CHAPTER TWENTY
JAI
Kade hovered at the edge of the room as I carefully lowered the ladder my master had provided down into the lab below us.
It had been a complicated dance to manoeuvre the ladder up past the crates in the stairwell, but there had been nothing within the lab itself that could have helped us climb safely down into the room below – safely being the operative word.
The white powder that covered several of the staff was nothing more than calcium carbonate, they had assured us.
The blood, on the other hand, was from a severe laceration on one woman’s arm, and a puncture wound on another woman’s leg.
That one was not pleasant to look at. A wooden spike had punched straight through her thigh, and it was still lodged deeply in her leg, wrapped up in a makeshift bandage made out of someone’s sweater.
While one of the other staff had told us the bleeding was under control, getting the woman out of the room via a ladder was going to be a nightmare.
I could dimly hear shouting from back down the stairs, though I didn’t give it too much attention.
If my master and the rest of the team were trying to move the crate, that could easily justify making a bit of noise.
I turned around and climbed very carefully down the ladder – not because I was particularly wary of ladders, but because the edge of the floor that it was leaning against was unstable.
The engine had shredded the floor as it passed through, leaving a jagged edge with strips of metal hanging from it.
The sturdier of the strips could be bent out of the way, while the weaker parts were prone to breaking off without notice, leaving an edge for the ladder to lean against that was far flimsier than I would have liked.
I made it to the ground and turned to assess the people, eight anxious faces staring back at me.
“Those of you who are able to climb, I’ll help you get up into the room above,” I told them.
“We have medical supplies on the way, but you’re going to have to stay in the lab above us for now.
There’s a crate blocking the exit route back down again, but there’s a team working on clearing it.
Once we have better access, we’ll be able to get more equipment in here to help those of you who can’t climb the ladder.
You, ma’am, are you able to climb?” I asked the woman standing closest to me.
I didn’t want to give them the option of deciding who went first, as that sort of thing tended to result in either everyone clamouring to go first, or everyone attempting to be chivalrous and insisting they go last.
“Yeah, I think so. Just a few bruises,” she stammered. She came over and set her foot on the first rung. “How safe is this?” she asked, pushing on it a little to see if it held.
Unfortunately, safe or not, this was the only way we were going to get them out of here. There was only one door out of the room we were currently in, and the weight of the engine block had warped it so it was now impossible to open.
“I’ll be holding it still from the bottom,” I assured the woman, moving to grip the ladder from the other side. “And Kade will be steadying it from the top.” I looked up at Kade, who gave the woman a reassuring nod.
“Okay, I’ll give it a go,” the woman said, not sounding terribly confident about it.
She took it slowly, one careful step at a time, her hands gripping the bars until her knuckles were white.
At the top, Kade took her hand to guide her the last few steps, and I breathed a sigh of relief when she disappeared over the top and into the other room.
Kade went with her to settle her into a seat, but then I heard his startled cry.
“What’s wrong?” I called up to him, already up on the first rung of the ladder. Did I need to go up and help him? But it wasn’t Kade’s face that came back to peer down at me. It was a Wasop woman that I hadn’t met before.
“Sorry, I think I just startled your colleague,” the woman said.
“I’m Doctor Lantaraz. Commander Hill helped me climb up past the crate.
And you’re right, it’s full of rocks. They’re going to pulverise most of it with a pulse projector, but that could shake the room a bit, so he didn’t want to do that while someone was on the ladder.
Let’s get a couple more people up here and I can start treating their wounds, and then we can let him know when it’s a good time to break up the crate. ”
The doctor disappeared and Kade was back a moment later, so I waved the next man over, to repeat the slow, careful climb to freedom.
Ten minutes later, we had five of the eight people up and out of the room, and being tended to by the doctor.
The last three were the two injured women, along with a Denzogal woman who had generously volunteered to go last, to make sure everyone else was able to get out safely.
Or to give us a hand lifting the others, if we needed a bit of extra strength.
“Okay, it’s as good a time as any to break up the crate,” I told Kade.
“Let’s get away from the edges of the ceiling, in case anything loose falls down,” I advised the three remaining crew.
I helped the woman with the leg injury move further towards the side of the room, then nodded at Kade. “All set.”
He disappeared into the other room, and I heard a muffled conversation as he relayed the information to my master.
Then I braced myself for a loud noise. Pulse projectors were often used as a weapon, the pulses of laser beams highly effective at killing, but they could also be used for terraforming or mining, for breaking up rocks.
But rather than the rumble of the pulse projector, Kade appeared at the top of the ladder again.
“Aiden wants me down there with you,” he announced, beginning a careful climb down the ladder.
“If anything comes loose and it’s not possible to climb out again, he’d prefer us together so we can help each other out. ”
I was sorely tempted to ask whether my master didn’t trust me. But in front of three scared and injured strangers was not the place for such a question. Once Kade was at the bottom of the ladder, he called, “Okay, ready,” up to the doctor, who relayed the news to my master and his team.
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a low rumble filled the air, and then a series of thumps – likely parts of the rocks falling down the stairs.
I wondered which planet they’d come from, and whether some of these scientists were going to be terribly upset about us destroying their precious samples.
The rumbling cut out and relative silence filled the air… but then another wave of rumbling started up again. The floor beneath our feet vibrated slightly.
I heard an ominous, creaking groan from the ceiling above us.
I looked up, expecting to see more of the edges of the metal raining down around us.
But instead, I watched in horror as a large section of the ceiling buckled, cracked, and began to fall.
But the edge of the strip was still attached on one side, so instead of falling straight down, it twisted, swinging down right into the path of the injured women.
