CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The beeping.
It was the beeping that kept her awake as she swayed slightly on the stool next to Callum’s bed. An airline was fixed over his nose, a patch of plastic covered his right eye, and the coverlet was tented over the stump of his right leg.
Stings of pain needled their way up her arm. A tiny drug pump attached to a port on her clavicle hissed, and the discomfort went away, but a fog rose in her brain, blurring her vision as the painkillers took hold.
She snapped the drug port off and tossed it onto a metal pan next to Callum’s bed.
Someone squeezed her shoulder. She looked up and found Murphy standing next to her. She tried to shoot to her feet, but he pressed her gently back down on the stool.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No…I was too slow.” She shook her head, her voice bitter. “I did what I could, but if I’d just been…better, realized what was happening faster, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt.”
“He’s alive. You saved him for me.” Murphy went to Callum’s side.
“He shouldn’t have done it.” She hung her head, tears blurring her vision. “He shouldn’t have!”
Murphy put his hand gently on Callum’s face and blinked back tears of his own.
“Of course he should have,” he said gently. “It’s what you do for people you care about, Eira.”
“But—”
She bit off her sentence in mid-word as Callum shifted and his one eye open slowly.
“Huh.” He blinked slowly. “Dad?” His voice was slurred, and he licked cracked lips. “Oh, no.” Those cracked lips smiled ever so slightly. “I’m in hell, aren’t I? No angel would be as ugly as you.”
His voice was still slurred, but his father swiped at his eyes and grunted a genuine laugh.
“Never judge a book by its cover, Son,” he said, his hand moving from Callum’s face to squeeze his shoulder. “You might want to write that down.”
“Nah, I’m too shallow to worry about things like that.”
“I’ve noticed that.” Murphy squeezed again. “How do you feel?”
“Like everything I’ve got hurts.” Callum closed his eye again, then rolled his head on the pillow. “What the hell happened?” he asked, after a moment.
“You took a couple of good hits when Kolyma—”
“Christ!” Callum’s eye popped back open. “Kolyma!” He stared at his father, then his head whipped around. “Eira—Eira!”
“Sir!” She popped up next to Murphy.
“Oh, good.” His head fell back. “You hurt?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said.
“Yeah. It does,” he said, his eye closing again. “Sorry, Dad.” He managed another smile. “You were saying?”
“I said you took a couple of hits,” his father said.
“Is that why I can’t—” Callum’s hand rose to the dressing over his eye. “It’s gone, isn’t it?” He opened his remaining eye and looked at both hands, then lifted one leg…and the stump of the other. “Oh…oh, no…”
“It’s my fault, Sir,” Eira said miserably.
“No, it isn’t,” Murphy said sternly.
“The explosion.” Callum’s brow furrowed in memory. “What the hell was it? It couldn’t have been the bottle.…”
“As nearly as we can tell, it was the ejection charge for Pod One,” his father said. “They left the bay hatch open when it didn’t launch. There must’ve been a glitch in the launch circuit, and somehow it closed while you and Eira were getting Petty Officer Shapiev into Pod Two. The ejection charge went off, then the thruster kicked in, at least some of it flashed back through the hatch. You’re both lucky to be alive.”
“Only because you got between it and me, Sir,” Eira said, her expression drawn. “That’s my job, not yours! I’m supposed to be your security!”
“You’d look silly trying to wrap yourself around someone my size,” Callum said, his eye closed again. “I know you would’ve done it. And don’t think I thought it through. Not brave enough to do something like that on purpose. ’Course, you did say the Sergeant Major warned you about ‘stupid brave.’”
“But—”
“He’s right, Eira.” Murphy reached out his free hand and gave her a little shake. “You’d have done it for him; he did it for you. That’s what friends—and family—do.”
“Friends?” Eira looked at both of them. “Family? But…I’m just—”
“A very extraordinary young woman,” Murphy finished for her. “One of the most extraordinary I’ve ever had the honor of meeting.”
She stared at him in disbelief, and he looked back down at his son.
“The only reason you made it after being—what was it you called it? ‘Stupid brave’?—was Eira. She did everything in the right order. She dragged you into the pod while you were still losing air through the hole in your visor. She got the hatch shut and the pod pressurized, she got you into a couch, got the pod ejected, then got a tourniquet on your leg before she put an emergency dressing on your eye. And after she did that, she did something about her own arm.”
