by Bob Mauldin
Distraught, Lucy took Victor’s implied order with ill grace and watched as the first casualties began to emerge from the boarding tube and were whisked off to make-shift infirmaries around the base.
The watch on her wrist slowed to a crawl as the pod’s cutting tools sliced through door after door and the pitiful few survivors trickled in. Finally, the pod operator reported that he’d arrived at the door to the bridge. The flow of people had ended, leaving room for Lucy and Victor to cross to the stricken ship. Gliding through the interior, reddened by the emergency lighting, Lucy shivered as she saw the mangled bodies of the dead that the rescue teams hadn’t yet had time to remove. She stopped and looked at the face of one as she passed, and wept, then closed the staring eyes and followed Victor down the once-familiar corridor. Hovering in the gravity-free hallway with the tech team, all of whom were as shaken as she, Lucy watched as the final barrier was breached and the heavy door was pulled away and set to one side. She steeled herself and pushed to the front of the gaggle of people, pulling herself into the command center and burning her hand on the hot metal of the opening as she did so.
For the rest of her life, Lucy would remember the sight that met her streaming eyes. Ten positions had been occupied at the time of the disaster, and seven limp bodies floated in various positions around the room or sat strapped in front of their exploded consoles as if ready to perform their duties. Two of the three survivors hovered over the central seat from which the TAS Arthur C. Clarke had been commanded. Lucy, gagging at the smell trapped in the room from the failing ventilation system, floated over to the command chair to find Gayle’s first officer and navigation officer trying to remove her from the straps holding her in place. Both officers showed evidence of their harrowing ordeal, but they single-mindedly kept at their grisly task until the medical officer from Libra ordered them back. Beckoning an assistant to bring a light to bear on the captain of the Clarke, he began an inspection that finally produced a groan of pain from Lucy’s friend.
Gayle’s eyes fluttered open to see Lucy watching worriedly. “Did we hold ‘em, Luce?” The question was so quiet that Lucy almost missed it but for the movement of her lips.
“Yeah, you held ‘em, Gayle. You held ‘em good. Now let the doctor take a look at you, okay?”
“Sure, Lucy,” the injured captain mumbled. “How’s my crew? And the ship? How did she do?”
Tears floated from Lucy’s eyes as she saw the wound in Gayle’s side, hidden until now by her hands, the spreading stain of red on black being wicked away from the wound by the material of her uniform. A piece of one of the exploded consoles had pinned her to the chair she sat in. The doctor reached into the bag held for him by an aide and looked up at Lucy. “I need to put her out for a while. We’re going to have to cut the chair free and get her out of it back on the base.”
“Do it,” was all Lucy could say.
The doctor pushed up Gayle’s sleeve, slid a hypodermic under the skin, and pressed the plunger home.
“Lucy,” Gayle whispered, her hand drifting out to rest lightly on her friend’s arm, “how is Stephen?” Her eyes closed as the drug started to take effect.
“We’ll talk later, Gayle,” Lucy said, grief strangling her voice.
The doctor motioned for the pod operator to start cutting the chair free as the captain succumbed to the narcotic he’d injected into her arm. Lucy slowly turned around and surveyed the room again. Floating over to the science station, she found the body of Stephen Walker still strapped in his chair, his heart pierced by a piece of his console that had blown apart during the energy backlash that had destroyed so many other systems throughout the remains of the ship.
At the same moment, millions of miles away, another ship quietly moved away from human space, undetected by the still-unfinished surveillance net being constructed around the system.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The McCaffrey one-jumped Gayle and thirteen other seriously wounded survivors to the Galileo to be seen by Dr. Jeffers. The remaining survivors, just over a hundred, were either loaded aboard the Heinlein and taken back to Earth or were given berths aboard Libra until such time as they could be sent back to Earth as well.
Lucy, feeling like an interplanetary hitchhiker, stowed her Mamba on the McCaffrey’s flight deck and waited out the jump while standing behind Marsha’s command chair. Less than an hour later, running at speeds that would make the Builders themselves shudder, the McCaffrey lay alongside the huge factory ship at the nearly completed Taurus Base.
