Wounds, Book 1 Read Free Page B

a medical kit, clicked it open, pawed through for a pressure bandage. Got to be quick, quick… “Come on, it’s no use! Leave it! Let’s go!”
    “Just a few more seconds!” The runabout was thrashing like a roped steer, and he was straight-arming his console, working fast while his blood puddled on the deck. “We’re still too high! If I blow the hatch now, the depressurization will suck us out; we won’t have any control!”
    He was right. She knew he was right. But what made her furious was that she was getting suited up, and he wasn’t.
    This is nuts; he has to get back here now! Jamming her helmet down over her ears, she thumbed the catch, heard the click and hiss as the helmet sealed and the suit pressurized. She banged open her external mike. “Bashir, now !”
    “ Almost there! ” His voice was a little tinny and sounded small and very far away through her internal speakers. But he did turn, and she tossed his suit forward, then his helmet. He fumbled for the suit, nearly lost it because his hands were slick. But then he had it, shook it open, shoved in one foot, then the other. Tugging the suit past his waist, he wriggled in one arm, then the other. But then, to her dismay, he turned back to his controls.
    “ I’ll try to level us! ” he shouted over the staccato sputter of maneuvering thrusters. “ That way when I blow the hatch—! ”
    “Forget that! We can blow it from here! Now you’ve got exactly three seconds to get your ass back here, or I’m going to drag you out by your thumbs!”
    “ No, Elizabeth, stay where you are! ” And then Bashir stiffened and he turned. Their eyes met and for one brief instant, it was as if time stopped. Everything fell away, and she would remember the look on Bashir’s face for the rest of her life: his horror and his regret, and all that blood.
    Then time began again. The runabout streaked toward its death; the alarm shrilled its ululating cry; then there was a weird, wrenching metallic scream and Bashir was shouting, wildly, “Elizabeth, she’s breaking up, she’s breaking up, she’s breaking—!”
    “Julian!” she shrieked. She lunged for him, one gloved hand hooked to a bulkhead, the other outstretched and they were so close she could nearly touch him, she was almost there, she could save him, she had to! “Julian, for God’s sake, give me your hand, give me your hand !”
    Maybe he started for her. Maybe not. But she’d never know because the next thing she heard was an enormous ka-bang. Flames sheeted through the runabout, and the air roared. Her right hand closed reflexively but her fingers clutched air, and then she was screaming because suddenly there was no deck, no bulkhead. No Julian.
    The entire starboard hull erupted like someone had touched off a bomb.
    Lense was swept away in a hail of debris. She smashed through murky clouds, tumbling head over heels so she saw dun-colored land and then an orange sun and then a vast gray-green smudge that undulated like oil. And then she was on her back, looking straight up, and she saw a bright fiery ball: the runabout, or rather what was left of it, arcing south and away from the water, shedding bits and pieces in its passage, streaming a jet of superheated plasma behind and breaking apart like some sort of angel fallen from grace.
    Then clouds swallowed her up and she couldn’t see the runabout anymore. There was only the sound of her guttural sobs, the wet of tears upon her skin, a swirl of vertigo. Her vision dimmed as she accelerated, and she went by feel, the g force hammering her body, squeezing her until she could barely take a breath. Her fingers crawled over her suit’s controls as she activated a force field to cushion her impact and programmed reverse thrusters.
    Her last coherent thought was that she would never survive. The impact would kill her. She was going to die, and only a fool would think otherwise.
    The very last thing she heard was the full-throated bellow of the