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Colonel Mason Leveque had a headache. Actually, he had several headaches. He was overseeing the investigation of multiple attempts to kill people that he was responsible for. He was overseeing the very risky surgery and implantation of an artificial immune system of one of those people who had been attacked. Three days ago the implantation had failed and only the absolutely heroic measures of the doctors present had prevented her death. Her odds of survival had dropped below twenty percent, and there was nothing he could do. She had rallied, and the second attempt at implantation was going as well as could be expected, but stress was thick in the air. He tensed for the message that the second implantation had failed as well every time his lookup chimed.
And then there were the personal problems that were threatening to intrude on his professional life. He had gotten into a fight with his wife, and even though he knew he was wrong, he just couldn’t bring himself to admit it. Or to do what she wanted him to do. Under normal circumstances that would be one level of bad, but this was worse. They both held vital positions in the Alien Contact Programme. A messy break up would mean that one or both of them would be removed from their position, and that would be catastrophic for either career.
He had tried to avoid letting the personal problem become public but two weeks ago, she had lost her temper and yelled at him in the dining hall. The only reason neither of them were on report for conduct not befitting their position was that the singular person who outranked them hadn’t been present. He had mostly avoided the situation since then. Their schedules were complicated, so it wasn’t too difficult… until yesterday when she confronted him again. Publicly. She accused him of avoiding her. And it was true.
The General had not taken official notice, but there was no way he didn’t know. Today his schedule included a meeting with both Nia and the General marked important. It could be just an update on the implantation of the artificial immune system, but it wasn’t likely. He was pretty sure that the meeting would include an order to resolve the situation quickly or find himself attending mandatory counselling sessions. He didn’t want to do that. The counseling wasn’t necessarily the problem. The problem was that he didn’t want to tell anyone what the fight had been about and he was sure it would come out.
And then there was the headache. The real kind. The kind that felt like a hammer in his head that never stopped pounding, and increasingly made doing his job ever more difficult. He had attempted to deal with that this morning. He had stopped by the Medical Center looking for some relief. But, before he could even explain the headache to the person working the desk, his lookup had gone off and he was dealing with another crisis.
Instead he was treating the headache with the painkillers he had obtained last time he was off the base. He had fallen after almost getting hit by a heavy lift sled that had been moving construction materials. They had worked like a charm. That had been a good day… emphasis on the ‘day’ part. He and Nia had been off the base enjoying a rare night out. He hadn’t wanted to go back to the base to get the painkillers and end the night early so they had compromised and stopped in the store. That night had not ended as well as it had started. In fact, that had been the first time his personal problem had occurred. He was still embarrassed by it. Nia had laughed and taken it as a challenge. His body didn’t cooperate and she hadn’t been successful. They chalked it up to the fall and moved on.
But then it happened again the next time too. And the one after that. She had said some hurtful things. He hadn’t been with anyone else. He didn’t want to be with anyone else. She was the love of his life and would be forever. The evening ended with cold looks and cold feelings. And he felt defeated. He wanted to tell no one.
She had gotten up before him and cornered him before he left that morning. She had apologized and said she loved him. She told him to go to the Medical Center and get it looked at. He had refused.
At first, she had done nothing. And then a few days later they had tried again with the same results. She had been more insistent that he get it looked at. He had again said no. Later that day had been the first public fight. And yesterday had been the second one.
She was right. He was wrong. He knew it. But actually dealing with the problem was still beyond what he could do. And so he found himself with a pounding headache and a multitude of other headaches. He knew the solution.
He sat in his office staring at the bottle of painkillers and thinking about life and what a mess he had made of it. And drank a cup of tea, maybe it would settle his stomach.
Knock, knock.
He looked up.
“Sir?” said Raven, usually on bodyguard duty to one or both of Jarra or Fian. With Jarra in a tank surrounded by doctors in a secure ward, and Fian safely in fighter training with Drago and his team, this was the perfect time to debrief.
“Come in, Captain,” said Mason.
“Yes, sir,” said Raven. “Commander Tell Morrath is in the secure ward with a security detail. And Major Eklund is flying a fighter with Drago’s team.”
“Have you had any new issues?” asked Mason.
“No, sir. No one knows who might have gotten to the fighter and no one has gotten near the tank without clearance.”
Mason updated the bodyguard with his news, limited as it was. “There aren’t any new leads on the sabotage of Major Elklund’s fighter. The security on the fighter wings has been upgraded and there have been no new attempts. The investigation of the woman who planted the device is still ongoing. My team is working on her recent contacts, but it is slow going. She spent the weeks before coming here on Adonis, and met with large numbers of people at various Isolationist rallies. We are sorting through which people are actual threats and which are bluster and noise.”
