Mission: Mistletoe Read online

  “Rhayne! Come here. I think I found the messages from the right time frame.” Mom danced in her chair, frantically waving Rhayne over.

  Rhayne started to head back across the room, but turned back to smile at Griffin. “I’ll see you then.”

  Chapter 7

  Althea and Rhayne made it to Griffin’s quarters thirty minutes late. Rhayne had already received three streams from Griffin, each one more urgent than the last, asking where they were. She’d gotten his last stream as they stepped off the personnel lift that had elevated them to the perm-res section of the station.

  “We’d better hurry,” she told Althea. “He’s threatening to come after us.”

  “That boy has been impatient since he was in the womb. He has never understood the concept of fashionably late. It won’t kill him to wait for us. Once we show him what we’ve found, I believe he’ll agree it was worth it.”

  Rhayne hitched the strap of her satchel higher on her shoulder as they sped down the brightly lit corridor. “Genetic engineering has been around for centuries, but this is a sick new twist. This whole plot is so scary and devious, I still don’t believe it.”

  Althea just grunted as they turned the corner and kept walking. Rhayne wistfully eyed the festive Solstice decorations lining the passageway. The temp-res area of the station was definitely lacking in the holiday spirit department. Restrictive weight limits were only one of the hazards of deep space travel when you were on a short rotation. Rhayne had to argue with the baggage-droid to bring the satchel she was currently clutching. The extra bag had put her over the limit and the droid had refused her admittance until she complied with regulations. Fortunately, she’d been able to remove an extra pair of shoes and some antique books from her luggage and put them in a storage locker. There wouldn’t have been any leeway for a Solstice wreath, even if she’d had one to bring.

  Seeing how station residents had embraced seasonal traditions made her miss her father even more.

  Would the ache ever go away?

  Some of the happiest times in Rhayne’s life had been the holiday celebrations they’d shared with their neighbors and friends. She recalled a treasured moment from her childhood when her dad had made a big fuss over carving out time from his busy academic schedule to stay home with her to decorate their quarters and make seasonal treats together. Her dad’s insistence that the measures of the ingredients for their winter biscuits and Solstice tea were simple science formulas. That time with Dad had been a major influence in her career decision.

  And now, during the station’s Solstice celebration, Udon Truser and Raster Claymont were preparing to destroy decades of progress fighting the disease that had robbed her of her father. They were going to unleash the antithesis of a cure. Rhayne quickened her pace, spurred on by the horrible thought as she approached Griffin’s door.

  She couldn’t let Truser’s plan happen.

  “Rhayne, slow down. Have some sympathy for this old lady,” Althea panted.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m so angry. How could they do this?” Rhayne paused in front of Griffin’s door, which slid open before she pressed the visitor alert button.

  “Thank Titan!” Griffin exploded through the door and hugged Rhayne first and then his mother. He hustled them into his quarters, scanned the corridor hastily, then locked the door behind them.

  Deke Slater stood ramrod straight next to Griffin’s dining table.

  “Deke! What are you doing here?” Althea asked, glancing quickly toward her son, the question clear in her eyes.

  “I’m not here officially, if that’s what you’re asking.” The man’s harsh, deep voice rasped down Rhayne’s spine like fingernails across an Endorian chalk panel.

  Griffin motioned his visitors into chairs around the table. “It seems we have an unexpected ally. Once I caught up with Slater, the situation changed. Raster Claymont arrived by special transport this afternoon.”

  Rhayne gasped and dropped her satchel to the floor as she stumbled into the nearest chair. “Holy Hades, it’s true. I’d hoped…” She let her words die. It was likely they’d all hoped the same thing. That they worked under a false hypothesis.

  “It certainly fits with what we’ve discovered,” Althea said, “but it doesn’t explain why you’re here, Deke.”

  Griffin answered for him. “He’s here to help, Mom. He’s one of the good guys.”

