She had a few brief glimpses of awareness.
Being passed through the sail locker and onto the quarterdeck, then carried back through the gunroom to the sick berth.
Someone removing her helmet, even the dry, stale air of the ship welcome after the fetid stink of vomit in her suit.
The surgeon yelling for them to “Get that great lot of cable out of my sick berth!” and someone yelling back, “They’ll neither one of ‘em let it go, now, and ‘aven’t we tried?”
Screaming anew at the sharp, grating agony in her shoulder as someone stripped the vacsuit from her. She felt something cool and soothing flowing through her, blotting out the pain and awareness all at once.
Sometime later, she was very unclear as to how long, the cool, soothing feeling started to go away and she grudgingly opened her eyes to find the ship’s surgeon, Comerford, standing beside her. She was reasonably certain that she was on a cot in the sick berth, but there was also a certain floating feeling that she couldn’t entirely discount.
“Are you with us at all, Mister Carew?”
Alexis murmured something she thought was an affirmative, then blinked rapidly to clear her head.
“You suffered some injuries, but you will be quite all right, do you understand?”
“Mm hmm.”
“There were some torn abdominal muscles, which I’ve repaired.”
“Ripped in half, I was,” Alexis muttered.
“Well not entirely, no. You also very badly dislocated your left shoulder.”
“Arm tore off,” she agreed. She looked down at herself and saw her left arm tightly bound to her chest, hand at her right shoulder. She wiggled her fingers and giggled happily before smiling at the surgeon. “You put it back on. Thank you, Mister Comerford.”
Comerford reached for something out of Alexis’ sight. “Good night, Mister Carew.”
And the world went dark once more.
The next time she woke, it was with a much clearer head, though her mouth was dry and caked and her throat felt raw. She opened her eyes, sticky and gritty and saw Philip beside the cot she was lying on. Her left arm still tightly bound to her chest.
“There you are,” he said, smiling with relief. “Here, don’t try to talk yet, have a drink.” He held a cup to her lips and she drank, grimacing at the taste of weak grog — ship’s water mixed with a bit of rum and lime juice. “I know. But it’s better than straight water and we’d no idea when you might wake to have a proper tea for you.”
She smiled. “Thank you, Philip.” She saw that one other cot was occupied but couldn’t tell who was in it, nor see the two spacers sitting nearby. “Who?” she whispered.
“Jeffreys, topman,” Philip told her. “Or was — likely never go Outside again. He’s still sedated … screams any time he comes out of it.” He shuddered. “I’ve heard stories about being outside the ship’s field. They say you can feel your very blood start to slow.”
Alexis closed her eyes. “And the other?”
“Hadd.”
Alexis winced, remembering Hadd in the sail locker her first time Outside and his tale of being sick in his helmet on his first time. “We couldn’t find him?”
Philip shook his head. “We sailed back along our line after – the pinnace didn’t strike and we put a broadside into her fusion plant – but there was no sign. Sometimes … well, they say a man’ll sometimes not trigger his lights and he’ll dump his air when he sees the ship is well away, not wanting to suffer with false hope.”
Alexis stared at him, her mouth open in horror. She struggled to sit up, wincing at sudden pain in her shoulder and midsection. “Easy,” he told her. “Mister Comerford says you can get up but will have to act lightly for a time.”
“We continued the chase?” she asked in disbelief when sitting.
“Well yes,” Philip answered, puzzled. “Of course.”
“‘Of course’? ‘Of course’? But a man died!” She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. After how hard she’d tried to save them both, all the effort and pain, when really, the ship could have just stopped. All they’d had to do was drop the charge to the sails and the ship would have stopped right along with the men who’d gone outside the field, or as close to them as to make no real difference. “Why?”
Philip looked more puzzled than ever by her reaction. “The pirates would have gotten away, Alexis.”
“But Hadd is dead,” she stressed, angry now both that the ship hadn’t turned back and that Philip seemed so blithely unaware of why that was wrong. “For what? To stop them stealing a ship full of rocks? Or to take the bloody pinnace so Roland can have a bit of that prize money he always speaks of?” She realized that the surgeon and the two spacers by Jeffreys were staring at her, but she didn’t care. “For what?”
“Alexis, I don’t understand why you’re …”
“No,” she interrupted bitterly. “I can see that you don’t. I’d thought better of you, Philip. I hadn’t imagined you could be so … so heartless and callow about throwing a man’s life away for nothing! It’s one thing that it wasn’t your decision to make, I realize that, but it’s quite another to not even see that the decision was wrong.”
Philip frowned. “But it wasn’t the wrong decision, Alexis. It was quite the only thing to do. We had to stop the pirates.”
“Oh, bugger the pirates!” Alexis yelled furious.
“Alexis!”
“We’d already stopped them, Philip!” she cried, quite on the verge of tears. “We had the merchantman back and all those precious pebbles or whatever. The damned pinnace would have been somewhere tomorrow, but Hadd won’t! Chasing after them just to … just to win was simply childish!”
Philip looked uncomfortable but tried to explain. “I do have to disagree, Alexis. If we …”
“Well, and you’re just a child yourself, aren’t you? No wonder you can’t see it!”
