Chapter 45

Even before becoming a young rebel, blood had never troubled Connor. He’d trained with his father for years in full-contact martial arts, so he’d seen plenty of grisly injuries.
But the wound to Martienne’s head looked bad. Dangerous. Life-threatening.
He stepped back, brushed sweat from his forehead with the back of a gory glove, and assessed the situation.
Monitoring systems pinged and chimed, but their data weren’t so cheerful as their sounds. The pilot lay on the treatment bed, naked torso covered with a sheet that didn’t obscure the equipment leads or the purpling bruises from where her harness and the mangled shuttle nose had punished her for her bold landing attempt.
His own backside and neck were probably just as deeply bruised, based on the aches when he shifted or turned.
And then there was the empty Dustoff packet Drew had dropped.
Connor sucked in a deep, alcohol-laced breath to reset himself.
These were minor problems. Martienne’s life was on the line.
Where he’d shaved her hair away, the scalp lay open like a flap three—almost four—centimeters across. The gash went deep, exposing dark red tissue and the white of bone.
Whatever had struck her had cut or jabbed hard. She should have been knocked out immediately.
She’s a tough old bird, he reminded himself.
Concussion seemed the least of their concerns at the moment. One of his fellow rebels during the Nyango Revolt had survived a grenade attack with a lesser slash across the forehead but had died a couple days later. Blood on the brain, or something. Pressure. The fluid sac around the brain. Swelling.
They needed Lem, but he was on the planet.
Connor activated his pocket computer with the least bloody of his knuckles. “Radio Lem.”
The mask muffled his voice but not so much the computer couldn’t understand. Several seconds dragged by, during which he cleaned new trickles of blood away and fought back shivers that could be the onset of nausea or simply fatigue.
Finally, his computer issued a bright tone: The connection was made.
Static hissed, dissipated by insect-like clicks and chitters. “Connor?”
It was Lem!
“Hey. You guys doing okay?” Connor planted his fists against the mattress of the bed where his computer rested and leaned in, shivering.
“Nothing has come from the dark of the forest yet.”
“Good. Stay alert. Keep those lights burning.”
“Yes. We have ample battery power for days of light. Is that why you called—the batteries?”
“No. We’ve got a problem. It might be serious.”
“I understand the shuttle has been destroyed?”
“It’ll be cheaper to buy a replacement than fix it.” Connor winced at the memory of the collapsed wing and nose. The hangar bay was going to need work, too. “Lem, Martienne has a serious cut along the left side of her head.”
“When you say serious, how would you rate that on a scale of one to ten?”
“If ten’s decapitation, I think this might be a seven or eight.”
“I see.”
“I can see bone, and it might be scraped.”
“Yes. A seven or eight seems a fair assessment, then. This could be a problem. Would you mind if I connect to my medical systems through your computer?”
Connor smiled. “It’s why I called you.”
“I appreciate your consideration.” There was no humor in the android’s dry tone.
While Lem ran through the remote connection process, Connor hobbled over to the cooler and took out an electrolyte replacement packet. Salts, sugars, and just enough water to keep everything drinkable…if you ignored the taste.
But his body signaled that it was exactly what was needed.
He crushed the packet and tossed it into the recycler, then pulled a paper cup from the water dispenser and washed the chemical slurry down with long gulps of fresh water.
The effect was almost immediate and no doubt purely psychological, initially at least.
Lem’s voice rose over the monitoring equipment. “Connor?”
A slender, articulated, stainless steel robot arm with a camera mounted on it scanned up and down the pilot’s prostrate body.
“Yeah?” He limped back to Martienne’s bedside, staying wide of the camera.
“I believe your concerns are warranted. Although I could better render an assessment via physical presence, I have little doubt about my conclusions.”
“What is it?”
“Blood has collected beneath the bone in the area of the cut, applying pressure to the brain. There is risk of death.”
“All right. What do I need to do?”
“Ideally, she would be given a few days under close monitoring.”
“We don’t have a few days, Lem. Those things in the forest could attack you at any time.” Connor wasn’t about to give words to his fear that his teammates would die in such an attack.
“This presents a problem.”
Another robot arm telescoped from the bulkhead. A cylindrical tube as long as Connor’s hand slid out from the end, then eight surgical tools sprung out like spider legs from the sides: blades, scissors, pointed probes, drill bits, pincers.
Lem made a sound like humming. “Actually, I can handle everything remotely.”
“Lag isn’t going to be a problem?”
“I will cache the sequence of commands and proceed slowly. You, however, will need to stand by to assist with cleaning and applying—”
The infirmary lights dimmed noticeably, and Lem went silent.
Actually, the entire room went silent—the monitoring systems, the hushed murmur of the ventilation system, the ever-present rumble of mechanisms throughout the ship.
And the radio connection to the planet surface.
Power. Something had happened to the Lucky Sevens’s power.
How close had they been to operating on Martienne, possibly killing her?
Connor tore a glove off and grabbed his computer, then connected to the ship’s intercom. “Drew? Can you hear me?”
His gaze dropped to the empty Dustoff packet he’d set on the bed next to his computer.
Had she fouled something up again? Was it all revenge for firing her?
That wasn’t fair. He had no proof at all she was still using. An empty packet—
The computer buzzed, then the intercom squealed. “Connor? We’ve got a problem.”
“I noticed.”
“It’s the reactor. I—I need to get in there. Something caused an overload.”
“A what?”
“The monitoring system detected a huge drain and shut the reactor down. I think it’s a short.”
“We still have batteries.”
“Yeah, but they’re going to drain fast. We’ve got to fix this, or we could be electrocuted with one bad step.”
“If the batteries drain, how do we restart the reactor?”
“We can’t. That’s what I’m saying. We have to fix this, or we’re dead.”