Floosie’s fighting compartment was an abattoir. The guns that hit her fired frangible shot that broke into a hypersonic spray on the other side of the penetration. Jellicoe had been manning the left wing gun and out of the direct blast, but the sleet of heavy-metal granules had splashed the thighs and torsos of her crewmen across the interior of the armor. Huber’s boots slipped when they hit the floor.
He fell with a dizzying shock. He was up again in a moment, but his right side was numb.
He lifted Sergeant Jellicoe. She was a stocky woman, still wearing the body armor that’d saved her life. Huber didn’t try to strip the ceramic clamshell off her now because he wasn’t sure his fingers could manipulate the catches. He stepped back and bent, throwing Jellicoe’s torso over his shoulders, then stumbled forward.
Learoyd and Deseau fired past Huber to either side; his faceshield blacked out the vivid cyan of their bolts. Via! there was no way in hell he was going to get aboard Fencing Master. He couldn’t carry Jellicoe and he sure couldn’t throw her into—
“Gotcha, El-Tee!” Frenchie said, bracing his left hand on the tribarrel’s receiver as he prepared to cross to help. “We’re golden!”
Huber didn’t hear the shot that struck Floosie’s bow slope, but he felt the car buck upward in the middle of a white flash.
Then he felt nothing. Nothing at all.
* * *
. . . he should be coming around very shortly . . . some part of the cosmos said to some other part of the cosmos.
Awareness—not consciousness, not yet—returned with the awkward jerkiness of a butterfly opening its wings as it poises on the edge of its cocoon. My name is Arne Huber. I’m—
Huber’s eyes opened. He saw three faces, anxious despite their hard features. Then the pain hit him and he blacked out.
He regained consciousness. The world was white, pulsing, and oven-hot—but he was alert, waiting for his vision to steady. He knew from experience that he hadn’t been out long this time, but how long he’d been here, in the main infirmary at Base Alpha . . . He must’ve been hurt bad.
“How’s Jellicoe?” he said. Huber’d heard rusty hinges with better tone than he had now, but he got the words out. “How’s my platoon sergeant?”
The technician adjusted his controls, his attention on the display of his medical computer. He nodded in self-satisfaction. Huber felt a quivering numbness in all his nerve endings.
The other men in the room were Major Danny Pritchard and—Blood and Martyrs—Colonel Hammer himself.
“She didn’t make it,” Hammer said flatly. “If you hadn’t had her over your back, you wouldn’t have made it either. The shot that hit Three-three’s bow slope splashed upward. The good part of it is that the impact pretty well threw you aboard your own car. Your people were able to bug out after the rest of the platoon with no further casualties.”
“It was quick for her,” said Major Pritchard. He smiled wryly. “This time that’s the truth.”
You always told civilian dependents that their trooper’s death had been quick, even if you knew she’d been screaming in agony, unable to open a jammed hatch as her vehicle burned. You didn’t lie to other troopers, though, because it was a waste of breath.
Huber nodded. Pain washed over him; he closed his eyes. The technician muttered and made adjustments. Huber felt the pain vanish as though a series of switches were being tripped in sequence.
The Slammers used pain drugs only as first aid. Once a trooper was removed to a central facility, direct neural stimulation provided analgesis without the negative side effects of chemicals. The Medicomp had kept Huber unconscious while he healed, exercising his muscles group by group to prevent atrophy and bed sores. He’d been awakened only when he should be able to walk on his own. The technician was smoothing out the vestiges of pain while Huber lay in a cocoon of induced inputs.
Huber opened his eyes. His brain was still collecting itself; direct neural stimulation tended to separate memory into discrete facets which reintegrated jarringly as consciousness returned. Part of Arne Huber understood it was remarkable that the Regiment’s commander and deputy commander stood beside his pallet, but everything was new and remarkable to him now.