by Steve White
"Much better!" he chuckled, crossing his arms and looking down at her. "I'm Captain Llewellyn, by the way. Pleased to meet you at last. I've been in and out for the last week or so, but you've only been out."
"How bad?" Han asked hoarsely.
"Could be worse," he said frankly, "but not a lot. It was all touch and near-as-damn-it-go, actually. At the moment, you weigh about twenty-eight kilos." She flinched, but her eyes were steady, and he nodded approval.
"You were lucky it was only a nice, clean fighter missile," he went on. "On the other hand, you'd already have checked out of our little hotel if you'd had the shielding of an escape pod. I understand the bridge pods were buckled and your crew got you out just in time, as it were."
"H-how many?" she husked.
"From the bridge?" He looked at her compassionately. "Five—counting you." She winced, and he went on quickly. "But overall, you did much better. Over half your crew got out safely." Her lips twisted. He was right, of course; fifty percent was a miraculous figure. But if over half had survived, almost half had not.
"As for you, you got an awful dose, but your chief of staff seems to have unusual rad tolerance. He got you and your lieutenant picked up and hooked to blood exchangers in time, but even so, it was a rough forty-eight hours. We've managed to scrub you out pretty well, and the cell count looks okay, but it was tight, ma'am. Really, really tight."
"Don't look much like I made it anyway," Han rasped.
"Ah." Llewellyn nodded. "You are a bit the worst for wear, Commodore. We doctors should, after all, be honest. But you'll improve quickly now we can get you off the IV's and put a little weight back on you." He examined her face critically and rose briskly. "But for now, I want you to go back to sleep. I know, I know—" he waved aside her half-voiced protests "—you just got here. Well, the planet isn't going anywhere, and neither are you. We've got you scrubbed out, but you have seven broken ribs, a cracked cheekbone, a fractured femur, and a skull fracture—just for starters. I'm afraid you're going to take a while healing up from that."
Han blinked at him, wondering where the pain was. They must have her loaded to the gills with painkillers, she decided, which helped explain her wooziness. His last words seemed to echo around a vast, dark cavern, and she realized dimly that the cavern was her own skull. She blinked again and let herself sink into the lightheadedness. The sun patterns on the ceiling danced above her, weaving the pattern of her dreams. . . .
* * *
The next few days were bad. Han was sick and dizzy, and she hated her surrounding forest of scrubbers and monitors. The instruments were silent, but she knew they were there—probing and peering for the first sign of uncorrected damage. They were part of the technology which kept her alive, and she hated them because they were part of what confined her to her bed.
It took long, hard effort to attain her normal calm, and it slipped away abruptly, without warning. She hated her loss of control almost as much as she did her weakness, and that loss showed when Lieutenant Tinnamou refused to let her visit Tsing Chang.
Han tried reason. It didn't work, so she pulled rank, only to find that medicos are remarkably impervious to intimidation. And finally, she resorted to a hell-raising tantrum which would have shocked anyone who knew her and, in fact, shocked her—but not as much as the flood of tears which followed.
That stopped her dead. She fell back on her pillows, exhausted by the expenditure of emotion, and her emaciated form shook with the force of her sobs. She turned her face away from the nurse's compassionate eyes, and the lieutenant frowned down at her for a moment, then stepped out into the hall.
Han heard the door close with gratitude, for her reactions both shamed and frightened her. How could she exercise command over others if she could no longer command herself?
But then the door opened again and someone cleared his throat. Her head snapped back over, and Captain Llewellyn looked down at her, his cherub's face incongruously stern.
"I suppose, Commodore, that we could call this 'conduct unbecoming an officer'—but I'm old-fashioned. Let's just call it childish."
"I know," she husked and turned her head away again. "I'm sorry. Just—just go away. I-I'll be all right. . . ."
"Will you, now?" His voice was sternly compassionate. "I think not. Not, at least, until you accept that you're merely human and entitled as such to moments of weakness."