Kade and I both moved at the same time. The woman with the injured arm was closer to me, so I grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her out of the way.
She yelped – I’d likely jarred her arm in the process, but that was better than being body-slammed by a sheet of falling metal.
The Denzogal woman scurried out of the way, given that she was uninjured, but the woman with the injured leg had no hope of moving in time.
And it seemed that Kade realised that at the same time as I did.
So instead of trying to move her, he threw himself in between her and the falling slab.
The end of it swung like a wrecking ball, and I watched helplessly as it slammed into his side.
His other side hit the woman, causing her to scream in pain as the combined weight shoved her across the floor, but with Kade’s body cushioning the blow, she shouldn’t have any more damage than a few more minor bruises.
Kade, on the other hand…
“Fuck. Kade? Kade!” I scrambled to help him the instant the slab stopped moving.
It was still attached to the ceiling by a twisted length of metal, though there was a serious risk that the rest of the connection would give out at any moment.
“Fuck, Kade…” Knowing I was risking doing him further injury, I grabbed his belt and dragged him further away from the fallen metal.
If the rest of it did come down, that should at least mean none of us got hit again.
Then I dared to check his shoulder and hip where he’d been hit.
There was a deep, ragged cut on his right shoulder where the metal had punched through skin and muscle, and a tear in his pants at his hip, though that seemed to be more of a graze than a real cut.
He’d have some nasty bruising, though. Unless the blow had been hard enough to actually break something?
“Kade? Talk to me,” I demanded. “Are you conscious? Can you hear me?”
“Still alive,” he groaned, floundering about until he managed to lift himself onto his knees. “The woman?”
The Denzogal woman was already checking the one with the spike in her leg, and she shrugged as I looked her way. “No worse than she was before,” she reported.
“It is broken or just a cut?” I asked Kade, very gently attempting to move his arm.
“Not broken,” he said with a groan.
“Are you all right?” Dr Lantaraz called down to us. “Oh, stars, Kade, you’re bleeding!” She scrambled for a medical kit to throw down to us, but Kade stopped her.
“No, I’d be better off coming up there,” he said. “Then you can bandage it properly.” He stepped over to the ladder and put his foot on the bottom rung.
“You can’t climb with only one arm,” I protested… even though I knew perfectly well that he could. I would have done, if I’d been in the same position.
Kade gave me a wry look. “Yes, I can,” he said simply, and then he did, climbing slowly but smoothly up, while the doctor waited anxiously at the top.
I could hear the ongoing thumps from the other side of the bulkhead that indicated the work was still going on to clear the stairway.
But a moment later, it became apparent that my master hadn’t been willing to wait until it was completely clear.
I heard his voice as he arrived in the upper room, and then a sharp curse as he got a look at Kade.
“Fucking hell, what did I say about being careful?” he scolded Kade.
“I was careful,” Kade replied, with just a hint of sass. “It could have been much worse.”
I heard the doctor mutter something, though I couldn’t quite make out the words, but I guessed a moment later that she’d been shooing my master away, because he came over to the edge of the hole next. “Jai? How are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I told him. “But we’ve got two more injured crew down here who can’t climb the ladder.”
“Help is on the way,” he assured them. “As soon as we get the stairs cleared, we’ll get some stretchers in here and lift you out.”
The next half an hour was an exercise in extreme patience.
A couple more medics arrived, with a stretcher for the woman with the leg injury.
But before they could load her onto it, they had to assess the edge of the hole to make sure it was stable – which it wasn’t.
A few hasty repairs followed, shoring up the flooring with metal braces, before they were willing to climb down.
Then they had to give the woman a thorough check over to make sure she didn’t have any other injuries that were going to be made worse by moving her.
And then we began the very slow, very careful process of lifting her up into the room above via a couple of pulleys.
I went up the ladder alongside the stretcher, steadying it as we went and making sure the woman didn’t get hit with the rough edges of the metal.
The stretcher got stuck on the edge twice, and I narrowly missed taking a blow to the face as we finally managed to swing it outwards, easing it up and over the lip of metal.
I clambered up the last few rungs of the ladder, then helped the two Wasop soldiers on our team carry the stretcher away from the hole.
“Once we make sure she’s stable,” my master said to me, “can you help carry her out to the transporter? Chorokan is going to help get the other woman out of the hole.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, turning my attention to the doctor to provide any assistance she might need. While I was steadying the splint and passing her rolls of bandages, I was aware of my master fussing over Kade in the background.
“No. No more for you today,” he said firmly, in response to Kade’s offer to help with the second woman.
“You’re going back to the base in the next transporter, and you’re going to get one of the doctors to stitch up that arm for you.
” The doctor here had given it a cursory clean and bandaged it to stop the bleeding, but that wouldn’t be enough to make sure it healed properly.
“And take some pain killers. That’s not a question,” he added sternly.
“You’re going to have some serious bruising all down your side.
So take the time to look after yourself. You got that?”
“Yes, sir,” Kade said, with a small, bashful smile. “I will.”
My master nodded. Then he ran a gentle finger along Kade’s jawline. “I’m bloody proud of you,” he said. “It’s quite possible you saved her life.”
“Thank you, sir,” Kade said, nuzzling his master’s hand.
I felt a hot rage in my chest, and turned away to focus on what the doctor was doing. There was next to no possibility that my master would ever look at me like that. And if he did, I would find it impossible to fawn over him in return, given how little he truly cared about me.
But nonetheless, I was aware of the painful stab of jealousy I felt at seeing their exchange.
It seemed so mightily unfair that some dimari were adored by their masters, while others were mere possessions to be bought and discarded.
I wondered what I’d ever done that the universe felt it necessary to punish me so thoroughly for it.