Trevor nodded to one of the SEALs with him, who promptly unshouldered a radio and moved toward Darzhee Kut. Darzhee Kut bobbed appreciatively, glanced up, but then the focus of his eyes seemed to go past Caine, as though he had seen something just behind—
Caine’s back flared, felt like it was splitting, shattering, with flame gushing in and up along the fracture lines. He staggered forward, heard a soundless roaring in his ears, and then shouting all around him:
“JesusChristCaineShootthatmuthafuckingBelaythatHelphimOhGodnoCaine.”
Caine felt himself sway, caught his balance with a sidestep that half turned him. Apt-Counsel’s tank was only two meters behind him, beaded with condensation, wisps of vapor wreathing it in white curlicues, a broad, smoking tube where one of the external manipulator arms had been mounted only a moment before. Caine reached behind, felt wet metal protruding from the right side of his back, felt his balance going again as people rushed in at him from every direction. He took another half step, confident he’d straighten up properly this time…
And found himself falling forward, turning, seeing a whirl of faces: Elena, Trevor, Darzhee Kut, Opal—Opal? No, not here—and not now. Strange how slowly things move when you fall, when you can’t help yourself, when you feel yourself slipping away into unmarked time once again. Since this morning, he had been reunited with a lover and lost her, learned of the infant growing in her and lost it, rediscovered a lover he had forgotten and child he had never known and now was losing those, too. Because, unfortunately, at this cusp of victory, he had been killed.
As Caine fell forward—faces looming, hands rushing in—he smiled at the banality of his final thought:
Such a busy day.
The young ocean sunfish circled the fluttering object warily, vaguely recognizing in its downward progress the undulations of a jellyfish: preferred prey. But ultimately, the ocean sunfish flinched away, discerning that this was not a food source after all.
The tattered sleeve of Michael Schrage’s uniform, made a colorful motley by service and unit patches, continued its slow-motion descent toward the sandy bottom where the mouth of Lada Bay kissed the Sunda Strait. It was the last piece of wreckage or debris from Elektronische Kriegsgruppe Zwei to come to rest. All the others had reached the bottom, and, like this, were too small to ever be of significance to historian-divers or curiosity seekers. None of the VTOLs’ flight recorders survived the catastrophic hits by Arat Kur orbital lasers; no member of the flight survived to tell their tale. The few cells that remained of Schrage’s body carried no encoding that marked them as the remains of one of the thousands of humans who had, on that day, courted and were embraced by certain death in the performance of selfless acts against invaders. In Schrage’s case, it had involved placing his ship over Dortmund’s and Thandla’s to give them the extra seconds they needed to ensure that the submarines could safely complete their decisive ascent. That this act was arguably the fulcrum upon which the balance of the battle had tipped made it no greater a sacrifice than the thousands of other sacrifices which had been offered up in the streets, airspaces, or waters around the island of Java.
As the tattered uniform sleeve neared the bottom, a sand shark, attracted by a faint scent of blood, snatched away a shred of skin which clung, scorched and fused, to the partial sleeve. Then, with a swirl of fabric, the sleeve met and flattened long and slow against the muddy sand. The shark swam testily off, disappointed at the meager pickings.
For no greater nourishment or savor resided in the unmissed flesh of unsung heroes.
Part Two
June 12–14, 2120
Chapter Fifty-Four
Caine awakened into a gasp before he was aware of the pain, and that it was peaking: a searing stab that started a few inches under and behind his right floating rib and shot straight up to his scapula. As he exhaled the slowly diminishing pain out of his body, Caine felt a residual ache curl up—sullen and persistent—in the place the stabbing sensation was vacating.
Well, it wasn’t like the Ktor nicked me with a pen knife. He remembered a doctor reading off a list of his injuries as he faded in and out of what seemed like postsurgical anesthesia: “…deep dorsal penetration resulting in transfixing laceration of the latissimus dorsi, splintering fracture of T5, highly localized pulmonary laceration, and multiple lacerations of the liver. Extensive peripheral trauma is observed throughout the right thoracic…”
He remembered losing focus then, sinking back into the black, and wondering: Where is Elena? Where is everyone?
He swam back up out of the lightless depths some time later and remembered hearing himself ask. “How long?”
Both the answering voice and the room’s ambient sound were markedly different. “You mean, before you’re ambulatory?”
“No. How long have I been unconscious?”
“Well, strictly speaking, you haven’t been fully unconscious since—”
Suddenly, Elena was there in place of the doctor or orderly or whoever. She took his right hand in one of hers, laid the other smooth and firm along his cheek, as though she were poised to hold him harder, to keep him awake, in this world, with her.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For worrying you. And for being such an easy target.”
She smiled and cried without blinking or making a sound.
And was gone.
And now he was here, without her. Wherever here was. He vaguely remembered being strapped in for shift, a surgical nurse beside him, just in case the shock of transition made him flinch, reopened his wounds.
But that was all he remembered, other than occasionally awakening and trying to separate the conflicting feelings that seemed to clutch his heart, paralyze his tears, shackle his joy: mourning for Opal, longing for Elena, and recurrent guilt at the way the first emotion was so easily overridden by the second.
But as if avenging her rapid passing from his heart, he could feel Opal haunting everything he saw, every breath he drew. For all he knew, he might not be breathing at all had she not drawn the fire that would certainly have been unleashed against Caine, Trevor, and the others who had cowered in that shed in Jakarta.
There was a faint knock at the door. Thank God. I don’t care who it is, just… “Come in!”
Downing entered.
Oh. Great. The Lying Bastard himself.
“Awake at last, I see. How are you feeling?”
“Well enough, I suppose.” And thanks for nearly getting me killed again. Asshole.
Downing drew up a chair. “I’m glad to see you’re alert and ready to move about.”
Caine knew the tone. “Okay, how much have I missed?”
“So, you know you were in cold sleep, again?”