Wrath and Retribution

Preface-4

She indulged her idealistic side periodically but not the conspiracy nonsense.

Suddenly, soldiers scrambled to pull the high explosive breaching shape charge from the door as its locking bar inside the door thumped to the unlocked position and the door opened. They had to remove it before the charge could fall and strike the landing grid, or worse, one of their favorite tools would be ruined in the thick metal door frame as the doors retracted.

There was always a chance, though a microscopically thin chance, that they would be allowed to use it later in the day. And the way they saw it, there was no point wasting perfectly good high explosives if you could actually, or possibly, use it to blow something up later.

The sarcastic flourish of Celine's hand and upturned palm, invited them into the dwelling. Her simple gesture chastened the soldiers who had just wanted to blow something up to start their day.

The Home Guard soldiers were the elite of the Empire's line troops, senior soldiers, every one of them a combat veteran and decorated soldier. They were on 'loan' from the Ground Forces Corporation, were extremely well paid and retained their individual combat campaign mineral rights residuals. Corporals in the Home Guard often enjoyed larger personal incomes than doctors in private hospitals. They were fiercely loyal, highly skilled and superbly motivated to protect the family and their Citadel. The down side was that they were all a little crazy, routinely started bar fights, and liked blowing things up a little too much. Celine shook her head with smile as they quickly filed past her into the apartment.

She stayed back at the Platoon Leader’s insistence and entered slowly behind the first three squads with the Lieutenant, followed by fourth squad that split and acted as rear security and the Lieutenant's headquarters section, in other words, Celine's bodyguards.

Shaking her head as the troops deployed crisply through the home, 'silly boys and their toys, always want to make things difficult'. As she slowly wandered up the stairs behind the squads to the incessant chorus of 'clear' while every team entered every room, and closet, and bathroom, and drawer, and cabinet. They put on quite a show ...

The show was rhythmic and almost soothing until it was ripped by the call, "Medic!"

She asked firmly, hiding her nervousness, "Lieutenant?!" Stopping the young officer in his tracks, with her question and the simple touch of her hand on his left arm, as two soldiers tore past them at a sprint, "What does that mean?"

"Nothing good, my Lady," He hesitated for a moment, "I need you to stay here."

Frustrated, while the young officer abruptly sprinted up the stairs, even under all his armor and equipment. His cautioning request lasted with Celine until a count of maybe 'five', or a fast 'seven', before she started up the stairs after him.

The hand from her right surprised her more than anything, as it closed distance to her arm. It was slow and not offensive but the look on her face told everyone it was clearly not something she was interested in entertaining. Slipping her arm smoothly back behind her so the offending grasp missed her smoothly, the question in her raised eyes stopped the trooper instantly. The young trooper's jaw dropped behind his ballistic mask, as he realized who he was about to unthinkingly man-handle. Instead of her intended harsh rebuke, Celine switched to, "Now didn't your mother teach you better than to handle women that way?"

Her smile disarmed and chastened the young soldier at the same time, "I'm sorry, Ma'am." He shifted back and forth on his feet, clearly uncomfortable, outside the door. His companions were also unhappy, "Ma'am, Eel-Tee asked you to stay here. We don't call 'Medic' like that unless it is ugly ..."

Celine felt a wonderful, ere, scary, and churning sense of enormous pride that the young soldier would try and think of her own feelings before blind obedience to orders. She wanted to cry and cheer at the same time as she looked up at the much taller soldier, "The only people in this home at this hour are close family. I need to see," her voice trailed to nothing imploring the soldier.

After climbing the stairs, on the opposite side of the apartment from Kazimir's elevator that deposited him next to his office earlier that morning, with the men who had remained after the Lieutenant left, finding the area of interest to her was easy. All she had to do was follow the clump of milling soldiers, bumping shoulders in their collective daze, and turning to shake their heads, as they left the bedroom.

She asked in frustration, "Shouldn't someone find something to do other than look?"

Celine's simple yet authoritative question kicked some Non Commissioned Officer out his trance. As he jerked back to reality, he started barking orders, to clear the way, set a perimeter, and any other number of military style make work for troops standing around gawking where they were non-critical to the situation.

What she saw when she entered the room turned her stomach.

The only way she could recognize Diantha was the red hair from her scalp. Her face was swollen black, and hair matted to the floor and discolored in an enormous lake of blood. She was blue on the skin that wasn't broken or bruised, and breathing shallow gasping breaths. Diantha's eyes were unfocused through the swelling and bruising of her broken face.

One medic barked, "Check heart!"

"Light and rapid," the other followed.

"Anything on her say her blood type? Is the blood-type strip ready yet?! What the hell's wrong with that thing?!"

"Negative, still nothing! I think this blood on her body is too dry for the typer to read. The carpet is contaminated with a chemical cleaning sealant that is giving error results, and she's damn near dry of blood, so we can't take any more from her...."

