Page 10 of Reformation
Lacey!
Memory hit him like another blow to the head. Jonah twisted to the side to get a look at his copilot. “Lacey?” She hung limp in her harness, unresponsive, but he could see her breathing. Still just knocked out, Jonah hoped. If he was only waking up now,then it made sense that a natural would be a little longer at it. He couldn’t see any blood, so there was that.
Not that he could really tell the color of anything under the glare of the blinking yellow emergency lights. He needed to get Lacey down and see if he could still fire up the ship’s medical system. The medbot wouldn’t be able to fix everything with an injection of Regen, but it could still diagnose and treat simple injuries.
Okay, then. He had a plan. But Jonah had to get himself loose before he could take care of Lacey. He let his head dangle and fumbled for the release catch that would open his harness. His fingers were slick and heavy, and his right wrist hurt bad enough that he switched hands after a moment, reaching cross body to undo the catch. Almost … almost …
Thankfully, the webbing of his harness kept him from falling flat on his face once he undid the buckle. Jonah got his feet under him, testing his balance on the slight curve of the ceiling before he pulled his arms free. The control panel in front of him was almost entirely inert, black except for the transmitter light.
S-O-S.S-O-S. S-O-S …
Jonah wondered whether or not it was a good idea to keep that going, all things considered. They’d been shot down by hostile forces, and the emergency system would lead anyone right out here.
On the other hand, pirates wouldn’t be interested in hunting down one lone ship while friendly forces out of the Box would. Better to leave it on for now.
Jonah stumbled the little distance to Lacey’s chair, needing his arms for support just to stay on his feet. He brushed her long, pale hair back and cupped her face in his hands. His fingers left glistening smudges. “Lacey? Honey, you with me?”
No response. He needed to get her down.
Undoing her harness was easier than working on his own but catching her was another thing entirely. Lacey was a slim girl, but she was tall, and Jonah was far from at his best right then. He managed to keep her off the ground, barely. It sent a shooting pain through his rib cage, but Jonah gritted his teeth and ignored it as he half carried, half dragged Lacey down the ship’s short hall to the medbot.
The medbot, like the engine fail-safes keeping the fuel from irradiating the ship, had its own emergency generator. The bot wasn’t immersive, but Jonah could make do with the handheld diagnostic tool. He set Lacey down, primed the bot for emergency measures, then picked up the wand and touched it lightly to Lacey’s head.
“Diagnosis: concussion, moderate. Fractured ribs: six, seven, nine, left side. Internal abdominal hemorrhaging: ruptured gall bladder.”
Fuck, that didn’t sound good. “Treatment options?”
“Limited. Remand patient to the nearest medical facility immediately.”
“No can do; I need treatment options for here.”
“Regenerative—”
Jonah slapped the side of the wall, then immediately regretted it when his wrist throbbed painfully. “No, dammit, I need treatment for a natural! You know how to do this, you goddamn machine?you’ve been treating Cody for years, now figure it out!”
The medbot blinked contemplatively for a moment. “Recommended: painkiller injection, localized anti-inflammatory, stabilizing gel for fractures and damaged organ.”
“Confirmed. Get on with it, then.”
That was a lot easier said than done. The process of actually getting the recommended treatment into Lacey, usually a minor symphony of lights and tiny pinpricks from the medbot, camedown to Jonah grabbing the things it indicated out of the cabinet behind it and injecting them himself. He thanked his stars that Lacey was still unconscious through all his fumbling.
By the time he finished, she seemed to be resting a little easier, at least. Jonah slumped down onto his hands and knees beside her, turning laboriously into a sitting position and just breathing for a second. He could feel his own ribs screaming at him, and his head ached fiercely. Half-heartedly, he touched the wand to himself.
“Diagnosis: concussion, moderate. Fractured ribs: four, five. Nasal bone fracture. Internal bruising. Sprain to right wrist extensors. Recommendation: Regen.”
“Of course,” he muttered. “Of fucking course.” One little shot, and he’d be spruced right up while Lacey had to deal with goddamn ruptured organs, and all she got was a painkiller. Part of Jonah wanted to refuse treatment out of a bizarre sense of solidarity … more like guilt.
You can’t help her if you don’t help yourself.When had his inner voice started sounding like Garrett?Get the damn shot now, feel the guilt later. Or better yet, never.
The medbot had helpfully lit up the syringe with the Regen in it. Jonah took it and shot himself in the thigh. Less than a minute later, the double vision he hadn’t even realized he’d had disappeared, he started to breathe easier as the muscles around his fractured ribs relaxed, and his headache vanished. Even his nose cleared up some, which—dumbass, he must have hit himself in the face with his own hand to break it in the first place.
“The wonders of modern—whoa.” Whoa, because the ship had just moved. It hadmoved. What the hell?
Jonah took his jacket off, stained as it was, and laid it over Lacey, then headed for the back hatch. There was a porthole there, an old-fashioned one that usually just looked out on theblackness of space. Right now, though, it looked out on a wall of water lashing the ship.
Jonah didn’t know exactly where they were or how they were oriented, other than upside down, but clearly the storm had caught up to them. The top of the ship wasn’t nearly as firm a landing place as the other side was, and whether it was rain or actual waves, the fierceness of the storm was moving them around. Too much movement and they might be swept into the ocean.
There’d be no chance of a rescue after that.
