CHAPTER 31
lf you’ve never tried living
underground, l don’t recommend it.
While soldiers
conduct a guerilla war in the tunnels, picking off the McCullough
scout teams, the rest of us work to build a life in this primitive
pit. The raw violence stuns me. I hear distant fighting, day and
night, and the screams of dying men. I don’t know what they do with
the corpses, can’t even imagine.
For the first few
days, I perform manual labor alongside the clansmen. We make
weapons, chemical stoves, and other necessities. At night I bed
down with Vel, who handles my presence with inscrutable
aplomb.
I don’t know whether
Tarn knows anything about the mess on Lachion, but even if he does,
I can’t expect rescue from that angle. This is a fair-sized planet,
and locating us where we’ve gone to ground would be worse than
trying to find a needle in a haystack. We’ll need to save
ourselves, business as usual.
March stays busy with
tactical meetings and leads the strike teams himself. This merc,
this killer, I hardly know him. Each time he leaves the bunker, I
feel sure he’s not coming back. I hate how he strides into danger,
leaving me behind, but Jael would bodily restrain me if I tried to
join the fight.
On the third day, a
mission goes bad. I don’t know whether we got faulty intel, or what
happened out there, but we’re drowning in wounded. Lex passes me at
a run, barking out, “Doc needs you!” as he goes to work on damage
control.
If the McCulloughs
find this bunker, we’re done.
A chill ripples over
me. Surely Doc didn’t go out with the grunts himself. That would be
madness. But my heart pounds double time as I head for the big gray
tent functioning as the clan hospital.
As I push through the
parted flaps, I break out into a cold sweat. There are at least
twenty bodies in varying stages of dismemberment, and the air feels
thick and heavy in my nostrils, sweet with clotting blood. Doc
looks up from his work briefly and then goes back to whatever he’s
doing inside that poor kid.
I say kid because the
person Doc’s working on can’t be much older than Keri, but he’s old
enough to fight for his clan. Old enough to die, if the operation
doesn’t go well. I haven’t seen March yet today; he could be
somewhere among all these bodies. I shudder and try to force that
thought away. If he were dead, surely I’d know. I’d feel something.
But our connection has thinned, and he doesn’t seek me out
anymore.
Rose turns then,
jerking her head toward the back of the tent. “Change into some
scrubs. There’s a sealed set in the cupboard. Then stand inside the
san-shower on sterile setting for at least sixty seconds.”
Maybe the dry heat
will do something to calm my nerves. I have a feeling that whatever
they intend to ask me to do, I’m not going to like it, particularly
if it requires me to dress like a doctor and scrub up like one,
too. But I don’t protest.
It takes me less than
two minutes to get geared up. “What now?”
Doc answers without
pausing what he’s doing. “There’s a device on the table next to
Rose. It’s dead simple, just point and shoot. I need you to use it
to take readings on all our wounded. It will help us calculate
triage.”
I’m not trained for
this. I want to argue, but I don’t. If it will help, then I can’t
say no. I don’t even bother asking “why me?” Approaching the
wounded men lined up on drab olive blankets, I feel my hands
trembling.
Like Doc said,
though, it’s really basic. From a single point of contact, the
gizmo registers temperature, heart rate, and scads of other medical
data. All I have to do is enter the patient’s number, as present on
his clan ID. I feel like I’m tagging corpses, even though some of
them move or moan or beg me to make the pain stop.
The third soldier is
wide-awake and, Mary help him, coherent. With a wound like the one
in his side, I don’t know how. He grabs my wrist, fingers grinding
against bone. “Did Jerro make it? Where is he? I promised his ma
I’d take care of him.”
“He’s fine,” Doc
says. “Just try to relax. You’re up next.”
Whether that’s the
truth or a platitude, the guy relaxes his grip on me and fades out.
I hope he isn’t dead. The gadget reassures me he’s stable for the
time being, and I move on to the next patient.
Soon, we get into a
groove. I see why they needed me now, or at least another pair of
hands. I choose the next patient, based on need, Doc does patch
work, and then Rose finishes up, sealing wounds and incisions.
There’s also a clansman doing transport, moving patients from the
hospital into the recovery area.
By the time we
finish, I’m aching from head to toe. People who say being on the
med team is easy ought to be shot. Of course that would just make
more work for us, so maybe I could let ’em go with a
warning.
Before I head back to
the tent I share with Vel, I ask, “Why me?”
