The moment her body cleared the ship on the far side, she remagged her boots. Full power. They slammed her down onto the ship working against her forward momentum.
To a certain extent, the foam continued to protect her.
Swearing seemed like a good idea except she had to concentrate on basic functionality. Given that she was in the cabin, she assumed she'd managed to stay conscious through docking maneuvers, but she wouldn't have bet her pension on it. And the tank hookup seemed stupidly complicated until she realized she still had the piece of wreckage tied to her back.
Things started to spin while she worked it loose and she only just got her mouth over the puke tube in time.
"You haven't had fun until you've had a helmet full of puke." Staff Sergeant Beyhn frowned down at her. "You're sucking carbon dioxide, Kerr. Get your gods-damned tanks in the fill position."
"Work… ing on… it, Staff."
"Work faster."
"Yes, Staff Sergeant."
She didn't so much push her tanks into the fill niche as collapse back into it.
"Lucky these things are idiot proof," the staff sergeant muttered.
Torin turned off the scanners, started to sit, and remembered her suit didn't exactly bend anymore. She'd been right. The scanners had picked up no sign of Craig. If he'd been blown to pieces, they'd have picked up the DNA signature. The pirates had him.
The way they'd had Rogelio Page.
But Craig had something Page hadn't.
He had her.
All he had to do was stay alive until she came for him.
FIVE
"I are not hanging around here indefinitely. I are having more important things to be doing than to be watching her breathe, so for the last time before you are suddenly being part of your own not very complimentary vid about medical personnel who are being deliberately obstructive to the media, you are needing to be telling me when she are waking up."
Imperious, demanding, and self-righteous with an order of scrambled syntax on the side; Torin knew that voice. Couldn't figure out how Presit a Tur durValintrisy, ace reporter for Sector Central News, had managed to push her way into Med-op but figured the duty noncom would have her furry little ass out of there so fast it wasn't worth worrying about.
Torin couldn't hear the response to Presit's demands, but she did hear the reporter's reply.
"Fine. But I are not going anywhere until you are telling me where Civilian Salvage Operator Craig Ryder are being. His ship are here, and his ship are being damaged, and he are not with his ship. Or with her."
And it all came back to Torin in a rush of sound and light and pain.
She'd punched up the Susumi engines, hoping that the panel she'd spot welded to the hole in the control room wouldn't throw off the equation too badly. As the patch's sole purpose was to bring Promise's external variables back to the dimensions in the default equations, it was a long way from airtight. Torin would have to remain suited up during the short fold back to the station and help. She had water and could easily go a day and a half on her emergency rations.
Not pleasantly, but easily.
The military had done tests on the protection an HE suit offered against Susumi radiation by strapping a suit filled with sensors to the outside of a ship during a fold. After twenty-seven hours, the suit had begun to fail. After thirty hours, levels were fatal for di'Taykan. After thirty-two hours, for Humans. After thirty-seven hours for Krai. Torin's fold would take thirty-four hours, but she figured she had two things going for her. First, the military had never performed testing on live subjects and while thirty-two hours might be fatal for a Human, that didn't necessarily mean it was fatal for this Human. Second, the patch would block a portion of the radiation, buying her time.
That was the last thought she could remember. The silent hope that the patch would buy her enough time had segued right into Presit's less than dulcet tones.
Torin had messaged the reporter back on Salvage Station 24. If Presit had time to both find her and get to her out on the edge, then how long had she been out?
Fuk!
Craig had been taken by the pirates. She had no time to lie around.
Her eyelids felt like they weighed a hundred kilos each. Forcing them open, she dragged her tongue over dry lips, and asked, "How long?"
A startled med tech spun around toward her, feathers ruffled, pale green crest rising. "You're awake!"
"She are obviously awake!" Presit snapped, moving closer to the bed and gripping the railing with a small hand that looked like a black latex glove emerging from the cuff of a thick fur coat. "You are being unconscious in this medical facility for seven hours. I are being here for three of them."
"The pirates have Craig." Teeth clenched, Torin sat up.
"You are having proof of that?" Presit demanded. Behind her, the tech spoke into her slate.
Torin stared at her reflection in the reporter's mirrored glasses. Even taking the curve of the lens into account, she looked like hell. Fuk it; she'd given sitreps in worse condition. Her brain was still too scrambled to separate out time spent sideways of reality in Susumi space and apply it to time passed, so she settled on listing the events that had brought her here in order of occurrence. "Recently, two Civilian Salvage Operators were killed attempting to keep their salvage from pirates." Her voice sounded like she'd been swallowing glass. Her throat agreed that was a valid observation. "This is not standard operating procedure; salvage operators drop and run, but these two found something worth dying to protect. A short time later, another CSO was tortured to death. The only thing a living CSO would have that a pirate might want is information. His death suggests they didn't get it."
"And you are knowing these two things are connected because…?"
"I don't believe in coincidence."
"Oh, well, that are all I need to be knowing."
Torin ignored the sarcasm and continued. "Approximately thirteen hours ago, pirates captured another CSO-Craig-in what is most likely a second attempt to get the information they did not get from Rogelio Page. I was left for dead."
"They are leaving you for dead? They are being fools for not being sure. And all that," Presit added, tapping one metallic-blue claw against the railing for emphasis, "are being a theory, not proof. Word around this station are being that you were attacked by the Primacy. You were being in a debris field very close to the edge, were you not?"
"I saw the ship," Torin said tersely, forcing the railing down and Presit back. The bright pink skin on her hand startled her and startled her again when she swung her bare legs out of bed. Right. The foam. The color would fade in time, but time was what she didn't have. "It wasn't a Primacy ship."
"And your word are being good enough because you are being Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr."
The floor beside the bed was freezing. "The Promise's computer wasn't damaged. There may be a record of the attacking ship in her data stores, but it doesn't matter if there isn't. I know the ship. It was docked here, at the station, repairing damage from Susumi radiation at the same time we were here selling salvage. Our sensors picked up residual Susumi radiation when we first arrived at the debris field. The debris field one of the crew of the attacking ship suggested we check out."
"That are perhaps being a few too many coincidences."
Torin grinned; she knew that tone. Presit sensed a story. "No shit."
The room spun when she stood and she sat back down considerably faster than she'd risen.