by S. L. Viehl
“Perhaps the thief intended only to take it from us.” He glanced over at the console. “Did you encrypt the last set of scans we performed?”
“Oh, I encrypt everything,” I said, and went over to pull up our files. Which were no longer there. “It’s all gone. The database has been wiped clean.” I reached under and felt around until I retrieved a packet of discs. “He didn’t think to check for backups, though. This guy is definitely an amateur.”
“It could be one of the delegates. Even the Hanar’s daughter.” He caught the look on my face. “I know you are fond of her, Cherijo, but her first loyalty is to her people.”
“I am a physician, Healer Valtas,” ChoVa said as she walked in. “My first loyalty is to my oath.” She studied the ruined tank. “How was this done?”
“We think he used a suture laser, not that he really knew how to use it.”
“It appears that he misjudged the strength of the containment unit, as well.” The Hsktskt made a contemptuous sound. “Were I your thief, oKiaf, I would simply use my fist and smash in the side of the tank.”
“Healer?” one of the nurses called. “There is a signal at the station for you.”
I went to answer it, and listened as Xonea described what he had found down in Engineering: more unconscious crew members, and an empty specimen container sitting on the deck next to a power conduit.
That meant the protocrystal could be anywhere. “You have to clear the crew out of there, and quarantine the entire level,” I told him. “Right now.”
Before he could respond, my console went dark, and the ship lurched under our feet. The light emitters overhead began flickering until they shut down, too, and the emergency lights snapped on.
“What the hell is going on?” I used my wristcom to signal the captain. “Xonea? What is your status?”
His voice was accompanied by the sound of men shouting in the background. “Someone has seized control of the helm. They have locked out all access to the navigation and propulsion systems. Evacuate your level to the emergency launches at once.”
“Why are we abandoning ship?” I demanded, but he had terminated the signal.
I gave the order to the staff and cleared out the bay, sending Shon ahead to make sure everyone went to their assigned launch. Then I went to retrieve some triage packs. Through one of the viewports I saw the rift, no longer small and distant, but right in my face, impossibly huge, blocking out the rest of space. I thought at first it had somehow grown larger, until I felt the entire ship shudder violently, as if caught in some powerful force. Then I understood what was happening to us, and ran.
ChoVa was waiting in the corridor for me and took several packs. “Why did the captain order an evacuation?”
“Someone’s taken control of the Sunlace,” I told her, “and they’re flying us into the rift.”
Nine
We made it into the emergency launches, but that was all we had time to do. I heard the pilot engage the engines as I pulled my harness straps over my shoulders, and then the air in front of my face began to sparkle.
“It’s here,” I heard Shon say.
I felt his paw grope for my hand as the dazzling light expanded and streamed over me. A cascade of blinding golden stars pierced my eyes and poured into my mind, larger and brighter until I felt a scream well up in my throat and Shon’s claws digging into my palm.
The feel of the soft fur and the bright pain jerked me back into the shadows of my memory.
“They ordered us not to kill you,” the strange alien voice said, “but said we could use you as often as we wished.”
I came to, but only just. My limbs felt heavy and dull, and my mind clouded, as if I had been drugged. Distantly I felt the restraints on my limbs; I’d been manacled and chained.
The cabin we were in slowly revolved around us, items tumbling out of containers, equipment smashing against the interior walls.
“My brother has no taste for your kind.” The claws that had been choking me only a few moments before caressed my cheek. “But I wondered. I wondered how you might be.”
I wanted to look through the viewport and see how close we were to the surface. “Oforon, there is still time to send a distress signal.”
“I’ve tried. No one will respond. The Toskald are blocking all transmissions.” Black eyes squeezed shut as he held on to my chains, the only thing keeping him and me from tumbling about the cabin. “The League would not come even if they received it. We were always expendable, my brother and I.”
The wind buffeting the transport began to howl outside the hull, a petulant child frustrated with a toy it could not break. “My husband and daughter care about me.”
