Chapter 43
Circumstances changed so fast, she wasn’t sure what happened. One moment she’d been tucked securely against Mace. In the next, weapons fire exploded around them.
They crashed to the deck, Mace’s arms around her ribs. Her breath left her in one big whoosh, her head smacking the hard surface. Stars danced in front of her eyes. Mace flattened her, a solid, motionless mass.
“Mace?” she croaked, turning as much as she could to see his face. His eyes were closed and sweat beaded his brow. Her stomach twisted with nausea.
“Move!” Betel shouted from nearby. Amidst more weapons fire, the acrid scent overwhelming, she tried to follow the order, to squirm out of Mace’s grip, but his body pressed her against the deck. A panicked sob left her lips.
His body jerked forward, rolling, but his eyes didn’t open. Then his arms fell away enough to allow her to wiggle free.
She lifted her head. Betel dragged Mace by his collar one centimeter at a time toward the lift. His weapon fired nonstop in the direction they’d come.
The next round of bursts made her flinch, and she ducked instead of getting to her feet.
“Take his gun!”
She turned and saw the two defenders using the bulkheads as cover, firing blindly toward them. Mace’s gun lay near his feet. She dove for it, pressing the trigger as soon as it settled in her hands. Her body jerked with the force of the recoil.
The laser blasts gouged holes in the bulkheads, sparks flying. But her chaotic aim had the desired effect of making the defenders retreat. She spun, scrambling after Mace as Betel pulled him fully onto the lift. The door closed behind her. Betel slapped his hand against the control panel and the lift ascended.
It was the first time she got a look at Mace’s injury, and a shout broke from her lips. She clambered closer. A laser burn cut across Mace’s spine, melting his uniform to his body. The wound was too deep, too wide. He was losing too much blood. He needed immediate stasis and surgery.
Nausea swirled in her stomach. “I need a med kit!” she shouted, swallowing against the bile rising in her throat. She pressed her fingers to Mace’s neck, felt a weak pulse, and exhaled a quick, relieved breath.
“There’ll be one in the command center,” came Betel’s rough reply.
The lift door slid open to reveal a wide corridor equipped with a biometric tunnel.
Betel dragged Mace out by the collar. “I need some help here,” he shouted to the right.
Spiro came running from an arched doorway. Nia moved out of the way and Spiro took his feet.
Her heart aching, she followed them the way Spiro had come. The doorway opened into a space mimicking the atrium’s in shape and layout, a holotable at its center. Viewers ran along the circumference, ones full of images of the battle outside, violent with laser blasts, mines exploding, a debris field scattered everywhere. Nia’s breath caught. She’d flown through that.
“What happened?” asked a woman with black hair swept into a tail at the top of her head, her expression hard. Must be the commodore.
“Stray defenders,” was all Betel answered as he and Spiro carried Mace to the side.
“Keep him face down,” Nia ordered, following, her heart beating a rapid rhythm in her chest.
Her gaze skimmed over the rest of the people in the command center. The bodies of six defenders were piled in one corner, two with high-ranking uniforms in white. A small group of bound CORE technical officers huddled not far from them. She recognized the Tellusian warrior, Mace’s friend, who stood near the CORE officers, but his concerned gaze was directed toward her.
Standing across from the commodore, three Tellusian techs stood shoulder to shoulder, their fingers frantically skimming the surface of the holotable, their faces pinched with worry. That’s when Nia noticed a countdown hovering above its surface:
16:39
16:38
16:37
A self-destruct?The acid churning in Nia’s stomach climbed her throat. She swallowed and returned her focus to Mace. He was the one who needed her help most right now—whether they were all about to explode or not.
She collapsed to her knees beside him and widened the melted and charred material of his uniform to get a better look at the injury. Her hands shook. Nerve damage. He might not be able to walk again.
“All three of you, get the damn thing turned off and get it turned off now,” the commodore’s voice cut through the tension. “Or we’ll die before we get a chance to see if this beast will even move.”
Betel shoved a med kit at Nia, and she opened it, letting loose a slow breath to calm herself. Thank the stars it was fully stocked. She grabbed two cardiovascular nodes, a laser scalpel, the transfusers, and a regenerator.
“Will Mace live?” The commodore’s voice cut right to Nia.
She swallowed and met the commodore’s gaze. “He needs stasis.”
“Do your best. We can’t move anyone right now.” She broke Nia’s gaze and focused on her technical officers.
“It’s the virus, sir,” the one woman said, voice shaking. “It’s doesn’t have anything to do with which systems we’ve unlocked.”
“Then figure out a way to remove it,” Cache said, her words clipped.
Nia looked up at Spiro who remained close by. “I need him on his side for a moment.”
The warrior crouched and helped her roll him. With quick movements, she cut away his top with a laser scalpel and attached the cardiovascular nodes to his chest. They laid him flat once more, then she inserted the blood and fluid transfuser portals into his arm. Each hummed as they worked.
She took a length of regeneration gauze and wadded it to stop the bleeding where the laser weapon had failed to cauterize. Her gaze flicked upward.
15:01
14:59
14:58
Spinal damage.Nia took out the fine detail regenerator, willing her hands to steady. Her hands hovered over the worst of the damage near the base of his neck. Focus!
She turned on the fine detail regenerator. It buzzed as she addressed the most sensitive area of the injury. She stopped listening to the voice in her head that told her if she”d seen this injury on Elara Five, she would have sent him straight to palliative.