  The hard stare Slater directed toward his former stepson could have frozen the Venutian polar caps. To his credit, Griffin didn’t flinch.

  “Claymont’s visit was unregistered. I happened to be at the off-load bay when he arrived. The warm greeting he received came from none other than Dr. Truser. I’d been informed there had been frequent comms between the two of them so I was suspicious.”

  “Truser is one nasty piece of work.” Althea interrupted vehemently.

  Slater spread his hands open, palms up, and pinned his gaze on Rhayne. “Why is a senior science officer in constant communication with the bad boy of Weapons and Info Tech?”

  Leery, she only shrugged in response and settled herself more comfortably on the cushioned dining chair.

  Griffin took over the explanation, pinching his thumb and two fingers together in the universal stop-talking motion. “When I mentioned to Slater what Rhayne received in her in-box, he went on alert immediately. The technology needed to route viewed files to a virtual mail account isn’t available to anyone without the highest security clearance.”

  “Well, don’t look at me,” Rhayne protested when all eyes darted toward her. “I had to beg Truser to let me look at the files in the lab.”

  Deke nodded. “That’s why I think there is more to this than we thought. I believe there is a spy in the lab. I just can’t pinpoint who it might be. The timing smells rank to me. Spies, stolen files, secret visitors, and Solstice.” He tapped the toe of his booted foot on the noise-absorbing syn-floor impatiently, the sound curious flat. “I’ve put my forces on a classified high alert. We know something’s going to happen and will be able to respond quickly. We just aren’t sure what we are looking for yet.”

  Althea reached out and laid her hand over Deke’s on the back of the chair. His tension visibly eased with the small gesture. “I know that has to be frustrating the Hades out of you.”

  As Rhayne gazed at the pair of them, it seemed to her they still communicated in the manner of long-married couples. Silently, with just a glance or touch. She looked at Griffin to find him scowling at his mother and her former husband. Deke might be one of the good guys, but by the look of it, he wasn’t going to be welcomed back to the family with open arms.

  “I’m worried WIT is trying to develop a new biohaz weapon. It’s the only reasonable explanation for communication between Truser and Claymont,” Slater said.

  “I guess you could call it a weapon,” Rhayne said. “But it’s uglier than any of us imagined.”

  Conversation came to an abrupt halt when Rhayne made her declaration. She lifted the satchel onto her lap and dug inside for her small personal comp-sys. After she rolled the keyboard open on the tabletop, she typed in the command for the holo-imager to project in the space directly above it.

  “What did you find out,” Deke demanded in a gruff voice.

  “Wait for Rhayne to load it.” Althea patted Slater’s hand as if requesting patience.

  Rhayne opened her virtual mail program and began accessing files within. She glanced at Deke. “I’m not sure how up to speed you are, so I’ll start at the beginning. You know Greg Chase, right? He was lead researcher on a promising aspect of the study two years ago. It appears he managed to isolate the genetic sequencing for ageing, especially for those with p53 markers.”

  “Is that significant?” Slater asked.

  “Very. Individuals with this marker, this genotype, are at significantly greater risk for neoplastic disease—for cancer. My dad had it. Actually, nearly one in fifty humanoids carry this particular marker.” Rhayne took a deep breath a
nd gave up her secret. “I’m one of them.”

  Althea gasped. “Rhayne, I had no idea. This explains why you came this far to join the Mistletoe Project. You find a cure for what killed your dad and you might save your own life.”

  “Well, mine and sixty million others.” Rhayne smiled ruefully, dismissing the concern she recognized on the older woman’s face. She avoided Griffin’s gaze and concentrated on the display on her comp-sys. This was major personal news and she was uncomfortable with how he might react. In the deepest regions of her heart, she wanted him to worry she could get sick. She knew she had no right to hope it might matter to him, but Titan, she did want it to make a difference. She wanted him to like her. As much as she liked him.

