The out-of-control alarm eased from his expression and he relaxed back against the pillows. “No drugs. Please, don’t knock me out.”
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What had the CSS done to him?
She swallowed and let her hands slip down from his face. “Okay, we won’t put you under. We’ll just give you something for the pain.”
“No. I can’t—I won’t—” He started shaking, his whole body wracking with deep shudders.
Sacha clamped a hand on his shoulder. “It’s all right. We won’t do anything you don’t want us to do.”
She couldn’t do anything about the rusty tenor of her voice, betraying the emotions ripping her up inside. But anyone who saw their commander now would no doubt have trouble staying detached in the face of this reality.
To steady herself, she took a long breath. “But we’re going to have to re-break your leg. It’s not going to be pretty.”
He clenched his jaw and dropped his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t care. Just do it and don’t give me anything.”
Sacha glanced over at Moore, who appeared pale and more than a little shaken. But they were the ones who had to be strong, who had to pull the commander back together and then hold him up until he could stand on his own.
She steeled her spine and moved back to the end of the bed. “You heard the commander. Let’s get this done and then leave the man to rest.”
Moore and the male nurse joined her and she quickly instructed them where to hold and how she wanted to proceed. They wouldn’t need to use any instruments. Because of Kai’s malnutrition and the angle of the bone, she could tell it was a simple snap away from being in the right place. Once she freed and re-aligned the bone, the bone-mending cylinder—or BMC—would heal the injury completely within twenty-four hours.
When she was sure everyone had gotten on board with the game plan, she wrapped a hand around the ankle and lower calf. She didn’t have to do much, just twist in counteraction to Moore.
Sacha glanced up and caught Kai’s glinting stare.
“Are you sure you want to do this without pain meds?” Her voice wavered like an intern on her first gory case.
He gave a single jerk of his head, and then returned to staring at the ceiling. His large hands wrapped around the rails of the bed, banged-up knuckles showing white with the pressure of his hold.
Preparing herself, Sacha looked from Moore to the male nurse. They had to get this right the first time.
“On three, gentlemen. One…two…three!”
She and Moore wrenched in opposite directions and a sickening, dull crack echoed a split second before Kai roared. The shout sounded near animalistic, with the kind of painful intensity that made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Kai went rigid all over for a long moment and then collapsed into a boneless heap.
“The commander is unconscious again,” the male nurse reported after a brief check.
She helped Moore set the bone to where it should be and then braced both of her hands against the edge of the bed, her limbs feeling like jelly. One of the other sub-doctors brought the BMC over and with Moore’s help, she positioned it over the damaged calf.
“Good work, Doctor Dalton.” Someone touched her briefly on the shoulder. Her peripheral senses were aware of people moving around her, but for a few moments she could only lean against the bed and stare at the man she’d mourned for almost a year and a half.
With a ragged breath she straightened, needing some time and space to decompress, to unwind and get used to the fact that Commander Kai Yang was alive and for the most part, okay.
“Comm me when he wakes up, and let me know if anything changes,” she instructed no one in particular. But the sub-doctors and nurses around her all returned agreements.
She turned and maneuvered past all the medical staff, going against the tide to head back toward the quarantine air-lock doors that separated the med-facilities from the rest of the ship.
The doors whooshed open and Doctor Macaulay rushed through, along with several other doctors who still should have been in the conference with him.
Macaulay grabbed her shoulder. “Is it true? Have they got Commander Yang in there?”
Mustering a nod, she called on the thin wire of professional detachment keeping her together. “The commander is in bad shape, but considering where he’s been the past year and a half, it could have been worse. He’s not conscious, but he was awake and lucid for a little while.”
A murmur rippled between the other doctors as Macaulay muttered a curse.
She gently pulled out of his hold. “If you’ll excuse me, Commander Emmanuel and Captain Phillip will be waiting to hear some details, I need to go debrief them.”
He stepped back and ran a hand through his hair. “Of course. Go, I’ll keep an eye on things here until you get back.”
She nodded a reply and then continued through the air-lock and out past offices and conference rooms. When she reached the transit-porter—which went between levels of the ship or from one end to the other—instead of going up to the command center, she went down to crew deck.
At this time of day, the ship’s level of crew housing was pretty much deserted. Which suited her just fine. She didn’t have to wear her Doctor Dalton mask as she took the short walk from the lift to her quarters.
The door slid silently open from a personalized remote sensor as she got closer. Inside, she only made it as far as the couch in the small living area before her legs gave out and she collapsed heavily on the cushions. Tears came hard and fast. And then a sob clenched her chest. She hiccupped for air and got attacked by another round of soul-deep sobbing, grief welling up from where she’d shoved it so she wouldn’t have to deal.
First Kai, her oldest friend, had been listed KIA. And then not even six months later, Elliot had been killed going in hot over Ilari lines, trying to provide air backup for the men caught on the ground. How many times had she had the “stupid risks” argument with her husband? And just as she’d feared, he’d been taken down trying something that most people would have deemed as insurmountable odds.
At least she’d been able to put Elliot to rest and send him back to his parents for a memorial service. There’d never been a body for Kai’s funeral. Just an empty spot in a military graveyard where others considered KIA had also been laid to rest.