“You’re not clan,”
Doc says quietly. “Do you really think I could ask someone who knew
these men to help decide who lives and dies?”
I never thought of
that. But yeah, the little gadget had determined two of the
soldiers wouldn’t make it, regardless of treatment, so they got
bumped to the bottom of the list. Rose shot them full of
painkiller, and they died quietly, which was all we could do for
them. I try to imagine someone who knew them, who had lived,
worked, fought, and possibly loved those men, being asked to watch
them die. My heart seizes up into a Gordian knot.
“I’m glad I could
help.” My voice sounds rusty. “But I’m busted. I’ll be back in the
morning if you need me again.”
“If you could.” He
looks so damn tired, too, but he’s not leaving.
We find heroes, not
on battlefields, but in hospitals that tend the injured. Sometimes
I think it’s easier to fight than it is to heal. I check the
recovery area one last time, making sure nobody needs
anything.
Dina has finally come
around. Thanks to her rugged constitution, they’ve developed an
antivenom for those who survive Teras attacks. She can’t walk yet,
but they’re hopeful. She doesn’t want me around, though. Dina isn’t
unfair enough to lay all this on me, but she’s a bitchy patient,
and I seem to rub her the wrong way, no matter my
intentions.
I spend the fourth
day working in recovery, changing bandages, fetching this or that,
and generally entertaining crotchety soldiers who are convinced the
war will be lost if they don’t get off their cots. March avoids me,
and my heart breaks by millimeters. I should confront him. I
will. When I work up the nerve.
And on the fifth day,
Doc takes me aside.
“Things have slowed a
bit, so I’ve had a chance to take a look at your test results, some
of the data I couldn’t interpret before.”
“Oh?”
The bustle of
clansmen going about their business muffles our words somewhat. In
the distance I hear the discharge of weapons, echoing oddly through
the tunnels. I’ve never been surrounded by war, not like this. It’s
a precarious feeling, and I’m itchy with the need to get the hell
out of here.
“I’ve got good news
and bad news, Jax.”
I brace myself. “Bad
first.”
“If you want to live,
you have to stop jumping.”
Of all the things he
could’ve said, this shocks me the most. We all know jumping will kill us someday; it’s sort of a
given. “Yeah, I get that.”
Doc shakes his head.
“No, I don’t think you do. You know how you’re receiving daily
injections to combat that inexplicable bone condition?” I nod. He’s
already told me that such diseases are rare in young people. “Let
me try to put this in laymen’s terms. A normal human brain suffers
irrevocable damage after repeated exposures to the stress of
grimspace. You’re no exception to this. But you differ from other
navigators in a DNA . . . mutation that permits you to cannibalize
other physical resources to heal the damage you take.”
It takes me a few
moments to process that. “When I pass out for three days after a
bad jump—”
“That’s the unique
metabolic process at work. But in order to heal, the resources must
be taken from elsewhere,” he says with a grave look.
“So my body breaks
down my bones to fix my brain, so I can keep jumping. And there’s
no cure?” I can’t look at him. My gaze roves the crowd behind him,
watching a man assemble shocksticks and taser pistols from spare
parts.
“How could there be?
I’ve never heard of a jumper who could do this, and I’ve studied
thousands of medical records.”
He doesn’t need to
spell it out for me. The next time I lapse into a near coma,
there’s no telling what system might be ransacked in order to
regenerate my brain. Vascular or respiratory pillage might kill me
on the spot.
“There’s no way to
regulate it?”
Doc shrugs. “Perhaps.
This is uncharted territory, Jax. I might eventually be able to
develop an implant to control what systems are tapped, defaulting
to the less vital ones.”
The rest goes
unspoken. That would require time and facilities, and right now, my
welfare simply isn’t at the top of his list. He has a whole clan to
care for, new wounded coming in daily, and a war raging around us.
In the meantime I shouldn’t jump, or it will just get worse. I’ll
die, just not like most jumpers.
So how the hell are we getting off this rock? I
exhale shakily.
“What’s the good
news?”
“Over time, we can
repair the degeneration to your skeletal system,” he tells me.
“Maintain the treatments as prescribed, and you won’t always be
so—”
“Breakable?”
“That is not a word
I’d apply to you.” He smiles faintly.
Well, he can’t see
inside me. The man I love risks his life on an hourly basis, and he
drifts further away with every heartbeat. Though I can’t articulate
the impression, I’m losing him. Kill by kill, someone else trickles
in to eclipse the light where he used to be.
