He looked up as the last trickle dripped from the spouts, then walked out, running a portable detector over the tanks and APCs.
“What’s the word?” LeBlanc called from her track.
“You’re still hot,” he called back. “Not immediately life threatening. But we need to get you to a ‘cold’ area within a few hours. We dropped the output by at least half with the shower.” He gestured at her to get down from the track.
She slid down the side, wondering how much more radiation she was picking up in the process. She noticed that, for once, he didn’t seem to be noticing her chest. In a way it was nice to know he could focus in a crisis. On the other hand, the fact that it was enough of a crisis to distract him was frightening.
He waved the detector over her front and then gestured for her to turn, covering her back and sides as well.
“Part of the problem is the ground we’re on is hot from the spills,” Kilzer said in a distracted tone.
“How bad is it?” she asked, worriedly. He’d been waving a long, thin rod over her chest and hadn’t even made a snappy comment. Things were definitely bad.
“Did you get splashed?”
“Yes.” She wanted to grab him by his suit and shake him. “How. Bad. Is. It?”
“Bad.” He answered shortly. “I’m trying to think what to do. You need a full decon, fast.”
“Oh,” she said, then thought about what that meant. “Shit. I can’t even accuse you of coming up with an excuse to look at my tits, can I?”
“No,” Kilzer said, keying his radio. “SheVa Nine, I need some help here.”
“Move,” Indy snapped, lifting the decon kit onto her shoulder as Pruitt followed with a tank of foam. “We have to get out of this mud; it’s all hot.” Both of the SheVa personnel were in rad suits and sweating up a storm despite the cold of the night.
“I’m giving you fifteen minutes,” Mitchell said over the radio. “The battalion is spread out on the hills on overwatch but the Posleen aren’t targeting them. They are, however, moving this way. So you don’t have much time.”
“We’ll get it done,” the engineer said, reaching the two figures standing in the moonlight. Without her Gortex and BDU top LeBlanc was shivering in the cold, her breath puffing silver in the night air. It was just going to get worse.
“Get the rest of the crew over here,” Indy said to Kilzer. “That track is officially deadlined. And they don’t need to be sitting around in a radioactive environment.”
“I wish I could consider this fun,” Pruitt said, slamming the foam pack to the ground and running back for more gear.
“We’ve moving all the tracks out of the mud; it’s hot as hell,” Indy said as the remaining APCs that had been snuggled to the SheVa’s flanks rolled out.
“Not the Sh-SheVa?” the major asked, her teeth chattering.
“No,” Indy said, throwing a rope up and across a limb of a handy oak. It dropped back down again, naturally, but she got it over on the second try. “It’s already contaminated. But we’ve got gear to handle it. None of you guys do.”
“Oversight on m-my part.”
“I think, given when you took over your battalion, that nobody could complain,” Indy said with a grin as Kilzer arrived with the three tank crewmen.
“Strip, all four of you,” the warrant said, hooking a portable shower up to the rope and lifting it into place. “Kilzer, I need light.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied, hurrying to the SheVa with barely a backward glance.
LeBlanc sighed and pulled off her undershirt followed by her bra.
“All my stuff is hot,” she muttered, looking at the latter article of clothing. “And I’m not going to be able to find one of these short of Asheville.”
“Not that fits, anyway,” Indy sighed, lifting her brush.
“I hope that wasn’t envy,” LeBlanc grumped.
“No, I’ve got enough back problems.”
Kilzer dragged the last of the extension cord up the hill, hooked the drop light to a branch, turned it on and only then looked around at the tableau under the oak.
The Abrams’ driver, his head already shaved as close as a cueball and nicked in places, was shaving the head of the loader while Pruitt was busy scrubbing down the already shorn gunner with decon foam and a bristle brush.
And Indy was doing the same to Major LeBlanc; she’d started on the major so fast she hadn’t even stopped to shave her. As the light came on the major turned towards it and snarled, her lambent eyes seeming to spark like an angry leopardess caught in a spotlight. She was stark naked except for a patchy coating of yellowish-white decontamination foam.
“Shut up, Major Ma’am,” Indy said, rubbing the officer behind an ear. “I need to see.”
Kilzer stood frozen for just a moment, his eyes blinking rapidly; then he shut them and shook his head. “I have got other things I need to be doing,” he said in a tone that was trying to sound definite and ending up sounding distracted. “I’m sorry, Major, my crisis override just got overridden.”
“It’s okay,” the major said, tightly. “I’m more worried about dying of radiation poisoning than being ogled.”
“Ma’am?” the gunner said and sputtered as some of the decon foam got in his mouth. “What about us?”
“You got less of a dose,” Indy said. “Your hair may fall out and you may have some other symptoms, but you’re unlikely to die. We need to get you med-evacced soon, though. And all the ambulances are on the other side of the river.”
“What about the major?” the loader said, pushing away the electric razor. “You can quit, now,” he said to the driver.
“They’ve got good ways to fix this stuff these days,” Indy said, but the doubt was clear in her voice.
Kilzer picked up the portable detector and waved it away from the group, checking the background conditions. Away from the contaminated material, the ground was clear of radiation, but when he swept it back across the clearing the detector immediately began climbing.
He turned off the audible alarms then swept the wand around the major. After a moment’s look he shook his head.
“Still bad?” Indy asked.
“Not as bad,” he said quietly, looking LeBlanc in the eye. “I’m sorry if I sort of froze there, Major. I have to tell you, though, you’re a very pretty woman. Not to mention competent. It’s an attractive combination. Especially covered in soft, slippery foam.”
“Why thank you, Mr. Kilzer,” the officer replied, dryly. “It’s that bad, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am, it is,” he said, holding out two gel-caps. “Rad-Off. It’s not going to keep you alive, but it will stretch things out.”
Glennis smiled tightly, her jaw working at the words. “Is anything going to keep me alive?”
“If we can get you air evac to a Galactic regen tank,” Kilzer said. “I’m not an expert in this sort of thing, but from these readings I’d say in a couple more hours the damage will be pretty irreversible. And the nearest regen tank I know of is in Asheville, which, under current conditions, would take about three hours to reach.”
“Oh…” Glennis smiled angrily again and shook her head. “That… really sucks.”
“I know, Major,” Kilzer said, looking at the ground and shrugging his shoulders.
“Christ, Major,” the gunner said. “Can’t we do anything?”
“Short of GalTech there’s not much you can do for extreme radiation exposure,” Indy sighed, lowering the brush. “If you decon fast enough, sometimes it helps. You guys are pretty okay. But…”