He pulled it out, wincing, then reached across Mdntyre’s inert form for the first-aid kit on the turret bulkhead. Clumsily, with his left hand, he swabbed the cut and sprayed a plastic over it. Then he carefully brushed his jacket and pants clean of the other fragments that had showered him.
Mclntyre began to moan.
“Easy sergeant. Don’t try to move. Your arm’s broken.”
“What happened?”
“Nuclear grenade, I imagine. They only needed one.”
Mclntyre closed his eyes and leaned back. “I told you we weren’t supposed to come out out of this alive.”
“We’re not dead yet.”
Vorgens rose from his seat gingerly. His knees were a little wobbly, but only a little. He jabbed a sedative into Mclntyre *s good arm, then decided it was too cramped and dark in the turret to attempt to set the broken bone. He reached up for the overhead hatch, the debris littering the deck crunching under his boots as he moved.
“I’m going to take a look around,” he said to Mclntyre.
The Watchman climbed up on his chair and pushed open the turret hatch. Cautiously he stuck his head out into the sunshine. The right side of the cruiser was smashed in, the turret itself tilted slightly askew. For a radius of fifty yards around, the ground was scorched black.
At the top of a little hillock, some hundred yards from the cruiser, three figures were moving slowly among the sprawled bodies. Two were Komani warriors, the third a native of Oran VI who wore the flowing white robes of a priest.
Blessing the dead, Vorgens thought.
They saw him, and one of the warriors raised his rifle.