“You think they still search for you?” Oforon uttered a sound of sour amusement. “You’re a fool. They believed Shropana’s ruse, just as everyone else did. They think you long dead.”
I had felt dead, until this moment. I wasn’t Jorenian, but at last I understood why they left behind messages for their kin. I couldn’t go into the embrace of the stars without speaking one last time to the ones I loved.
“Please.” I had no problem with begging, not when it came to Reever and Marel. “Release me, let me send one signal. Only one, I promise. I must say good-bye to my family.”
“No.” His grip on the chains tightened as the ship spun faster. “If the signal is intercepted by others, they will relay it to Shropana in hopes of collecting the reward for you. He will use it as an excuse to invalidate our contract. My family will get nothing.”
He punched me in the face, and I fell into the dark. I don’t know how long I was there, but when I woke, I felt sweat slicking my skin, and my heart hammering with frantic fists under my breast.
I couldn’t die. Not like this.
“You won’t die, Terran,” Oforon snarled, as if he could hear my thoughts. Hot flecks of his saliva pelted my face. “Not from the sickness, not from beatings. What will it take to kill you?”
I tried to answer him, but the silencer strapped to my face plugged my mouth.
“We’re going to crash.” He said this bitterly, angrily, as if it were my fault. His claws jerked the collar up, completely cutting off my air. “Maybe that will finish you. Do you wish for death?” He released the collar and reached up to wrench the silencer out of my mouth. “Tell me now.”
“Don’t be afraid, Oforon,” I said. “It will be quick.”
He curled his claws into a ball, and drew them back as if to hit me in the face. Then his eyes closed, and he fell to his knees, his head back, a terrible howl tearing from his throat.
I wanted to wrap my arms around him, to comfort him in these last moments. All I could do was rest my cheek against the top of his mane.
The void that followed that vision seemed almost merciful. In it, I had no thought, no awareness, no sense of self or surroundings at all. I wasn’t unconscious or conscious. My abductor no longer existed; no one did. I hung between the two states, caught in a moment of time and trapped there, unable to go back or forward, helpless to do anything but be in that place.
I could leave it; on some level I knew that, because I had done it before. My body might have been bioengineered to last forever, but it was a thing apart from me. I could shed it like a garment and move beyond this torment. I understood the path and where it would take me. I knew what was waiting beyond it. More of the same suffering and outrage and agony. An eternity of it.
So many things had been done to me during my brief life. So much had been violated, stripped away, and stolen, all without my consent. I had been drowning in the ugliness of that existence. But this, this decision, could not be touched or swayed or removed from me. I could leave behind all the pain and horror and wretchedness I had known. I could finally be free.
This time, I would stay. This time, I would be alone forever.
The between grew colder, and smaller, sinking inside me until I became the prison and the prisoner. Intolerable. Inescapable. If I didn’t choose, I’d spe
nd eternity shrinking down until I was the size of a crystal of a crystal of a crystal of a crystal. . . .
I opened my eyes, only vaguely surprised to find myself hunched over, half in and half out of my seat harness. The warm weight of Shon’s head rested against my shoulder. The light had disappeared. The rest of the crew in the launch appeared to be unconscious.
I felt brittle and numb as I eased Shon off me and back in his seat before I staggered to my feet. Slowly I moved around the compartment, checking him and the crew. Their body temperatures were low, but their vital signs were strong. Everyone had survived the passage through the rift.
Shon was the first to regain consciousness, and he looked at me through unfocused eyes. “We’re alive.”
“Looks that way.” I chafed his paws between my hands and tried to smile. “When your legs feel steady, I could use some help.”
Another hour passed before the crew began to wake up. We used it to make rounds of the launches and the corridors, and found the Hsktskt to be in the worst shape. We wrapped them in emergency thermal packs where they lay; they were too large and heavy to move easily.
