy trainer’s voice echoed through Tonee’s memories. “You never leave yourself cornered. What were you thinking, boy?”
The firefight had been intense. It forced Tonee and Salayla to retreat to the corner of the apartment’s hallway, where Kaydeen prevented enemies from entering through the front door. He ducked behind her blind and gave Salayla fire support as the woman hobbled to him. He squeezed next to Kaydeen to allow Salayla to slip past him into the rubble-enclosed passageway to the kitchen, then followed her.
Kaydeen came after them moments later with enemies not far behind. She paused at the kitchen door momentarily to verify Tonee and Salayla were in position by the back hallway. That passage led to the bedroom where they had stashed Taylor.
After a glance back the way she’d come, she kicked the support Tonee had rigged. Nothing happened. She cursed and kicked the beam again. Still nothing. On the third try, it finally shifted and fell. An instant later, the rubble it held in place rumbled down. But not before a grenade bounced off a chair in the old dining room and landed on the kitchen island.
“Grenade!”
Tonee came back to the present with a start. He was surprised the vertigo wasn’t interfering with his memories as it always had before. Or did it? He couldn’t remember. He remembered falling and his head slamming into the floor. It hadn’t hurt, not that he recalled at least.
Realizing he was sinking into the memory again, he forced his mind back to the present. In the previous iterations of this dance, he’d always tried to escape the torture of the present by diving into the past. It took a moment to figure out how to go the other direction and stay there.
The pain was still there but at a manageable level. Wait, what pain? He explored the flood of sensory input washing over him. There in his center, it felt as if a door breacher had hit him. A sensory flood washing over me? What the hell?
He suddenly understood he wasn't awake, at least not fully, but somewhere in between. Well, no wonder I can't identify anything. He couldn't be sure if the things he was trying to identify were coming through his senses or his dreams. He wondered if he should be relieved or disturbed by this insight when he realized he was stalling…stalling to keep from waking. Now, that was a new one. He’d never been one to procrastinate or avoid things. He never had...
Damn, here we go again. How hard is it to keep my mind together?
He had also never before had problems staying on task, but this was turning into an exhaustive effort. He only hoped that whatever was wrong with him would go away, and soon.
It took all his effort, but he was finally able to feel the bed under him. Yes, it was a bed, and he was lying on his back with a blanket pulled up to his chest. He opened his eyes to a gray ceiling and walls, bulkheads to be more precise. So, he was on a ship. It looked like an Intergal ship, but then again, he had never been on a Traverse ship and wouldn’t know if their bulkheads looked different.
Reeling in his mind and turning it back to the task at hand, he tried to move his arms. His left moved freely, but his right didn’t. He tried harder but still couldn’t budge it. He stopped after a few more attempts, cursed his scattered mind, and rolled over to see why he couldn’t move his arm.
A cuff around his wrist held it to the edge of the bed. It took a moment, but he finally identified it as an IV cuff, a medical device used to monitor a patient’s vital signs and administer medication intravenously. Could drugs be blamed for his lack of mental control? Before his mind could wrap around this new thought, the door in the bulkhead facing him opened.
To Tonee’s relief, the medical officer coming through the door wore an Intergal uniform.
“How do you feel?” The MO checked the wall monitor beside the door, then tapped some commands. Tonee felt a sting, followed by a burning sensation crawling up his arm, emanating from the wrist cuff. Soon after, the fog lifted off his mind.
“Better,” Tonee replied. “I can hold on to my thoughts.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” The MO removed the cuff and helped him sit up. “Let’s see if you can sit upright on your own.”
Tonee nodded carefully. The elevation change had caused a sudden burst of dizziness, but it dissipated quickly.
“Good.” The MO nodded. “Try to stand.” He beckoned Tonee off the bed and pulled the sheet still partially covering him out of the way. Tonee considered grabbing it but was unsure if he was coordinated enough. Instead, he did as instructed. He wobbled as he slid to his feet, causing the MO to step forward and steady him, but he quickly got his balance under control.
“Good.” The MO pointed at a fleet uniform stacked on the chair beside the bed. “We sized it after the measurements in your personnel file. You’ve probably lost some weight, so it’ll be a bit large, but it’ll work for now.”
Once he verified Tonee could dress without falling over, he turned back to the wall monitor. “You suffered three broken ribs, some minor cuts, and multiple contusions. We’ve fused the ribs and sealed the cuts. The bruises will heal on their own.
“The chest pain will fade in a day or two but take it easy even after it’s gone. While the fusion put your ribs back together, the bones will take about a week to mend fully. Any headaches, body aches, and dizziness you’re suffering should disappear over the next day or so. The injection I gave you should help with that, but it’s mainly aimed to help your brain function.”