Philip stood up stiffly. “Well, I see.” He cleared his throat. “I can see I’m doing no one any good here.” He nodded to her and turned to leave.
“Philip!” she cried after him, but he’d slid the hatch shut behind him. Alexis turned to the others, all of whom were staring at her, and that one of the spacers by Jeffreys was Acker. She fixed her gaze on Comerford. “Surely you can see the right of it, Mister Comerford?” she appealed. “As a doctor?”
The surgeon stepped over to her. “I do see,” he said gently. “And the captain had the right of it. Pursuing the pirates was the only course of action.”
Alexis stared at him in horror. “How can you say that?” she whispered. “But if they’d only stopped the ship, they could have fixed it.”
“Fixed it?”
“I should have saved him,” she whispered, tears finally overflowing her eyes. “I was so close.”
Acker rose from his seat at the other cot and approached. He shared a look with the surgeon who nodded and backed away.
“I’m sorry,” Alexis said as she saw him.
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for, sir,” he told her gently, sitting on the edge of her cot.
“I should have saved him,” she repeated, the image of heavy bag striking Jeffrey’s helmet and veering away, leaving Hadd to his fate, running through her mind. “I was so close. I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is!” she insisted, sobbing harder.
Acker slid one arm behind her and Alexis buried her face in his chest.
“You must hate me,” she sobbed into his chest.
“Hate you?” he asked, bewildered.
“Hadd was your friend.”
“Lass, we all saw what you did,” he whispered gently. “There’s not a better-loved officer in the whole fleet this day.”
“How can you say that? I killed him! If I’d taken a second longer to aim … a half meter in front and they’d both be safe!”
Acker pushed her back gently, careful not to jostle her shoulder. “A second longer? With the stern c
omin’ up fast and nothing to brace against fer the shot and all three o’ ye moving at different speeds?”
“I should have …”
“Stop it now,” he told her. “A half meter to the left or right and none of them’s comin’ home. Half meter behind, an’ old Jeffreys is keeping Hadd company in the cold Dark, right now.”
“I …”
“Not many men aboard could’ve made that shot,” he insisted. “An’ none that could’ve got their mass scampering down the keel as fast.” He shook his head. “It’s one man come back ‘cause of you, not one man lost, and that’s a fact.”
Alexis stared at him, wide-eyed, for a moment, then sniffed and rubbed her face. “The ship should have stopped,” she insisted stubbornly, still not quite believing what he said about her own actions.
Acker shook his head. “Weren’t just pebbles ‘n rocks on that merchantman,” he told her.
“Well, whatever it is, we’d already gotten it back!”
“You have aught off’n that ship to show her, Mister Comerford?”
“Yes, I do believe so.” The surgeon drew his tablet out and after a moment, handed it over.
Acker glanced at it. “That’ll do,” he said, handing it to Alexis.
For a moment, she couldn’t make out what the image was, then she gasped. Bodies, more than she could count, stacked like cordwood upon a blood-covered ship’s deck. She looked back to Acker with wide eyes.
“Merchantman’s crew,” he told her. “Fifteen of ‘em, at least. Crew was twenty, so mebbe five joined up wi’ the pirates — never know fer sure, I reckon.”
He nodded at the tablet and Alexis looked at the image again, horrified.
“It’s real pirates out ‘ere, not some story-tale.” He sighed and took the tablet back from her, passing it to Comerford.
“So Hadd’s dead, and I’m right sorry for that, I am. But so’s that merchant crew and now them pirates. And there’s some other merchant crew tomorrow, or the next, won’t be dead now, ‘cause a that.”
Alexis stared at the image, realization slowly dawning.
“Hadd fer them others won’t die tomorrow? Maybe it’s a fair trade, maybe not. But he weren’t thrown away and it weren’t fer nothin’, an’ I won’t hear it said it were, y’understand?”
Alexis nodded. She reached out and grasped his hand. “Thank you.”
“Well, and yer welcome, Mister Carew,” he said, eyes twinkling. “An’ anytime you need to know the way of it, you just come an’ ask old Acker, eh?”
She smiled wanly. “I will.” She closed her eyes tightly. “Oh, I do owe Philip an apology. Mister Comerford? When will I be able to get up?”
With a bit of difficulty, Alexis was able to stand and make her way out of the sick berth. A stop at her cabin for fresh clothing and then to the head to clean up would definitely be in order, she noted, for she was still dressed in the underthings she’d been wearing beneath her vacsuit during the action, and they were stiff with dried sweat. The rest of her also, as the only part that seemed clean was a small area around the sealed incision at her midsection.
She made her way from the sick berth toward her cabin, walking carefully to avoid jostling her shoulder or stretching her midsection too much. The gunroom was empty, save for Philip and Lieutenant Ames sitting at the table with a bottle of wine each. She decided not to put off the apology, and that her injuries gave her a bit of leeway in regard to proper clothing, she stopped at the pantry and retrieved two bottles of her wine, holding them awkwardly with one hand before walking barefoot and clad in undershorts and undershirt to the gunroom table.