Some of my nurses stumbled out of the launches and came to assist us with reviving the rest of the crew, but it was slow going. I found Xonea behind the launch bay’s main console, his hands still on the board. He had been trying to open the outer doors when we’d entered the rift, which would have killed him the moment the bay depressurized.
In spite of my ire with him I felt a reluctant admiration for my ClanBrother. He might be an interfering jackass, but he was the captain of his ship, and he would have sacrificed himself in order to save his crew.
White eyes opened as I took his pulse. “Cherijo. Did we embrace the stars together?”
“The rift embraced us, I think,” I said as I scanned two ugly gashes on the side of his neck. “What did this?” I glanced down and saw blood on his hands, and lifted one to inspect it. “Xonea?”
“I could not open the hull doors,” he said. “When the light came over me, I thought I would make it quick.” He drew his hand away. “What of the others?”
“The Hsktskt aren’t in great shape,” I admitted, “and the crew is cold and disoriented and a little banged up, but I think everyone will be all right.”
Some color returned to his face. “We must have passed through the rift.”
“I don’t know anything else that could have done this. We’d better keep everyone in the launches until we know if the environmental system is still functioning,” I suggested as I applied a pressure dressing to the wounds on his neck. “This will hold you for now, but you’re going to need some sutures.”
“After I assess our situation.” He tried to use the console, but the unit was powerless and off-line. “What need you now for the crew?”
“We have triage packs on the launches, and my people are all right,” I assured him. “Once we know it’s safe to stay on the ship, I’ll need some glide gurneys and a couple of strong hands to transport the Hsktskt over to Medical.”
“Healer.” An intern waved at us from a launch I hadn’t yet checked.
“I’d better get back to work.” I hurried off.
Shon was already inside the launch and working on a pilot who had flash burns on his face and hands, and what appeared to be a pulse pistol embedded in his chest. On the other side of the deck, a second pilot sat holding a burned arm with a compound fracture near the elbow.
“Report,” I said as I knelt down beside them and opened my case.
“The pilot attempted to use his weapon after entering the rift.” Shon gingerly tried to extract the power cell from the base of the pistol, without success. “The copilot attempted to stop him.”
I gloved and scanned the chest wound. “Punctured lung, internal burns, hemorrhaging—what the hell was he thinking?”
“He shouted that he was being crushed,” the copilot said, his voice tight with pain. “I felt the same sensation, but when I heard the weapon being activated . . .” He looked at his arm. “I could not permit him to shoot me. I meant him no harm, lady.”
“You were both hallucinating,” I told the copilot as I measured the depth of the penetrating wound. “We can’t remove the pistol; the end of the barrel is plugging the hole in his heart.”
Shon gave me a direct look. “The weapon’s power cell prevents anything I could do for him here.”
Which meant he couldn’t touch- heal the pilot, and I couldn’t operate on him, not on the deck of a launch with no instruments. I shouted for a gurney.
The nurse touched my arm. “Healer, we cannot know yet if it is safe to return to Medical.”
“That’s why Healer Valtas and I are going.” I glanced at the copilot. “Wrap that fracture, immobilize the limb, and try to keep him comfortable until you’re permitted to transport him to the bay.”
Xonea insisted on sending two guards with us, something I didn’t think was necessary until we encountered all the debris in the corridors. Every storage unit seemed to have dumped its contents in our path, and the two warriors cleared and climbed and kicked their way ahead of us to clear a path to a still-operable lift.
“Remind me to talk to the captain about getting you guys some serious additional compensation,” I told them, earning a grin from both.
Medical was likewise a mess, but we quickly confirmed that we still had power to some of the equipment and two of the surgical suites. I sent the guards back to launch bay to report on what we’d encountered, while Shon and I prepped the pilot.
He heard the faint whine before I did. “Cherijo, listen. Do you hear that?”
