Imperial Hilt (Imperial War Saga Book 2)

by Celinda Labrousse

“What are you in for?” he asked. Miranda pulled down the collar of her shirt.

  “Ah, second degree burns.” He looked her up and down with confusion showing on his face.

  “Home planet must be in the Nebular rims,” he said. He smiled all-white teeth in a sea of brown. He had chocolate eyes that danced with laughter. A full mouth, a square chin, and a shaved head. But really, who didn’t have a shaved head in the Empire?

  Miranda didn’t nod. Didn’t say anything. She was just fair skinned. No matter how dark others got out in the sun, she burned, peeled, and stayed white. She tried to imagine the medic getting a sunburn and couldn’t. It wasn’t just how dark skinned and muscular he was. It was also the fact that he looked like he worked indoors most of the day.

  The medic touched the burn. Miranda winced for the second time that day.

  “Be back in a jiff,” he said, turning towards a pair of double doors at the end of the ward. Farmer flopped down on the bed beside her.

  “You're a first-gen Farmer, aren’t you,” Farmer said. It was a statement, not a question. So Miranda scowled instead of responding. But her curiosity got the better of her.

  “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “If you burn, that means you can’t afford even basic nano upgrades,” he said.

  “Hey.” She fixed her collar back into place. He’d stuck his feet out, pushing her to the edge of the cot.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” he said, looking at her through his impossibly long eyelashes. Again. Another not-question. Miranda's face flushed. Not that he could see it. The burn made sure of that, but the look on his face said otherwise.

  “I didn’t think so,” he turned over and picked up a magazine from the table next to the bed. Miranda gathered up a handful of the brown fabric they called a blanket. The mattress was the same spring-filled, rock-hard surface. The blankets were the same mud brown, the sheets bright white. With all the red dust around, you would think the sheets would be pink, but no; somehow the laundry kept them a bright, almost glow in the dark, white. In med unit, beds were singles. The barracks beds were double stacked. Which made Farmer laying all over her med bed that much more infuriating.

  Miranda sighed, letting go of her aggravation. If she punched her battle buddy there would be no break time on the Seventh day. She wanted her break time. She’d never wanted her break time more than she wanted it now that she was a soldier in the Imperial army. Her arms demanded it.

  “Ok, plaster skin nanos. They’ll fix you up in a couple of hours.” The medic was back with a container that looked a lot like her mother’s makeup jars. He unscrewed the lid. Miranda scrunched up her nose. The smell hit her hard. She felt like she might pass out.

  “A little warning,” Farmer said, turning his back to her and the medic. The medic shrugged.

  “Hazard of the job.” The medic stuck two fingers into the jar and took out a large chunk of the paste from inside. He took Miranda’s hand and scraped it off onto her palm.

  “Strip off your shirt and rub that into all reddened skin.” Miranda struggled to comply. Her uniform jacket was hard to get on without holding onto a large handful of goo that was melting at her body temperature. After what felt like forever, she was finally able to escape her jacket and shirt. She wished, not for the first time, that things were thought through here. He could have handed her the jar, or told her to strip first. No, shirt off with goop in hand. The Imperial way. Her breast band was the only thing between her and the room full of men and women.

  At one time she might have cared. She might have worried that someone was looking at her. But not anymore. Everyone here was either too tired, too hurt, or too busy to care about her nakedness. She knew this for certain, given that she was all three right then.

  She slapped the stinking glob onto her shoulders and neck, down her front, and as far along the back of her neck and shoulders that she could reach. She had to get a second handful. There was so much skin.

  “Here,” the Medic said when he noticed that she was out of the paste.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” Farmer said, standing up from the cot.

  “Through the double doors on the left,” the medic said, handing Miranda a third scoop of the salve for her arms. Farmer nodded and headed down the hall. She wasn’t supposed to ever separate from her battle buddy, but Miranda was glad to see him go. Too late she asked, “Should I go with him?”

