Free Tin Woodman by David Bischoff, Dennis R. Bailey

Kervatz’s orders, he had gone directly from treatment in MedSec to the Engineering Office to report the necessary forty-eight-hour absence from duty his injury had caused. Lingering there, he visited the electronics shop, where he illicitly pocketed certain items of hardware, failing to have their nature recorded or their price debited to his ship’s account. Back in his quarters, he waited for his roommate’s necessary duty-shift departure, then constructed a simple device capable of blocking electronic signals to magnetic locks.
    After locating Mora’s quarters in the ship’s directory, he used his new lock pick to enter the compartment. There he found her MedSec uniform. It fit him poorly—blouse too narrow across shoulders and chest; pants too long in leg; baggy about the rear section. But it was identical to all the other MedSec uniforms, and would have to serve as the needed camouflage to mask his intended activities.
    A brisk walk and lift-chute jump later, he was striding outside the MedSec offices. There was no one in sight. His luck was holding up. He selected the correct door, clamped his device to the wall, tapped its button. The door whispered open obediently and Ston walked through, mindful of the directory schematic he’d memorized. He was in the post-operative recovery cell, which adjoined Mora’s recuperation chamber, connected by another door. He applied his lock pick to that door.
    The chamber that was revealed to him by the door’s opening was dim, lit solely by a small lamp near the medical form-couch upon which Mora lay unconscious. She was not alone. A nurse was leaning over her.
    “What are you doing here?” Ston challenged immediately, blurting the first thing that flashed into his mind. He shifted the lock-pick mechanism to his injured left hand.
    “Huh?” The man straightened up hesitantly, turned around. A big man, he almost eclipsed the lamplight. “Why, uh, Vandez put this on my rounds. I’m to administer—”
    Drawing in a breath, Ston stepped forward, delivered a hard blow to the nurse’s chin with his good hand. The fist shut the nurse up, but hardly fazed him more than that. Ston desperately rabbit-punched him again, gave him a few clumsy karate chops, which managed to bring him to his knees. He kneed him in the jaw, brought the lock pick down on the back of his head as a last resort. The plastic case smashed, scattering the jerry-rigged circuitry components on the floor.
    The nurse grunted and banged onto the floor, unconscious.
    Fiery pain coursed up Ston’s left arm from the blow’s impact. He clenched his teeth, choked back a scream.
    Once more in control, he paced over to the form-couch’s control panel. “Mora—can you hear me?” he whispered harshly. When there was no response, he activated the couch’s motor. Its low hum seemed to his jangled nerves a huge roar. Mora stirred, her head lolling from side to side on the pillow. But she didn’t speak. Her eyes, half-opened, seemed unable to focus. He knew she couldn’t understand him, but he spoke nevertheless: “It’s going to be all right.”
    As he looked down on her, for a moment he seemed to be gazing at Adria.
    Shrugging off the illusion, he found the lever that disengaged the couch from its wall-and-motor attachment. The bed rolled away slightly on its four wheels. He pushed it past the snoring man on the floor into the post-op room. After poking his head out the main door, he steered the bed into the still-empty corridor, wheeled it toward the lift chute.
    He’d just arrived when a lift platform sighed down. On it was a tall man wearing the maroon and gold of command crew. Ston didn’t know him; he checked the ID badge over the left breast pocket. Lieutenant Norlan. Ston gulped silently, flashed a small smile, praying the expression would hold Norlan’s gaze so that the man wouldn’t pay undue attention to the medical couch’s passenger.
    Norlan returned the smile. “Going up?”
    “Down.” Ston