ships from the left flank. Shields up, the Empire forces closed ranks, counting losses with a shock which reverberated throughout the fleet and was expressed in emergency blinkstats beamed along the route to Empire central.
For a brief period, the Texican fleet was exposed to long-range beams, but the distance limited damage to a few singed external pods and extensions. The Darlene projectiles ripped through space, blinking out. An explosion against a shield was as deadly as an explosion against a bare hull.
The Empire launched a thousand ships against Texas. When the generators were charged, allowing for orderly retreat, under seven hundred vessels sought the safety of far space in a planned withdrawal which no officer of the fleet could accept. It was inconceivable to the Empire mind to think that a ragtag fleet of converted freighters could rout an entire Empire battle fleet. Combat commanders wanted to mount an all-out assault on Texas immediately, withdrawing huge units of the fleet from the Cassiopeian lines. Cooler heads prevailed. It was recognized, at fleet headquarters, that the Empire was up against a new weapon and a new technique of battle. Gray-haired Admirals gulped wakers and pored over reports of the brief but tragic battle. Plans were made and discarded. The Emperor himself interested himself in the affair and shipworks all over the Empire were put on overtime to replace the lost vessels.
On Texas, it was party time. The victory over the Empire fleet had been so swift, so decisive, so
bloodless that young hotheads called for an immediate strike into Empire territory on the theory that the best defense is a good offense.
'If I were in charge of the Empire fleet,' Arden Wal told a group of high-ranking officials at the debriefing, 'I would deploy my forces to envelop all of Texican space with a ring of fire. Such a plan would require massive forces, but I need not tell you that the Empire has such forces. Ranks of ships blinking in at intervals, in tremendous numbers, would, sooner or later, catch your fleet between blinks. True, you can double-blink, but then you must charge. True, you are superior ship to ship because of your armaments, but the Empire's weapons are superior to your ship shields. Some of your ships are not even shielded. Caught in a direct fire, you'd sustain losses. And the loss of one Texican ship is the equivalent of the loss of some several thousands of Empire ships.'
But the first battle of Texas did what it was planned to do. It bought time, time for the Blink Space Works to finish and outfit hulls, time for Darlene space rifles to be installed on everything large enough to handle the weight. And it bought Lex enough time to reenter the hospital to find the reason for his severe headaches.
In spite of the surgeons' skills, a small hematoma had formed and once again be was lying in bed with a hole in his bead cursing the Empire sadists who had mucked around in his brain. It was not until he was moved into convalescent quarters atop the large building, with a view of the plains to the west, that he began to believe that fate works in strange ways and that his hematoma was a blessing in disguise, for there he met Riddent.
Most of the female personnel of the hospital were career people, aged thirty and up, stern-faced, motherly, businesslike. They brooked no nonsense from patients, not even a young, virile Texican of good looks and restlessness. Lex complained bitterly against a technology which could build an airors brain and a Darlene projectile, but which could not devise a better means of getting medicines into his blood than with a needle the size of the fangs of a beagle. There were two broad, meaty areas on his lower backside which were the favorite targets of the females and their needles and it became almost automatic with Lex, upon the approach of a nurse, to lower his hospital pajamas and roll onto his stomach.
But when they snuck up on you in your sleep—
He'd been lying on his stomach thinking of that little girl back in school and wondering what she was doing. He dozed and awoke to a feel a draft on his backside and then the bite of a needle and he yelped, twisting away to break the needle off in his flesh.
'Now see what you've done,' said a female voice.
'Ouch, dammit,' Lex said, as fingers pushed flesh down around the stuck needle and then plucked. 'Great Zed's balls, do you have to—' He halted in mid-sentence, for a big, forceful hand had zapped him, hard, right on the spot where the needle had penetrated. 'Ahhhhhh,' he groaned, rolling over to escape and then he was frozen because she stood there, tall, new whites crisp and bulging with Texas girl, big, a man's woman, an armful.
'I will not,' she said, her lips pulled back, her eyes fierce, 'tolerate such language.'
