Burden of Solace

  Burden of Solace

  Book 1 of

  The Starforce Saga

  A novel by

  Richard L. Wright

  Copyright © 2019 Richard L. Wright

  All Rights Reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published: 7 February 2019

  Cover Art by Isabel Westling

  www.deviantart.com/westling

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Deb.

  My friend,

  my love,

  my hero,

  my solace.

  CHAPTER 1

  The sweltering heat of an Atlanta summer hit Cassie like a fist the instant the elevator doors slid open. She gave a muffled grunt as she shoved the heavy gurney out onto the hospital’s rooftop helipad. One of the wheels went sideways and caught in the gap of the elevator’s threshold, bringing the bed to an abrupt halt. The chrome steel railing slammed into Cassie’s stomach, nearly knocking the wind from her petite frame. She braced herself, fighting to control the gurney, and shot a dirty look at the emergency room nurse who should have been helping instead of fiddling with his phone.

  “Matthew, put it away or so help me God I will pitch you and it off this roof.”

  The nurse finally looked up and gave the gurney a half-hearted tug, freeing the wheel.

  “Screw you,” he said. “Footage of Guardians in action sells for big bucks.”

  Great, Cassie thought. We’ve got a gun-shot little girl inbound and all this jackass cares about is filming the exohuman flying her in.

  As if on cue, a glint of light from the setting sun reflected off something in the eastern sky, something moving very fast and coming directly for them. Despite her indifference to how this young victim was being transported, Cassie felt her breath catch in her chest. There was something awe-inspiring about seeing a human being fly. Well, not human, exactly. By law, exos were classified as non-human.

  “Man, look at him move,” the nurse murmured, his phone trained on the action.

  The approaching shape quickly resolved into that of a slender man, clad in skintight metallic gray with a silver-gray helmet covering his entire head. Cradled in his arms lay their patient. The girl’s face was turned into her savior’s chest, her long, dark hair whipping about it in the wind. As they watched, the flying exo reversed his headlong approach, flipping onto his back so that his booted feet were in front of him, aimed toward the roof as he began braking his urgent, rocket-like approach.

  It looked to Cassie like he was still coming in way too fast for a landing with such fragile cargo. Then he was there. His feet struck the concrete with a sharp ‘crack’ sound, but his knees flexed, dropping him into a full crouch as they absorbed the energy of their combined momentum. His arms dropped slightly, then buoyed back up as he did his best to cushion his precious payload against the abrupt stop.

  Cassie was already in motion with the gurney when she heard the chime of the second elevator arriving with more nurses, the ones she’d left behind in the ER when they didn’t move fast enough. Matthew put away his phone as the exo unfolded his arms to lay the bleeding girl on the crisp, white sheets. Cassie was stuck by the careful tenderness the Guardian displayed even as she noted the small cracks surrounding the shallow, footprint-shaped impressions in the helipad. He stepped back, allowing the hurricane of medical personnel to surround his small passenger. His thick, corded arms - capable of crushing granite - now hung limp at his side.

  But Cassie could spare no attention for him now. Her eyes and hands moved with quick precision around the young life that was slowly ebbing before her. Each second was crucial as she worked and issued orders to the nurses. Needles plunged into tender flesh, fluids flowed, pressure staunched the outpouring of crimson life. Then they were on the move, rushing for the operating room where skilled hands would try to put right what brutish bullets had wrecked.

  Only when the elevator doors started to close did Cassie look up at the Guardian again. For the first time, she saw the blood - a child’s blood - smeared across his broad chest, almost obscuring the stenciled number that was the only identity the government allowed his kind. His head was bowed, and even through his mirrored visor she could imagine how helpless he must feel. His strength and invulnerability were useless here.

  Cassie nodded to him, a grim smile forming on her lips to send a reassuring message - Don’t worry. I can do this. Then the brushed-steel doors slid closed.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Blood pressure’s still falling. We’re losing her.”

  Cassie worked furiously, stitching up holes in her young patient as fast as she could find them. “Forceps,” she called out, holding out her left hand. “Hang another unit of blood. We need to keep her volume up until I get these fucking holes plugged.”

  Cassie’s coarse language stood in sharp contrast to the calm tone of her voice. She hoped that tone masked her rising anxiety. A surgical nurse slapped the requested instrument into Cassie’s palm with practiced precision, but there was hesitancy in her voice.

  “Dr. Whelan, shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Zacharias?”

  Cassie’s anger flared as another nurse sponged the sheen of sweat from her forehead.

  “Fuck him. I paged him, five times. Rules or no rules, I’m not letting this little girl bleed out.”

  Cassie used the forceps to tease out the glint of metal she had seen. Slow and easy, she slid the bullet fragment from the surrounding tissue. As she worked the jagged sliver clear, blood flooded the incision area.

  “Dammit,” she hissed. “Vascular clamp. Suction.” Working quickly, she clamped off the bleeding vessel while another nurse vacuumed up the blood that kept her from seeing its source. The suture was ready before Cassie even called for it.

  A tinny voice rang from the intercom. “We’re running low on O-Positive.”