  “It’s fine,” the medic said. “Once you are on the ward, you don’t have to stick that close,” he gave her a wink as he scraped the last of the salve from the container.

  “Here,” he said, “finish putting this on your back.”

  He tossed the jar in a trash can to the left of the bed. Miranda hoped that if she had to stay here for long the smell would dissipate.

  The medic pulled a long string of key cards out of his pocket and tapped one against the smooth metal stand to the right of the bed. A drawer popped out, exposing an array of bandages in all shapes and sizes. He got to work cutting and arranging them over the areas she’d lathered with the goo.

  “You can put your shirt on now,” he said. She rubbed the last of the medicine into her hands before reaching for her military issued shirt. The brown fabric slid over her bandaged back and shoulders. The sting was already dissipating.

  “No showers for two days,” the Medic said, handing her a sheet of instructions. There were other things, like a restriction on night patrols and staying out of the sun for twenty four hours. Miranda nodded.

  “Give that to your drill instructor,” he said. “Stay here until your buddy comes back, then you may return to duty.” The medic got up off the bed and turned his back to her to help the next patient.

  It wasn’t until that moment that she realized she hadn’t read his name plate. She hit her head against her palm. All soldiers wore name plates. It made calling everyone something easier for a person like her. And she hadn’t even taken the time to look.

  “Oh well,” she thought, “next time.” She went to lay back on the bed when Farmer came running into the room.

  “Dead!” he screamed. Every head in the room turned towards her battle buddy.

  “Dead!” he screamed again.

  Chapter 4

  Miranda sat up straight in her bed. All comfort brought by the bandages and burn nanos faded with one word: Dead

  “He’s dead,” Recruit Farmer screamed into the room again. He straddled the double doors, pointing down the hall. A surge of people rushed for the doors. Miranda swung her legs off the bed, thinking about joining them, then she stopped. The fresh memories of her father in his tractor hit her hard. She didn’t need to add more images of death to the ones that already haunted her nightmares. She might not have been the cause of those deaths anymore than she was the cause of whoever Farmer was talking about, but that didn’t mean she needed to see it like everyone else.

  “Stand back,” called a woman in a long blue robe and sterile gloves. She strode forward, breaking up the crowd of people in front of the door. Farmer had stepped back out of their way and was slowly making his way back to where Miranda sat on the edge of the bed.

  “He is dead,” the woman announced. Miranda let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She looked up at Farmer. Was that a smirk she saw on his face just now? It was hard to tell. Only tired concern rested on his features.

  “Captain, lock this place down. No one in or out,” the woman commanded a man on her right. The captain saluted the woman, who was most likely the major in charge of the med bay, then headed down the hall. Miranda watched him go as far as she could see around the wide open double doors.

  “What did you do?” Miranda hissed at her battle buddy.

  “Me?” Farmer said, taking back up his lounging position across her med bed, the magazine back in his hands.

  “You are in so much trouble,” she said, not really caring if he heard or not. He turned a page before answering.

  “I just found the guy
.”

  Miranda knew that there was more to it than that. One didn’t just find dead bodies. Not even in a hospital. But she held back the hundreds of questions plaguing her mind.

  Miranda tried to take up more of the bed. Maybe he would get the hint and get off it. Farmer stretched out over the front in a way that forced her back to the edge. Miranda narrowed her eyes. Was he doing this on purpose? She couldn’t help but think that. If that was the case, why? It made no sense. No, he probably just cared about him. She was making too big a deal out of it. That’s what dead bodies did to her.

  Part of her wanted to fill the silence between them, but the murmur filling up the room was enough to stop her every time she went to open her mouth.

  “Not a mark on him,” one of the patients by the door said. They could all see the body. Miranda set her resolve. She didn’t need to see any more dead body memories. She didn’t. But part of her wanted to know what the man had looked like. Was he tall or short? Fat or skinny? Maybe he was balding so he shaved all his hair off. She chuckled at her own joke. The group at the door turned around to give her a dirty look. The laughter died in her throat.

