Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) (36 page)

Irine’s ears fell. “I’m sorry. It’s just... how can you fix something when you don’t know what’s wrong?”

“I wish I knew,” Reese said. “Sascha, Bryer, come on. Let’s get the bleeding soil out of here.”

Anxiety. Fear. Sickening fear, bright as acid, pulling breath after breath until—

Anger. Confusion, no concentrating, taste and smell twining.

Will I ever live to have my children?

Pirates—I had forgotten about the pirates—have to focus—

—lived so long, nothing that lives so long should die—

So many “I”s. So many selves. Surely there was a single one in the middle, something to hold onto in the wave. But every “I” turned out to be the wrong one. Sorrow, gray as too many days without sunlight. Worry as corrosive as centuries of water wearing at stone. Flashes of panic like memories of knives parting flesh. Hirianthial shredded like wet paper and vanished into the maelstrom.

A sight now of a body. Familiar, even concealed by covers. That ankle still had twinges after he’d fallen on it poorly, dismounting a horse. Those twin aches were his knees, a whine that had grown so gradually he’d never realized how stressed the joints had become. That scar: a visceral memory of the armsmaster catching him on the side, cutting a divot of flesh from between the two ribs. Those scars, thin ridges crossing his back and stomach, perfidy’s mementos. His chest, which no longer flexed with the ease of youth; his wrists, broadened by the House swords.

His body. And Allacazam on top of it, building shields around his mind to replace the ones he had no energy to lift. When he tried, his faculties failed him entirely, and he almost lost touch with his own body.

A twinkle of stars and a gentle wind blew past him, as if to counsel patience. As he grappled with that, it also offered him the image of a patient convalescing.

That was before he examined the extent of the damage. His entire mental apparatus, that part of him that sensed the unseen energies and shaped them, was in tatters.

A fluting curiosity asked while holding him apart from the wound.

“I’ve never seen the like,” Hirianthial said to the Flitzbe’s presence. “I’ve heard that we can be hurt in these areas, but I’ve never...” He stopped, sinking into a blank despair.

The crystals.

The screams.

The star-sprinkled sky returned and dropped around him, sealing it away. He wanted to protest that the screams were important, but Allacazam was adamant. There would be time for the screams after the wound had closed a little further. Healing came first.

“You have
got
to be crazy,” Sascha said. “This is a joke, isn’t it?”

Reese stared at the opened packet, then leaned forward and checked the encryption key. Twice. Then the packet. Twice.

“Angels on the battlefields,” Sascha said. “It’s
not
a joke. Our drop-off point is in Sector Andeka, the place we’re supposed to be avoiding.”

“It’s not the same solar system,” Reese said in a small voice.

“Yeah, well, let me tell you, Boss, a couple of solar systems is not enough distance between me and slavers.”

“Fleet cleaned out that nest,” Reese said.

“Fleet also told you to stay far-clear of it for a year!” Sascha said.

“So what are we supposed to do, renege on the contract?” Reese snapped. “We’re supposed to drop off the shipment. We’re expected. We’ll just sneak in, deliver and leave.”

Sascha’s reluctantly slid into the pilot’s seat and took the controls. “I think this is crazy.”

“I think this is the last time I’m signing a contract this mysterious,” Reese said. “But we can’t just break off because we think someone might be left to shoot at us. Come on, Sascha. You got past slavers in that system, and now pirates in this one on the way in.”

The engines woke beneath the Harat-Shar’s touch. “We’re not out of this yet.”

Reese ignored him and sat at Kis’eh’t station, belting herself in. “It’s going to work out. It can’t not work out, because I’m not planning to die here.”

The
Earthrise
shuddered, then vaulted upward, bursting loose from the ice that had formed over its landing feet. Reese lapsed into the silence of her checklists as Sascha pulled them out of the thin atmosphere and out into the dark, the dark that was supposed to be so vast the chances of being found in it were laughable. The dark that was supposed to be safe.