Minutes counted down. An oppressive silence hung over everyone in the command center with only the small noises from her machine and the beeping of the techs working to cut through the tension. While she worked, she tried not to look at those numbers counting down above the table. Her gaze flicked upward anyway.
8:23
8:22
8:21
Her stomach clenching, she kept healing Mace. If they exploded, at least they would explode together.
“I think I’ve found a back door,” one tech said, voice soft. “Give me a couple of minutes.”
“We don’t have a couple minutes,” the commodore responded over top of her, her tone incredulous.
Nia healed the spinal cords and the tissue around them, trying not to think of what would happen if she did it wrong or rushed the process. Seconds ticked by, seconds she knew they didn’t have.
“Got it!” the same tech shouted.
Nia flicked her eyes to the holotable. The numbers above continued to decrease.
5:37
5:36
5:35
She refocused on Mace’s injury but couldn’t help looking at the countdown ever other minute.
“Callista…” The commodore said, the one word a warning.
A collective breath swelled around them.
Nia paused in her task and grabbed Mace’s hand.
1:26
1:25
0:00
Simultaneous exhales filled the stifling silence. The three technical officers stepped away from the table, visibly shaken. The commodore braced her hands on the holotable and hung her head like she needed a minute.
Nia lowered her shoulders from where they’d lifted around her ears.
“No time for breaks,” the commodore said not a minute later. “Return to what you were supposed to be doing in the first place.”
There was still an air of urgency swirling in the command center, but the sick sensation of impending doom had faded. Adrenaline easing from her body, Nia focused on healing Mace’s muscles a strand at a time. By the time she was done, his back would be more synthetic than not.
“Sir!” A technical officer at the holotable shouted. “I’ve got Orion’s weapons on line.”
“Fire at those Guardians,” Cache ordered.
An overwhelming hum filled the command center, followed by an internal groan and a hollow clank, as though a giant flicked its fingers against the outside of Orion. Nia lifted her head to look at the viewer. A spear of red shot from the station and connected with the closest Guardian. She gasped.
The weapon cut the ship in two like a knife through flesh.
“Target another Guardian,” Cache ordered without missing a beat.
The station hummed again, and the beam of light cleaved another ship.
All those lives.Nia blinked the moisture from her eyes as she refocused on Mace’s wound. This was what the war had brought them to: two peoples who’d destroy each other with a flick of a switch. Her throat tightened painfully.
“Betel,” the commodore ordered. “Destroy all the Marauders about to make suicide runs.”
“I’ve got navigation,” said one of the techs over top of Betel’s, “Yes, sir.”
“Get us the hell out of here.”
A moment later, Orion shuddered, and Nia pulled her tools away from Mace’s wound to brace herself against the deck. She stared at the information scrolling across the holotable’s surface. The ship she’d been on, the Phalanx, imploded on the way by, scuttled.
Orionlurched around them, moving forward with a groaning jerk, then accelerated to high speed, absolutely still. The amount of power needed to move a station this size boggled Nia’s mind. The reason for four of those massive engine cores was suddenly quite clear.
“You three,” the commodore’s voice rang out as she addressed her warriors. “Clear the rest of this station a deck at a time until reinforcements can be brought over. Grey, take these CORE techies to the brig until they can be processed.”
Three, “Yes, Sirs,” echoed as Nia continued to heal Mace’s wound. Now they were safe, the noise of the command center faded into the background as she concentrated.
Nia was finishing with the one side of his back when she realized the commodore drew near. She lifted her head when the imposing woman squatted beside her.
“How’s he doing?” the commodore asked.
Hands bloody, Nia pushed the hair away from her face with her forearm. “Better. I need to take him to a sickbay. He needs more fluids and blood. He also needs a large bulk of tissue synthesized, but I’ve healed the worst of it.”
The commodore nodded, seemingly satisfied with the answer, but worry lingered in her eyes. “You said something about a traitor.”
Nia nodded, then focused on Mace’s wound. What she was about to say…it would sentence the man to a horrific death and go against everything she’d believed in.
But when she thought about what he’d done to her…all those deaths he’d caused on Orion…
She swallowed and kept her gaze on the blood on her hands while she moved the regenerator over Mace’s spine. “There was a man on the Phalanx, one who I thought was an agent. I saw him alone in the engine core the day before the attack, and from the way he was trying to kill me, I’m pretty sure he was the one responsible for Orion’s breach in security.”
“You can identify him?”
“Yes, and he wore a doctor’s uniform, was supposed to be heading here to provide medical aid. At least that’s what I heard someone say in the hangar.”
“Mouse!” The commodore’s shout made Nia jump.
“Yes, sir?” the tech with huge eyes came closer.
“Have all medical personal heading here detained for questioning. Don’t let anyone leave for any reason. Keep them in B2 for now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Cache didn’t say anything for the longest time, just stared—long enough for Nia to ask, “What?” belligerently without looking from her task.
“Since when have you known how to fly a Condor?”
“Mace taught me yesterday.”
Cache expelled a bark of a laugh. “I can see why he kept you.”
Nia’s hand pulled back. She shook her head, then resumed her task. “I need to focus here.”
“Yeah,” Cache agreed, then asked, “Are you sure he’s going to be okay?”
“He’ll live,” Nia said with a small smile, the truth making her heart light. “He’ll live.”