"It's not that," she protested, scrubbing her eyes with balled fists like a child. "I . . . I mean . . ."
"Yes, it is," he said gently. "I've checked your record, Commodore. Sword of honor. Youngest captain in Battle Fleet. Stellar Cross. Headed for the War College, but for the current . . . unpleasantness. And that's only the official record. There's also your crew."
"My—crew?" It popped out involuntarily, and she bit her tongue, cursing her crumbling self-control.
"The survivors have had our visitors' desk under siege ever since your arrival. If I hadn't put my foot down, you'd've been buried under well-wishers—which, since I don't want you plain buried, I'm not about to permit! But my point is simple: amassing that record and winning that loyalty says a lot about your personality." His voice grew suddenly gentle. "You're not used to being helpless, are you?"
Han turned away, horribly embarrassed, but his question demanded an answer. And she owed him one for keeping her alive, she supposed fretfully.
"No," she said shortly.
"I thought not. Which explains exactly why you're reacting this way," he said simply, and Han turned back towards him.
"Perhaps," she said levelly, "but it doesn't help that you haven't told me everything, either, Doctor."
Llewellyn's face stilled at the accusation, and his eyes narrowed.
"Why do you think that, Commodore?" he asked finally, his tone neutral.
"I don't know," she confessed bitterly, "but you haven't, have you?"
"No." His simple response surprised her, for she'd expected him to waffle. But she'd done the little Corporate Worlder an injustice, he was as utterly incapable of evading a direct question as she herself.
"And what haven't you told me?"
"I think you know already," he said quietly. "You just haven't let yourself face it. I'd hoped you wouldn't for a while, but you're more bloody-minded than I thought," he added, and a door opened in her mind—a door she had been holding shut with all her strength even as she hammered against it.
He was right, she thought distantly. She did know. Her hand crept over the blankets across her belly, and he nodded.
"Yes," he said gently, and her teeth drew blood from her lip.
"How bad is it?" she asked finally, her hoarse voice level.
"Not good," he said honestly. "A high percentage of your ova are sterile; others are badly damaged. On the other hand, some are perfectly normal, Commodore. You can still bear healthy children."
"At what odds?" she asked bitterly.
"Not good ones," he met her eyes squarely, his voice unflinching, "but you know about the problem. It wouldn't be difficult to check the embryos and abort defectives at a very early stage."
"I see." She looked away, and Llewellyn started to reach out, then stopped as he recognized the nature of her withdrawal. She wasn't dropping deeper into depression; she was merely digesting what she had been told.
He stared down at her helplessly, tasting her anguish and longing with all his heart to comfort her. Yet he sensed something more than anguish under her sick, weakened surface, something pure and almost childlike in its innocent strength, like spring steel at her core. This was a woman who knew herself, however imperfect her self-knowledge seemed to her.
He sank into a chair, knowing she would turn back to him shortly, that his departure would shame her, watching the taut, bony shoulders relax. And as he watched the wasted body unknot, he felt himself in the presence of a great peacefulness, as if she were but the last link in an endless chain, able to draw on the strength of all who had gone before her. He'd already recognize
d the years of self-discipline behind her serenity, yet now his empathy went deeper, sensing the gift of freedom her parents had given her so long before, and he wished desperately that more of his patients could be so.
Her head moved finally, the delicate skull under the fine, dark fuzz shifting on the pillow, and she spoke quietly.
"Thank you, Doctor. I wish you'd told me sooner—but maybe you were right. Maybe I needed to wait for a little while."
"No, I was wrong," he said humbly.
"Perhaps. At any rate, now I know, don't I? I'll have to think about it."
"Yes." He rose unwillingly, shocked to realize that he wanted to stay within the orbit of her strength, then shook himself and smiled faintly. "Should I send Lieutenant Tinnamou back in? I think she's a bit concerned you might have, er, exhausted your strength."
"Is she?" Han's weary face dimpled. "I hadn't realized I knew so much profanity, but I'd rather be alone for a bit, Doctor. Would you give her my apologies? I'll apologize in person later."