  Cassie’s eyes narrowed, focusing on the gore that was once a little girl’s chest. “What? We’ve only used three units. Fuck’s sake…” She bit her lip, trying to get a grip on her emotions. So much for trying to sound calm. “Hang a bag of plasma and tell the bank we’ll need a unit of packed cells once we get her stitched up.”

  She heard the door to the OR bang open and spared a glance up. That quick look was enough to tell her that Ari Zacharias was in a foul mood. The snap of his gloves matched her attending physician’s terse tone. “Dr. Whelan, you can step out now. I’ll take it from here.”

  “No need. I’ve got this,” Cassie replied. Her needle arched through another ripped blood vessel.

  “You,” he said, “are a fourth-year resident, Doctor. You don’t operate unsupervised. Now, step out.”

  “You’re here. Supervise me.”

  Cassie continued tying off the suture, sealing what she hoped was the last of the bleeders in her young patient before releasing the clamp. She knew she was in dangerous territory with Zacharias - flirting with outright insubordination - but she’d had enough of being held back. She was going to save this girl.

  “That’s an order, Doctor Whelan. Step out, now!”

  “BP stabilizing,” someone reported. “Coming up now.”

  Cassie breathed a sigh of relief and did a quick scan of the patient’s open chest for signs of more leaks. Seeing none, she stepped back off the riser that compensated for her short stature. She took a deep breath and
turned to face the man who could end her career with a word. Zacharias elbowed her aside and kicked the riser out of his way. After a quick survey of the surgical field, he turned his attention over his shoulder to Cassie.

  “Whelan, we’re going to have a long talk about your lack of regard for protocol. And about whether you have a future at this hospital. I don’t care who your parents were, you follow rules like everybody else.”

  Behind her surgical mask, Cassie’s teeth bore down on her lower lip, muzzling the words she wanted to say. She lowered her eyes, hiding the fire she felt smoldering there, and pretended to adopt a more submissive demeanor.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zacharias picked up a pair of forceps and began probing, examining her work. “First, I’ll need to clean up these sloppy sutures.”

  Sloppy, my ass. Those stitches are fucking gold and you know it.

  “In the meantime, make yourself useful. Get rid of that exohuman freak in my waiting room. The last thing I need is a media circus out there filming the city’s ‘Guardian’ while he hangs around, looking for a pat on the back because he gave a kid a piggyback ride.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cassie headed for the operating room door, pausing to look back at the child’s face. She looked sweet and peaceful, even with the crisscross of tape that held her breathing tube in place. Cassie felt the anger rising again, this time against whoever had gunned down a little girl, leaving her to die. But this one hadn’t died, thanks to Cassie’s swift action. She’d worked all her life to become a trauma surgeon, to live up to the role thrust upon her as her parent’s legacy. The irony that she might lose her dream because she’d saved a little girl’s life didn’t escape her. She pushed through the door, shouldering it open. As she pulled off her mask and gloves, a nurse came down the hallway.

  “That exo who flew her in,” Cassie asked, inclining her head to indicate the operating room. “He still hanging around out front?”

  “Guardian 175? Yeah, he’s been waiting for an update on the girl. You look exhausted. Want me to talk to him?”

  The note of excitement in the nurse’s voice reminded Cassie that not everyone held the rare, mutated individuals known as exohumans in the same low regard as Zacharias. Some people actually admired exos, viewing them as something akin to celebrities. Historically, the people of Atlanta had held an affectionate esteem for the Guardians assigned there. After all, the country’s first exohuman national hero, the WWI super-soldier known as Ironhorse, had come from Atlanta. The city pride attached to local exos probably explained why the government had never assigned more than one Guardian to the city at a time. It was harder to keep hometown heroes under their thumb, so they limited their numbers. Elsewhere, hundreds of years of fear and distrust had led to the restrictive laws that governed exos across much of the world. Some humans don’t like what they can’t control.

  Cassie’s attitude toward exos fell somewhere in the middle. She didn’t particularly like or dislike them, as a group. Until today, she’d never even met an exohuman. It wasn’t like they were walking around among normal people. Most of what she knew about exos was from seeing them on news broadcasts, in the limelight after using whatever unique and bizarre powers they possessed - for the public good, of course. Even though the government kept their kind under tight control, and their identities had been stripped from them - replaced with assigned ID numbers - exos still possessed an all-too-human need for recognition. It fostered an opinion, especially in exo-haters like Zacharias, that they were all egotistical braggarts.

  It was tempting to let an enthusiastic nurse deal with him, but Cassie knew she couldn’t fob this off on someone else. If Zacharias found out she’d farmed out an assignment he’d specifically given to her, then she could probably kiss her surgical residency goodbye. Pushing the rules to save a kid was one thing. Avoiding work was another whole bag of bananas.

  It didn’t help her mood that she was probably walking into a journalistic feeding frenzy. The nurse on the helipad was right; when exos swung into action, it was news. In all likelihood, there were reporters and cameras waiting for her out there. The idea of facing that kind of circus made Cassie’s back tense up. She’d always suffered from stage fright. It had started at her parents’ funeral. She still had nightmares about walking through the gauntlet of media vultures, her nine-year-old hands tightly clutching her GranDa. No, she wasn’t up for any of that crap. But, this ‘Guardian 175’ had made a huge difference by flying the girl directly into their care, buying them precious time. She likely would’ve lost this patient if not for him. Zacharias’ exo-loathing aside, she owed this guy the decency of a ‘thank you.’ She sighed and threw the nurse a wan smile.

