Then Brun reached up with her webbing-wrapped arm, and pushed up Esmay's mirrorshield before Esmay could bring an arm in to stop her. Her eyes widened. Then she grinned, as mischievous and merry a grin as Esmay had ever seen on her face. She used the same arm to work free the thermal-packed bag of IV fluids sticktaped to the gurney, and very deliberately used her glove's screwblade attachment to poke a hole in it. Then she winked at Esmay, looked past her—moved the bag around—and squeezed.
A stream of saline jetted out, instantly converted to a spray of ice crystals that glittered in the sun. Esmay wondered if Brun had just gone completely insane. Then she realized what it was. For all the good it would do, Brun was trying to use an IV as reaction mass to get them back to the station faster.
Esmay did her best to hold still, even as her air ran out, and the hunger for oxygen overtook her, urging her to run, struggle, fight her way out of the dark choking tunnel that was squeezing the life out of her.
She heard voices before she could see; the steady quiet voices of the medics, and somewhere beyond, quite a bit of cursing and yelling.
"What's her pO
2
doing?"
"Coming up. Caught it in time . . ."
"We're going to need another can of spray over here—"
"My God, what'd they do to them?"
"It was the horse, I think—" That in a tentative, soft voice.
Esmay opened her eyes to see unhelmeted faces bent over her. She wanted to ask the logical question, but she would not ask that one. One of the medics anticipated her.
"We're in the shuttle again. Our targets are alive, no wounds taken in the shootout. We lost two dead, eight with minor injuries. The station's pretty much gone and there's a fight going on upstairs somewhere. And now you're with us, we don't have to worry about you any more." The medic winked. "But I do have to do a mental status exam."
Esmay took a deep breath, and only then realized that she still had something up her nose feeding her oxygen. "I'm fine," she said. "What else is going on?" She tried to sit up, but the medic pushed her back.
"Not until we're sure of your blood gases. Your suit telemetry said you were out of air for about two and a half minutes before we got you reconnected, and that's on the edge of the bad zone."
"I'm fine," Esmay said.
"You're not," the medic said, "but you will be when we're done with you." She inserted a syringe into the IV line Esmay had not noticed until then, and a soft gauzy curtain closed between Esmay and the rest of the universe.
Barin had the uncomfortable honor of observing the whole collapse of the "simple, straightforward extrication" from the bridge of
Gyrfalcon
. Most of the carnage had already happened by the time
Shrike
's signal reached them, and his grandmother ordered the rest of the task force to jump in. They popped out less than thirty light seconds from the planet, only ten from the nearest enemy ship.
Gyrfalcon
's first salvo took it out; the cruiser's massive energy weapons burned through its shields in less than a second.
"Not used to facing real firepower," Escovar said calmly.
"Captain—
Shrike
has recovered one shuttle—casualties . . ."
Please, please, let it not be Esmay . . . Barin clenched his hand on the ring he had bought for her.
"Firing solution on second enemy ship—RED for
Shrike
—"
"Hold!"
"Got it!" That from
Navarino
, whose clear shot at the second enemy ship had blown it as cleanly as their own had the first.
"Third target running—headed for jump point—"
That would be the job of
Applejack
, the cleanup light cruiser . . . Barin watched scan intently as the enemy ship headed toward the minefield
Applejack
had spent the past six hours sowing around the jump corridor.
Hazel had seen the bulkhead peeling back, and felt a moment of complete panic—not now, not after all they'd been through—but someone's gloved hand caught the bar at the end of her gurney, and wrapped a quick line to it, then secured the line to a stickpatch. But—when she looked—she could see a tumbling, receding shape that had to be Brun and someone holding her.
She said nothing—there was enough noise on the comunits anyway—until someone asked if she was all right.
"Yes, but—what about Brun?"
"We'll get them back," a reassuring voice said. "Don't you worry. And we'll get you into a shuttle."
"Yeah, before this place breaks up completely . . ."
She was passed from one set of hands to another—each carefully attaching her to another set of secured lines before releasing the first—and then finally through the cargo hatch of a shuttle. People moved past her, all busy, all doing something she hoped would rescue Brun. She had heard of Fleet SAR all her life, but she'd never seen it in action. She'd had no idea that SAR teams wore black p-suits that looked like space armor from storycubes. She'd expected them to wear bright colors with flashers or something to make them easier to see.
"Hey there—can you tell us your name again?" That was a blonde woman with sleepy green eyes.
"Hazel Takeris," Hazel said. "Of the
Elias Madero
." Her throat closed on all the things she had meant to say, that she'd rehearsed in her head so many times.
"We're going after Brun now," the woman said. "There's a beacon on the officer with her—we can't lose her."
Hazel felt better, but she could sense more tension in the people around her. Something was still wrong.
"What is it?"
"Nothing to worry about," the woman said. "Only this was supposed to be a quick, simple extrication . . . and we didn't know about you—"
"I'm sorry," Hazel said automatically. The woman looked startled.
"Don't
you
be sorry. It's those idiots who planned it who need to be sorry."
The woman looked aside suddenly, and Hazel turned her head to see what it was. The cargo hatch gaped again, and three more black-suited figures swam in, pushing another, attached to Brun's gurney.
"Hatch closed," she heard through her com.
"Air up! Air up!"
"Patch it into the suit, dammit!"
Hazel could just see Brun's turquoise suit . . . surely she had air, from the suit tanks. The others cut off her view.
