Defying the Prophet: A Military Space Opera (The Sentience Trilogy Book 2) by Gibson Michaels

Southern leanings, so with a Confederate fleet overhead, they might become heartened enough to secede, in spite of our Federal troops stationed there. The international community might even start recognizing those damned traitors as legitimate, or God knows what other disasters could occur, as long as Kalis is allowed to sit there.”
    As soon as Campbell and Bradley left his office, Marrot sent a communiqué to Nork, summoning Consortium Deputy-Chairman Aline McCauley to the White House. 
    The damned Consortium and their congressional lackeys are leaking classified information like a sieve, and this is exactly what I need to finally put a cork in the damned bottle!
    * * * *

 
    Chapter-6
    I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.  — Irvin S. Cobb
Planetoid Discol, City of Waston
July, 3862
    It took over six weeks for J.P. Aneke, Chairman of the Executive Board of the Consortium of Industrial Management, to finally regain consciousness in the intensive care unit of Waston’s most exclusive private hospital. Aneke had suffered extensive internal and external injuries, when a heavy Confederate ship-killer missile malfunctioned and leveled the hotel where Aneke was sleeping. He was lucky to have survived at all. It had been a very near thing and, while not entirely out of the woods, at his own insistence, he was transferred to an exclusive private room with his own personal staff, dedicated solely to monitoring their single, monomaniacal patient.
    A curious midnight power failure dropped power in the wing of the hospital where Aneke’s room was located. In the mere seconds before the hospital’s emergency generators kicked on, a black-clad man slipped quietly into Aneke’s room completely unobserved. The sedated Aneke was totally unaware of a tiny penlight switching on, his sheet being lowered or his hospital gown being lifted. Neither was he aware of the heavily gloved man, wearing a tiny respirator, using a small syringe to dribble several drops of a clear liquid down the length of his penis and onto his testicles. Capping the syringe and gently placing it back into a small custom-made metal box, the man placed the box into a pants pocket, lowered Aneke’s gown and pulled his sheet back up into place. He carefully removed and placed his heavy gloves into a triple-thick sack that hung on his belt. He then retrieved a second syringe from a shirt pocket, with which he pierced the injection port on Aneke’s IV. Placing his left thumb firmly on the plunger, the man then used his right hand to gently shake the sedated patient.
    “Herr Aneke.” As he shook him again, the man said, “Wakey, wakey, Herr Aneke.”
    Aneke’s eyes groggily opened.
    “Ah, there you are, Herr Aneke. I was so sorry to hear that you had been injured.”
    The penlight snapped on again to illuminate the man’s bearded face from beneath his chin. Aneke’s eyes bulged in disbelief.
    “I have brought you an old German remedy I’m sure will make you feel better, very soon.”
    The man made a show of shoving home the plunger on the syringe and Aneke screamed. The penlight snapped out. The emergency power generators again faltered in Aneke’s wing, plunging that section of the hospital back into darkness a second time. The hospital staff fell all over themselves getting to their screaming patient in the shadows of the dim emergency lighting, which had snapped on again. But no one noticed the dark-clad figure slipping out of Aneke’s room and through a darkened, computer-controlled door just around the corner.
    “He was here!” screamed Aneke. “That German bastard was here and he put something into my IV.”
    A nurse immediately jerked the IV from Aneke’s arm and pressed tightly to prevent the injection site from bleeding. It wasn’t an easy task, holding tightly to the arm of a wildly gyrating, ranting patient. 
    “He was in here, goddamnit, and he did something to me! How the hell could you imbeciles