and humanity flushing out into space was Sandra. Not only that, but the bricks were the key to our long term survival. Without them, we would run out of food, air, water and be unable to adapt by building new equipment in the factories.
“What is it?” Kwon asked, finally catching on that something was terribly wrong.
I shushed him, making a chopping motion in the air. “Keep the signal going, Welter,” I said.
Things went from bad to worse about ten seconds later.
“Sir?” Major Welter said, “things have gone badly, I’m getting a transmission from Major Sarin…the Macros have engaged some kind of device.”
At least Sarin was alive. But what about Sandra? my mind asked. “Keep feeding me data,” I told him.
About then, the invasion ship blew up. The engines exploded, popping like a fireworks display. The hold area lurched forward, swallowing a few of the escaping bricks and marines that floated away from it. Some were riding dishes, and they flew with desperate surges of speed.
Fortunately, explosions in space are not as far-reaching as they are in a planetary atmosphere. Without air to carry the shockwave, even an atomic explosion has to be very close to kill. There was no air to burn or carry the concussive force to my people. The invasion ship itself came apart in a blossoming ball of radiation and molten metal, killing a number of them.
I watched the silent, expanding sphere of destruction with a sinking heart. I’d watched many friends die, but usually not in a single, helpless instant like this.
Numbly, I switched off the video input from Major Welter’s helmet. I had to do something. What was it?
“Alpha and Delta companies,” I said, my voice sounding faint even to my ears. “Get onto your skateboards. Get out there and drag any and all survivors and equipment you can find back to the cruiser. This ship is our home now.”
19
I put everyone I could on rescue duty, but it wasn’t enough. Some marines and bricks fell tumbling, out of control, toward the atmosphere of the icy planet below us. They would burn up in a few hours, but I couldn’t get to them. I tried not to think about it.
A full twenty minutes later I got the first word about Sandra. She was identified floating with a brick. We later realized she’d tethered herself to it and when they were jettisoning all the equipment in waves, she’d been flushed out of the hold. Unfortunately, she’d been badly banged-up.
I dared let hope take hold. Letting my exoskeletal suit take huge strides for me, I ran up to the outer decks to the spot we’d drilled into on the cruiser’s hull. On the way, I berated myself for not putting Sandra into a battle suit. I’d built less than two hundred of them, and had used them all on the invasion forces. This had been a sound military decision, but I was still upset I hadn’t used my rank to protect Sandra. It was hard as a commander to have the power to do things that could help your loved ones-even if they weren’t ethical.
When I’d reached the breach, I ordered a squad to clamp down our bricks directly on the surface of the cruiser. We had no way to get them inside at the moment and we needed the life support systems each carried. Marines clustered around each brick, powering up their suits and replenishing their oxygen until the brick was dry. It would take hours to reprocess more supplies, so I had Kwon limp around, knocking heads and getting the marines to share evenly.
It was up on the dark, scarred surface of the cruiser that I found Sandra. They had her stacked in a medical brick. She was in a medical pod. The little door on her pod was closed. I frowned, knowing that was a bad sign. The nanite arms inside worked their little tripods of black metal fingers, performing their magic upon her body. I was filled with memories. Bad ones. She would be pissing out nanites again soon-if she ever got the opportunity to relieve herself again.
I asked the tech what her status was. There were thirty-odd other little coffins stacked up in a tight space with him, but he didn’t seem to mind.
“Best I can tell sir, that one’s a turnip.”
A turnip was Star Force slang for a vegetable stashed away by our nanite friends in a dark hole. The nanites were amazingly good at keeping people alive if you got to a medical unit fast enough. But they couldn’t always fix them completely. Sometimes there was just too much cellular damage. Nanites could force her lungs to function, even if she couldn’t do so on her own, but they couldn’t breathe life into the dead.
I wanted to physically attack the tech who had given me the news so callously, but I controlled myself. He didn’t know he was talking about my girl. I glanced at his nametag. “Give me the details, Sergeant Carlson-and pretend to care.”
Carlson caught my tone and changed his. “Sorry sir. She’s in a coma. Not the good, temporary kind. She’s got almost no brain activity registering. We can keep her on nanite support, but…”
Carlson didn’t need to finish the thought. I leaned against her metal and ballistic-glass coffin, and opened the curtain on the little window. It was fogged with grease and condensation. I could see her in there, just barely. Her hair was still a rich, dark brown. She didn’t look dead, but looks could be deceiving.
It took a while for my throat to unlock enough to allow speech. “What hit her?” I asked.
“Oxygen deprivation and other decompression effects. Her suit was perforated and vented extensively in vacuum. It had repaired itself by the time we got to her, but the damage had been done.”
The damage had been done. Prophetic words. Losing Sandra shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did. I’d lost my wife, and my kids. I’d lost a dozen men who were right there in my face. I hadn’t even been traumatized by watching her die in front of me. She had died while I was busy fighting a ten ton steel bug. But it did hurt to see her like that. It hurt a lot.
“What are her odds?” I asked.
“Odds, sir?”
“Some make a miraculous recovery, don’t they? I’ve been briefed on it.”
“Well, it has happened,” Carlson said with a shrug. “I would give any of them a thousand-to-one shot. The nanites might tickle the right organ. Our tissue damage estimates might be off.”
“How many like her do you have in this brick?” I asked.
“Seven, sir.”
“Do you have enough pods to keep supporting them all?”
Carlson hesitated. “What are you asking sir?”
“You heard me. We have more injuries coming in. Do you have enough pods to support the new injured, the ones with better odds?”
Carlson thought about it. I looked over and saw him tapping at his slate computer. At last he pronounced his verdict: “Yeah. We’ve got enough. There are only a few more coming back now. We’ll be able to keep these seven alive indefinitely-if you want to call it that.”
I gave him a flat stare.
“Uh, sorry sir. But really, we aren’t doing them any favors by keeping them breathing. If the nanites can’t repair their bodies, there isn’t anything the best hospital on Earth could do for them. Even if we cart them all the way home, they won’t make it.”
So strange. I looked into the pod, and could see the nanites had done all surface work correctly. Soon, I knew, her skin would be smooth and perfect again. Since she’d died due to asphyxiation, there wouldn’t even be any scars. But she would never open her eyes, speak, or have a coherent thought again. Sometimes, advanced medical technology had its downside.
“What did we do with the turnips back on Helios?” I asked.
Carlson looked as if he were going to ask what do you mean? again, but he saw my face and didn’t try it.
“We didn’t load that brick sir. It was low priority.”
“We left them. For Worm food. They have dissected them by now. You know that, don’t you?”
He shook his head. “We made sure there was nothing for them to tear apart, sir.”