"Air pressure's nom," someone said.
Then they moved, coming past her with the black-suited figure. Two of them stripped off suit gloves, and opened the other's black suit with some tool—and it flipped back like a beetle's carapace. Hazel stared—it
was
space armor. Inside, a limp figure . . . she could see a pale face, slack-mouthed. Busy arms, hands—and then someone tapped her shoulder.
"You don't want to watch," the green-eyed woman said. "It gets messy. And since they're working on her, they asked me to do an initial assessment on you. Any trouble breathing?"
"No," Hazel said, "but—"
"Fine, then. You want to open your helmet? We can talk off the coms that way, save interference."
Hazel realized she could reach up and open her faceplate. The woman had opened hers, as well, and was folding back her gloves.
"You got any broken bones you know of?"
"No . . . is Brun all right?"
"She's fine—she's got her own team working on her."
"But who was that—"
"Lieutenant Suiza—just a little hypoxia, don't fret."
She wished people would quit telling her not to worry. She glared at the green-eyed woman.
"I'm not a child, you know."
"You sure look like one."
"Well, I'm . . ." She wasn't even sure how old she was. How long had she been a captive? At least a year, because Brun had those babies. "I'm seventeen," she said.
"Mm. Well, I'm thirty-eight, and my name is Methlin Meharry. Want to tell me how you got away?"
"I was coming back from market—" Hazel began, and she'd gotten as far as cutting off their hair with the long knives when she heard someone working on the officer—on Lieutenant Suiza—let out a happy
Yes!
"She coming around?" Meharry asked.
"Any minute now." One of the others came over to Hazel.
"All right—let us professionals at her." And to Hazel, "Let's get you out of that p-suit and see what shape you're in."
"You be gentle now," Meharry said.
"You should talk," the medic said, without rancor. "Considering your rep."
"I could get out of this myself—" Hazel started to say, as the medic reached through the sleeves to unfasten her p-suit.
"Yes, but we want you in the tent in case the shuttle has pressure problems . . . unlikely but it's a zoo out there." The medic peeled back her pressure suit section by section; Hazel heard exclamations from those working on Brun and craned her head, trying to see, just as her attendant peeled the leg sections of the suit and the clothes underneath. "My God—what did they do to them!"
"I think it was the horses," Hazel said. "We rode horses all night."
"Horses! We send a task force halfway across the cluster, and they're getting you out on
horses
?"
"It makes you really sore," Hazel said. "And the clothes were stiff."
"Barbarians," someone muttered. "Should have spaced the lot of 'em."
Shrike
scooped up the shuttle, and medics moved Hazel and Brun into the spacious sickbay. "Regen for you," said the green-coated medic when he'd peeled away the gurney's tent and draped a gown over her. "You'll feel a lot better after an hour—maybe two—in the tank." Hazel wasn't about to argue; she saw that Brun was being led to the other tank. She settled into the warm, soothing liquid, and dozed off.
Brun was furious. They were talking over her head again, as if she weren't there, and no one had thought to get her a voice synthesizer. Three hours aboard, and they continued to treat her like an idiot child.
"She'll need another five hours of regen for those abrasions," one medic said. "And I still think we should order a parasite scan."
Brun reached out, caught hold of his uniform, and yanked hard. He staggered, then turned.
"Are you all right? All right?" He spoke a little too slowly, a little too loudly, as if she might be a deaf child.
Brun shook her head and mimed writing a message.
"Oh—you want to say something?"
Yes, she wanted to say something, something very firm. Instead, she smiled and nodded, and mimed writing again. Finally, someone handed her a pad.
HOW'S ESMAY? she wrote.
"Lieutenant Suiza is fine," the medic said. "Don't worry—you won't have to see her again. It was strictly against orders—"
What were they talking about? Brun grabbed the pad back. I WANT TO SEE HER.
"That's not a good idea," the medic said. "You weren't supposed to see her at all. We understand how traumatic it was—"
Brun underlined the words I WANT TO SEE HER and shoved the pad back at him.
"But it was all a mistake . . ."
SAVING MY LIFE WAS A MISTAKE? That came out in a scrawl he had to struggle to read.
"No—her being involved. Your father said, under no circumstances should you have to see her, after what she said about you."
Her father. Rage boiled up. Carefully calm, she printed her message. I DON'T CARE WHAT MY FATHER SAID. ESMAY SAVED MY LIFE. I WANT TO SEE HER. NOW.
"But you can't—you need more time in regen—and besides, what will the captain say?"
She could care what the captain said. Or her father. She had not come back to the real world to be told she couldn't talk to anyone she pleased, even if she couldn't talk.
"She's getting agitated," someone else said. "Heart rate up, respirations—maybe we should sedate—"
Brun erupted from the bed, ignoring the remaining twinges, and slapping aside the tentative grab of the first medic. The other one picked up the injector of sedative spray. With a kick she had practiced in secret for months, she smashed it from his hand; it dribbled down the bulkhead. She pointed a minatory finger at the medics, picked up the pad, and tapped the word NOW.
"Good to see you up," came a lazy voice from the entrance. Brun poised to attack, then realized it was Methlin Meharry, whose expression didn't vary as she took in the two medics, the smashed injector, and Brun with the short hospital gown flapping about her thighs. "Giving you trouble, were they? All right boys—out." The medics looked at each other, and Meharry, and wisely chose withdrawal.