"If you like," he said, relieved to see her smile at last, "but we kindly healers know sick people aren't at their best, Commodore."
"Please, call me Han," she said, touching his wrist with skeletal fingers. "And I will apologize to her. But not just now."
"Certainly. I'll tell her—Han." He twinkled sadly at her and touched his nameplate. "And my name is Daffyd."
"Thank you, Daffyd." She smiled again and closed her eyes. He left.
* * *
It took hours to truly accept it. The actual fact was not surprising—not intellectually. Somehow Han had assumed it wouldn't happen to her, but she'd always known it could. It was unfair, but then so was biology.
She felt tears on her cheeks, and this time felt no shame. Her life had been so orderly. She'd faced her need to excel in her chosen field, known that pride required proof of her competence. And, as a woman, the pressure for early achievement had been great, for she was not just a Fringer; she was Hangchowese, born to a culture which thought as much in generations as individuals. So her schedule had been set; she would achieve her rank, and then take time for the children she wanted.
She rolled her head on the pillow, agonized by a loss even more poignant because she had never possessed what had been lost. The pain was terrible, but the awful moment of realization was past. All she must do now was face it. All she had to do was cope with the unbearable.
It would have been different if she were an Innerworlder, she thought sadly, for the crowded Innerworlds restricted access to longevity treatments. But Han had been born on a Fringe World blessed with adequate medical technology, one where the antigerone therapies were generally available. At thirty-nine, she looked—and was—the Innerworld equivalent of perhaps twenty, and the differential would grow as time passed. She had expected another fifty years of fertility . . . fifty years which had been snatched away. For a moment, she almost envied the Innerworlders' shorter spans. They would have had fewer lonely years, she thought in a surge of self-pity.
She frowned sadly. Llewellyn was a good man, despite his homeworld, but his every word of comfort only underscored their differences. There were too few people in the Fringe. Alien gravities and environments inhibited fertility—it took generations for the biological processes to readjust fully, and no woman of Hangchow would even consider conceiving a child with a potentially lethal genetic heritage. For them, babies were unutterably precious, the guarantee of the future, not burdens on a crowded world's resources. Intellectually, Han could accept Llewellyn's words; emotionally they were intolerable.
She shook her head slowly, feeling the pain recede as she faced the decision. There was only one she could make and be true to herself and her culture, she thought, and knowing that defeated the pain.
But nothing would ever dispel her sorrow.
* * *
Time passed slowly in a hospital. Seeing days slip past without activity to fill them was a new experience for Han, and she felt events leaving her behind. Her battlegroup was disbanded as Bayonet and Sawfly, the last surviving units, were repaired and transferred to other squadrons, and even her surviving staff was on the binnacle list. Tsing Chang would be returning to duty only shortly before Han herself, and Esther Kane had never cleared Longbow. Robert Tomanaga would live, but he would be busy learning to walk with one robotic leg for months to come.
Only David Reznick had survived unhurt. He was the sole visitor she was allowed for two weeks, and meeting him again was perhaps the saddest of her few duties, for if he was physically unscathed, his coltish adolescence was gone. He'd been forced to mature in a particularly nasty fashion, and she was only grateful it had not embittered him. Indeed, she felt a certain subtle strength within him, the strength of a man who has been so afraid that he will never be that frightened again. She hoped she was right, that it was strength and not the final, fragile ice over a glaring weakness. She was in poor shape when he called on her, and the visit was so brief she could scarcely recall it later, yet she felt her judgment was sound.
But her staff's losses reflected her people's casualties as a whole, and she grieved for them. There were over four hundred dead from Longbow alone, and it had taken all her will to remind herself that almost five hundred of her people had escaped.
Yet no one at all survived from Bardiche or Yellowjacket, and only twelve from Falchion. She supposed historians would call the operation a brilliant success, but twenty-eight hundred of her people had died, and it was hard to feel triumphant as she brooded over her dead in the long, lonely hours.