"O Negative," Celine shouted into the mix. When all work stopped and eyes all turned to her, the Lieutenant was the third man kneeling in the blood puddle that was dispersed deeply into the thick carpet.

He looked up from inspecting the body for other life threatening injuries. "Are you sure, my Lady?" His imperative tone left no room for argument even from Celine. He was in his element. She knew by his tone he was deadly serious and that she should not question or second guess him, "If you are wrong she will die! O Negative blood can donor to anyone but if they receive anything but their own blood type they will die." The young officer snapped, "As much blood as she has lost, and with all these internal injuries, she doesn't have much time, and if we get this wrong she will be dead before we load her onto the dropship outside on the pad."

"I am absolutely sure. She is the same as me," Celine's assured authority slipped momentarily at the questioning gazes from the medics and the Lieutenant. She mumbled, "Sorry. Stupid girl tea party conversations sometimes get out of hand."

The Lieutenant snapped crisply as he realized she actually did know Diantha's blood type, "No apology Ma'am, she is about to die. Can you donor right now?!"

Celine's mouth worked silently in shock for a second before her brain caught up and engaged, "Yes. Where do you want me?"

Standing, his knees and boots dripping blood from the sodden lower levels of the carpet, he snapped, "On the bed, lay down quickly." He looked around quickly for a better solution, finding none he repeated, "We need you on the bed, it is elevated, and we won't have to move her."

Tubes and devices appeared rapidly in place around Celine as she lay back on the bed. After all the eons of Human medicine this critical situation still came down to a person to person transaction using little more than primitive tubes and metal pokers. While one of the medics and the Lieutenant closed all the wounds they could find. The other medic quickly started the transfusion. He cleared the line of bubbles in the blood, affixed a huge needle to the other end, fumbled with Diantha's arms and got frustrated with the constricted veins, and finally jammed it into Diantha's femoral artery.

Celine must have passed out when they stuck Diantha. At some point uniformed medical personnel had arrived. There were now the two military medics, the Lieutenant, and four medical service personnel working on Diantha.

Celine's head lolled bonelessly to her right and Diantha was no longer a sickly blue with cracked b****y purple lips. While not healthy, she no longer looked dead. Her perilous rapid breathing had slowed, and one of the medics was checking pulse and nodding his head in the affirmative. Diantha was still in rough shape and was obviously unconscious.

Diantha was always a sweet young woman, regardless of Kazimir's faults. Celine smiled sadly, until she heard something about neck trauma and a body board. Neither sounded good to Celine and the bustle of activity registered like floating in a fog as her blood continued to drain from her brain, and into Diantha.

The primitive looking plank, with long flat ovals cut down the whole length, slipped into place while the true definition of 'man handled' finally sunk into Celine's blood deprived brain. These men had Diantha trussed and strapped and grabbed and pulled and twisted and held in every possible way, even a giant round squishy thing around her neck, while the two at the ends of the plank slipped it under her shoulders. As the men moved as one, someone keeping some kind of cadence, she couldn't hear or see, orchestrated the movements that settled her firmly into place on the board, followed immediately by straps and belts, to keep her from falling off the contraption.

One of the medics cursed, "s**t! Her heart's stopping!"

There was a flurry of activity around Diantha that Celine couldn't really see from her position on the bed and blocked by all the rapidly moving bodies.

In the seconds it took her mind to recognize what the medic had in his hands, Celine dismissed it as a trick of the eyes. But it really was a huge needle, with an even bigger body and plunger. The rest of the flurry of activity seemed to abruptly pause. The medic who said that her heart was stopping looked hard down at Diantha and muttered, "Lady, you're not going to like this ..." That warning to the listing Diantha was his only warning to Celine. It was intended for the semiconscious Diantha, as her still functioning brain drifted back to the world, with her heart stopping, after being tossed around and strapped to the board. His warning was loud enough to warn the rest of the room, before he pulled down her lacy top, laid fingers over her left breast, shifted them back and forth a few times, and plunged the needle deep into her heart depressing the plunger as it landed.

The desperation measure of pure adrenaline kicked her system out of shock, restarted her heart, reawakened the shattered and shocked pain sensors of the brain, and caused one of the soldiers in the door to throw up, followed immediately by two more.

Diantha's scream turned, anguished moan through her cracked teeth and shattered jaw. All her pain that had hidden behind her unconscious state suddenly crashed back to her.

Her scream was accompanied by the wet splattering sound of vomit splashing face shields, down uniforms, then onto the floor.

Hands shifted Celine on the bed as something cold and hard settled into her back. The world folded to black for her too.

70)

Samson's 'Applied Sciences' project was turning into a nightmare.

The shop rooms were tucked away in the bottom of the Academy. Each was reserved for a single student per grade. They were shared over year levels but with the ever decreasing class sizes and Samson's class was by far the largest. The fifth year was the first year that practical science classes left the standard classroom. Each student room was shared by three Guardsmen candidates but they were all from different levels of their education so there was less chance of cheating or collaboration.