Prisoner of Conscience Read Free Page A

than anyone else — since Fleet Orientation Station Medical, before they’d been assigned to Scylla . But that had been three years ago.
    And almost the first thing they had learned about Koscuisko was that they were clear to make jokes with him. Not that the others had been easy to convince that it was really safe; and that had depressed Robert at the time, because of what it indicated about the usual treatment bond-involuntaries expected to receive in Fleet.
    “But it’s true, your Excellency, I swear it by the officer’s chin-beard,”Joslire protested. There was no response from their officer to this impertinence; Andrej Koscuisko didn’t have a chin-beard, smooth-skinned as any unmarried man. Koscuisko concentrated on smoothing the edges of the wound in Joslire’s thigh flush with the layer of anaerobe that would protect the raw flesh while it healed.
    After a moment Joslire spoke on. “Kaydence’s shot was the only one that really mattered, when it comes to that. All the other ones do us no good if the last one doesn’t go in.” Serious now, Joslire was giving his report, which meant that the others were free to contribute.
    “But it was Jos’s idea to get through the waste-chute behind food-stores forward. Or we wouldn’t have gotten there in time.” Toska Bederico, apparently no more than bruised and tired, was leaning against the stores table that would normally back against a wall that was now braced up in the bulkhead. “Can you get Jos to admit it, though? There’s the question.”
    As a joke it was not a very fortunate one, in Robert’s mind. Andrej Koscuisko could make anybody admit to anything, once he but got them down into Secured Medical and got started. Toska was tired, or he wouldn’t have made so potentially ambiguous a remark. The officer didn’t seem to have noticed anything; Koscuisko was tired, too.
    Of course Koscuisko had been hard at work since the first casualties had started to trickle in. For Robert’s own self he considered that he had the better part of the contract, since he only had to fetch and carry. That wasn’t really work.
    “Was that my idea?” Joslire sounded genuinely startled. “I don’t remember it being my idea. I thought it was Erish. Are you sure? I’ll take full credit, of course, Robert, write that down.”
    Joslire would do no such thing, needless to say. Joslire was scrupulous about credit where credit was due, sometimes too much so.
    “Don’t think so,”Kaydence frowned. “I thought it was Toska. Whose idea was it? Because someone’s got to go clean that up.”
    “Light duty, ten days.” Their officer tagged Joslire’s trouser-leg closed with a few strips of closing-tape to spare his blushes till he could change his trousers. Joslire blushed differently from people Robert had grown up with; he didn’t pink from pale, he toasted from tan.
    Of course there was the fact that Joslire was simply the color of meal-cake to begin with. The officer put his hand to Joslire’s shoulder for emphasis. “And keep your weight off your leg, you may walk if you must but no further than two turnings at a time. Now you must go to rest.”
    Joslire was subdued enough to let himself be moved by Robert and Code in tandem. Off of the treatment table. Back onto the mover. Koscuisko raised his voice and called for Kaydence, who was doing what he could to disappear; but there weren’t any walls to hide behind just now.
    “Kaydence, you are next. The shins of your boots look as though you had been using scour-skin for bootblack.” Koscuisko’s desire to lighten the atmosphere a bit was clearly evident in his bantering tone; and it worked, too. Quite apart from the fact that Koscuisko was their officer, he was a personable man, whose determined cheerfulness communicated itself to his Bonds almost immediately. “Tell me about it.”
    Koscuisko was right, the front of Kaydence’s boots were scratched and abraded across the shins. Kaydence actually did blush,