A hysterical laugh bubbled up under her tears. They’d had a full five-star military funeral for Kai, and he’d been alive all along. Wait until he heard about that.
Her gaze crept over to the display case in the corner of the room, where two yellow-ribbon, bronze medals sat under soft lights in the topmost shelf.
One for Elliot. And one for Kai.
For honor, bravery, and great sacrifice in the line of duty… The words Commander Emmanuel had spoken on the two separate days she’d gone up to accept those medals.
Bone-deep weariness stole over her and she closed her eyes on a long sigh. She’d just rest a minute, pull her crap together, and then she’d get her butt up to the command center where Kai’s replacement commander would be waiting for a report on the patient.
Chapter Three
Kai shifted his hips, not able to go far with the various cords attached to him and BMC enclosing his damaged leg.
After spending the past year and a half with a slab of concrete for a bed, the fact that the pillows behind him were so damn uncomfortable seemed ridiculous. His bad leg burned, itched, and ached all at the same time while the cylinder sped up the body’s natural bone-knitting process.
And while he was bitching, the bright sterile lights in the room made his eyes twitch and a slice of pain shoot right through the middle of his skull after being in semi-darkness for so long. Everything around him had a soft blur. One of the sub-doctors had mentioned something about optical atrophy, which would apparently get repaired once his body’s functions were back on track.
The door to his room stood open, and even though the clock near his bed read oh-t
wo-hundred ship-time, not five minutes would go by without at least one medico ducking in to check something or other. Lucky he didn’t feel like sleeping, or all the hustle would have kept him wide awake.
His surroundings had an edge of surrealism to them. For so long, the only people he’d seen were Amos and the robed CS Soldiers. In the past few hours, all the faces of the people who’d been in and out of his room had fritzed his brain. The only clear face he had in his mind belonged to Sacha in those hazy few minutes before she’d gone and re-broken his goddamn leg.
His whole body clenched at the memory of the wrenching pain, so he shut down that line of thinking.
Sacha had left while he’d been out of it and hadn’t returned. Doctor Macaulay had taken her place in ordering the other doctors and nurses around. Before Kai had been captured by CSS, Macaulay had always rubbed him the wrong way. And now he had the guy in charge of his care.
Where the heck was Sacha?
A few times he’d almost asked the nurses shuffling in and out, but in truth, he didn’t want to know the answer. He’d seen the stark emotions playing across her face when they’d taken that long second to really look at each other. She’d probably been busted off his case because she was too emotionally involved with the patient.
His mind dragged up the memory of the first day he’d met her, when he’d been sixteen and she’d been thirteen, and they’d been allocated the same class at pre-military school. She’d been so smart, they’d put her up a couple of grades. Some of the other kids had made fun of her, but he’d always thought she was interesting. Though they hadn’t been very close from the start, they’d had the same group of friends. Sacha had opted to go into medicine, while he’d put in for active duty and, by chance, they’d both been assigned to the Valiant Knox in their early twenties.
Sacha had always just been there. She’d met Elliot within a year of starting service on the Knox and Kai had been concentrating on moving up the ranks. All right, so occasionally over the years he’d looked at her and wondered what if. But he was truly happy she had Elliot and was content.
Still, when he heard her voice earlier, when he looked over and caught a glimpse of that bronze-spun hair and smoky blue gaze, his heart had gone into freefall. There’d been days in that CSS cell when the only thing he’d wanted was to see her again. Her memory had stayed with him a lot longer than anything else of his former life. And too many nights he’d dreamed of her, the images so vivid he’d woken up with an aching chest and moisture stinging his eyes.
A nurse strode into the room carrying a tray, an easy smile lighting up her face.
“Commander Yang, Doctor Macaulay has decided you’re well enough to eat, so I’ve brought you some multi-jelly.” She walked over and set the tray on a hover table before positioning it in front of him. The nutritional multi-supplement jelly gleamed in a rainbow of colors under the lights above him. “We’ve got watermelon flavor, green apple, mixed berry, or orange. Eat whatever you feel like, but the more you get down, the quicker you’ll recover.”
He reached down and wrapped a hand around one of the spoons. The nurse fussed and hovered for a few more moments until he sent her a commander-esque glare. After that she cleared the room in a nano-second flat. Sighing, he dropped his gaze to the rainbow assortment of jelly. The Commander Yang everyone else knew had ceased to exist in the dim, squalid cell down on Ilari. He had no damned idea who they’d brought back to the Knox. Yet everyone still jumped if he scowled at them the right way.
The door whooshed and he looked up from his poor excuse for a dead-watch meal to see Sacha standing in front of the closed door, hands in her pockets, expression unreadable.
His heart palpitated, words failing him at the profound relief her simple presence brought him.
“So Macaulay deemed you fit for jelly, huh?” She moved forward, coming over to casually hike her butt up onto the bed near his left thigh. “Yum, watermelon. Do you mind? I forgot to have dinner. And lunch as well, I think.”
She grabbed one of the spare spoons and then popped the top off the pink-colored jelly.
