Free Recon Marines III: The Marine's Doctor by Susan Kelley Page B

“We’re going
to resupply. I have to pick up a few things I don’t have on board.
Think about what you need. Take off in five.”
    The warmth from her fingers lingered
on his arm as he walked back to the bridge. He worried the general
would pull him from the mission. Though Mak hated seeing the
evidence of human torture on the trail they followed, he enjoyed
being back in the sky. New places, new worlds and stars to see. And
a lovely doctor to watch over. But damned if he hadn’t failed when
they’d faced the first real danger.
    Box had the flight plan ready. Mak
wished the ship beneath him was a warship instead of the science
vessel. He would blow the cursed space station out of the sky. He’d
have to ask the general to take care of that as well as report his
own failure.

Chapter Five
    Molly only saw Mak during his brief
but frequent visits to Pender. Twenty-four hours after his surgery,
Andy and Mak helped Pender move to his bed and off the hard lab
table. She lost track of the hours as she and the other doctors
processed the small bits of evidence they’d found on the space
station.
    “ The blood scrapings
didn’t tell us much,” Hector observed when they all took a break to
eat.”
    Molly sipped on a nutria-shake,
promising herself she’d have at least one real meal while they
resupplied. “But we’re agreed it has come from people more than
thirty-five years old?”
    “ Yes,” Helen said. “And
there’s some evidence of tampering on the cellular level, perhaps
an attempt to change their DNA. Do you think they took some of
their lab subjects with them?”
    Mak walked into the cafeteria,
glancing at the doctors but otherwise ignoring them. The ship
wasn’t that big, yet he’d managed to avoid them most of the day.
With Pender on bed rest, Andy spent most of his time on the bridge
with Mak even though the corporal wasn’t a pilot. Mak selected a
nutria-shake out of the cooler and then left without a word to
them.
    Molly excused herself from her
comrades and hurried after him. “Mak.”
    He stopped and waited for her a few
steps from the bridge. “We’ll make landfall in three
hours.”
    “ Great. I’m looking
forward to eating something that has more flavor than strained
grass.”
    Mak looked at his shake and then
lifted his eyebrow at her. Just the reaction she’d hoped for. “At
one time, I thought this was as good as food could
taste.”
    Her heart did a funny little skip, and
she thought of the poor abused and abandoned men they’d left behind
on Julian. And all the blood they’d found in the space station. “Do
you think they took some of the lab subjects with them when they
abandoned the space station?”
    “ I think they killed them
all, another failed experiment. Nemon was only two or three years
older than me. That place was one more stepping stone toward him.”
Mak shook the drink in his hand. “I sent a secure radio message to
the general. He’ll see that the space station is destroyed before
anyone else gets hurt in those traps.”
    “ Good idea. I would like
to stay a full day on…. Where are we going?”
    The eyebrow went up again, and this
time he blessed her with a smile. Molly’s heart nearly stopped. As
a physician who specialized in disease and pathogen studies, she
often saw a lot of ugliness. But Mak and especially Mak smiling,
might have been the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. “New
Venus. They export aluminum and cotton. There’s a good-sized
trading port. I’ve already made arrangements for a surgeon to check
Pender out as you suggested though I believe you and other doctors
fixed him as well as anyone could.”
    “ Maybe.” But his
compliment warmed her. “The real factor in saving his life was how
quickly you brought him to us. He could have bled to death in a
short time.”
    “ We weren’t that far
away.” Mak hesitated and then lowered his voice though Molly was
sure no one could hear them. “Is Pender healthy enough to continue
with