Something flashed overhead, glowing red-hot and the entire world jerked away in a blinding jolt of pain. A flood of white sparks roared across her vision. A massive wave of sound slammed into her, battering her eardrums. Someone's scream was lost in a dragon-throated roar. Metal squealed, stressed beyond all expectation of design and manufacture. Gretchen caught a glimpse of the planet rolling past, then Hummingbird's face slack in unconsciousness.
The windows shattered as the airframe deformed, spraying glassite into the cabin. What little air remained was wicked away into a supersonic slipstream. Waves of heat boiled in, raging against her face. Blinded, Gretchen gritted her teeth and hung on. Somewhere above and behind her, there was a shrieking whine as cable spooled in at tremendous speed.
The blazing red shape – superheated air flaring around the Komodo in a brilliant corona – swelled over her head. For a single instant, a black maw gaped before her, limned with fire.
Everything slammed to a halt, flinging her violently against the seat restraints. She choked, feeling bone and muscle tear. The world outside went black, even the stars blotted out by a roaring, twisting storm of abused atmosphere. She was still bouncing back into the seat, a shattered retaining ring spinning free to fly out through the window, when the side door tore away.
A pair of hands reached in, seizing the centerline join on her suit. Something blazed blue-white at her back and shoulder, then she was free of the restraints and being dragged from the shattered wreck of the Midge. A combat-suited figure – broad, well-muscled – wrapped her in powerful arms and leapt back as a workline reeled in. They hit the wall of the shuttle's cargo bay together and his hand wrapped around a support brace.
"Clear to eject," shouted a tense male voice on the comm. Every other sound was overwhelmed by the shriek of air whipping around the hold doors.
Gretchen squirmed around – so slowly, time stretching like taffy – and saw, in a brief, perfect image: the crumpled cabin of the Gagarin sprawled on the deck of the cargo hold. The clamshell doors stood wide, Hummingbird in the arms of another man in a combat suit on the far wall of the hold, the launching pad rushing back, slamming into the broken, twisted metal of the Midge.
No!
The ultralight punched out into the darkness, spewing glassite and metal and bits of plastic. The Gagarin hit the shuttle's slipstream and blew apart, vanishing in the blink of an eye. Nothing remained, even the debris was already dozens of k behind, falling toward the planet in an expanding, jumbled cloud. The clamshell doors swung inexorably closed, blocking out even a momentary glimpse of the white arc of the planet.
Gretchen slumped into the man's arms, feeling their strength holding her up. Poor little plane. After all you did for us, for me.
"Pressure doors secure," Fitzsimmons shouted into his comm. "Kick it."
The shuttle engines lit momentarily, pitching the Komodo up into a higher angle of exit from the gravity of Ephesus Three. Somewhere ahead, the Palenque was waiting, swinging through its own wide orbit, gathering speed from the planet's gravitational pull. Glowing wings turned, catching a glint of the distant sun, and they sped on into the sea of night.
Aboard the Cornuelle
Gretchen became aware of a peculiar, antiseptic smell. Feeling strangely unencumbered, she opened her eyes and blinked in pain. Everything was so bright! A pale gray ceiling inset with soft white lights shone down on her. Walls of pale green. Chrome fixtures and subdued paintings in black, gray and brown on wrinkled rice paper. She looked down at her body and found a fuzzy cotton quilt laid across her.
"My suit…" Some kind of flannel pajamas had replaced her z-suit and Gretchen felt horribly, dangerously naked. Her arms clenched reflexively across her breasts. The sight of her hands was a surprise. The grungy, stained bandages were gone. Instead, patches of new skin shone pink in the clear white light. She flexed her fingers and found they moved without pain. The welts and ridges left by the jeweled chains were only faint reddish lines on her skin.
"No scars," said a tired male voice from her left side. Gretchen rolled her head sideways.
Captain Hadeishi was lying in an adjoining bed. He too was under a quilt decorated with oak leaves and cherry blossoms, wiry arms lying across his stomach. Seeing him without his uniform struck Anderssen as being particularly indecent, a feeling made more so by the sight of his muscular bare arms. Despite a lingering air of exhaustion, he struck Gretchen as being as clean, trim and at-attention as ever. Even on his back in a hospital bed.
"Our medical team does good work," he said, allowing her a small, warm smile. "Our esteemed judge is already up and about, though he did not suffer nearly so much damage as either of us."
"What…" Gretchen coughed, clearing her throat, and realized the crushing pain in her chest was gone as well. "…happened to you?"
Hadeishi turned back the quilts, revealing a huge patch of dermaseal covering his left chest, shoulder and arm. "Depleted uranium flechette burst at close range," he said, considering the repaired wound with a pensive, sad expression. "Very foolish. My death would have precipitated even more violence."
"Why…" Gretchen stopped, wondering if she were allowed to question a Fleet captain on his own ship – for this was most obviously the Cornuelle. Even before being gutted, the Palenque had never boasted such a clean, efficient, advanced medical bay as this.
"Did I put myself in front of a gun?" Hadeishi shook his head, amused with himself. "Because my father used to tell me stories about the samurai in their days of glory, before the Empire and the treaties of Unity and gunpowder. They would have ridden alone into the enemy fortress and challenged the rival lord to single combat. There could have been a great deal of bushido in what I did. As I said, very foolish."
"You lived." Gretchen wondered if she could ask for more blankets. Her bare skin felt cold and exposed without the snug, warm embrace of her z-suit. She tried to take a drink from the water tube, but found her mouth closing on empty air.
"There is water." Hadeishi pointed at a table beside her. There was a cup – plastic, half-full – and a little sick-shrine of offerings. Origami animals and paper flowers, Grandpa Carl's battered old multitool, a bar of "Ek Chuah"-brand chocolate and a fresh, shining 3v of three little children smiling up from a watery-green pool.
"Where did this come from?" Gretchen felt her heart lurch, knowing the original had been blasted away into nothingness with the Gagarin.
"Your exec sent the xocoatl and the picture over from the Palenque." Hadeishi's expression had become composed and polite again, but his eyes were shining. "The origami is from Gunso Fitzsimmons, though I did not know he had learned to make such fine examples himself. I suspect -" he visibly suppressed a merry grin "- he begged them from communications technician three Tiss-tzin, who is noted among the crew for her nimble fingers."
"That is very sweet." Gretchen ran her hand across the surface of the 3v. The electropaper was fresh and thick and carrying a full charge. Pressing her lips together and blinking back tears, she pressed the upper right corner of the picture.
Mom! Mom! We're mermaids! Mermaids!
Am not, I'm a merman!
She moved her finger away and the bouncing, splashing figures stilled. I'll see you soon, she promised them. I'm coming home.
"What about you?" Gretchen lifted her head, trying to see if the captain had anything on his side table. It was bare, save for a matching half-full glass of water. "Nothing?"