Yet endless though the days seemed, she was improving, and she received concrete proof of that in her third week of convalescence. A chime sounded, her door opened, and her thin face blossomed in an involuntary smile as she looked up from her bookviewer and saw Commodore Magda Petrovna.
"Han!" Magda reached out to grip her hand, and her concerned eyes surveyed the ravages of Han's illness. But they were also calm, and Han recognized a kindred soul in the lack of effusive, meaningless pleasantries.
"Come to view the nearly departed, Magda?"
"Exactly. Mind?"
"Of course not. Sit down and tell me what's happening. It's like pulling teeth to get them to tell me anything in this place!"
Magda scaled her cap onto an empty table and brushed back her hair. The white streaks flashed in the window's sunlight like true silver, and for just a moment Han was bitterly envious of her healthy vitality.
"Not too surprising," Magda grinned. "It's a Rump hospital, and they wouldn't like to talk about a lot of what's happening."
"I think you're doing Captain Llewellyn an injustice," Han said gently from her pillows. "I don't think he worries about his patients' uniforms. He certainly couldn't have been kinder to me."
"Then he's an exception," Magda said tartly. "Most of 'em look like they smell something bad when we walk into a room. Hard to blame them, really. Their defense wasn't anything to be particularly proud of."
"No?" Han's mouth turned down. "They did well enough against me, Magda. They destroyed my entire battlegroup."
"No they didn't, Han. Oh, they hurt you, I don't deny that, but Bayonet and Sawfly came through practically untouched. And my God, what you did to them! All my group had to do was clean up the wreckage, Han—you and your people won the battle."
Han shook her head stubbornly and said nothing.
"You did," Magda insisted. "The poor Rump pilots were so green they never stood a chance once Kellerman got his fighters launched, and the local population was with us. Some of the planetary garrison tried to hold out, but the ground fighting took less than a day. They never had a chance without Fleet support. But if you and your people hadn't smashed those forts up before they came fully on line—" She shivered elaborately.
"They did well enough against me," Han repeated with quiet bitterness.
"No argument. But they were the only vets Skywatch had, and their only Fleet units—one battle-cruiser and a half-dozen tincans—hauled ass
as soon as they realized we were in force." She grinned suddenly, her humor so bubbling it reached through even Han's depression. "You should hear what old Pritzcowitski has to say about them! They'd better pray he never writes an efficiency report on them!"
"I can imagine," Han agreed, and amazed herself by laughing for the first time since the battle. It felt so good she tried it again, feeling Magda's approving eyes upon her. "You're good for me, Magda."
"Fair's fair," Magda said, shaking her head. "If you hadn't done your job, I wouldn't be here. They went for Snaphaunce with everything they had as soon as they saw her—fortunately, you hadn't left them much."
"I'm glad."
"So was I. Oh, by the way, I checked on your Captain Tsing on the way up here. He's madder than hell the doctors won't let him come see you, but he's doing fine. In fact, he even kept some hair."
"Thank God!" Han said quietly. "And Lieutenant Kan?"
"A little worse than Tsing, but he'll be fine, Han."
"Thank you for telling me."
"Well, I hope someone would tell me if the position were reversed!"
"So the rest of the Fleet got off light," Han mused.
"Yep. In fact, Admiral Ashigara's already headed for Zephrain, and Kellerman's carriers are off to join our monitors and move on Gastenhowe."
"Then why aren't you gone?" Han asked.
"I, my dear, am senior officer commanding Cimmaron—at least for now. They added a cruiser and light carrier group to my battle-cruisers, then uncrated those fighters . . . and most of Skywatch surrendered intact when they saw what you did to one detachment."
"I see." Han pursed her lips thoughtfully. "Not bad for a lowly commodore, Magda. I'm glad for you."
"You are?" Magda smiled warmly. "Thanks—but I'm only your deputy. You're still senior, so as soon as you're up, the command is yours. So get yourself well and relieve me, Commodore!"
"I'd say the job was in good hands," Han said.
