"I promise, Joanie. I'll do everything I can, you know that." He waved the medics on, looking after them, then turned to his second. "Find anything useful, Sergeant?"
"Afraid not, sir. They're too damn good at covering up. We won't have a thing, unless Captain Cortin's able to give us some descriptions."
"All right. Call in a specialist squad from New Denver; they may be able to find some kind of evidence. Fingerprints, footprints, identifiable bullets—damn, but I wish we had what the prewars had!"
"Able to identify a culprit from a speck of blood or a hair?" Sergeant Vincent laughed bitterly. "Hell, if we could do that, we'd have the Brothers under control in six months."
"Yeah." Odeon tried to hide his frustrtion. "No use playing what-if, though; we could do that forever. Let's get back to HQ."
Silently, respecting their leader's mood, the Special Operations team returned to their command van for the copter-lift back to their Middletown headquarters. It wasn't until they were landing that anyone spoke. "Captain?"
"What is it, Boris?"
"I spoke with the physician, sir. Captain Cortin will be stabilized at the local clinic, then sent to New Denver for surgery. You are due for leave, are you not?"
"Yeah, and I intend to take advantage of it. Two years' worth of accumulated leave ought to give me time to help her stay in."