Mason’s head pounded in time with his heartbeat. His stomach did flip flops. He stood up to refill his cup of tea and suddenly the headache grew unbearable and the world spun. The cup crashed to the floor and he was close behind.
“Sir!?” said Raven, alarmed. “SECOP, Colonel Leveque is having a medical emergency. He just collapsed.”
“Where are you, Birdie?” asked the ever calm disembodied voice of SECOP.
“His office,” replied Raven.
“Medical and Security are responding now, Birdie,” said SECOP. “Medical wants to know if he is breathing.”
Mason couldn’t feel anything other than the pain in his head. But he vaguely noticed Raven place a hand on his chest to determine if he was breathing.
“Yes. He dropped a cup of tea when he fell, though, there are shards of glass all over the floor.”
“Don’t get cut, Birdie,” said SECOP. “Medical says two minutes.”
Mason finally opened his eyes and tried to make sense of his position. “Not necessary.”
“What is that, sir?” asked Raven.
“I said it wasn’t necessary,” said Mason.
“I am going to disagree with you on this one, sir,” said Raven.
“I outrank you, Captain,” said Mason.
“Sir, the General would agree with me and so would your wife, either of which would have called for assistance. If you want to take this up with me after you are released then, I suppose we will, but...”
Mason could feel the thuds of footfalls from his position on the floor. The temporary domes transmitted the vibrations through the floor.
“Almost there, Birdie,” said SECOP. “And for the record, I agree with you about calling it in.”
“I think you’re outvoted, sir,” said Raven.
“Not a democracy,” replied Mason.
The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of four people, one wearing the distinctive red armband signifying medical personnel and three security personnel carrying a portable stretcher.
“Colonel?” asked the one in the lead as she entered the office, carefully avoiding the shards of glass around the desk.
Mason tried to sit up but the pounding in his head was incredible. Moving at all seemed to increase the waves of nausea and he laid back down. Instead he opened his eyes and found Dr. Carolina Kar Broussard waving a scanner in his direction.
“Carolina. Aren’t you supposed to be attending Commander Tell Morrath?” said Mason from the floor.
“She’s stable. I was just going on a break when the call came in.” replied Carolina. “How do you feel, sir?”
“Like someone has put my head in a vice and is trying to crush it. And if I move my head I might deposit my breakfast on your shoes,” said Mason.
“Okay,” said Carolina. “I am going to give you something for the nausea but I need to get you back to the Medical Center before I can treat the headache.”
Mason felt the hiss of an injector and tried moving his head. The world still spun but it no longer made him want to send his breakfast flying. It would have to be enough. “Thank you.”
“Load him in the stretcher. Use the head injury protocol,” Carolina told the security people. “And Captain, can you get SECOP to clear the corridor between here and the nearest portal?”
The disembodied voice replied, “Done, Doctor Kar Broussard.”
A few minutes later Mason found himself loaded onto a stretcher with his head wedged between two unforgiving foam blocks and moving down a corridor. He was profoundly grateful for the anti-nausea meds. The indignity of being carried down the hall in a stretcher would be so much worse if he was puking all the way.
The portal trip was quick. Carolina was directing people as they arrived. “Get him under the scanner in Room 3, inform the General, and prep a rejuvenation tank.”
Mason didn’t even have time to protest before he found himself under one of the advanced scanners recently delivered from the research area at the trauma center on Adonis. He felt the stretcher settle into the specially designed slots that would prevent it and him from turning over even if he tried to move. He didn’t bother. The headache was back in full fury and he desperately wanted the pain killers that he knew were here. Carolina wouldn’t deliberately keep her patients in pain. He just had to wait a few more minutes.
“I need Emangurd,” said Carolina as she watched the flashing lights on the scanner above him. He couldn’t have made sense of them even if he wasn’t in pain. She didn’t seem to be particularly frantic so maybe this wasn’t so bad. “Colonel, this will help with your headache.”
The welcome hiss of his second injection and the whir of the scanner blended into one as he succumbed to the inevitable and began to pass out. He faintly heard the sounds of Carolina giving more directions, but he didn’t care.
He woke up in a different room blissfully free of the headache that had plagued him for longer than he cared to admit. The first thing he noticed was the fact he was no longer in his uniform, but was instead in a hospital sleep suit. The second thing he noticed was Nia sitting in a grey flexplas chair staring at her lookup. She looked beautiful and exhausted. “Hi.”