  “Poison?” another asked, leaning into his crutch. Oscar had scooted past the crowd to where the body was while Miranda was stuck listening to two idiots discuss the case with no more information than she had.

  “How?” the first said. This was a medical unit; there would be only things for healing here. Nothing that killed, or could some of this stuff do both? Miranda didn’t know. A vague memory of her mother telling her not to touch a bottle and smacking her hand away crossed her mind. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “Worm’s rue can kill you,” she said, repeating the words her mother said all those years ago. The two guys at the door who she’d been eavesdropping on looked back at her.

  “What?” they both asked in unison.

  “Worm’s rue,” she said. The memory was clear now. “My mother told me if you take it when you ain’t sick, it can turn your insides bad. Enough and it can kill you.”

  “I bet that’s how they did it,” the guy on crutches announced. His blond hair was scruffy. Much longer than regulation allowed. He had to have been there a long time to have hair that long.

  Miranda winced. Worm’s rue tasted nasty. Worse than molly powder. To take enough to kill, that would have been one sour drink.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Miranda said, trying to get out of their conversation.

  “You’re the one that brought it up,” the second guy accused. His brown hair was also shaggy, but not as bad as the first. Stubble graced his chin. Miranda only noticed because he kept scratching it. Like he wanted to shave but couldn’t, for all the reasons you couldn’t shave while in med bay.

  “And it’s a good idea,” the crutches guy said. “It would be too easy in a hospital like this for a guy to knock himself off with the right meds.”

  Miranda’s eyes went wide. They were talking about suicide. Now she got up off the bed and walked over towards the door. It was also something she never intended to speculate about. But here she was in the middle of their questions, and her with no more answers than the other two.

  “Thanks,” said the other guy.

  “Let me see,” Miranda said, pushing up into their space. They shifted to the side, making a small hole in the people all around the door.

  She couldn’t see much. On the other side of the double doors was a long hallway. It had several smaller doors going on either side up and down, with another set of double doors at the very end. The walls were a browned white, not quite cream color, but not exactly white. In-between the doors were posters of cats in different positions. One was falling off a cliff, another was looking cute in a cup, and so on. Each had a saying underneath them. Miranda read each saying before letting her eyes fall on the pair of legs sticking out from the third door down the hall on the right. They had to be his or her legs. Miranda sucked in a large breath, then let it go.

  “Like what you see?” The guy with the crutch needled her with it. Miranda turned and smiled back at him and his friend.

  There was nothing to be afraid of. Nothing to even to see, really, she told herself.

  “Can’t see a thing,” she said, stepping out of the doorway.

  “Right!” the other guy said. Miranda shrugged.

  “Unless we go down the hall and check for ourselves, I guess we will never know,” she said.

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” the other guy said, patting her on the back. Miranda winced. The touch hadn’t been hard, but it was enough to aggravate her burns.

  “Names Mike, but here I go by Farmer,” he said, giving her a conspiratorial wink.

  “Danny,” the crutch guy said. “I’m going back home so it doesn't matter what they call me.” Miranda pointed to his crutch.

  “Don’t they normally hold you until you heal?” she asked. It wasn’t like the empire to give anything back once they claimed it, especially people.

  “Training injury, I need surgery,” he said. “They have to ship me to a med planet, then I get the option of coming back.” Miranda nodded. He didn’t need to say any more. If it was that bad of an injury... Miranda shook her head. That the on-planet med unit couldn’t handle it was reason enough to let him go.

  “You?” she asked Farmer Mike.

  “Battle buddy,” Danny pointed to Mike. Miranda nodded again.

  “You know, you better stop doing that,” Mike warned her, punching Danny’s shoulder. “Instructors here can get touchy about that much head shaking.” Miranda went to nod her head again then stopped herself.