  “Thanks, Shelly, I’ll handle it.”

  Before going to the waiting room, Cassie stopped by the locker room to make herself more presentable. Even without issues of biological contamination, nobody wanted to see a surgeon smeared with blood on the evening news. She stripped off her surgical cap and gown, tossing them into the appropriate bins before slumping onto a bench. She pulled her hair out of its customary work-bun and let her long, auburn locks tumble free as she ran her weary fingers through them. She was physically and emotionally spent. She’d already been at the end of a thirty-six-hour shift when the call came in about the girl. This thing with Dr. Zacharias was just the cherry on top of a shitty day.

  Cassie heard the voice of Althea Stewart, the ER’s head surgical nurse, coming from the next row of lockers.

  “I’m tellin’ you, she’s done. Zacharias has had it with her crap.”

  “Come on, that kid wouldn’t have lasted. What was she supposed to do?” The second voice was that of an anesthesia RN whose name escaped Cassie at the moment.

  “She’s supposed to wait until a surgeon becomes available is what she’s supposed to do,” Althea continued. “But, no, she thinks she’s too good. Puffed-up little thing. Thinks she’s special ‘cause her parents were famous.”

  The RN didn’t sound convinced. “I heard she’s never lost a patient – not one. How is that even possible?”

  “Psfft, she just been lucky. She’s only, what, twenty-four? And the Attendings are mighty careful about what they let her tackle. Nobody wants the famous Whelan Legacy killing someone on their watch.”

  “The other residents trash-talk her behind her back, but I figured it was just because she’s good, makes them look bad.”

  “She don’t make friends easy, that’s for sure. That little red’s got a foul temper. I don’t reckon many folks ‘round here will be sad to see her narrow ass booted out the door.”

  Lockers slammed and the rest of the conversation drifted down the hallway. Cassie took a deep breath. She was used to people resenting her, always assuming she’d been given unfair advantage because of who she was. Growing up with her particular brand of infamy, she’d dealt with it all her life. But it never failed to catch her by surprise and it never hurt any less.

  She reached into her locker and pulled a small sports bottle from the back.

  Just a sip, she promised herself. I’m off-duty anyway.

  *

  Cassie saw the exo standing alone in a corner of the waiting room as the “Staff Only” doors slid open. There were no reporters or photographers, only him and he seemed to be trying very hard to remain out of the way and inconspicuous. Well, as inconspicuous as was possible for a helmeted, gray-clad Guardian.

  On the roof, she hadn’t fully appreciated how tall he was. He looked to be at least six-three – more than a foot taller than Cassie. His form-fitting steel-gray uniform showed off his physique to full advantage, which was probably the idea. Unlike most bodybuilder types, he had a slender kind of muscular build that didn’t bulge in unnatural places. The full-face helmet covering his head was something that set him apart from other Guardians. Of all of the conscripted exos, only his face was hidden behind a silver-gray mirrored visor, causing some to speculate that he had been famous before his abilities Emerged.
As she approached him, he stood perfectly still, gloved hands clasped behind him, but Cassie got the impression of a spring under tension.

  “So, you’re called Guardian 175?”

  The helmet nodded and he pointed to those very numbers stenciled in black on the left side of his chest.

  “Duh,” she said, conceding his point. “I just wanted to let you know that the girl survived surgery and her prognosis is favorable at this point. We’ll continue to monitor her closely, but I expect her to make a full recovery.”

  The tension in him seemed to unwind, falling away. “Thank you,” he said.

  She had expected his voice to be muffled by the helmet, but it sounded completely natural. There was a soft quality, a warmth, which contrasted sharply with the dehumanizing effect of the helmet. She’d heard somebody on talk radio theorize that he was really a sophisticated robot. Apparently, they’d never heard him speak because there was no mistaking the humanity behind his voice. It reminded her why she had felt obligated to speak to him personally.

  “Actually, I came to thank you. If you hadn’t flown her directly here, she would have died. You saved her life.”

  “That’s the job,” he said. His head lowered a bit and Cassie imagined a look of embarrassment beneath the one-way glass of his faceplate. Maybe she was projecting her own feelings onto him. She often found herself flinching away from compliments. Growing up as an overachiever did that to some people. Being super-strong and invulnerable definitely qualified as ‘overachieving’ so maybe he shared that personality trait with her. Whatever Dr. Zacharias might want to think, this man wasn’t a glory hound.

  “Is there any word on her father?” he asked.

  Cassie shrugged. She’d heard that the girl’s father had also been shot, brought in by ordinary ambulance because his bleeding wasn’t as severe. For the last couple of hours, she’d been completely absorbed in the girl’s well-being. Someone else was focused on the father. She weighed her orders to get rid of this man against her human decency. If she were being totally honest, it was possible her current screw-you attitude toward Zacharias may have placed a fat butcher’s thumb on the scale.