  Rhayne dismissed her personal feelings and continued, her voice cool and professional. “Chase had a breakthrough in unlocking the allele, the genetic mutation that would reverse the propensity toward neoplastic disease. The ‘same but different’ plant research he conducted was promising. But he missed a step in synthesizing the antidote, for lack of a better explanation.” Rhayne shifted in her chair to give the others a clearer view. “Or rather, he didn’t miss it, but before he could explore the avenue, he was pulled off the research to go on the deadly mining mission on the planet’s surface. The answer, the chimera formula, has been there the whole time.”

  Althea stood over Rhayne’s shoulder and touched her fingertip to the holo-imager, opening another file containing complicated charts and formulas. “If you modify this formula in the smallest way, you end up with a plant with a genetic makeup that is vastly similar to mistletoe. But there’s enough of a difference to eliminate the plant’s holistic properties. The end result is a death sentence instead of a cure,” she said as she made a slight change to the string of gibberish there. “We, Rhayne and I, think Truser and Claymont found a way to change Chase’s cure into a silent killer. Ultimately, the winners in the entire devious scenario are the Business Coalition and the Insurance-Industrial Complex.”

  “Wait a minute,” Griffin said. “How do you figure that?”

  Slater whistled low in his throat as Althea’s meaning hit home. “Reduce the number of sick bastards in the universe and you reduce the amount of money it costs to support the hospitals, med-staffs, and even those who are ill. Health care costs have been an election hot button for politicians since the mid-twenty-first century. The political faction that solves the issue is likely to be the ruling party forever.”

  “That’s why I think they’re ‘curing’ cancer by killing anyone with it,” Rhayne said as she pulled up one last file.

  Griffin still looked confused. “How—what—? That’s just sick.”

  “Nope. That’s politics,” Deke said flatly.

  Rhayne nodded. “I received one final email just before Althea and I headed here. Still no idea where it came from, but it’s a forwarded comm between Truser and Claymont from a few days ago. There are twenty people on the space station with the p53 marker. The number goes up to thirty once the Solstice transports arrive with guests later tonight.” Rhayne tapped her fingers impatiently on the table. “According to the message, their plan is to introduce their formula in a massive way to see how effective it is. A captive audience ensures they not only ‘treat’ the individuals with a cellular predisposition, but they have a very large control sample, too. The question is how would they introduce the serum.”

  “It would have to be inconspicuous. Something everyone has access too,” Althea said.

  “Using needles would raise suspicion.” Deke crossed his arms over his chest. “Is that how it would have to be administered? Inoculate people with it?”

  Rhayne shook her head. “Not necessarily. It seems more likely they’d introduce it through the Djinn system.”

  “Not everyone could be counted on to eat the same thing,” Althea pointed out.

  Griffin scrubbed a hand over his head. “They could add the serum to the hydration system. Everyone drinks the water. But the computers controlling quality would probably discern the unusual chemical change.”

  “If the formula we found is correct, they’ve synthesized enough of the serum to contaminate the entire water supply. But it would have to be manually added to whatever medium they choose.” Rhayne sat in silence for a moment, considering how she’d do it if she had to. She eyed the festive lights Griffin had strung around his door while she thought.

  Oh no! She bolted upright in her chair and snapped her fingers. “The Solstice punch.”

  “Holy Titan! Everyone drinks that stuff. It’s the best part of the entire celebration.” Griffin stood and started pacing. “I just inventoried the ingredients. There was enough cargo for fifteen hundred revelers.”

  “This isn’t your first Solstice event, right? You’ve made the punch before?” Deke asked while he scanned the comm still displayed on Rhayne’s imager.

  “I’ve made it a few times. Why?”

  “When you checked in the supplies did any of the ingredients seem unusual?”

  Griffin considered for a moment, then shook his head. “Everything was the same as what we’ve previously received. Last year we thought we were short a few things, but we found them in Djinn storage. I had last year’s packing list as a cross-reference in case it happened again. We got what we were supposed to.”