  “Thanks for the tip,” she said. He waved her off. Miranda felt the blush rise her neck. She was thankful for the bandages, even if she was getting hot. Her focus went around the room to the mostly empty beds. Only two guys hadn’t gotten up to look. Both looked trapped by machines and bandages.

  “Found it,” someone said from the hallway. All three of them spun back around.

  The remains of a green liquid glimmered inside. Miranda didn’t know what it was, but whatever was in that jar had killed a fellow soldier. That was enough. Miranda felt a prick in her arm. She swatted at it, missing the thing that got her. Stupid mosquito. She was missing all the important information.

  “Second one this week,” the medic that had treated her said.

  “Must have overdosed,” another medic at the door added.

  “Must have,” someone else agreed.

  The room started to spin.

  “What would lead a perfectly healthy guy to commit suicide?” someone else asked. If someone answered him Miranda didn’t hear it. The sound had gone out of the room.

  All she wanted to do was get out of this place. The room felt hot. Too hot.

  Miranda pulled at the collar of her shirt. The bandage under her fingers felt like a death grip instead of the warm hug it felt like before. Before someone had died here. Now they felt like a chain of heat around her neck and back.

  “I need to sit down,” she said to no one in particular. Tiny white dots exploded over her eyes. Then she heard it again. That long mournful cry. She went to put her hands over her ears, only to find that her hands would not respond.

  “I think something’s wrong with her,” Mike said.

  “Medic,” Danny called. Miranda watched as the white spots spread from fireworks lighting up the work around her into a patch of never ending white. The sound had reached a crescendo.

  “Medic!” she heard Danny shout. Then everything went blank.

  Chapter 5

  “Miranda!” someone called. The voice was far away.

  “Move her to her med bed.”

  Miranda felt pressure at her legs and shoulders. A cool brush of air tickled her back as her body lifted into the air. It made her itch. She wanted to scratch it, but she couldn’t find her fingers. They were still there. She could feel them, but like her eyelids they refused to move at her command.

  Her body hung in th
e air as she was moved from where she fell towards what she hoped was her med bed like the voice had ordered.

  “Move.” Miranda heard the command and tried to respond. Nothing. Her legs hung there, held up by whoever was carrying her.

  “What did you say?” Farmer asked. Even in the haze, Miranda recognized his voice. She could hear that smile of his. That horrible sarcastic smile oozing through every word.

  “Move,” the voice said again. She knew that voice too, so why couldn’t she place it?

  “You have your orders, Recruit,” said one of the medics. It sounded like the guy that had given her the cream for her sunburn. Miranda tried to open her eyes again to see who was talking, but they remained glued.

  Someone grunted. ‘Probably Farmer,’ Miranda thought. The world was washing in bright colors on the kaleidoscope. Was the world normally supposed to be on fire in color when your eyes are closed? It wasn’t like she could see anything. In fact, every time she tried to open her eyes, the muscles refused. Yet there were the colors, like a rainbow set to spin.

  ‘I guess I’ll just have to go off sound for now,’ she thought. She sent up a small prayer to God that her eyesight would return, sooner rather than later. What good was a blind soldier? Or even a blind farmer, for that matter. She’d never heard of a blind farmer’s wife, either. They’d already told her she wasn’t good for anything else. Plus she didn’t turn eighteen for a few more cycles. Which was good because she wasn’t ready to be a wife. So maybe she didn’t want her sight to come back.

  There was some shuffling in the background, then everything went still.

  “How is she, Doc?” the familiar voice said. It sounded a lot like Eric. But what would an Ironside, team captain to the unit with Prince Adamantium, be doing here at her BASIC training planet?

  “I don’t know,” the medic replied.

  “Beep beep beep!” An over excitable droid yelled at the medic.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” the voice that sounded like Eric, but couldn’t possibly be Eric, said. Miranda couldn’t tell if the voice that couldn’t possibly be Eric had asked the droid or the medic for clarification. Both answered him.