by Anne Corlett
He fired.
It was a warning shot, above the lad’s head, but all hell broke loose.
The lad turned, firing wildly, and Jamie saw the storekeeper go down as she hauled Mila the last few feet to the doors. Gracie had already hit the lever, and the gangway was moving under Jamie’s feet, the doors starting to close.
“Go. Get in.” Callan’s gun was still up.
Then he lurched back as another shot cracked out. His hand went to his side, and he staggered and almost went down. Mila was screaming. Jamie’s head was one white-hot flare of noise and fear. Adrenaline was surging up inside her, so hard that she thought she’d choke on it. Somehow she shoved Mila inside, then turned, reaching for Callan. He was off-balance, tipping forward, away from the safety of the hold, and the retracting gangway was almost to his feet.
She grabbed at his shirt, bracing herself against the weight of his fall. Another gunshot, and something struck the side of the ship, just above the doors. She was losing her hold on herself. Her body wasn’t responding to her muddled commands.
The drag on her arms eased. For a terrifying moment she thought she’d let go, but then she realized Gracie was beside her, holding on to Callan. They hauled at him, staggering backward, and then they were through, sprawling painfully onto the ridged floor as the door slammed shut behind them.
Mila was still screaming, shrill and panicked, the sound slicing around the ship’s metal insides. There were too many people. Too many voices, too many pairs of hands.
“Give them room.” Lowry’s voice rose above the rest, calm and authoritative.
Jamie leaned over Callan. His eyes were open and he was trying to shove himself up on one elbow, the other hand pressed against his side. Jamie could see blood on his fingers and she tried to push him back down. He shook her off and sat up, teeth gritted.
“Gracie.” The engineer nodded and ran for the engine passage.
Callan dragged himself up to a half crouch. She could see the blood clearly now, staining his shirt.
Jamie reached for him again. “You need . . .”
“I need to get us in the air,” he said. “Hull’s solid enough, but if they think to open the fuel port, we’re in trouble.” As he climbed to his feet, he breathed in hard, his hand tightening against his side.
“Here.” Lowry stepped forward. “Lean on me.”
Callan forced himself upright with a visible effort. “I’m all right.”
The preacher didn’t let go. “Then you’ll be even more all right with me helping, won’t you?”
Mila was standing next to Finn, the back of her hand pressed against her mouth, as though that were the only way she could stop screaming. Finn was hunched over, his fingers shoved into his ears.
Speak no evil, hear no evil. Jamie had a sudden urge to laugh. If she covered her eyes they’d have the full set. And she wouldn’t have to see the deepening stain on Callan’s shirt.
Up on the bridge Lowry helped Callan into the helm seat. As the engines began their steady crescendo, Callan jerked his head back toward the door. “Go.”
“I’m staying,” Jamie said. “What if you pass out?”
“You going to fly?” Callan pressed a rapid sequence of buttons.
“I’m staying,” she repeated.
“Fine.” Callan’s teeth were gritted.
Lowry was hesitating, and Jamie turned to him. “Go help Finn and Mila.”
When the preacher had gone, Jamie reached for Callan’s harness, but he brushed her hand away. “Leave it.”
She decided against arguing. She pulled the jump seat out of its slot, sat down, and tightened the straps across her body.
As Callan hit a final button on the console, the ship juddered beneath them, and Jamie felt that now-familiar shift of air and gravity as they lifted off. She couldn’t see out of the front view panel from the jump seat, but she imagined the men scattering from the ship’s vicious downdraft.
Callan took them up fast. He had to be burning fuel at a relentless rate, but the blood seeping from his side seemed more relentless still. The speed of their liftoff was the only sign he gave that he was in pain. His hands were entirely steady on the controls, and when he spoke to Gracie on the comm, his voice was calm.
It was the first time she’d been at the front of the ship for takeoff. She watched the clear blue of the sky fade into off-white, and then there was a moment when that white seemed to give way to something that was the opposite of color, a not-quite nothing that made her look away for a moment. Then all of that fell away as they cleared the atmosphere. When you were down there looking up, it was light that you saw. But up here it was all black, with only the pinpricks of the stars to lift the darkness. It was as though the sun were an illusion, designed to keep you happy there, trapped against whatever little piece of the universe you’d decided to call home.
The ship banked, then leveled again. Up front, Jamie was more aware of its impossible bulk. It was difficult to picture something so unwieldy carrying them up here, its velocity as swift and brutal as a child’s lost helium balloon. Jamie had a sudden image of that lad, the gun limp in his hand, watching their ascent.
What now?
Callan let out a slow breath, almost a groan, and slumped back in his seat. When Jamie scrambled across, he gave her the bare shadow of a smile.
“Think I might need a vet.”
“Don’t worry.” She tried to keep her tone light as she lifted his shirt and saw the mess of torn flesh and blood. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got some horse tranquilizers.”
There was no medical bay on a ship this size, and no room to treat him on the cramped bridge.
“My cabin,” he said. “Just down the corridor.”