Dr. Jeffers, alerted to the arrival of so many wounded, triaged the entire group himself, assigning crewmen to attend to the less seriously injured. One amputated arm and three surgeries later, he walked out of the sick bay to find half a dozen anxious people waiting for him. Sitting wearily in a chair, he looked at the row of faces. “I said it the day I came aboard, and I’ll say it again—we don’t have enough adequately trained medical personnel for a really serious incident. This just points the fact up. I need to find a donor with B-positive blood for a transfusion for Captain Miller, but the others will be fine as they are now. Lieutenant Morrison needed an O-positive transfusion, but I found several of my assistants who helped in that department. She’s going to have to learn to do things left handed, I’m afraid. Her hand was crushed when one of the airtight doors closed on it. The other three will have some interesting scars, but the B-positive is considerably rarer and needs to be found as soon as possible.”
Captain Morgan stood up. “That will be my job, then. With the McCaffrey and the Galileo here, I should be able to get someone here pretty quick.” He turned to leave but then turned back. “Unless B-positive is really rare?”
“Not all that rare,” the doctor said. “About seven percent of the population have it. Out of what, some thirteen hundred plus, you should be able to find at least a couple of dozen who have B-positive.”
Captain Morgan nodded and said, “I’ll put out a ship-wide bulletin right away.”
He’d started to leave when Marsha stopped him. “Call my exec and have him put out the same notice, will you, Mustafa? Can’t hurt.” The Galileo’s captain nodded and left without a backward glance.
Simon, standing next to a transformed Kitty, asked, “So, exactly what is Gayle’s condition, Doctor? Not to disparage the others, but Gayle is a personal friend, and I… we all,” he said, waving at the room in general, “want to know.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, she was in the best condition of the four who needed my attention. The piece of metal that pinned her to the chair had wedged itself between two ribs. No internal organs were damaged, but she did suffer a lot of blood loss, hence the transfusion. If she wears a bikini, she is going to have an interesting scar to explain. But I understand that we may still have a problem, and that’s in the department of mental health. Is it true that her boyfriend or lover was aboard and died in the attack?”
Lucy answered, “Yes he was, Doctor. As a matter of fact, he was in the same room. Died instantly, we believe, sitting at the science station.”
Dr. Jeffers shook his head. “That’s a rough one. I thought it might be something like that from some of the things she said while she was under sedation. She’s going to need the support of all her friends in the months to come, as will the others,” he added. “This is a new experience in the human condition, people. Participating in space battles isn’t something that happens in ‘real life,’ and the trauma, both physical and mental, is going to be severe.”
Simon spoke up more confidently than he had in almost a year. “We didn’t expect a cakewalk, Doctor, but I had hoped that after taking out whoever attacked Orion, we’d have a longer breathing spell than we got. Distances being what they are, we figured we’d have more time...”
A white-haired, still not completely up-to-date Kitty spoke up. “Dr. Jeffers, is it? I don’t know you, but I know what Simon told me, and if he trusts you, then I do, too. I guess you know about me and my cond
ition.” She self-consciously fingered her hair. “I sure as hell don’t. But Gayle and I have been friends for almost thirty years now, and if anyone can even come close to understanding her loss and helping her, I think it would have to be me.”
Brian nodded slowly. “I was briefed on your condition when I took over Dr. Penn’s position, and I’m as much at a loss to explain what happened to you as anyone else. According to all medical data and experience, you should be in a vegetative coma, at best. Still another case of technology getting the upper hand—for the better in this case, thank God. But just for everybody’s information, none of the patients were left on any of the tables. I don’t want another occurrence of what happened to Captain Hawke. Anyway, none of these are suffering from life-threatening injuries. I did think about leaving Lieutenant Morrison there to see if we could give her back her right hand though.”
Kitty asked, “So, when can we see her, Doctor?”
