Incursion Vector

030

[▲] {-LOCATION REDACTED-}

The problem had always been the fact that he had never looked at all threatening.

Born in low gravity the man had been diagnosed with osteopenia at a very young age. His slightly brittle bones had resulted in rejections from military schools across the board, thus the man vested himself entirely in obtaining three doctorates by the time he hit the age of majority and another five by the time he hit thirty from engineering academies across the galaxy. Topping out at two meters tall, it seemed that no matter how excessively the man ate, drank, and exercised, he never gained a kilo of either muscle or fat and resigned himself to remaining unusually thin. Despite his Germanic genetics he couldn't grow a decent beard to save his life, and given his aversion to natural sunlight, always had a pale, almost sickly pallor to his skin.

Perhaps that was why the clerk failed to take him seriously as he repeated, "I believe I said that I want my son moved to my private medical facility."

"And we're sorry, Doctor Ironside, but that's impossible," said the clerk by rote.

"I trust you heard what I said after that."

The man bobbed his head up and down, maintaining his utterly disinterested expression. "That you'd storm the facility and take him, yes."

"I see."

"Doctor, this is a class five military medical facility," explained the clerk as though Ironside had no idea what he had walked in to. "Your son is in a sterile isolation chamber at the heart of this facility. Hell, I have no idea how you got in the front door, but you're not going to be able to get any further than this even if you shoot me in the face."

The assertion of the clerk was tempting to try. Ironside found himself remarkably curious as to whether or not the man's training would indeed keep him from flinching or if he would break down into hysterics like half the other men he had already gone through once a bullet had been placed in a limb or two. "I see."

"I'll show you out, Doctor." The clerk got to his feet and walked around the table to usher him to the door. "Visiting hours are on Wednesdays. You can come back then."

"Petty Officer, hold." The voice came over the room's com system just as the airlock leading to the more secure rooms at the core of the station snapped to the side. It was a man wearing Navy lieutenant's bars, though his face was over-aged for the rank. "I'll escort the Doctor out."

"Lieutenant Commander Maro, sir." The clerk saluted the man crisply. "As you wish, sir."

Maro placidly motioned towards the exit and Ironside obliged the man by following him through the environmental isolation door. What qualified as the general reception area of the facility was kept several degrees cooler than the other side, and the chairs were specifically designed to be uncomfortable so as to dissuade people from staying in the area for any length of time. In fact the entire station gave off the distinct feeling of being in a morgue rather than a medical hospital.

It pissed him off to no end that this was the the sort of place where the Navy had isolated his son. Seigfried had given up everything to join them and in turn they stuffed him in a metal tube at the ass end of civilized space. The military was a pack of ungrateful sons of bitches considering how many technological breakthroughs he had allowed them to steal from his companies over the years.

"Please trust me, Doctor," said Maro as he slowly walked towards the shuttle bay, "your son is receiving the best care here on the station. But due to the classified nature of the engagement in which he was injured we can't release him to a private medical facility."