  “They wouldn’t need a large amount to enhance the genetic alteration. If they had the proper conditions and ingredients, they could brew it here on Kronos,” Althea said.

  “If they can create a poison, could you synthesize a cure?” Griffin demanded.

  Rhayne pushed away from the table and stood. “Theoretically, yes. Althea and I have identified the formula, so yes, we could probably do it, given enough time.”

  “Their potion should already be brewed this close to the festival. If we had a different serum, we could substitute ours before the festival and let them spike the punch with the cure instead of the disease.” Althea put her hand on Rhayne’s shoulder and squeezed excitedly as she spoke. “Truser has a lab in his personal quarters. I’m not supposed to know, but invoices for some new equipment made it to me by mistake. He practically had Venutian puppies when he found out 58 had given them to me. If Udon could have taken the droid offline and repurposed him as a Djinn serv-bot, I think he would have.”

  “Then we just need access to his quarters to search for their serum,” Deke said. “I can help with that. We can invent a bogus reason to pull him into the security station to give Griffin enough time to sneak in and make the switch.”

  “But where did they get the chimera mistletoe?” Rhayne asked.

  “How could you identify if it was a chimera or the real thing?” Slater asked.

  Althea and Rhayne looked at each other, both thinking hard. Rhayne snapped her fingers excitedly. “Variegated leaves. Or berries.”

  “What?” Confusion tainted Slater’s voice.

  “The leaves of the chimera would be green and white, not just green. The berries would probably be green and white also.” Rhayne said. “But could they grow it here on the station? I haven’t seen any plants like that in the lab. They’d need a place to feed and care for it. And grow it to maturity in a relatively short period of time, if the lab notes are any indication.”

  The four of them fell silent in thought. Griffin stepped next to the table and nudged Rhayne aside. She twisted around a bit and leaned into his shoulder. The small jolt of electricity that arced through her body with the contact thrilled her. He traced a fingertip on the station map displayed on the tablet.

  Griffin tapped the map decisively with a little chuckle of triumph, drawing Rhayne’s attention back to the task. “Deke, your security clearance gives you run of the ship, right?” At the other man’s nod, he continued, “If they aren’t growing it in the lab, there’s only one other place on the station they could be growing it—at the hydroponics farm. Can you get us access?”

  “Us?” Slater questioned, giving Griffin a hard stare.

&nbs
p; “Yeah, us. Unless you’re able to identify and harvest the correct plant, you’ll need Rhayne and Mom. Until this mess is cleared up, I go where they go.”

  “Do you really think we’re in danger?” There was a note of skepticism in Rhayne’s voice as she asked.

  “Yes, I do. I think Slater would agree we’ve stumbled onto some high level subterfuge.” He paused. “WIT is involved. They play for keeps. If they suspect we’re trying to stop their plan before they can implement it, they’ll shoot first and ask questions later, if you’ll pardon the cliché.”

  Deke nodded his agreement.

  Griffin reached for Rhayne’s hand while he spoke. As his lean fingers wrapped around hers, she went a bit breathless. In spite of the hint of danger he alluded to, she felt…safe. It was crazy. She barely knew him. She hadn’t relied on anyone to take care of her for all of her adult life, not even her father really. She certainly didn’t need to start now. This small gesture, him holding her hand this way, melted some of her resolve to be self-sufficient. She instinctively trusted him to protect her.

  Rhayne stared at Griffin for a long moment while she processed her feelings. A smile tugged at his lips. He felt it, too. She barely resisted the impulse to lean in and lick the corners of his mouth just to watch that smile broaden and turn sexy.

  Deke cleared his throat, drawing their attention back to the present. He pulled the station-issued mini-tab from the holster on his belt and tapped it with a stylo. “Okay. We’ll all go to the hydroponic farm together. All of the ag-bots return to the hyper-maintenance pod at oh-two-hundred for their recharge cycle. It will be the best time to go if we want to stay under the radar. Any idea what we’re looking for once we get there?”