And what had she sacrificed, with a hold full of riches and all her belongings intact?
Maybe her crew.
Bracing herself against the bulkhead edges and fighting a tug of vertigo, Talis leaned forward and looked down. She could see the round silver forms of alien ships freshly added to the flotsam layer. Now an undeniable part of Peridot’s sordid history. There were Veritor ships down there, too, but their dull wooden hulls blended with the older detritus: just more of the same.
The hull breach extended down past the floor to the deck below. A portion of the cargo hold where everything was fortunately tethered to the decking and not the bulkhead. She chose not to seek out further damage.
Something in her mind twitched a note that she probably ought to make sure their payload was still in the hold, if they were going to requisition the kinds of repairs Wind Sabre needed.
But Tisker was alone on deck, keeping his blistered hands to Wind Sabre’s wheel. She owed him haste, and then some.
She gathered up two metal mugs and filled a pitcher with water from the barrels that, thankfully, were stacked along the inner bulkhead. She put them on a tray, then made her way to the med bay.
Hankirk was struggling to tourniquet his arm. It was a rough enough job one-handed, and he’d lost a lot of blood. He was pale, and sweat beaded on his brow. His lips were tinged with blue.
“You actually listened to me,” she said, and pushed aside the litter from his self-care so she could put the tray down on the counter.
Scrimshaw lay on the bunk in the corner, watching them with those big sapphire eyes. She nodded to xin, and xe lightly fluttered the fingers that rested on xist chest over the blue scarring. The stump of xist right leg, not much more than half xist thigh, was elevated. The Yu’Nyun field kit lay open on the deck beneath the bunk, in a sticky puddle of blue blood.
“Not much choice,” Hankirk replied, voice weak. His teeth were chattering. His shoulders flinched with involuntary shudders.
She grabbed a pair of shears and took over. “You’ve gotta get that jacket off. This needs to be tight.”
He nodded, shifting awkwardly to try and peel the ruined sleeve off, but she put a hand on his good arm and he stilled. She cut up the back, through the expensive trimmed jacket and the ruined cotton shirt beneath. It was soaked, more with the moisture from his cold sweat than with blood, except past the shoulder. She peeled it back. The blood had gone sticky, but for Hankirk it was only a matter of time, so she wasted none for gentleness. He clamped down on a roar of pain, and she flung the tattered clothing into the corner. The wound pulsed with fresh blood. The flow was not as strong as it should have been.
That infernal Veritor sigil was tattooed on his chest, over his heart. The black ink lines were soft and tinged with green. It was old, though she didn’t remember it from their academy days.
“You chose the wrong friends,” she told him.
She held out a hand and he placed the rubber tourniquet into it. Cleaning the wound was pointless until the bleeding stopped.
“But I wasn’t wrong.” His voice was weak.
Instead of answering, she tied off his arm and cranked the tourniquet. She had to get to Tisker. She hated that Hankirk’s wound took priority. That she couldn’t make herself just leave him to it. His pale skin went whiter as it tightened. He only looked at her.
She sighed, then cringed even as the words came out. “You were right about ‘fixing’ Peridot, weren’t you? All along, The Five just never did it.”
He had the sense not to gloat, or perhaps he just didn’t have the energy. He watched her treat his arm and moved his fingers a little bit, with difficulty. They spasmed instead of wiggled.
She went to the cabinet for loose cotton, strips of bandaging, and a bottle of astringent. She held it all out for him to take with his good hand.
He secured the bottle between his knees so he could lift the cap and pumped the liquid onto the cotton. His gaze had regained some of its intensity. He looked at her sideways as he gently wiped at the blood on his arm.
“They betrayed me,” he said. “They would have replaced our gods with the Yu’Nyun. Talis, what were they thinking?”
She involuntarily glanced over at Scrimshaw, but if xe reacted to Hankirk’s mention of xist race, there was no outward sign of it.
Hankirk held out a mess of reddened cotton expectantly. She looked at it, disgusted, and used a foot to slide the bin closer so he could drop them in. He moistened another piece of cotton and turned back to his arm. It would take all the cotton they had to mop up that mess. Thick, half-dried blood stuck to the wound. The flesh was ruined, looked more like a badly butchered hock, and she could see far more of the bones of his forearm than she cared to. Her doing.
She turned to the sink and scoured his blood off her hands. Didn’t answer him. Didn’t have an answer for him, but his words reminded her of something. “Did either of you ever read, in all that research, that the planet used to be called Meran?”
Scrimshaw didn’t reply. Xist eyelids were closed. Possibly xe’d passed out. Or had sedated xist-self with something in the kit.
“No… She tell
