tips.
Michael slowly emerged out of the darkness into a world of agony. His eyes would not open. Everything hurt badly except for the parts he could not feel. His left leg was dead. His groin was numb. The left side of his face was not there. Pain was everywhere else.
Slowly he got himself back under control. Comming the last of the painkillers into his system, he waited until the blessed wave of cool softness worked its magic. That was good, he thought. The only problem was that that was the end of them, and the way things were going, he would need a truckload more, and soon. With a huge effort, he started to put his hands up to his face. He had to see.
“Sir, sir!” The voice was urgent, demanding. “Sir, sir!” There was a muttering of voices; he could feel hands working on him. He could not make out what they were saying. Goddamn it! Why could he not see?
Another voice, much closer. “Sir! Lie back. We’re just cleaning you up.” Someone was shouting in the distance. Something about water. It made no sense.
“Mmmphhthh,” he tried, but he could not speak. His mouth was full of something foul. It tasted coppery, metallic. His tongue was thick; the damn thing would not do what it was told. Michael lay back. God, he was tired. He slipped back into the darkness.
When he awoke, he felt better, though not much; everything still hurt like hell, but at least his head was clearer. Cautiously, he opened his eyes, the sudden bright light making him wince with pain. He lay there for a moment. All he could see through slitted eyes was a distant deckhead hung with the usual confused mess of pipework, cables, lights, and gantries. That did not tell him much. One deckhead looked much like any other. He was in a hangar or cargo bay probably. Suddenly a face appeared. Michael’s eyes would not focus properly, and so he had no idea who it was. The face was a blur.
The face spoke. Thank God, Michael thought. It was not another damn Hammer. “Ah! Good, you’re awake. How do you feel?” the man asked.
“Uuurghhh.” Michael tried to get his tongue to move properly. It felt thick, like an old wool sock. “Water,” he croaked.
“Here you go,” the face whispered gently.
Michael drank greedily. The water was cold, and there was plenty of it. It felt good. “Thanks,” he mumbled gratefully.
“Tell me if you want more. You want more?”
Michael shook his head.
“So how do you feel?”
“Run over,” Michael croaked. “By a truck. Hurts everywhere.”
“Where mostly?”
“Ribs. Face. Bad.”
“Okay. Lie there while I have another look at you.”
Michael nodded weakly. Whoever the man was, he knew his stuff as he quickly and expertly checked Michael over, his fingers probing, prodding, and manipulating. When he was done, he leaned over.
“I know you won’t believe me, but you’re going to be fine, well, eventually. The damage is mainly superficial. So far as I can tell, no concussion, eyes and vision okay, no major bones broken, though your left cheekbone is in a bad way. Might be broken; can’t tell. Nothing too serious internally that I can see. Plenty of cuts and bruises, a lot of ligament damage, especially to the ribs, and some broken teeth. Oh, and someone kicked you in the groin. There’s a lot of swelling down there in all the wrong places, but that’ll mend.”
“Shithead.”
“What?” The man sounded baffled. “Who? Me?”
Michael shook his head. “No, no. Not you. Shithead did that. After I did it to him. One of the Hammers.”
The man looked confused. “Hammers? What Hammers?”
Michael struggled up into a sitting position. He quickly wished he had not; his ribs responded to the insult with a vicious stabbing wave of pain. “Holy Mother of God!” he whistled through clenched teeth. He waited until the pain receded a bit. “The men who’ve taken us. They’re Hammers.”
The man looked like he had been kicked. “Hammers. Oh, fuck!”
Michael nodded. “ ‘Oh, fuck’ is right. What’s your name?”
“Kaufmann, sir. Leading Spacer.”
“Medic?”
“Not exactly, sir. I’m a comm tech, but I do have emergency first aid training.”
“Ah, good. Thank God for that.”
Michael looked around carefully for the first time, struggling to get his eyes to focus properly. It seemed he was one of about fifty spacers being held in a wire cage. Most looked okay, though some clearly were not. A couple in particular looked to be in a bad way, each with a small group around him doing what they could to help. He turned back to Kaufmann. “Who’s senior here?”
“You are, sir. A couple of cadets are the only other officers; the rest are all spacers.”
“Shit.” The last thing Michael felt up to was doing the senior-officer-in-charge bit. “Okay. Who’s the senior spacer here?”
“Warrant Officer McGrath, sir, but we don’t think he’s going to last. The ship’s doctor has had a look. Severe head injuries, third-degree burns, internal injuries. He’s in a really bad way. We’re trying to keep him comfortable until, well, until. .” Kaufmann looked down at the deck as his voice trailed off.
The rage roared up in Michael, obliterating everything else. “What!” he shouted, ignoring the screams of protest from his ravaged body. “The fucking doctor says he’s dying, and he’s just left him here? Get a guard here. Now! You and you!” He pointed to two young spacers sitting against the wire of the cage close to him, their faces white with the shock of it all. “Get me up.”
With their help, Michael stood at the gate, hands locked into the wire to stay upright. “You,” he shouted at one of the guards, “get over here. Get over here now or by God, you’ll regret it.” To Michael’s surprise, the man, shipsuited and hooded like all the rest, did not need much persuading; he slouched over to see what Michael wanted.
“Yeah? Waddya want?”
“Right, you fucking piece of Hammer filth,” he shouted furiously, “listen to me. You go now and get whoever’s in charge of this circus. Tell him Helfort wants to see him. Now!”
The man stepped back in astonishment. Without another word, he spun on his heel and was gone.
Kaufmann was impressed. “Bugger me, sir. Don’t fool around, do you?”
“Yeah, well. What has to be done and all that,” he whispered as he slid down the wire and onto the deck.
When Michael shuffled painfully out of the interrogation room, he felt a brief moment of elation.
He did not know who Kingpig was, but the man was not all bad even if he had allowed him to be beaten to a bloody pulp. It turned out that the doctor had not bothered to inform Kingpig that some of his unwilling guests were dying and that more would die without proper medical attention. Kingpig had been visibly angry when Michael told him. Michael was glad he was not the doctor. It looked like the man’s casual attitude toward his duties would cost him dearly. Even better, it seemed that Kingpig had bought the story that the Feds could soon be on to them. Michael did not know who they were, but there must be other officers in other cages, and they would have run the same analysis as Michael, and so they must know it was the Hammers they were up against.
The only flaw in Michael’s hastily constructed position was the fictitious intelligence report. Kingpig had told him that all the other officers he had interrogated had flatly denied that any such thing existed. Kingpig must have attributed that to their unwillingness to reveal classified information; the possibility that they actually might be telling the truth did not seem to have occurred to him. So they were safe, for the moment at least.
When Michael was pushed back into the cage, he was pleased to see the Hammers already stretchering away the worst of the casualties. It seemed that Kingpig really was the man in charge or at least a man who could make things happen. Michael was exhausted. He had to sleep. He waved Kaufmann over.
“Sir?”
“Tell whoever is next senior after me that they’re in charge. I can’t do this mu. .”