Lieutenant Ames saw her approach, glanced at her attire, turned beet red and grabbed his bottle and glass, leaving an uncomfortable harumph behind him has he fled to his cabin. Alexis placed the bottles on the table and eased herself into a chair, wincing a little at a pain in her belly.
“I’m sorry, Philip,” she said, seeing that he was studiously avoiding looking at her.
He raised his glass and took a gulp of wine. “Not heartless.”
Alexis winced. “No, you’re not. I am sorry.”
“Nor callow, nor childish, neither.”
“No,” she agreed. “It was I who was childish, not letting you explain or even listening when you tried.”
He took another drink. “Wouldn’t throw a man’s life away,” he said firmly. “Wouldn’t do that.”
“No. You’d …” She paused, thinking of what Acker had said. “You’d spend them. Wisely and to good purpose.” Her eyes burned as she held back more tears and swallowed heavily. “As we did with Hadd.”
Philip finally looked at her and Alexis saw that his eyes were red-rimmed as well.
“Aye,” he agreed. “Captain Grantham’s taught me better than that.”
Alexis nodded. “Well, he hasn’t had the time to teach me that yet, so I didn’t understand. I am sorry for what I said to you, Philip.”
He smiled tentatively. “All right, then.”
“Are we? All right, I mean?”
“Not sure,” he said, brow furrowed. “Never really finished a row without a bit of a tussle and a blow or two.”
Alexis smiled sadly. “Well, I’m a bit out of sorts for that. And I’ve never really finished a row without ending it with a hug.”
Philip’s eyes widened. “Not at all sure that’d be proper either.”
“Well then, let’s do this,” she said very seriously. “After I’m all healed up, if you feel it’s absolutely necessary —” She straightened her shoulders and raised her chin. “— you may punch me in the nose.”
Philip’s lips twitched, but he kept his expression serious and nodded. “Fair enough. And then, if you feel it’s absolutely necessary, we shall hug.”
“Done,” Alexis agreed, smiling. Then her smile faded as the images of the day returned, images she felt certain would never leave her. The pirate’s shot severing the yard, sending Jeffreys and Hadd loose from the ship, her frantic scramble down the keel, the horror she’d felt when her shot had gone awry, and the desperate struggle to hold on as Jeffreys had been dragged behind the ship. Added to that the latest vision of merchantman’s crew murdered and left behind, as well as her own certainty that, regardless of Acker’s words, she’d failed to save both men as she should have.
It seemed this new world had costs in addition to its rewards. High costs and high stakes that she wasn’t entirely sure she was prepared for.
“Would you be so kind as open those bottles and share a drink with me, Philip?”
He picked up one of the bottles and began working on the cork. “Two bottles, Alexis? Even shared that’s quite a lot for you — I thought you had little head for wine?”
“Yes, well, you see — the advantage to that,” she told him, grasping his half-full glass and draining it before holding it out for him to refill. “Is that it will take only a little time for me to become very, very drunk.”
Eighteen
Alexis, along with everyone else on the quarterdeck, scanned the images flashed up on her monitor for any sign of a ship. Merlin was lying still and dark, sails furled and uncharged, her colors and signal lights dark, just off the Lagrange-5 transition point of yet another empty, nameless system. A system so unremarkable that it was deemed unworthy of being known by anything other than its catalog number in the navigation charts. Its sole points of interest to Merlin were that it was near enough to two likely shipping lanes to Eidera and its sole planetary body, an airless rock orbiting an anemic sun at a distance of almost two hundred million kilometers, was stable enough that it could be used to store cargo and supplies by a band of pirates.
This was the fourth such system Merlin had inspected since taking the pirate off Eidera, and Alexis was already viewing the task as routine. They would wait for a time, then she would man the signals console as Merlin transitioned from darkspace to normal-space at one of the system’s Lagrange points. Merlin would then cruise the system, and Alexis would monitor the
signals console’s computer for any alert to a man-made emission while the spacer at the tactical console looked for any other indications of human presence, and then Merlin would depart, having found nothing, and move on to the next.
Which Lagrange point Captain Grantham would choose would be an easier decision in this system, as there was only one orbital pair and thus, only five points to choose from. Unlike other systems having multiple planets, each potentially having one or more moons, and each orbital pair offering five distinct Lagrange points to choose from. L1, L2, and L3, though, were generally transited only by military ships — L4 and L5 were preferred by merchant and other civilian vessels, due to the higher volume of space that made up their transition zones.
Most inhabited systems enforced this, going a step further to require all incoming traffic to transition at L4, while outgoing made for L5, thus creating clear and open lanes of traffic in and out of the system. In Captain Grantham’s view, pirates would be lazy and creatures of habit, therefore, they had been entering each system at L5 transition points, hoping to transition on top of any pirates leaving the system.
For the time being, though, they would wait in darkspace, hoping to catch the pirates coming or going. Captain Grantham’s preference was to catch them in darkspace where Merlin’s superior speed and gunnery would give her the advantage over the more complex maneuvering in normal space. Alexis scanned yet another image presented on her console, the computers having decided that this one, out of the hundreds per second brought in by the optics, could potentially contain a pattern that represented another ship and required human attention. Around her on the quarterdeck, others on watch performed the same task.
Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3 Page 21