“I’m sure Elliot isn’t happy about you skipping meals. He’s always complaining you’re too skinny.” The words were rough and awkward. He wasn’t used to normal conversation that didn’t involve torture, or imprisonment, or the damn CS Soldiers.
Sacha’s eyes darkened to the color of bruised storm clouds as she regarded him for a brief moment, before returning her attention to scooping the jelly.
“Elliot’s dead. He got shot down over Ilari lines about a year ago.”
The words were even and emotionless, but he still caught the utter tragic undertone. Or maybe he imagined it. Either way, the fact that her husband had died not long after the CSS had captured him eroded his soul like acid. How had she coped, after losing them both?
He knew he should have been just as devastated by this news. Elliot had been one of his closest friends; he’d been the best man at their wedding five years ago. But after Amos, after everything, it seemed his body had run out of grief to expend.
“I’m sorry.” He clenched his fist around the dull edges of the spoon. Those two words didn’t even begin to cover the collision of emotions inside him.
“Don’t be. You knew Elliot as well as I did. He knew the risks, yet he took them anyway. I think I’d known for a while it was just a matter of time before that day came. After you—” She paused and swallowed, then took a short breath. “When you went missing, he just got more reckless. It didn’t matter what anyone said to him, didn’t matter how much I loved him. He was determined to go out there and make a difference like a fricking one-man army.”
Her words were tough, but he could see the shadows around her she’d never had before. Kai stared down at the three other jellies on the tray and then slowly picked up the orange one. “Elliot was a dick. With you waiting for him to come home, it made his risks even more idiotic.”
He glanced up to catch the misty smile she sent him before she scooped up some more of the pink watermelon conserve. She held out the spoon toward him.
“You want some? Watermelon is the best. Everyone always steals it out of the cool-store whenever supplies come in. You must be an extra special patient if someone scrounged one up for you.”
His lips twitched and astonishment burst through him. She made him want to smile. He couldn’t even remember the last time his mouth had moved in an upward direction.
“You finish it off. I’ll stick with orange.”
A sharp rapping on the door drew his attention. He glanced over, but Sacha didn’t turn from where she had her back to the doorway, sitting on the bed.
Doctor Macaulay knocked on the pane again, his expression landing somewhere between indignant and pissed off.
“Sacha, Macaulay’s at the door, and he doesn’t look too impressed.”
She shrugged, but didn’t look up from finishing off her substitute meal, her actions telling him she didn’t give a crap about Doctor Douche out in the corridor.
“I locked the door after I came in and secured it with my personal codes so no one else could enter.” She lifted her gaze to him. The familiar mischievous glint in her eyes made him feel lighter, took him back to easier, happier times. Any prank they’d ever pulled had always started off when Sacha got that gleam in her smoky eyes. She’d never admit it, but she’d instigated more than her fair share of the trouble they’d found when they’d been younger.
At another round of furious banging, she sighed long and loud, and then turned to send Macaulay a mocking salute. Doctor Douche glared with annoyance while his face turned an interesting shade of red, and then he shoved off from the door to disappear from sight.
This time, when the foreign urge to grin hit him, he didn’t resist, letting the expression tug at face muscles that hadn’t been used in a while.
She turned to him once more and dropped the empty container on the tray. “I bet they haven’t left you alone for more than five minutes at a time sinc
e you came in. I thought you could use a break.”
“Thanks. The past few hours have been a tornado of unending people.” He reached up to scratch his jaw under the thick scruffy beard.
She tilted her head and regarded him with a thoughtful expression. “Now that you’re on the way to healing, how about we start getting you cleaned up?”
He smoothed over the section of beard he’d been scratching at. The idea hadn’t even occurred to him; he’d been shaggy and covered in whiskers for so long, he’d forgotten not having them was an option.
“What’s wrong? Don’t you like a man who can pull off a full beard and still strike fear into the hearts of his subordinates?” It was something his old self would have said with ease. After the words left his mouth, they made him feel like a fraud.
But Sacha didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. She sent him a droll look, hopped off the bed and walked over to the various machines above his head.
With agile movements, she had the equipment off-line and all the cords disconnected in a matter of seconds.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Macaulay said I needed over twenty-four hours of treatment.” Though, he felt a hundred times better already. Various aches and pains he’d gotten used to living with had disappeared. Even the constant, subtle nausea that’d plagued him had gone, leaving him with the astounding sensation of being hungry.
Sacha glared at him as she leaned over to flick electrodes off his chest.
“Technically you’re my patient, so you can take whatever Macaulay said and vacuum it out the nearest hatch. At this point you’ve come far enough in the healing process that being off the machines for half an hour won’t make a difference. Though, your leg will probably ache some.”
“And what are you going to do with me while I’m not plugged in?” With her leaning so close to him, when he breathed, all he smelled, all he tasted, was the familiar acacia and summer scent of her, overlaid by the med-lab’s sanitizer.
After she’d flipped the last electrode free, she glanced up at him and the sight of her so close brought a rush of warm, euphoric sensation. His body buzzed to life, long-dormant sensations rushing through the blood in his veins. He got hot all over, her nearness sparking off a primal and darkly instinctive reaction within him.
Escape Velocity Page 3