He needs to walk away
from this war. But March cannot excise his sense of obligation to
Keri, springing from his inability to repay Mair, Keri’s
grandmother, for everything she did for him. I remember his words,
back on the water-logged world of Marakeq. I’d asked him why he was
always in my head.
“It means our theta waves are compatible,” he’d
said. “It’s almost always a one-way feed. I
get impressions from other people, what kind and how deep depends
on how disciplined their minds are and how much I want to know.
Used to be uncontrollable, couldn’t shut it off.”
“How did you—”
“Mair. She wouldn’t teach me the higher forms, but she
saw what a mess I was and taught me how to quiet my mind. Shut out
the noise through meditation.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Before she took me in hand, I wasn’t even human,
Jax. You have no idea how many people I’ve
ended. Broke minds to set an example, for the hell of it, or just
because I needed a quiet kill. I spent years on Nicuan, feeding
their endless wars. By the time I stole a ship because they shorted
my pay, there was nothing left. Mair rebuilt me, brick by
brick.”
Oh, irony, you’re
such a bitch.
“Thanks,” I tell Doc
then. I think he reads something in my expression, but he doesn’t
ask, thank Mary. “I’ll let you get back to work. I know you’ve got
people a lot sicker than me to deal with.”
“I’ve prepared sixty
days’ worth of your treatment, Jax. Just inject yourself once a
day, and you should start to see some improvement.”
As long as I don’t jump. Fuck that, it would be
kinder to kill me outright. I make myself smile and thank him.
Turning, I lose myself in bodies going about their business. The
clansmen are tough, stolid as rocks, and they seem to have adapted
well to this lifestyle.
Sometime later, Jael
finds me as I sit mechanically assembling weapons I’ll never use.
This isn’t my fight; I’m just caught in the middle of it. But if I
ever need to, I can get work on low-tech worlds where they make use
of cheap human labor.
Part of me
acknowledges that’s an exaggeration. I still have my post as
ambassador, unless Tarn has washed his hands of me. I wouldn’t know
at this point. They can always hire another jumper to ferry me from
place to place, but that option rouses a sick, miserable feeling in
the pit of my stomach.
“You look like your
best friend died,” he says, dropping down beside me.
Given our current
situation, that seems particularly tactless. I just shrug. I don’t
feel like talking, particularly not to him. I can’t let myself bond
with someone who reminds me so much of Kai.
He misinterprets my
gloom. “Look, they seem to think Dina’s going to make it. Cheer up,
won’t you?”
“Is it mandatory?”
I’m not ready to share my prognosis with anyone. It’s bad enough
that I have to haul a med kit around and shoot up like a
chem-head.
“Nope. But this might
help. We’re getting out of here. Two days, tops.”
“How?”
“Your Bug friend has
some astonishing resources in that bag of his. We’ve been
monitoring enemy transmissions, and they’re discussing a fallback,
as the tunnel war isn’t going well. When they retreat, we’ll sneak
out and head for the surface.”
“And be left wide
open for Teras to pick off? Or any McCullough men that happen to be
in the vicinity?” That might be the worst idea I’ve ever
heard.
Jael sighs. “Give us
a little credit, will you?”
“What’s that supposed
to mean?”
I don’t have much
faith left, I’m afraid. This scheme sounds stupid, dangerous, and
highly likely to get me killed, full of adrenaline-inducing
moments, and the hot rush of risk. Which means I should be all for
it. Haven’t I always said I didn’t become a jumper to die old and
gray? I stop protesting.
“It means we have a
plan. I will get you out of here, Jax. You
have my word.”
I manage a smile, but
I don’t believe much in promises anymore either. “What about Dina?
She’s not going to be ready to run in two days.”
If he suggests
leaving her, I’ll punch him in the eye. I am not the woman from the
vids. People are not disposable to
me.
“That’s going to pose
a bit of a problem,” he says. “But we’ll figure that out, too. I
need to get back to Vel. Did you want to be in on the
brainstorming?”
My brittle smile
softens into something close to real. “Yeah. I would.”
He tugs me to my
feet. “Well, let’s do it. Forget this,” he adds, sweeping an arm to
indicate the dim, grungy encampment. “Soon it’ll seem like a bad
dream.”
Sure enough, I have
plenty of those.