“You’re hurt?” Callum’s eye popped back open, dark with sudden concern.
“You weren’t big enough to completely shield her,” Murphy said. “Her left arm took a lot of the blast. Punctured her suit in three places. Put two hull splinters through her biceps. Thank God they were small and the auto-sealant worked the way it was supposed to! Oh, did I forget to mention that she did all of those right things in the right order with only one arm?”
“Well, look at you!” Callum smiled and held out a hand to her. “Talk about big things in small packages!”
She took his hand hesitantly, and he squeezed hard.
“Sounds to me like we’re probably even,” he said.
“No.” She shook her head, but she managed a small smile of her own. “Not yet, Sir. I remember who carried me up that ladder from the bunker.”
Callum made an uncomfortable waving away gesture with his other hand, then looked back at his father.
“Shapiev?”
“He’s going to make it,” Murphy said. “Thanks to you two—and, I don’t want to start a fresh argument over which of you did more to rescue him. Let’s just call it a team effort.”
“Works for me,” Callum said, letting his head fall back. “I don’t think a noble warrior’s supposed to say this, but I really feel like shit right now, Dad.”
“Not surprising. You’re out of the fight for a bit.” Murphy shook his head. “But we’ll get you back home and into rehabilitation. You can make a full recovery, Son. That’s what’s important.”
“Mom’s gonna kill me,” Callum murmured, then snorted. “No, she’s gonna kill you, Dad. You’re the one who’s in real trouble when she finds out. I don’t think Eira and I together can rescue you from her!”
“I do anticipate a…testy word or two from her,” his father conceded.
“You’ll be lucky if it stays verbal!” Callum said. “So, I guess the next classic question—where am I? Ishtar?”
“Right the first time. Doc Barbeau’s facilities are at least as good as anything on Crann Bethadh. I did think about sending you dirtside before we wormholed out, though.”
“Damn!” Callum shook his head. “Didn’t even think about Crann Bethadh! How bad was it?”
“Bad enough, but a hell of a lot better than it might have been, thanks to you and the rest of Umbrella,” Murphy said. “Nothing hit the planet, at all, but we lost New Dublin Bravo completely, and two of the refinery nodes took hits, too. Fortunately, we’d gotten almost everybody off of all three platforms, so we only lost about two hundred people there.” It was his turn to shake his head. “Only two hundred.”
“Dad, there were a hundred million people on Crann Bethadh. Trust me, ‘only’ works, however much it still hurts.”
Murphy looked thoughtfully at his son, recognizing the hard-won maturity behind that painkiller-slurred sentence.
“Well, maybe,” he said. “But Umbrella paid cash for it. Kolyma and Changsha are total losses. Nanga Parbat took a heavy hit, too, but the yard says she’s repairable. We lost three hundred more people in Kolyma, including Commander Seydel, I’m afraid. Changsha got off lighter—she only lost about a hundred and fifty.”
Callum nodded. That was sixty-five percent of Kolyma’s entire crew, but it was a miracle they’d gotten any of her people out alive. Changsha’s loss rate was far lower—“only” (there was that word again) about thirty percent of her ship’s company.
“But nothing got through to the planet?”
“Not a thing. As a matter of fact, I don’t think they were shooting at the planet at all. It was missile debris that took out Kolyma and Changsha. Nanga Parbat took her hit from a laserhead, but I doubt she was the intended target. Looks more like a missile that got damaged on the way in, realized it wasn’t going to hit anything ‘worthwhile,’ and settled for whatever it could get. But Crann Bethadh didn’t even catch any debris, aside from some that deorbited from the Bravo platform when it broke up.” Murphy shook his head. “If they’d been aiming for the planet, at least some of the missile wreckage would have hit atmosphere, and probably a lot of it.”
“Well that’s good, I guess.” Callum smiled slightly. “I’d feel more heroic if we’d saved millions of lives, though.”
“Plenty of heroism to go around, Son. And saving—I don’t know, the odd trillion credits or so—of industrial infrastructure and all the people who were still aboard it probably counts for something, too.”
“Maybe.” Callum shrugged. Then his eye narrowed. “You said you thought about sending me dirtside before we wormholed out. We’re in wormhole space?”
His father shook his head.
“Not yet. It’ll be another thirty hours or so. But we will be leaving just as soon as we can.”
“Why? Did we lose after all? Are we headed for Jalal?”