“No.” I stopped scrubbing and cocked my head. “Yes. Sounds like power arcing.” I glanced around, looking for sparks or smoke, and then saw a faint yellowish glow coming from under the drape over our patient’s chest. “For God’s sake, not now.”
Shon pulled back the drape and scanned the pulse pistol. “The focusing unit and safeties must have been damaged during the transition through the rift.”
I stopped scrubbing and grabbed the end of the gurney. “How long do we have?”
He shook his head. “Minutes, perhaps.”
It would have to be long enough. I shoved the gurney into the surgical suite and maneuvered it over to the procedure table. Shon helped me slide the pilot’s body off the gurney and into position under the laser rig.
“Go and get the probe from the lab,” I told him as I grabbed a rolling instrument tray and dragged it over to the table.
“You cannot use the lascalpel,” he reminded me before he ran out.
The whine came from the pulse pistol’s power cell, which was still engaged and trying to feed pulse energy into the focusing unit of the weapon. If the pistol had been functional, that would have merely burned a hole through the pilot’s spine and killed him. But the weapon was damaged, and the focusing unit disabled, which sent the pulses of power directly back into the cell. This was causing a critical-mass buildup that we had no way of stopping. The explosion would vaporize the patient, me, Shon, and at least half the deck.
Worse, I couldn’t use a laser-powered instrument anywhere near the power cell, as its beam could also trigger a detonation.
I hunted through the manual instruments on the tray and found a dermal probe with a sharp enough edge to cut through flesh. After administering a neuroparalyzer, I made my first incision to the right of the embedded pistol, in a section of the rib cage that I knew would be wide enough for what I had to do.
This wasn’t surgery; this was barbarism, and it went against every iota of my training. But with the weapon about to detonate, I didn’t have time to do otherwise.
I shoved my hand into the incision, working my arm as I pushed my fingers past the tough outer membranes and muscles. The feel of his rib bones scraping against the back of my knuckles and the heel of my palm gave me the creeps. So did feeling the sponginess of his collapsed lung as I groped by touch for the compromised aortic junction.
M
y sensitive fingertips found the place where the tip of the weapon had penetrated. With my free hand, I gripped the heated stock of the pistol and used a steady pressure to work it free. As soon as the tip slid back, I put two fingertips into the hole it left behind, plugging the junction as best as I could. Then I pulled the pistol out of his chest with a fast jerk.
It had already grown so hot that it scalded my hand, but I didn’t let go. “Shon.”
“I have it.” He took the pistol from me and, as the smell of burning fur filled the suite, carefully placed it inside the specimen container within the probe. He sealed it and carried it over to the biohazardous disposal unit.
“Disengage the sterilizer first,” I snapped as I felt the pilot’s heart rate beginning to speed up. “And hurry. He’s going into cardiogenic shock.”
I held my breath as Shon placed the probe inside the unit, tapped the console to override the disposal’s first-stage operation, and enabled the venting system. A moment later I bent over the patient as something exploded just beyond the hull wall, sending a wrenching shock wave through the entire level.
“That was too close.” The oKiaf closed his eyes as he braced his hands on the unit and murmured something under his breath.
“You can pray later,” I told him as I reached for a clamp. “For now, come over here and help me get my hand out of this man’s chest.”
The pilot’s collapsed lung, along with injury to the aortic junction, which directly affected the left ventricular muscle mass, reduced his cardiac output to the point of imminent heart failure. Hypoperfusion had already begun, and if he didn’t suffer a massive MI, then his organs would begin failing and there would be nothing we could do to bring him back.
Shon transferred the patient over to the heart- lung machine before cutting through the remains of the sternum and spreading open the interior chest.
“On three.” I handed him the artery clamp. “One . . . two . . . three.” I pulled my fingertips out of the artery, and he immediately clamped shut the perforation. After I applied suction to clear leaking blood, I inspected the wound. “The tissue is burned, damn it.” That meant the damaged section of the artery would have to be replaced by a graft, something his poor condition didn’t allow us time to do.