Sergeant Wells was crouched behind good cover about thirty feet forward of me, pinned down by a veritable waterfall of auto-blaster fire. The bolts were striking everywhere, all around him, some just an inch or two away. The marine didn’t have enough space to do much more than turn his head, which he did frequently to look back at me. I finally caught his eye and waved. He waved back, clearly pleased that I was conscious. Then he pointed at the grapple, the unconnected end of which still floated near the half-melted steel bar.
Wasn’t I supposed to do something with that? It seemed terribly urgent, but somehow I couldn’t quite remember…
I shook my head to clear it, which was a mistake because this jarred my ruined ears something fierce and I fear I wasted more time screaming. But maybe it was just as well, because when I was done I was truly myself again. I had, simply had, to reconnect that grapple! It seemed so simple, but…
…I didn’t want to burn again, either. Not that! Never, ever again! And Sword’s hull was already all silvery, almost like before!
Somewhere along the line Sergeant Wells had activated my sandal magnets so I wouldn’t float away. Wincing because I knew it was going to hurt, I raised my right foot and took a wobbly step forward. It wasn’t so bad, really—no worse than the time when I was little and fell down a flight of steps, smashing three teeth and breaking my jaw. So I ignored the agony and did it again. And again and again and again, squish-squish-squish in the medicated foam. I was ready to weep by the time I grabbed the loose end, but shook it off regardless. This had to be done, and that was that.
Even though I was quite certain that this time the back-eddies would kill me.
Since I couldn’t afford a second failed hookup I opened the connector with nearly numb fingers, then lined up my swing carefully so that with any luck at all the fitting would snap shut and grasp the pipe on its own, without my having to be around to close the thing manually. Then I made a couple practice swings, again to ensure that everything was just-so. A couple blaster bolts zinged by—apparently someone had finally seen me. But they were too late. I swung the grapple one last time, lined up everything just so…
…and slammed the fitting home onto the twisted, burned pipe!
Once again there was a terrible flash as the ship’s accumulated power was shunted down the endless, geometrically-impossible drain that was the grappling-line and Hummingbird’s hull, and I screwed my face up in anticipation of the terrible burning. But this time all that happened was that I felt a sort of electrical tickle pass up and down my body five or six times. I blinked, shocked to still be in existence. What on earth? Then suddenly I understood. It was the first-aid foam! It must be electrically-conductive, like Dad’s powder!
There wasn’t much time to celebrate, however. Suddenly the ever-thickening blaster-rounds were a lot more important than they’d been just seconds before; I used my sandal-magnets to creep around behind one of the little protuberances whose purpose I still hadn’t divined. Once there I was almost all the way aft, so that for the moment at least all the fire was coming from one direction. Sergeant Wells was still pinned down, and I didn’t see any way he was ever going to extricate himself without help. Though in turn, I also didn’t think anyone could force their way past him without paying a terrible price. My red light was blinking faster now, which meant I was getting worse. Though I didn’t need the indicators to know it—I was seeing black spots sometimes, and the problem didn’t lie in my suit’s oxygen density.
I looked back at the grapple, which was holding fine. Then I looked up towards Hummingbird, and my jaw dropped at how crowded the space between the two vessels had become. There was debris everywhere, of all sorts and description. Blown-out hatches, abandoned weapons, bits of cable, and a veritable snowstorm of ships papers. Worst of all, there were suited figures everywhere, many mutilated and some still feebly struggling to survive. Hummingbird herself was a near-skeletal wreck, though most of her guns were still blazing away. Which was more than could be said for Sword’s mounts—her huge fireballs would’ve been quite visible, had her major weapons remained in action. But…
I gulped. Yes, the navy’s engineers were very good indeed at repairing battle damage. But if Sword was in as pitiful a condition as my own ship, well…
None of us would be going home. Not ever.
21
I popped my head up again to check on Sergeant Wells—he was still pinned down, but very much alive and in the fight. His flanks were at least somewhat protected by intense covering fire from Hummingbird. And yet…
I scowled to myself. Surely I wasn’t the only one to notice how quickly Sword was deteriorating. The Imperials themselves had to know her condition better than anyone. Yet, it was becoming clear, they could no longer win this battle so long as the grapple was in place. So… If I were the enemy commander, what would I be doing?
