Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

Colin called, “Come back down. She has an implanted mic and earplant.”

Of course she did. Cursing himself for an idiot—Colin, who eschewed technology, had remembered the mic and implant and Zack had not—he sprinted back down the stairwell. He bent over Lindy. She was speaking in short gasps, her voice full of pain. “Jason… help me… Lab tunnel… please…”

“Lindy, no—Jenner will be over in Enclave Dome, he can’t hear you! Call someone else…”

But someone heard. Maybe the mic, or the frequency, was tuned to more than just Jenner. A few long minutes later multiple footsteps pounded down the stairwell. Claire Patel said, “What happened?” at the same moment that an Army sergeant thundered, “What the fuck are you people doing down here?”

Zack wished he had a good answer. He no longer knew.

Anything.

When Dr. Holbrook came out of the operating room, Jason was there. Three o’clock in the morning, and Dr. Holbrook’s eyes drooped with exhaustion; he was not a young man. He pulled down his mask and said, “Sir, she’ll be fine. A broken rib punctured a lung, but she’ll be fine.”

“Will there be any permanent damage?”

“No.”

“Can I see her?”

“She’s sedated. They’ll take her to… wherever they can find an empty bed, I guess.”

A nurse found, or made, an empty bed in a tiny room whose empty shelves on three sides said that until recently it had been a storeroom. Lying on a gurney, Lindy looked small and vulnerable. Jason smoothed her hair, matted with dirt, away from her forehead. She didn’t stir. Her left hand lay on top of the blanket. Bare—what had she done with her wedding rings? Probably put them in a drawer somewhere, as he had with his.

She breathed regularly, her small breasts rising and falling under the hospital gown. Was the 3-D printer still making gowns? He thought he remembered hearing that the raw material had all been used up, but maybe not. There was so much going on in these two domes that he did not, could not, keep track of it all.

When had he and Lindy lost track of each other? At the Collapse? No, they had still been working together then, overwrought and terrified and furious in those first few days when Jason had been snatching scientists and equipment, trying to outrun the spread of RSA in order to create an outpost of military research. He and Lindy had worked together at the start of the war, too. He had held her as she cried when they’d gotten the news of the nuclear strikes that had wrecked what was left of civilization.

So when? He had done only what was necessary to defend the base. To defend her. And, somehow, that had made him lose her.

Just as he had lost Jane to Colin. Although Jane, unlike Lindy, had never been his to begin with.

“Lindy,” he said softly, “what the fuck were you trying to do in that tunnel?”

Actually, he already knew. The patrol, outside in the nightmare wreckage, had received the message from Captain Cooper, acting CO at Lab Dome. Jason had gone over there, picking his way through twisted wreckage and body parts in the streaming rain, and had learned the whole stupid story from Zack McKay.

Lindy had been trying to save the base. Jason had actually done so, by taking a terrible risk, and armed with bombs and military knowledge and a fucking spaceship . She had had nothing but courage and heart and a willingness to die if necessary.

He took her limp hand. So much emotion shook him that the floor seemed to waver. Lindy.

A noise behind him, and Jason turned. Colin, in his powerchair, sat in the doorway.

“Jason—Colonel Jenner—I need to talk to you. Alone.”

Zack crept onto the bed beside Susan, who didn’t stir. Sometimes v-coma patients twitched when touched, but not now. The curtained cubicle held two beds; Caity lay on the other. Zack put his arms around his comatose wife. Susan had lost weight. Always slim, now her bones felt as fragile as a sparrow’s, as fragile as Zack’s heart.

Everything in him ached: muscle, bone, brain. Colonel Jenner himself had questioned Zack about Lindy’s plan, about the tunnel, about the entire disastrous enterprise, and the more Jenner questioned, the stupider Zack felt. Why had he ever agreed to help Lindy?

Because somebody had to do something, and Zack had not trusted that Jenner and his military were capable of that. Well, Zack had been wrong. The attacking forces had apparently been pulverized. The base was safe, and Zack was lucky he wasn’t in prison for violating a military area or something. If they had a prison. If he wasn’t so desperately needed in the “research effort.” Which, like Lindy’s plan, was going nowhere.

In the last twelve hours, another soldier, a civilian, and a Settler had fallen into v-comas.

He was, paradoxically, too tired to sleep. But eventually the sound of Caitlin’s and Susan’s breathing calmed him, the only things that could.

The only things that mattered.

Colin said to his brother, “You need to take me with you to Sierra Depot. It will be today, won’t it? You need me with you.”

It took all of Jason’s self-control to not betray surprise. “Sierra Depot?”

“Come on, Jason—the attack you’re planning.”

“Why do you think there will be an attack on Sierra Depot?”

“I made it my business to know. I’m not stupid, even though you think my ideas about the Settlement are stupid. And unlike you, I’m not isolated by military protocol from talking to anybody at all. Nurses, cooks—do you know how much information cooks and kitchen help overhear in the mess? Your off-duty soldiers talk to the Settler women, who report to me. Soldiers speculate about what you’re going to do with them. Some might even know.”

Christ—Colin’s intel network was as good as Hillson’s. Maybe better. “I don’t discuss strategy with civilians. Especially not civilians that engage in violations as stupid as the one you just did.”

“It was stupid,” Colin said, with his disarming candor, “but that was Lindy’s plan. This will be yours and so I’m sure it will be well thought out and effective. The reason you need me with you is my hearing. I can hear things way before any of your officers can.”

“We have technology to ‘hear things.’”

“Not on the Return , you don’t. Or if it’s there, you don’t know how to use it. Because you’re going to go on the Return , aren’t you? To bomb the jets at the depot the same way you bombed New America here?”

“Again, as I said—”

“I know, I know, you don’t discuss strategy with civilians. But I can be an added resource, Jason. You need all the resources you can get.”

Jason studied his brother’s face, that face he had known as toddler, child, awkward teen, grown man. And yet how much did he know Colin at all? It was possible to become so familiar with someone that you ceased to see him at all. And since Jason had chosen West Point, their lives had diverged so much.

“Colin, why would you even want to go on any kind of military operation at all? You disapprove of the Army, of our tech, of everything this base is trying to do. Why go on an attack, if there were to be one?”

Colin said simply, “The kids.”

“What kids?”

For the first time, Colin showed a flash of anger. “Don’t play dumb with me. Jason. The two kids of Sugiyama’s that New America captured and are still alive. If they are alive still.”

“How did you—”

“Tommy Mills. That boy is confused as hell. But he’s been in Sierra Depot, he came from there, and he’s another resource you’re neglecting. Seeing what happened to the one Sugiyama child really shook him. He wants to help get the kids out of there. Lindy told me—”