Lenson wanted an update. She couldn’t give him much, just that they’d lost main engines and power to both shafts, and all the gas turbine generators. “When can you get them back?” he asked. “We need power. I can’t manage this formation without comms, without radar. You can’t defend yourself either.”
She unzipped the top of her coveralls and tucked her arm in, gasping at the pain. She bit back an angry reply. “Bart and the master chief are working it, Admiral.”
Relays chattered, and the battle lanterns went off. Then came back on again. Flashlights flickered from the consoles. Frightened voices rose, before a shouted order silenced them.
The smoke got thicker, the air hotter. Clicking from circuit to circuit, she tried to raise the pilothouse. But no one answered. Had one of the hits taken them out? “I’m going up to the bridge,” she said, pulling her gas mask out of the carrier. “Until we get power back, I can’t do a thing from down here.”
Lenson raised a hand as if to stop her, then dropped it. She crossed to the watertight door and set her palm to it. Warm, but not hot. She undogged it and jerked it open. Smoke flooded in. She pushed her shemagh back, set the mask to her face, sucked in rubber-smelling air to hold it there, snapped the spider around her ponytail with her good hand, and tested it. Tight. She stepped through, into a smoky murk probed with flashlight beams, and dogged the door firmly behind her.
Two decks down and far aft, a diminutive strawberry blonde in scrubs positioned herself on a wire-basket Stokes litter. Two smoke-stained repair party team members in dripping-wet oversuits stood gripping the other side.
“He got a name?” the older man beside Duncanna Ryan said.
“No tags, no name tag,” one of the HTs rasped, coughing. “But he’s an Army guy, from the Stinger battery. They say he was trying to heave one of his rounds overboard when it cooked off.”
“Hold his head. Goddamn it, think about the spine! Ready. One, two, three,” the chief corpsman, Grissett, said, and they grunted together as they shifted the flaccid bundle on the litter onto the operating table set up in the center of sick bay. The new hospitalman seaman, Kimura, swung out stainless steel overhead lamps from their stowage against the bulkhead. One lamp tinkled as it swayed, broken with the shock of the explosions. Two others clicked on, illuminating what lay beneath with the brightness of noon.
The body was a wrecked horror, torn apart, then roasted. It seemed impossible, but he was still breathing, panting as if after a hard run. Grissett bent to listen to heart and lungs. “Respiratory distress. Impending failure. Ryan, get the IV in. Kimura, get his clothes off. If they’re unconscious, the first intervention is to intubate. Watch how I’m doing this!”
Forcing numb hands into motion, she slid in an IV, then hung a plasma bag. The other corpsman seized heavy cast shears and began cutting off bloody clothing, torn, scorched flash gear, half-melted nylon webbing. “Done with us?” one of the HTs said, a heavyset, muscular woman.
“We got him,” Grissett murmured. “How many more are there?”
“A lot,” said the woman. “Mainly burns. They’re screamin’ up there. Can’t you hear ’em?”
“Well, bring us the next one. — Dunkie, what have we got?”
Steeling herself, she peeled back a torn sleeve.
Under the shredded, bloody cloth, the arm was gone.
Though not all of it. Some unimaginable force had stripped all the flesh away. The bone beneath gleamed white and pink. It smelled like freshly cooked pork. She swallowed, trying not to barf.
“Good thing he had his flak jacket on. Check the other side,” Grissett muttered. “Shit, look at that bleeding. We’re gonna need a central line, some O neg blood. Lactated Ringers.”
When Kimura cut through the other sleeve, Ryan swayed and had to grip the table. The other arm was gone too. Just a macerated stump, and more flesh flayed off down to bone.
Grissett murmured, “Traumatic amputation of both upper extremities. Massive hemorrhage. Pupils equal. Heart rate regular and fast. This guy needs a surgeon, but we’re all he’s got. You kids ready?”
Duncanna made herself nod, but this was the first time she’d seen an injury like this.
Muffled voices approached again, out in the passageway. A thud made her flinch. But it wasn’t another rocket hit. Just a litter-corner whacking the steel jamb of the sick bay. When she stepped to the door and glanced out, her lips tightened. The stretcher bearers weren’t bringing them in. They’d just laid the wounded end to end down the narrow corridor, leaving only enough space to walk. Four, five… no, six men and women lay moaning and bleeding on the terrazzo. Plus silent ones who lay perfectly still… “We’re gonna need help down here, Chief,” she said. “We got molto wounded. Maybe some dead.”
“Get out there in the passageway, Dunkie. Airway, breathing, circulation. Don’t fixate on the visible injuries; remember to palpate for internal injury. Try to stop the bleeding when you can. Tourniquets are nice, but they’re not limb-salvage devices. We don’t have a vascular surgeon, so I’m gonna have to amputate. Kim and I’ll treat, you morphine and triage.”
“Me? I’m not qualified to—”
“Yeah, you. Pick out our next one. Man up, Dunkie, it’s up to us to save them.”
She grabbed a fistful of syrettes from the open can and went from litter to litter, icy inside. Bending to lift a bandage that exposed pink-and-gray intestine, to turn a head whose breath bubbled blood through a gashed throat, to inspect chemical burns, flash burns on exposed skin, take mental status and vitals so she knew who could wait and who needed to see Grissett right now.
She’d drilled it, yeah. But this wasn’t moulage, the fake plastic wounds they’d trained on. Each body had its own smell, its own glistening, fluid-pulsing horror. Blood, urine, meningeal fluid, and water slicked the deck. The corridor stank of phosphorus, propellant, feces, and burnt bacon. She tightened tourniquets, cleared airways, took pulses, injected succinylcholine so they didn’t fight the tube, set up drips, sealed gaping chest wounds with adhesive-edged bandages, injected morphine and lidocaine and norepinephrine, traced letters and the time of administration on pallid foreheads. Hands groped for the leg of her coveralls, clutched, weakened, fell away. One of the limp bodies began convulsing, boots drumming on the deck, then turned its head and died.
More casualties arrived. Their stertorous breathing and hoarse, hacking coughs echoed in the passageway. She dragged oxygen bottles out. Most cases of severe smoke inhalation ended up on the vent. Better sooner than later, due to edema.
“Help me,” someone murmured. “Tell my wife…”
As Grissett shouted for the next casualty, a heavyset black man staggered around the corner and fell to his knees. He too was in Army camo. His face hung in charred rags, showing bone beneath. Fluid dripped from this ruin, staining the front of his uniform. He knelt there for several seconds, watching her with eyes that wept blood, then struggled up and grabbed the other end of the litter she was trying to drag.
“You’re wounded,” she muttered, straining under the weight.
“Not bad as some. I got medic training. Washed out, but I remember. I’ll give you a hand.”
“You’re burned. Your face—”
“Let’s get these guys taken care of first.”
“Jeez, that would be great. Just let me get a bandage on you.… Can you do the vitals? That would really help. And bag that guy over there? There’s body bags in the med locker. What’s your name? What do I call you?” She couldn’t read his name tag for all the blood.
“Custis, babe. Jus’ Custis.”
In a vestibule off the helo hangar, Bart Danenhower checked his mask. He peered through the circular porthole, but couldn’t see the sea. Only eddying smoke. Flames crackled, and something let go with an echoing boom. He picked up a portable fire extinguisher, touched the door gingerly with the back of his other hand, then pulled his glove back on and undogged it.