confusion. One of her arms was missing. How could that be? The nanites glistened in the wound. I could see them in the fabric too as they worked to close the gap in her suit. She shouldn’t even be conscious, I thought, but here she was, carrying me through the ship like a sack of potatoes with her one remaining arm.
I looked back behind me. Something strange was flying after me down the corridor. It took me a second to recognize Marvin. He was following us.
“What are you doing, Marvin?” I asked.
“Following you,” he said.
“What for?”
“You must survive to fulfill your commitments.”
It took me a dazed second to realize he was talking about his homemade spaceship fantasy. I would have laughed if I wasn’t nearly dead. “Go back and rescue everyone you can. Get them out of the ship. Then we’ll talk about building your dream body.”
He did a U-turn and sped away. Sandra paused and pressed her faceplate against mine.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wish I wasn’t. Get us out of here.”
“My suit radio is broken,” she said.
“I figured.”
“I’m firing the airlock bolts now,” she said. “I need you to use your good hand to clamp my suit closed. The nanites haven’t sealed it completely yet.”
I frowned. Several things about her statement concerned me. One worry was her use of the phrase your good hand — which indicated I had a bad one. I quickly figured my left side was the bad one, because it didn’t move when my nerves sent signals to it to do so. I reached up with my right to grasp the dangling scraps of cloth around her stump. Another major worry was the implication she was about to launch us into space. Her flapping suit made this a bad idea.
“This won’t hold,” I said. “I can’t make a good enough seal.”
“Hold on,” she said.
Hearing her words, my first thought was she had meant to wait a second while she fixed the situation, but she didn’t mean that at all. She meant literally: hold on.
The air in the lock gushed out, and we gushed out with it into space. Sandra and I twirled out into a freezing void. We tumbled, but my suit jets automatically fired, steadying us. I grabbed up a handful of Sandra’s suit material and held onto it for all I was worth. It was like a cinched bag in my hand. We weren’t in a good position to touch helmets again, so I couldn’t hear her if she was talking. She pointed downward.
I hurt my neck in order to take a look. There was quite a drama playing out down there. Three ships were left in the fight. The fourth one, the Macro ship that had been to our north, was floating scrap. Our own ship was trailing fire and explosions. The cannon was still blazing, however. I figured the sparks along our hull were due to the continuous, hammering impacts from the enemy cannons. Tiny figures swam away in every direction out of my ship. I craned my neck around, and after my vision cleared, I saw my marines swarming over both the Macro vessels, setting their charges.
I smiled and listened as my men signaled each other. The plan was working-sort of. They were destroying them all. As I watched, they laid bombs on their hulls and sprang away like fleas jumping off a dying dog. We were the swarm plaguing them, now.
I turned my head back toward Sandra. She was watching the scene with me. It was silent, colorful and terrifying all at once. My fingers were still holding the cloth of her suit together. I knew if the nanites were in close proximity, they were more likely to meet and chain up into an airtight surface. Apparently, they had made a good enough seal, because she was still alive. We’d spun around to watch the battle, and I was able to twist enough to click my faceplate against hers.
“What happened to your other arm?” I asked.
“It hurts,” she said.
“Hurts? I’ve got some bad news…”
“It will be fine.”
“You should have listened. You should have kept your battle suit on.”
“Don’t start with me, Kyle,” she said. “My arm will be fine.”
“It’s been blown clean off, girl!” I shouted. “It’s about to burn up in that dying ship.”
Our old cruiser was sagging now, flying upside down like a dead goldfish. The top of it ran with streaks of fire and thick vapors as it scudded against the mesosphere, the layer of Earth’s atmosphere where most meteors burned up. The friction would soon melt the hull to slag. I was sorry to see it go down.
“No it isn’t,” she said, rummaging in her utility pack.
Sandra grunted and pulled something into view. It was a stiff, feminine arm. “See, here it is. Frozen solid, but with some hard-working nanites and microbial-loving, it will work again. You’ll see. I’ll give you a massage with this by Christmas.”
“Microbials?” I asked. “I thought we left them all on Jolly Rodger.”
“I’ve still got some inside-trust me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Maybe she could reattach her limb. I turned back to watch the battle. Things had taken a welcome turn. Earth’s missiles took out one of the last two cruisers and finally, at the very last, Crow’s Fleet showed up and made a production of destroying the last limping Macro ship. I figured Crow would award himself a medal for saving the day.
Something flipped off inside my brain then, and I blacked out.
51
I awoke looking at Sandra. I couldn’t even recall passing out, or being taken down dirtside. The familiar tug of real gravity felt good on my bones-most of them. Some were irritated, having been broken in several places. I groaned, and Sandra smiled.
She looked hot to me, even with one arm missing. I realized with a feeling of disconnection that she really was smiling. It had to be the microbes and nanites working on her injuries. Most people aren’t happy after they have a limb ripped off and nearly die. What I wasn’t sure of is how much those tiny creatures had affected her mind as well as her body.
“You’re awake,” she said.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“Back home on Andros Island. This is the hospital inside Fort Pierre. Don’t you recognize it?”
“Tell me I fell in the shower and the aliens were all a bad dream.”
Sandra shook her head. “I wish they were. We won at least-you do remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes. Tell me about my crew, did everyone make it?”
She shook her head. “Welter got out. Sloan got out.”
“Sloan always gets out,” I commented. “What about Jasmine?” I asked.
Her eyes half-closed and pursed her lips into a tight, pissed expression.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I mean Major Sarin.”
“She made it, but she was banged up a bit. She says Marvin carried her off the ship as it went down into the atmosphere. And Kwon has some new scars, but he’s still a marine.”
“That’s great news,” I said.
“Gorski can’t be found,” she continued, frowning. “I think he manned his gun until the end.”
“Gorski didn’t make it?” I asked, shaking my head. “He was a good man. I’ll name a ship or a base after him.”
“Really, we didn’t lose too many considering the cruiser went down,” Sandra said. “Most of the unit was out jumping on Macro ships in those new suits of yours.”
“How about you?” I asked.
Sandra lifted her stump of an arm for me to examine. I could see a dangling tendon and mercury-like