“I can’t treat you in a bunk.”
“I’ve got a proper bed.” He gave another faint smile. “Captain’s prerogative.”
It took a couple of attempts to get him out of the seat, and she was just wondering whether to go and find help when Gracie appeared and ducked under his other arm. Together they managed to get him along the corridor and into his quarters. His cabin was more spacious than the passenger berths, with a small bathroom off to one side. The bed wasn’t much more than a generous single, but it would do.
Jamie eased his shirt up and turned to Gracie.
“Do you know what a trauma kit looks like?”
Gracie shook her head.
Jamie swore and stood up. “Stay here. I’ll go.”
She collided with Lowry in the corridor.
“Where’s Callan?”
“His cabin. Back there.”
She took the steps three at a time and skidded along the passage to the storage bay. The bright red trauma kit was still sealed and sterile, thank God, and she grabbed it and sprinted back to Callan’s quarters.
Lowry was already there. He’d found some scissors and cut up the seam of the bloodstained shirt to give her access to the wound. Callan was lying on his side, teeth gritted, his face a sickly gray-white, no longer making any attempt to hide the fact that he was in pain.
Jamie’s hands were trembling. Once again, the face of that lad flashed in her mind. He’d been as out of his depth as she was now, although she had treated a bullet wound before. Her first job had been at an animal hospital on Alegria. Most of her patients had been expensive thoroughbreds brought out from Earth by the über-rich elite who’d turned the new world into their playground. One day a young mare had been brought in, bleeding from the shoulder. She’d been hit by a stray round from a party out hunting imported pheasants. Jamie had managed to extract the bullet, but the owner had decided to have the mare put down rather than spend the vast sums involved in complex tissue repair.
Jamie tried to steady her hands as she broke the seal on the trauma kit. She found the sterile wipes and a syringe of local anesthetic and laid them out on the e
dge of the bed next to a pair of surgical tweezers.
“I’m going to give you a shot for the pain.” She was surprised at how calm her voice sounded.
“Wasn’t it a shot that got me into this trouble?” Callan said, looking up at her with a grimace.
“Don’t make jokes.” She wiped her hands with antiseptic gel. “If you laugh it’s going to hurt like fuck.”
“No laughing here.” He closed his eyes as Jamie slid the syringe into the ragged edge of the wound. “Ow.”
“Give it a second to kick in,” she said, injecting him again, at small intervals around the injured area.
He held his breath as she worked, but by the time she’d finished numbing the area she could feel a little of the tension draining out of the tight muscles just below where her hand was resting.
“That’s better,” he said.
“This is still going to hurt.” She dropped the syringe back onto the bed and picked up the tweezers.
“Shouldn’t you be telling me it won’t hurt a bit?” He twisted his head around to look at her. “I think you were right to switch to animals. Your bedside manner could use work.”
“Keep still.” Her hands were full, so she used her elbow to nudge his head back around.
“That how you treat the cattle?”
“No.” She ran a sterile wipe around the edges of the wound. “Only people who won’t stop talking so I can take bullets out of their sides.”
“It’s still in there? I thought it might have just grazed through.”
“No, it’s still in.” She used another wipe, laying the wound clear. The bullet glinted just below the surface layer. “It’s not deep, though. I may be able to get it out in one go.”
“How many goes does it usually take?”
“You’re assuming I’ve done this before.” She was surprised to find that the exchange was helping her. She usually found it impossible to concentrate while people were talking, but her mind seemed to have split into two separate parts. One part was standing back, watching her work, exchanging idle remarks with the prone Callan. The other was just a tiny sliver of consciousness guiding her hands.
Callan shifted, as though he was about to speak, but she put her hand on his side again. “Keep still,” she repeated. “I’m going to try to get it out.”
She had to rest one knee on the edge of the bed to steady herself enough to go in. As she eased the tweezers into the wound, she felt him stiffen again, his breath shortening, but he held rock-still as she increased the pressure, feeling for the edge of the bullet.
There. She felt metal grate on metal, and then the tweezers slid free, scraping against the torn flesh. He jerked under her hand but made no sound.
“Sorry.” She tightened her grip on his side. “It’s at an awkward angle.”
“I don’t need a running commentary.” He was curt, the black humor gone. “Just get it out.”
“Here.” It grew brighter as Lowry stepped up to her side, holding a flashlight.
“That’s perfect.” She reached into the wound again. “Keep it steady.”
This time she could see the curve of the bullet. It was wedged against his rib cage. There were two ways of doing this. She could ease it out, a millimeter at a time, until it dislodged enough for her to fish it out, or she could go for it in one vicious yank. Callan had closed his eyes again. She could ask him, but she already knew what he’d say.
“Still as you can,” she said, more to mark the decision as made than from any real need to say it.
She went for the bullet. The tweezers grated against bone as they closed around the metal casing, and Callan twisted against her, one arm jerking out to grab the edge of the bed. But the bullet was safe in the tweezers, its silver flanks glistening with blood and a couple of strands of tissue. She let go of it and it clanged onto the floor and rolled a little way. It didn’t look like anything much.