“Lose?” Murphy smiled. “No, I don’t think you could put it quite that way. In fact, the problem is that we’re still dealing with the POWs and captured ships.”
“Captured?” It had to be more than just the drugs making him feel so confused, Callum thought.
“Yes. We took all of Xing’s—prisoner interrogation’s confirmed she was in command—parasites intact. Well, actually, we’re still in the process of taking them intact. We didn’t have nearly enough parasite racks to recover all of them in a single lift. Or even in a couple of lifts. And they’re still headed out-system at about forty-five percent of light-speed, so each round trip’s taking about twenty hours now. But I promised we’d pick them all up, and O’Hanraghty’s getting good info from them. For that matter, we captured enough of their capital ships it may actually be worthwhile putting them into TFN service! Once we’ve got them all, though, we’re wormholing out.”
“But not to Jalal?” Callum rubbed the plastic over his missing eye.
“No.” The word came out a bit slowly, and Callum frowned.
“Then where are we headed?”
“Well, that’s an interesting question,” Murphy said. “The outer recon platforms got lucky. We got good reads on the exit vectors for both components of the League fleet. We’re pretty sure the force that actually hit Crann Bethadh pulled out on a diversionary vector, because it wasn’t headed into League space. It was headed deeper into Concordia. But the other one, the one we blew hell out of—that one was on a beeline course for the League. Now, it’s possible that that was the diversion and that their real ‘secret base’ is somewhere right here in the Concordia Sector, but I doubt it.”
“So you’ve figured out where their base is?”
“We’ve run the cone for their destinations, assuming they were on a direct vector home. It cuts across a lobe of League-claimed space, but there are only a handful of stars in it. We’ve already narrowed the probable destination down to about seven, and two of them are inhabited. It seems unlikely they’d put their base somewhere with eyes to see, so O’Hanraghty and I figure it’s most likely one of the others. Prisoner interrogation and data from the prizes should let us narrow our five remaining candidates further—hopefully to no more than a couple. And once we have, we’re going to find out if we’re right.”
“Did I hit my head?” Callum looked at Eira, who nodded. “Thought so. And I must’ve hit it really hard. You’re doing…what, Dad?”
“Seizing an opportunity. One victory at New Dublin’s not enough. If we take the fight to the League’s ghost yards, it may well tip the balance of the entire war. It’s a risk, but it was my decision.”
“Maybe I can…get a peg or something. Help out somehow.”
“Doc Barbeau says you’re not ready to be up and about yet,” Murphy said. “Just concentrate on resting. Eira, Logan wants you with him when we reach the League system. You can fight?”
“Yes, Sir. The doctor says the nanites should be all done in another three or four days. But Callum—”
“He’ll be taken care of. I want you with Logan. We’ll need everyone…if you’re up to it.”
“Yes, Sir. I can fight.”
“Good.” Murphy smiled at her, then looked back down at his son, his expression more serious. “I have to keep making the rounds. Too many injured. Too many lost for good. Don’t make a habit of this, Son.”
“Just a flesh wound.” Callum swiped his hand over his crotch and gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. Murphy shook his head. Then he nodded to Eira and headed back out of the ward to join a group of waiting medical staff.
“How do I look?” Callum asked Eira.
“Your face is still perfect.”
“Aren’t you sweet?” He flopped a hand to one side of the bed and bent his fingers slightly. Eira put both hands into his, and he brought her fingers to his mouth for a kiss. “Now you tell Logan you’re not allowed to get hurt anymore. One leg or not, I’ll kick his ass.”
“I will not tell him that.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t like you.”
“Always looking out for me. Thanks for dragging my butt onto that pod.”
“I could only do it because—”
“Eira. Shut up.” He rolled his head to smile at her. “You remember what you said about my getting you killed doing something stupid brave? Well, that’s exactly what I did—something stupid brave. And after I did, you got both of us—hell, all three of us, counting Shapiev—off that wreck alive. I owe you. I owe you, and I don’t think I can ever really repay you.”
“Sir…just…just let me stay by your side. You and the Admiral. You’re all I have.”
“I think we can manage that.” He closed his eyes again, lying back against the pillow. “I think we can.” His voice was more slurred, and she gripped his hand more tightly. “You go to Logan. Show him how to kill Leaguies. I’ll stay here and…have some more of the painkillers. They’re nice.”
“Let me stay. Just a little longer.”
“’Course you can. ’Course you can.”
Callum drifted off to sleep.
She was still holding his hand.