“I think this time tomorrow will be soon enough,” he replied. “I’m going to keep her sedated for a while to let the stitches set and to let her to gain some of her strength back. I’d like you there when she wakes up, of course, so I’ll let you know a bit in advance.”
“None of us are going anywhere right now, Brian,” Simon said familiarly.
“All right, then,” the doctor said with a touch more joviality than was really necessary. “I should get back to my patients. I’ll leave you folks to your reunion.” He stood up and shook hands all around. When he got to Kitty, held her hand a bit longer than the others. “I’d like to give you another quick exam sometime tomorrow, if you don’t mind. After you see Gayle would be a good time. I can check out your stress levels as well.”
Sixteen hours passed, allowing all concerned to let their body-clocks adjust to the Galileo’s time while they came to some kind of terms with the situation. The “reunion” consisted of Simon, Kitty, Lucy, Marsha, Victor—who’d also hitchhiked to the Galielo—and Mustafa when his shift ended. The group made their way to Mustafa’s ready room, and on the way, Lucy laid her hand on Kitty’s arm, slowing her down a bit. The action caused the two women to be the last two to enter, and as the door closed, she hugged Kitty gently.
For her part, Kitty hugged back fiercely and said, “I’m not going to break, okay?”
Marsha took her turn, and the six sat down around the table.
Mustafa, playing host, brought a pitcher and glasses to the table. “Tea,” he said. “Technically, I’m still on duty.”
“Sounds good to me,” Kitty said. “Simon had a beer in our quarters last night, and the smell almost made me gag. I guess I was out way too long.”
Lucy sipped from her glass and asked, “How much did he tell you about what happened?”
“Pretty much everything, I think,” Kitty replied soberly. “I gather I was pretty messed up, like one-foot-in-the-grave kind of messed up.” She sat quietly for a time, twirling the glass in her hands. “He didn’t think I should see the footage of what happened at Camp David, but after he fell asleep, I found it. Some pretty rough stuff. Our guys did a good job. I just wish, you know, that fewer people had died, like none of the bystanders. And the changes!” She flipped a hand through her hair. “I don’t just mean me, this I can get used to after a while, but I mean the embassies, the ships, you in charge. It’s a lot to take in and process in forty-eight hours, you know?”
“I know,” Lucy said, nodding. “And I apologize for what I’m about to say. We have six captains present. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a quorum, and I’m making this a Captain’s Call.” She looked around the table. “At present, there’s one topic up for discussion, and that’s Simon taking back the reins. I feel that since the Alliance was his vision in the first place, he should be the one to lead it. Especially right now, with what has just happened. He has the military mind among us, and he’s best suited to lead us through this.”
“‘Military mind,’ my ass!” Simon exploded. “I was just a sergeant, for Christ’s sake! And I made that rank three times. Insubordination, I believe the charges were both times I got busted. And I haven’t forgotten how to be insubordinate, either. How about, ‘No way in hell am I taking this job back!’ I didn’t ‘die’ on purpose, you know,” he said more reasonably. “You just got stuck with the job. And you’re doing a good one, too. We need an administrative type at the top, and you’ve got the mind for it. Look at what you’ve accomplished so far.” He stared across the table at Lucy. “I just got my wife back, dammit, and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of that for a while. I say, let’s not change horses in midstream. It’ll just confuse the troops. And more importantly, it’ll confuse everybody on Earth at a time when we need to have them see us as more stable than we know ourselves to be. I know I wasn’t acting responsibly most of the time Kitty was out of it, but I did keep track of what and how you were doing. I couldn’t have done any better. Remember, we’re winging it here.”
Simon wound down when Kitty laid a hand on his arm. “I agree with Simon, Lucy. And not because he’s my husband. God knows, I’ve stood up to him before, but right now, you’re our best hope. Not necessarily as a military mind—those are a dime a dozen—but as an overall administrator.” Simon settled back into his chair and Kitty put her hand back on the table. “We talked a long time ago about the occupations we were going to need out here, and tacticians and strategists were on the list. I remember that. So, go looking for some. Put one in charge of military matters and let him or her do it. I hate a sports analogy, but you’re the coach. Make someone the quarterback and let them run the plays. You set overall policy, and we’ll do what needs to be done.”