She turned back to Callan, reaching for the sterile gauze to stem a fresh spurt of blood.
“It’s out,” she said, noting the sheen that had broken out on his face. “I just need to stitch it now.”
Gracie spoke for the first time. “I better go check the helm.” Her own face glistened with the faintest suggestion of a cold sweat, and she kept her eyes averted from the mess of blood and discarded wipes.
Lowry propped the flashlight up on a shelf beside the bed. “If you don’t need me, I’d better go let the others know everything’s fine.”
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Callan said.
Lowry gave him a quick pat on the shoulder. “I would,” he said, and headed out of the cabin.
Left alone, the two of them lapsed into a silence that somehow made it harder to focus. For the first time, Jamie was conscious of the fact that she had her hand resting on him.
“You stitching?” Callan looked back over his shoulder.
Jamie repositioned herself, sitting side-on to him. She couldn’t quite get the angle right, and she shifted along, bringing one leg up onto the edge of the bed, so that she could rest her elbow on her thigh to steady her hands.
“You carry on like that, people will talk,” Callan remarked.
Jamie slid the needle into the first scrap of torn flesh. “Oh yes,” she said, not really thinking about what she was saying. “What will they be talking about?”
There was a long pause, during which Jamie suddenly thought how flirtatious that must have sounded.
She felt him draw breath to speak again, and she tapped him with her free hand. “Don’t talk.” It didn’t really matter if he did, but the conversation was becoming a distraction now. She couldn’t concentrate on both things, and she had a sense that it was the talking that was likely to go awry, not the stitching.
The silence stretched out as she slowly pieced him back together. By the time she was done, her neck was aching and her leg was cramped.
“Finished,” she said as she fixed an all-in-one antiseptic dressing over the stitches. Dropping the needle down into the open lid of the trauma kit, she stretched both arms up, flexing her complaining muscles.
Callan shifted cautiously onto his back, lifting his head to inspect her handiwork.
“Good job,” he said. “I assume I’m going to live.”
“I should think so.”
She was dead tired, she realized, fighting against the impulse to lie down on the bed, head to toe with her erstwhile patient.
“You okay?” Callan was studying her.
She rubbed at her neck, pressing her fingers into a sore spot. “Just about breathing again after all the excitement.”
Callan nodded slowly, his eyes searching her face. “How are you feeling?”
She found a smile for that. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question? You’re the one who got shot.”
He didn’t smile back. “I mean after what happened back there.”
“I know what you meant.”
Jamie was acutely aware of the way her leg was resting against his side, as though they’d just flopped down on the bed together. Close-up she could see that his eyes were much darker than she’d realized, almost navy blue. Or maybe they were just clouded by pain. She got up, abruptly enough to make him push up on his elbows and look at her.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.” She crouched down and began cleaning up the mess on the floor. “You should probably stay lying down. Once the local wears off, I can give you a shot of something a bit longer-acting.”
“You look like you could do with a lie-down yourself.”
She packed the waste into the empty trauma kit and closed the lid.
“Maybe I will.”
He was still looking at her, although his eyes were already taking on the glaze of tiredness she’d often seen after treating injured animals. “Tell me something,” he s
aid, lying back on his pillow. “Why do you want to go to Earth?”
The question caught her off-balance. “How come you’re suddenly asking me that?” she said, playing for time.
You’re looking for Daniel, a little voice in the back of her head reminded her.
“I just wondered. Can’t work you out.” He blinked, turning his head to hide a yawn.
She should walk away.
“It’s home,” she said. “It’s where I grew up.”
“They’re not necessarily the same thing,” he said, closing his eyes.
“Where’s home for you, then?”
He didn’t answer straight away. Just as she thought he’d fallen asleep, he opened his eyes again. “Home’s what’s left over when you’ve figured out all the places you don’t want to be.” His lips lifted in a brief smile. “Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? But that’s what we do. We say not there and not there and not there, until there’s only one place left.” He stifled another yawn. “It’s like triangulating something. Work out why you don’t want all those other places, then follow the lines and see where they cross.”
His hand wafted vaguely, as though drawing some diagram in the empty air. She should go. They’d both be awkward over this conversation when he woke.
She moved toward the door. “Get some sleep.”
“Jamie.”
She turned.
“There’s someone,” he said, fixing her with a suddenly clear gaze. “Someone you’re looking for. Isn’t there?”
She hesitated for a long moment. “Yes.”
“Thought so.” He gave her the faintest of smiles and closed his eyes.
Jamie watched him for a moment, before letting herself out and closing the door behind her.
Back in her quarters, she climbed straight into bed. She was lead-limbed with tiredness.
She really should go and check on Mila. And Lowry. He’d mentioned a heart problem.
As she closed her eyes, her thoughts flicked back to those moments when she’d slumped next to Callan. She had an absurd urge to climb back down, and go and find him and curl against his back. Just to be close to someone else who must be feeling a little of what she was feeling.