It didn’t take long at all to figure that out, what with my sitting where I was and staring dead aft. Which was, as near as I could figure, the best place left for the Imperials to mass for a decisive counter-attack.
This time when I tried to lift my feet against the tug of the sandals, I couldn’t manage it at all. It wasn’t just the pain—that was tough, yes, but I’d conquered it before. The problem was that I was growing weaker by the second. Which was all the better reason for me to do what had to be done and get it over with, before I became totally helpless.
So I turned off the magnets and drifted slowly towards Sword’s stern, easing my way from handhold to handhold and keeping an eagle-eye out for the sudden massed attack that I was certain had to be coming. And sure enough, when I was just a few feet short of the end of the ship a whole gaggle of suited men, many of them marines, popped suddenly into my line of sight with their jetpacks roaring away at full power. I didn’t have time to think, which was just as well. Instead I hooked my leg around the nearest stanchion, drew my blaster, and let fly without aiming just as fast I could pull the trigger. Blam! Blam! Blam!
And three shots it was, no more and no less, because that was more than enough to empty my weapon. Indeed, the third blast was noticeably weaker than the previous two. But with them all catching the enemy drifting in the open, three were more than enough. Suddenly space was filled with writhing and twisted figures, all spinning in contrariwise directions as the survivors attempted desperately to evade the further rounds which they couldn’t know I was unable to fire. And in mere seconds all of Hummingbird’s heavy guns, alerted by my oversized discharges, were blazing away at the disorganized mass with all they had.
In the end only one Imperial marine really drove home his attack on the grapple. He came gliding directly at me, blaster aimed and ready as I tried to ward him off with my now-empty weapon. My bluff failed, however. He came boring in regardless, until the hole in the end of his own weapon looked like the entrance to a tunnel. By then I understood that it really didn’t matter much whether he fired or not— I’d had it regardless. So I held my gun up steady and proud, then lined the sights up directly on the Imperial’s helmet. “Bang!” I whispered at the moment when I should’ve fired, and so help me if I’d had even a partial charge left I’d have killed him. Instead he grew larger and larger and larger, until I wondered if he was bluffing too. When he was almost on me I looked down at Sword’s hull and closed my eyes. At least I’d held up my end, I reminded myself. And maybe now James and Pedro and the rest of those who’d been so kind to me might get away.
But somehow my enemy never fired. Instead something heavy landed on my back, driving me face-down into the hull. I screamed again at the insult to my poor, suffering ears, and in turn the screaming was effort enough to make the universe first fade, and then spin away into total darkness. After that I must’ve sort of faded in and out of consciousness for a while, because I remember being tugged along at an incredible speed by a group of marines, and then my helmet being removed in what I suppose must’ve been Sword’s sick bay.
“…only so many Tanks
to go around,” someone was saying. “And we’re going to need every one of them! There’s no way that I’m displacing a real person who needs intensive treatment for—“
“Shut your bloody trap!” I heard an enraged Sergeant Wells bellow. In the distance, blasters were still firing. “I don’t have to take any shit from a goddamn Imperial just because he happens to be a doctor!”
“Sarge!” I heard my friend Percy say from somewhere nearby. “Settle down a little. We’ll get the kid taken care of; there’s no need—“
“You shut your mouth too, Corporal!” Sergeant Wells shouted. “If you’d seen what I saw, well…” Then there was a click, which I recognized from my brief training as a standard-issue blaster’s safety being released. “Put him in the Tank! Right now, before it’s too bloody late! He can’t have more than another minute or two.”
I finally managed to open my eyes a little; sure enough Sergeant Wells was holding a gun in his bloody, burned left hand—the right one was now missing. “I…” I tried to say. “Uh…” But of course no one ever listened to a mere Rabbit.
“All right, Sergeant,” the voice agreed. “Have it your way. But I assure that I won’t be the one who…”
And then a far deeper blackness than any I’d ever known before surged up from somewhere within me and carried me far, far away.
David Birkenhead’s adventures continue in Book 2: Midshipman
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