Dana Cartwright Mission 1: Stiletto Read Free Page A

poor sucker on Flight Control tonight. He’s going to get hammered for this one. Hope it was mechanical failure and not his fault.”

      Via did a three-way transfer to cover his tracks, ending finally in a deserted warehouse halfway around the globe from Capitol City. Only two other members of the hit-team had the location, Skeller and Taupin. The ‘King’ liked to have a plan B incase something should go wrong.
    Well, something had!
    Ambassador Cray survived the crash. Damn that woman doctor from the Medical Center. And damn Skeller. He was supposed to make certain that no one was out on the landing deck when the shuttle crashed.
    Via tapped into a computer terminal and used a code to bypass security tracking. Who the hell was she?
    “Dana J. Cartwright, MCE Neuro-ophthalmologist…Adopted daughter of Doctor David ‘DOC’ Cartwright, the former Director of Competency at the science academy…Crap!” Via snarled.
    “Well, at least she’s no relation to Admiral Barrett Cartwright; that would be impossible,” he grumbled, reading a bit farther, then balled up his fists and pounded the off button. “Damn, of all the luck!”
    Via had read enough of her file to know she would be trouble. She knew her stuff. Cray would survive the crash. She’d transfer him to MCE.
    “Maybe I can…”  
    Via began to hatch a back-up plan. Hacking into the MCE computers would take some time. He dove right in. Before the med-evac shuttle   transported the patient, he should have full access to the controller system. The nice thing about MCE — they depended almost exclusively on ANs, and android nurses were all programmed alike.

CHAPTER THREE

    Kieran forced his eyes to open. They didn’t want to. His whole body seemed to be in mutiny mode, disobeying direct orders. His hands burned. His lungs burned. His eyes burned. “This must be hell,” he decided. Except, it was dark, way too dark to be Tartarus, the Alphan equivalent of the mythical Hades of Earth literature. Or was it the dungeon in his most recent fiction adventure? Or the dragon lair from the one before? Or… No, it had to be hell, and he couldn’t move.
    Something bright and amber approached.
    “Argh!” He shut his eyes and gasped. The light was blinding. He felt something crawl closer and ordered his body to retreat but it didn’t obey. “I must be caught in a wizard’s spell,” he grumbled. “Can’t move my legs.” His brain seemed sluggish and his heart was pounding. “I can’t move my…”
    “You’re pinned under a beam. Please stop struggling.”
    Kieran panicked. “Who’s there?” He forced one eye to look, but the light was too bright for him to keep it open.
    “I’m Doctor Cartwright,” a soft, female voice soothed and a gentle hand patted his left elbow.  
    Under other circumstances, he might have been intrigued. “What a lovely voice...” He was far too frightened, hearing strange sounds in the distance, like metal clanging and then the musical tones a MAT pod made. Other sounds were closer   and stronger, growing faint then louder. Still, the bright light blinded.
    “Am I dead?” He blinked and tried to turn his face away from the light.
    “If you can ask, you’re not,” the woman responded.
    She was now lying right beside him, so close he could feel the shape of her breasts against his shoulder.  
    “Who are you?” he pleaded, so dazed and confused he could barely get the words out.
    “Doctor Cartwright, Dana J.”
    “J?”
    “January?”
    He tried hard — really hard — to reach out telepathically, but even his sixth sense wouldn’t obey. “I can’t feel my legs,” he repeated.
    “Bet you weren’t wearing your safety bar,” she scolded.
    “Safety bar?” He puzzled. And then his brain snapped to attention and it all made sense. “ Stiletto crashed!”
    He opened both eyes. The light was now near his left shoulder, just out of sight, though it bathed the crawlspace with an amber glow. His left hand was