“I don’t know if I can do that,” Lucy said quietly, her voice cracking. “Hundreds of our people died yesterday, and I’m the one who gave the orders. Do you know how that feels?”
“Yes, I do,” Simon said gently. “And if that gets easier as time goes by, then you aren’t the right person for the job. But as long as even one death hurts you, your compassion is intact, and you can’t do any worse than anyone else. Plus, you’re known and liked. Me, I’m a tactless SOB who’d rather tell someone else they’re an SOB and watch the defecation hit the oscillating air movement device.” He was interrupted by a wave of laughter that rolled around the table, and even Lucy’s mouth turned up faintly. “Is that who you want running this show? I always said that all I wanted was a ship of my own, and being the boss won’t get one for me.”
Marsha had sat back to watch the sparks fly, and she finally spoke up. “Are you really calling for a vote on this, Lucy? I have to go with Simon, here. You’ve done a damn good job. You can’t blame yourself for what happened to the Clarke and her people. If there is anyone to blame, it’s the damned aliens who won’t leave us alone. Twice now, we’ve slapped ‘em down for being where they shouldn’t be. The first time we were lucky, the second, we got our fingers burnt. We’re learning as we go. If we dump someone because they feel bad about a battle they won, we’re in deep enough that we might as well kiss our collective asses goodbye. I’m not ready to do that.”
Mustafa chimed in, agreeing with Simon and Marsha, and Victor took his turn before Lucy could start over.
“I agree with the rest, Lucy. You’ve done first-rate work, and you’ve got all five of us of one accord. Even if you think that all five of the other captains and commanders would vote your way, the tiebreaker is still under sedation but will be able to vote in the not-too-distant future. Do you want to drag this out or give in gracefully?”
Lucy sat silently, eyes twitching left and right, looking for an escape route.
Wild animals caged for the first time have that same look, Simon thought. The next words we hear are going to be interesting, one way or the other.
“So, you want me to be the boss? Is that what you’re saying?” Lucy glared around the table. All five facing her nodded, some a bit more affirmatively than others. She stood up and placed her hands on the table, fing
ers splayed. “Okay. But there will be changes, and the first is that I will not be called First Captain any longer. And you won’t have a president, either. What my position will be called is yet to be determined. Here’s another—every one of my captains will follow my orders, or I’ll quit so fast it’ll make your heads spin! Am I understood?” When she got a few weak nods in response, she asked again. “Am I understood?” The volume rose substantially as all five answered aloud.
Her glare included all present and stopped when it got to Simon. “You’re going to regret this, Simon Hawke. And I hope you live a long time so you can regret it in detail.” Lucy stood there, chest heaving for a few seconds longer. “There will be one more meeting before the McCaffrey takes me back to Earth.” A transformed Lucy stood up straight and said, “I’ll let you know when.” Only a hint of the trapped beast remained, hidden behind a stern look and new resolve.
Twenty-four hours went by before Lucy summoned the five conspirators together again. The fact was that they’d spent a considerable amount of that time together already, trying to guess what was going on in the head of the woman who’d gone into total seclusion.
“I don’t think she’s eaten at all in the last twenty-four,” Mustafa said. “She’s either been in her rooms or in the comm shack. All I know for sure is that she’s ordered that all her incoming and outgoing traffic be kept secret.”
“She sent word to me that the McCaffrey is on a five-minute departure notice,” Marsha announced. “Has anyone heard anything else?”
“All I know is that Dr. Jeffers has pushed Gayle’s visitation back by a day. Says she needs more recovery time before we inflict ourselves on her,” Kitty said.
The door opened, stopping any further discussion, and Lucy walked over to the table wearing a uniform shorn of all insignia. “This meeting is called to order,” she said without preamble. Looking down at a piece of paper she had placed on the table in front of her, she said, “First order of business: I will no longer be called First Captain. My new title is ‘Herald’ from this moment on.