“You too, Kyle.”
The white-hot hole the Macros had drilled through the airlock hatch was spitting sparks of burnt metal. The opening was big enough for a human to walk out of now, but of course it had to get bigger to allow a Macro to pass.
“I want you to hit those brake jets now. Just a puff. Then tell everyone to brace for impact.”
“Impact?”
“Just do it.”
She did it, and the jet-wash nearly incinerated me right there. I hadn’t thought about how near the brake jets might be. I was less than a hundred feet from a blue blast of radiance that had to be as full of protons as it was heat.
As I had hoped, the cruiser fell away behind me. I realized with a shock it was falling away too fast, way too fast. I flipped on the mine in my hand and snapped it toward the ship. The mine flew away, spinning.
“Sarin, that’s too much! Cut the brakes! Give the mains a little goose and turn the nose-down about five degrees.”
“Sir?”
“Do it!”
I watched as my mine dwindled from my sight. Jolly Rodger surged forward and nosed downward a fraction.
Now that the ship wasn’t dominating my region of space, Helios swam into view far below. The Worm planet filled a huge arc of space with its orange-brown deserts and dark murky seas. I could see a Worm mound here and there, looking like mountainous spikes of natural terrain. If I hadn’t been so close to dying, I would have stared at it in awe.
“That should do it,” I said.
“Do what?”
“Grab onto something!” I shouted.
A tremendous flash silently lit the universe around me. I was bathed in radiance-and presumably radiation.
“Cut the engines!” I shouted. “Sarin, brake a bit, you need to slow down so I can-”
But Jolly Rodger didn’t slow down. It barreled right toward me. Suddenly, I wished I’d picked up one of those flying skateboard things. I could use one about now.
In space, there was nothing to push against. When it came to getting places, this was both good and bad. You generally had nothing stopping you-no air resistance, no gravity, no obstacles. But that also meant you couldn’t use those things to help you move. Essentially, the only way to move was to throw things in one direction and therefore be propelled in the opposite direction. I didn’t have much to spare.
“Sorry sir, braking jets are not responding,” Sarin said in my headset.
I quickly saw why. I’d blown the brake-jets off the cruiser. The nose of the ship had no jets left at all. Jolly Rodger grew larger with the black, smoldering maw of it looking like the open mouth of a great shark. I threw my pistol away, then my knife. I had a belt pack, and that went. I might have tried to toss my boots, figuring my feet would have to fend for themselves and the nanites could unfreeze them later, but I ran out of time. Throwing things didn’t generate enough thrust anyway; the ship was going to hit me.
The cruiser swallowed me-ran me over. I went right into the hole in the hull I’d blown open with the star-shaped mine. How fast was it going relative to my own body’s mass? A hundred miles an hour? Two hundred? It mattered, but I had no way of measuring. I did my best to turn around and take the impact feet first. Turning in space isn’t easy. It was like swimming in the air-but with no air.
Everything happened in flashes at the end. The big red sun vanished as the ship’s shadow swept over me. I realized I was inside the ship’s blasted-open maw. The impression of being swallowed was very intense. Shiny, floating bits of destroyed Macros drifted around me. Twisted chunks of hull tapped and slammed into my feet and torso. It was like hitting a mass of glittering, metal confetti. One piece starred my helmet. Then I hit something solid, spun around, and knew no more.
32
When I woke up, everything was fuzzy. In my head, I mean, not visually. I hadn’t the will to open my eyes yet. I heard Kwon on the next rack, arguing with a med-tech. The med-tech’s voice was female.
“Sir, you need to stay-” she said.
“I’m fine,” Kwon complained. “I don’t want to lie here anymore. I don’t care about the other leg either, it will grow back.”
“There could be blood-clots-”
“Nanites will eat those. You fuss like my grandma.”
I turned my head toward the voices. That hurt. It really did. Opening my eyes was worse. They felt glued shut, and I swear some of the flesh on my corneas was ripped off as I forced them open.
I saw right away it was a new med-tech-a female this time with vaguely Asian features.
“Kwon,” I said. It came out as a croaking sound.
“Hey, it’s the colonel!” Kwon said. He put a massive paw on the med-tech’s shoulder and used her as a prop to heave himself into a sitting position. Any normal woman would have been knocked down. But this girl was like everyone else on the expedition, sturdy and full of nanite enhancements. She made a squawking sound and staggered, but managed to stay on her feet.
“Kwon,” I croaked again.
He loomed near. I could see him now. He had one leg and one arm. He balanced with his one hand on the med-tech’s shoulder. She looked annoyed and alarmed. I tried not to look sick. Kwon was the only person in the medical brick that looked happy. He had a kid-like grin on his face.
“What is it, Colonel?” he asked me, as if I were a king giving him my final words.
“Get your ass back in bed,” I said.
Kwon looked disappointed. He turned with a grunt, hopped back to his rack and flopped onto it. “I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”
I laid there for a minute, watching Kwon and the med-tech. Kwon complained while the tech worked to touch up the IV lines and tape down a few flapping instrument leads that were attached to his body. I felt vaguely nauseous to see Kwon like that. We could give him prosthetics of course. Fake arms and legs made of nanites that were better than anything made in the past. But it still wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t have sensation in his limbs, and there would be health problems associated with missing body parts. There always were. We couldn’t regrow his original flesh. Nanites could do fantastic cellular repairs, but they had to have something to work with. They couldn’t rebuild missing limbs from scratch.
I had a sudden, upsetting thought. What kind of shape was I in?
I lifted my head and tilted my chin down to my chest. The process was slower and more painful than usual. I’d suffered a hard blow to the head and neck, that much I was sure of. But I had no idea if I was missing a foot or an arm. I licked my cracked lips, and looked down.
Right hand, left hand-check. Two of the fingers were wrapped up, but they were still in there. I could wriggle them and move them. The legs didn’t look so good, however. The right was in a cast. The left-the end of my left foot looked funny. It was exposed and bluish-purple. Maybe the med-tech had been in the middle of wrapping it up when Kwon had decided to go on a safari and distracted her. That foot looked like a cookie with a bite missing.
I eased my head back down onto the pillow. Two-thirds of a left foot remained. Three toes-the smaller three-were missing. I was already bargaining with it. Could have been worse, I told myself. I’d almost died out there.
The med-tech loomed over me. Her young face hovered like a moon. “I’m Ning. How are you doing, Colonel?”
“Just peachy, Ning,” I said, faking a smile.
“You’ve lost a lot of-everything. But you’ll live.”
“Did you cut off anything other than the foot?”
Ning winced and glanced down toward my missing foot. “You’ve been peeking,” she said. “Only the foot is gone.”
“What’s your name mean?” I asked her.
She looked surprised. “I think it means ‘tranquility’,” she said. “Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know. Good name for a nurse, I suppose. What happened to the rest of my foot?”