Her head snapped to his face. Her eyes clouded with concern. “Hi, yourself,” she said. “Let me get Carolina.” She tapped something on the lookup and looked at him. “You scared me.” she said. “And you scared a lot of other people too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mason. “I didn’t mean to.” He hadn’t meant to scare anyone. He had only been trying to avoid a conversation he didn’t want to have.
“You need to be nice to Major Tar Benden.” said Nia.
He paused. Why was his deputy coming up in this conversation? And more importantly, why was Nia telling him that he needed to be nice to the man? “Why?”
“I am pretty sure the man thinks he is about to be demoted to filing reports on some backwater base for the rest of his very short career.”
Mason thought for a moment and ran percentages. “He didn’t?”
“Are you asking if he reacted to your collapse as if someone was attempting to attack you as a way to halt the Alien Contact Programme? Did he see a threat against you as a threat to Jarra and Fian? Then yes, he did.”
Mason silently prayed that Nia hadn’t tried to withhold information from the man. While he had been out of commission, the entirety of the Security forces would have been at the Major’s disposal to deal with any perceived threat. Including, and especially, a threat from his wife. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a personal vendetta had caused chaos on a military base.
“Are you asking if he knew about our very public disagreement that morning and considered me his prime suspect?”
If it was possible for him to have shrunk into the bed any further, he would have tried. This was all his fault. He had seen his wife angry before, even as recently as the day he collapsed, but somehow this was different.
“Or are you asking if he went to the General and got authorization to go through every little bit of information on both of our lives?”
Mason braced for the rant he knew he deserved. It really was all his fault.
“Because it all happened.” She looked at him. “I have been married to you for a long time. I know how you would have reacted if you had been that deputy. You have been that deputy.” She took a breath and stared into his soul. “And because of that, I decided very quickly that he wasn’t going to stop until he got the answers he wanted. You wouldn’t have. Since I had no desire to meet any of the more advanced information gathering techniques Security can use to deal with reluctant suspects, I told him everything.”
He winced. That was the least horrible outcome to the situation. She was right. Major Tar Benden was not going to be satisfied with anything less than her complete cooperation. And the General would have been heartbroken to authorize the use of those advanced information gathering techniques, but he would have done it. A threat to him was a threat to the Alien Contact Progamme, and that had to be protected even if it meant personally distasteful things along the way. Having Nia completely cooperate was the least bad solution from that angle too. He marveled at her ability to figure that all out in the middle of a crisis. It was not a choice that could have been easy. He should never have put her in that position, and she had no reason to stay with him even now. “It was the right thing to do.”
“I know that. That is why I did it. If it’s any comfort, Major Tar Benden was as professional and thorough as you would have been. And he seems to have kept the details limited to a very few people. And decided that it wasn’t necessary to explain exactly what the medical condition that you wouldn’t get treated for was. According to Drago most people are assuming it was a headache. I don’t think he quite believes that, but he doesn’t want to be standing in front of the General explaining his actions. For all the bluster, Drago has decided that he would rather not be on your naughty list...or, more importantly, the General’s. ”
Small mercies abound.
“But that hasn’t stopped the gossip from running amuck. There are some very creative ideas out there. But at least to my knowledge, no one has stumbled on the correct answer.”
“I will have to thank both of them,” said Mason.
“Carolina was told while you were still in the tank. Once it became obvious that you weren’t going to be able to tell her yourself, I asked Major Tar Benden to relay. I was a bit busy at the time. Carolina didn’t seem surprised. I believe her exact words were ‘All of the vascular system is connected. All of it.’”
“Anyone else?”
“The General. But I can’t imagine he would be interested in feeding the gossip.”
It was very unlikely that the General would be feeding the gossip train.
“But I can say he was none too pleased with the situation. Really, he wasn’t happy with either of us.”
Mason understood that. He wouldn’t have been happy if it had been members of his staff either.
Before he could ask more questions, Carolina walked in and waved her scanner at him. “You, Colonel, gave everyone quite a scare. The General is requesting updates on your condition along with the updates on Jarra. Captain Raven is pestering SECOP for updates almost as often. And your wife has been....”
“I’m sorry,” interrupted Mason. There wasn’t more he could say. And he expected that he would be saying that a lot in the near future.
Nia and Carolina shared a look. They had been talking. He was never going to keep anything away from either of them for a very very long time.