'Duh,' Lex said, his mouth open.
'Not on my first day,' she said, her eyes going moist.
'Well, look, I'm sorry,' Lex managed, but the tears were there and she turned. He tried to scramble off the bed, but his pajamas were down and he fell heavily and she, hearing the thump, turned, tears streaming.
'Oh, did you hurt yourself?' She was kneeling by his side and he was thinking more of his exposure than of his bruises, and was pawing at his pajamas and trying to look at her eyes, which were as blue as Texas skies, and her hair, which was the yellow flame of a sun, and her—well, he was trying to look at all of her and his eyes weren't made to take in that much at one time and they crossed as he let them fall to the bulging front of her whites.
She, seeing his crossed eyes and thinking terrible things about concussions and possible reinjury, went white through her lovely tan and said, 'Don't move, I'll get help.'
'Help,' Lex repeated, in a stunned voice, as he fell a thousand parsecs deep into her eyes.
'Yes,' she said, pushing him back as he tried to sit up. 'I'll get help.'
'You help.'
'Yes, yes, I will,' she said, her voice agitated.
'I'm all right.'
'Yes, I'll get help.'
He grabbed the sleeve of her dress. 'No, don't leave me.'
'I have to. I have to get help.'
'I'm afraid,' he said. He was truly afraid, afraid she would walk out and he'd never see her again.
'Yes, yes, I'll help.' She began tugging on him. He was a big lad. Her hands were so warm, so soft on his arms. He let her pull him to his feet, and then he leaned, putting an arm around her shoulder. He had the universe in his arms, the stuff of creation was bursting inside him. He let her guide him to the bed.
'Where do you hurt?' she asked, leaning over him anxiously.
'Hurt?' he asked stupidly.
At last she recognized his dazed look. 'Oh, you,' she said, popping him on the chest, hard, with her fist.
And then she was gone, turning, skirt flaring to show lovely thighs.
'Miss, miss,' Lex wailed, seeing her back retreating from him. She paused, turned. 'Don't go, please don't go.'
'There's nothing wrong with you,' she said.
'I'm hurting. The fall.'
She approached his bed warily. She looked at him with her big eyes squinted. 'I can give you a shot.' 'I don't hurt anymore,' he said. 'Don't go,' he said, as she turned.
'Look,' she said. 'I have work to do.' 'Give me the shot,' he said. 'You don't need a shot.' 'I need to—look at you.' 'You can do that every day when I make the rounds.' She smiled, the skies opening up after a dark,
northern storm. 'No extra charge for looking.' Her name, he discovered, was Riddent. In Old English that meant 'laughing.' It was, he felt, a beautiful name, a descriptive name, for just seeing her made him want to laugh, to sing, to do things like leaping on
an airors and gunning it to all-out and making low passes at the hills. And there were no rings on her fingers. Not even a promise ring. 'Riddent?' 'Yes?' Patient. Eyes so large, so deep. 'Don't go.' His hip tingling from another shot. With perverse female joy, she seemed to like punching him with
needles. 'I have work to do.' Another day. 'Riddent, have lunch with me.' 'Sorry, I have a date.' He sneaked into the dining hall, ambulatory to a limited extent, to see her lunching with a doctor, a
youngish doctor, but old enough to be her father. He guessed her age at eighteen.
'He's too old for you,' he said, next time she rolled him onto his stomach. She slapped his bare hip, drove the needle ouchingly deep into his flesh, and then wiped the sting with a cool, damp something. 'Who?' 'That man. The doctor.' 'That's none of your business.' But as she left the room, she turned, gave him a pixie grin. 'He's my father.' And, another day, the rain clouds rolling down from the big northern emptiness, gusty winds making
themselves heard inside the room, fat drops running down the glass. 'I'm a San Ann girl. Grew up in the shadow of the hospital.'
'And you wanted to become a doctor?' 'Not a doctor. Yeeech. Cutting into people.' 'You shouldn't have any
