Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1) by Mariana Morgan (essential reading txt) 📕

kit had some painkillers and basic bone-knitting nano-meds, but there had been no point in using the latter as long as Gonzalez was on the move. The painkillers had dulled the pain, but the small shot he had allowed Atkins to use was already wearing off, leaving nothing but overexcited nerves that stung with each breath. At least there was no internal trauma.

‘No!’ Eloise screamed. ‘I said I would shut up until we got back to the Roc, but now we are here I see no reason to hold back. You abandoned your people. You just walked away, leaving them to their fate. To death. To torture.’

‘Ms Moretti, please.’ This time it was Atkins, pushing his way in front of the Elite woman. He could see the green tinge on his CO’s face, and was torn between running to fetch proper bone-knitting drugs and extra-strong painkillers and staying right there to keep the crazy woman away from Gonzalez.

‘And you are no better!’ Eloise turned her attention to the sergeant. ‘Blindly following orders and leaving your friends behind. Some fucking values they taught you! She was alive, dammit!’ She turned her attention back to Gonzalez. ‘She was fucking alive and you didn’t even try. And Raymond would have lived if you hadn’t ordered him to die!’

There was too much, and then there was way too much. With shaking hands, Gonzalez reached into his armour pouch and pulled out the syringe containing a heavy dose of sedatives he had taken with him just in case Eloise went crazy on them again. In one smooth motion, he launched himself onto the woman, pinned her hard against the wall and jammed the syringe into her upper arm.

It was all over before the woman even had time to scream. Her muscles relaxed, and Gonzalez growled in pain as he caught her and lowered her body safely. On the floor on one knee, he fought down the rising nausea.

‘Get me some bone-knitting drugs, anti-inflammatories and painkillers. Now!’ he barked to the stunned Atkins.

The other man hesitated for a second, as if worried about what Gonzalez might do to Eloise next, but then shook himself hard and snapped to attention.

‘Yessir!’

CHAPTER 49

Somewhere in the Afro-European Alliance

Thursday 30 April 2725

DAY 11

‘I assume you are not going to acquiesce to Gonzalez’s request for reinforcements and a mass assault on Olympus?’ the caller asked. The request hadn’t come in yet, but it was obviously just a matter of time.

‘No.’ The black silhouette remained eerily still.

The caller sighed. Over the years the black avatar and the computerised voice had become the norm, but usually they came with suitably exaggerated gestures to make up for the loss of facial features. Not today. The stillness was new. Without the movement the connection looked almost like a still shot, a photograph, not a live conversation.

What are you hiding behind that stillness? Pain? Guilt? You fucking sonofabitch!

‘The people he had to leave behind, some of them could still be alive. Major Toscano…’

The black silhouette flinched as if slapped.

‘I cannot compromise the operation.’ Back to the eerie stillness.

Definitely guilt. Hope you choke on it, you bastard.

‘Wasn’t she your protégée for years?’ the caller persisted icily.

‘She and many others. This is bigger than her. If she was worth the effort of saving her Leech ass all those years ago, she will hold on long enough.’ The stillness became even more profound.

‘Long enough for what?’

‘Patience.’

CHAPTER 50

Olympus R&D Compound

60 km south-west of Turin

Afro-European Alliance

Thursday 30 April 2725

DAY 11

‘Wake up, bitch!’ The loud, harsh sound grated against her barely conscious mind just as a bucketful of cold water drenched her body.

Ingram gasped, and instantly regretted it. A huge nano-dressing covered her wound and there must have been a cocktail of strong nano-meds coursing through her bloodstream, but the sharp intake of breath stretching her abdomen hurt like a bitch.

She tried to move to wipe the water off her face, but she couldn’t lift her arms. Nothing except her head would move. She was restrained in a sturdy metal chair. Naked.

‘I said, wake up, bitch!’ Fingers twisted in her dark hair and yanked hard. A new surge of pain pierced the grogginess. Her bleary eyes struggled to focus. There was something familiar about that voice.

‘I’m… awake,’ she hissed, teeth clenched, fighting the agony. A needle stabbed into her neck and the world around her focused as the pain receded. The hand gripping her hair disappeared.

An urge to cough tickled her throat, but she squashed it down, unwilling to trust her abdominal muscles to take that much abuse. She was alive, but she had no illusions that soon she would wish she was dead. Multiple thoughts raced through her mind all at once, none of them good, as she processed her situation.

The explosion. Something slamming into her. Dust everywhere. Blinding pain. Blood. Coldness.

Andy… I will never see him again. The thought twisted her throat, trapping the air from reaching her lungs.

But then her own mind took pity on her, offering more hopeful images. The data they had copied. The colonel taking Eloise Moretti away. If they had made it out, it was all worth it.

They made it out. They had to.

Palmeiro and Kizenberg didn’t. Part of her was relieved to remember the severe brain trauma they had both suffered. They were beyond saving. Whatever her captors planned for her, at least they wouldn’t be able to torture her people, her friends, in front of her.

Unless they caught Gonzalez too. Or Moretti. Or Rivas.

No. They made it out. They had to. They had to.

Tears prickled in her eyes, and she shook her head violently in useless denial. They must have injected her with something beyond painkillers and healing drugs; her head felt woolly and strange. Vulnerable. For the second time in as many weeks her body was assaulted by more nano-chemicals than it could safely metabolise without the unpleasant side effects of drugtox. She was grasping for control over her sanity and losing fast.

The reality of where she