The dark that wasn’t. Two red triangles popped up on her sensors the moment they spiraled out from behind Selebra’s shadow.

“Sascha—”

“I see them,” Sascha said, voice tight.

Reese hunted for something to hide behind. The nearest asteroid belt was too far. The planet itself—no, they’d be target practice if they landed. The red blots were no longer ignoring them... they were approaching. “We’re going to have to out-run them.”

“We’re going to have to try,” Sascha said, and something about the word “try” made the muscles in Reese’s gut clench.

She tapped the intercom. “Bryer, pet the engines. We’re going to haul tail. Even if it means leaving some tail behind.”

“Understood.”

The pirates coasted closer. They weren’t even burning their engines, from the sensor data. Were they so certain of themselves that they were being careless?

“Hang on,” Sascha said, and for once Reese gripped the chair’s battered plastic edges in time to save herself from being thrown across the bridge as the ship twisted back on its own course and flung itself in the opposite direction. The safety belt kept her in her chair, but it bit into her neck so hard she smelled blood. When she blinked the spots out of her eyes, Reese found them lengthening the intercept cone. If the pirates had the kind of engines the slavers in Andeka had mounted, Sascha’s strategy wouldn’t work....

But the pirates didn’t accelerate. They didn’t even fire their in-systems.

“What the—?”

One of the ships flickered on her screen and Sascha yelled, “Evading!”

The
Earthrise
jerked to port, flinging Reese forward so hard she gagged on the safety harness. She rubbed her throat and checked the instruments for damage. “They missed?”

Sascha was scowling. “I’m not even sure they fired!”

“But the plot—” Reese double-checked the data. “They had an energy surge. No, it only looks like a surge. They flashed their lights.”

“Why would they do that?” Sascha asked.

“No idea,” Reese said. “And as long as they’re not chasing us, I don’t care either.”

“I just hope they don’t think of us as friends,” Sascha said.

Reese glanced at him askance.

“You know. Sending code. Why would you change your running lights for an enemy? Maybe they think we’re on their side.”

Reese laughed. “If thinking that keeps them off our backs, it’s fine with me.”

“Dropping into the Well in ten minutes.”

“Not a minute too soon,” Reese said.

Under Allacazam’s care, Hirianthial felt divorced from the outside world, even the parts of it his physical body would typically report. He floated in a sensory deprivation that would have alarmed him had he not been so tired. Instead, he sank into the exhausted unconsciousness of healing and woke only infrequently to “feel” the Flitzbe’s mental touch. On one occasion he remained aware long enough to wonder at the sutures one bound an invisible wound with. Instead of floss, did one use sunlight? Was the needle a memory of a mother’s touch? What kind of antibiotics did one use on a person’s mind?

The Flitzbe healed the way he talked—invisibly, using mechanisms that seemed as natural as the waves on a pebbled beach. Hirianthial had no idea how long it would take, only that it wanted all his strength.

The memories began to seep back into him. This time, Allacazam let them filter through. The touch of the boxes, the sense of unease, the nausea... the screams.

Screams.

“I need to wake up,” he said.

Allacazam showed him the barely stitched bits of his mental center. To shield with it would be impossible. Waking would mean subjecting himself to everyone’s thoughts and wishes and feelings, and though he would now remain centered in his body the experience would undo some of the Flitzbe’s work.

But the screams rang in his ears. “It’s that important.”

Unease, like seeing shadows in an empty house when walking alone to bed. Warning, as well, this time pulled directly from Hirianthial’s own memories of a halo-arch monitor emitting a piecing siren as its patient attempted to break free. Hirianthial ignored it and rose toward the light.

Riding through the Well would have proven pleasantly monotonous had it not been for Hirianthial’s state. He remained unconscious, so deeply so that Kis’eh’t had had only marginal success hydrating him and they were now all worrying about him drinking. With the ship guiding itself on its pre-determined course, each of the crew took a shift at his side, sometimes doubling up if fear overcame other considerations.