“So what happened?” He still didn’t know what had happened. He was plenty grateful that the headache was gone, and hopeful that the other problem was too, but that didn’t enlighten him as to what the problem actually had been.
“How about you tell me what you remember?” replied Carolina setting down the scanner.
“I had a headache. It was getting steadily worse. I had a meeting with Captain Raven and I was supposed to have a meeting with General Torrek after that. But the headache suddenly got much worse during the meeting with Captain Raven, and I ended up here.”
“Is the headache why you stopped in the Medical Center?” asked Carolina.
“You went?” asked Nia. Apparently that bit of information hadn’t made it to her. Probably because she had been kept in the dark while Major Tar Benden had been doing his job.
Mason looked at Nia. Had Major Tar Benden neglected to tell her? No. It was information she didn’t need to have. But she could have been told after she had been cleared! After this was done he was going to need to have a long talk with the man. “I did stop by the Medical Center. I was hoping to get something for the headache but I got called away before I got much farther than the entry.”
“You should have made the time, Colonel. You were very very lucky to not have more significant organ damage.” said Carolina.
“What?!” responded Mason. “It was just a headache!”
“It was not just a headache. Colonel, you had a hypertensive emergency. Your blood pressure was far far too high. You have been in a rejuvenation tank for the last three days while your entire vascular system was repaired. You were definitely in the zone where a stroke and true brain damage was a possibility.” said Carolina.
Mason looked at his wife and gulped. He did not want to die. He had too much to live for. He had a wife and three wonderful children. He had his dream job.
“But you didn’t have a stroke. The damage has been repaired. And aside from not drinking that tea and coming in for regular scans for a while you will be fine.”
“Tea?” asked Mason.
“Yes, tea, Colonel,” said Carolina. “That new tea you were drinking endlessly has significant amounts of a compound known to increase blood pressure.”
“And I drink a lot of it,”
“Drank a lot of it,” corrected Carolina. “You need to find a new tea.”
Mason looked at his wife. “Understood. No more of that tea.”
“And Colonel,” Carolina gave him a look that would have made anyone afraid. “The next time you try to avoid dealing with a medical problem....”
Suitably chastised, he said, “I won’t do that.”
“If he had come in earlier...” said Nia.
“The high blood pressure would have shown up on any scan,” said Carolina. “It would have taken some research to pinpoint the tea as the cause, but at least you wouldn’t have put the base on high alert for the past few days and worried a lot of people.”
“You were an idiot,” said Nia.
“I was an idiot,” said Mason.
“You were an idiot. Don’t do it again,” said Carolina. “I am going to keep you here overnight to make sure there are no lingering effects of either the tea or the rejuvenation treatment. And you will come back weekly until I say otherwise to confirm the problem has gone away.”
Mason looked at Nia and then back to Carolina. “Understood, Doctor.”
Carolina turned to walk out of the room and then paused and looked back, “Wait. The headache wasn’t the reason for the fight was it?”
“I’m not telling,” said Nia.
Carolina laughed and walked out of the room.
Several hours later, Mason was alone. Nia had gone to spend some time with the children, and he was splitting his time between reading reports and working on overdue paperwork.
“Knock, knock,” said a familiar voice outside the door.
“Come in, sir,” said Mason.
General Riak Torrek walked in. “You look better than the reports suggested.”
“I am doing much better, sir. Carolina says I can go back to work tomorrow,” said Mason.
“Nia seemed very relieved when she came by an hour or so ago,” said Riak.
“Yes, sir,” said Mason.
“So, is the problem between you two resolved?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mason. “I was stupid.”
“That happens to everyone eventually,” said Riak. “It still wouldn’t be a bad idea to attend a few counselling sessions.”
“No, sir,” said Mason. He recognized the statement for the order that it was. “It probably wouldn’t.” He had been correct. The meeting would have included an order for mandatory counseling.
Mason watched as Riak’s gaze seemed very far away. “I’ll be going then. Don’t worry about being on time tomorrow.” He walked out the door.
Mason took a deep breath and realized that the headache was gone. There was still someone trying to kill Jarra and Fian but it didn’t seem so bad. Now that his personal headaches were gone he could deal with the professional ones.
He turned on his lookup and continued the process of answering the messages that had been queueing. He sent a meeting request to Major Tar Benden for tomorrow. It would be late enough that he was sure he would be released but as early as possible beyond that. He needed to schedule it soon, if only to assure the man he wasn’t going to be demoted.
There were plenty of problems out there and many of them were his. But the headache didn’t return.