Reese arrived for her shift to find Kis’eh’t facing the door, hands clenched on her paw’s wrists. Some of the medical supplies Hirianthial had brought with him were laid out on her lap on a clean towel. There was a needle there. And a tube. And a bag of some fluid Reese couldn’t identify.

“Is that what I think it is?” Reese asked, stopping at the door.

“It’s been five days,” Kis’eh’t said. “We have to do something about this or he’s going to die.”

“We’re not doctors,” Reese said.

“No,” the Glaseah agreed. “We’re just going to have to follow the instructions in the manual and hope we get it right.”

“But we might puncture something!”

Kis’eh’t bent forward and examined the needle’s tip. “I hope not. Or at least, I hope we puncture the right thing.” She covered her face. “Aksivah’t hear me, Reese. I don’t want to. But I can’t think of anything better to do.”

“I thought... isn’t there some other way to keep him alive?” Reese asked. “Something besides needles? One of those pumps?”

“Pumps require vials full of something to be pumped,” Kis’eh’t said. “I found plenty of anti-toxins, antibiotics, anti-virals, vaccines and anti-fungals, but I didn’t find anything we could use to sustain him. Only this. And before you ask, no I can’t break open the bag, or it won’t be sterile anymore. And even if I did I have no idea if the hydration formula for the pump is different from the one for the needle. The pump is pushing through tissue, the needle isn’t… I have no idea if that makes a difference, but I don’t want to be wrong.”

Reese waved a hand at the mysterious-looking machine Kis’eh’t had brought with her from Harat-Sharii. “You synthesized glass beads... can’t you synthesize whatever the pump needs?”

The Glaseah choked on a laugh, then covered her eyes with a hand. “No. I need a formula to make something I’m not familiar with and appropriate supplies to make it out of. My specialty is inorganic chemistry, Reese, not medicine and not pharmaceuticals. I can identify drugs but I don’t know how to make them. And I certainly don’t know what you inject directly into someone’s bloodstream to hydrate them, beyond it not being plain water.” She sighed and dropped her hands onto her wrists. “Look, all we have that we know will work is this bag. I looked and looked, but the u-banks all say if you don’t have a halo-arch and you don’t have medical facilities and you don’t have what you need for the AAP and you do have one of these... this is what you use.”

Reese sat next to Kis’eh’t before her shaky limbs dumped her there. “I can’t stick a needle in him. What if we do it wrong?”

“Then I guess he’ll die,” Kis’eh’t said. “He’ll certainly die if I can’t get more water into him somehow. The health monitor in his own pack says so.”

Reese stared at the limp body and its cocoon of blankets. “Someone should get first aid training.”

“What a good idea,” Kis’eh’t said. “Too bad we didn’t think of it, oh, say, several years ago.”

Reese eyed the Glaseah, ready with a retort of her own, then let it die in her mouth. She’d never seen Kis’eh’t so exhausted. Embarrassed, Reese looked away and found Hirianthial’s face among the blankets. “I guess we should get it over with.”

“Yes,” Kis’eh’t said.

But neither of them moved.

They remained that way for a while. Long enough for Irine to show up for her shift and pause at the door, as startled by the tableau as Reese had been when she’d entered.

“Are you sticking him with that thing?” Irine asked.

“We’ve come to the conclusion that we should,” Reese said.

Kis’eh’t nodded. “Definitely.”

Irine looked from one to the other. “And that’s where you stopped.”

“Do you know how to do it?” Reese asked hopefully.

Irine sat between them and shook her head. “No.” She looked clear-eyed but her coat was dull. Had any of them been resting well? “Maybe Bryer knows.”

“We could consult Allacazam,” Kis’eh’t suggested.

Reese started laughing. “Consult Allacazam. I like that.” It continued to seem funny until it stopped. “Wait a minute. That might actually work.”