The Diamond Deep (11 page)

She went still. “What did you do? And what happened to their followers?”

“They tried to kill you.” His spoke firmly, but she knew him well enough to hear the insecurity behind the strength. That didn't stop her from being afraid of what she'd hear.

“What did you do?”

“I turned off the life support where they were.”

Ruby felt gut-punched. “How many?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Ix allowed that?” It hadn't allowed them to kill during the insurrection unless it was self-defense.

“Even Ix knew that we couldn't fight two battles. It picked the one that matters the most.”

It was a hard death. When she was a child, she'd had nightmares about losing air and heat. They'd all been drilled in the creche about life support failure, told there were only moments to leave anyplace the air was rushing away from. The warnings from the drills ran in her head.
Get out, get to a door, do it immediately. There's ten or fifteen seconds before your heart stops.

Ix must have actually done it. At Joel's command.
But Ix had turned off the air.

Ellis and Sylva had tried to kill Joel. Had damaged his arm, if only for a while. Inches closer, and he might have been stunned completely, maybe killed. Surely that was what they meant to do if they got here. To kill everyone in the room.

She remembered locking eyes with Sylva. Ruby's shot had been wild, but she would have killed Sylva then. Even so, this felt different.

She stared into Joel's eyes, searching them. Was he sorry?

Was this just part of leading?

Even though it hurt inside, what she said to him was, “I love you.”

Laird came up and clapped Joel's arm. “Good to see the ships are away. What's next, Captain?”

Joel kept looking at Ruby in spite of Laird's clear request for a conversation. He hadn't yet responded to her whispered declaration that she could accept the horrible thing he'd done in spite of her own feelings about it.

Her teeth worried her lower lip as she kept watching him, hoping for his face to soften. She thought she saw concern slip across his eyes, relax his mouth, give him warmth.

But of course, now that Laird was here, he wouldn't say it out loud. He did nod at her and give her a slight, secret smile before he turned and smiled—more broadly but not half as deeply—at Laird. “We need to decide what to do about the invaders. Make sure KJ rejoins us.”

“I will.” Laird turned and walked off, and Ruby put a hand on Joel's arm.

He twitched it off. “Not now.”

SueAnne and Bruce came up. SueAnne looked exhausted, while Bruce seemed excited about the danger, almost like an adult version of Haric. “Ready?”

Joel started for the door

Ruby took a deep breath, and followed. She could help.

Joel held the door open for Bruce and SueAnne. The old woman hobbled through even more slowly than usual, her footsteps showing the strain of being part of command during the attack on the
Fire
.

Ruby stepped up to take her arm, prepared to help her get to wherever they were going.

Joel's hand on her shoulder stopped her. He shook his head.

“I can help. I know how everyone on our level thinks. I've been in the cargo bays.”

She saw regret on his face, but it wasn't audible in his sharp words. “Stay. You can see what's happening here, and you'll be safe.”

“I don't care about safe.”

SueAnne turned. She looked almost apologetic, or at least empathetic. Her words, however, were clipped and iron. “Officers only.”

Ruby glanced from her to Joel. Both looked resolute.

Laird and KJ came up behind her. She was going to have to step through the door and defy Joel or step back for them to get in.

She took another deep breath, used it to control her anger. Even though every part of her rebelled, she stepped back, and watched Laird and KJ and two others go through. The door shut. She stood and stared at it, furious and bereft all at once.

Onor jerked so hard on the lever that secured the airlock door that he nearly lost his balance. His breath came in great foul gasps that stank of fear and his hurt arm screamed pain at him, but what mattered was that there were two sets of metal doors between him and Marcelle and the robot spiders.

“I never want to see those things again,” he whispered. “Never.” Never an enemy like that, never the rending of a friend into parts. He'd seen death, but this was death covered in horror.

Colin. Onor felt dizzy remembering. He peered back through the lock, but all he could see was light. “Ix?”

“Yes, Onor?”

“Where is it? Are we safe?”

“The spider bots cannot open the lock if it's dogged shut.”

Onor protested. “They opened the outside door of the
Fire
. The
outside
.”

“I can keep them out of the rest of the ship.”

“Could you have kept them out of ship at all?”

“I don't know.”

“Damned machine.” He wanted to say worse things, but knew it for the heat of adrenaline. He took three deep breaths, his lungs seared by the pain in his arm, which seemed to go to the bone. As soon as his hands stopped shaking too hard to undo the clasps, he stripped his helmet off. Marcelle did the same, and then he had her in his arms, both of them bulky in their suits, not really touching. There was no way to reach her face to kiss her. He ripped his glove free and stroked her hair awkwardly. “I'm so glad you're safe.”

Her face had gone white as bone except for pink spots on her cheeks from the exertion of pulling along the line. Her breath came in fast little gasps like his. Tears hung in her eyes.

He closed his eyes, searching for something to focus her on, to get her back into control. The pain in his arm throbbed, demanding attention. It would do. “I need help. A medikit.”

“Back. Right outside the airlock.” She was already turning. “Are you hurt?”

“A cut. It's bleeding.” He could still feel it, warm and sticky inside his suit.

“I'll get the kit.”

He slithered out of the bulky suit, standing mostly-naked in the corridor until Marcelle returned with a fistful of medical supplies held in a bare hand and one suit-glove clutched in her gloved hand. She stared at his arm, which dripped red blood. “You should have left your suit on until we got all the way back to a working hab.”

“You sound like The Jackman.”

“Someone needs to protect you,” she shot back at him. “What if they space the air in here?”

He grimaced. “If the damned suit had worked, I could have saved Colin.”

Her face screwed up into an expression that looked like rage and sorrow blended. As she wrapped the bandage around his arm, the look softened, replaced with calm and concern everywhere except her dark eyes.
They
were steeled and angry. “Hold that,” she whispered, “use pressure.” She helped him onto the cart and found a way for him to hook his elbow around a rail to hold on with the bleeding arm so he could keep pressure on the cut with his good arm.

Ix gave them directions.

Marcelle turned out to be quite deft at flying the cart.

If his arm didn't hurt so much he would have felt silly being out between levels in his underwear. As it was, it just meant he had to hang on tighter since his sweat-slicked bare skin wanted to slide off the smooth surface as Marcelle cornered faster than he would have. Not that he blamed her. Every turn left the robots further behind.

They rushed through the open space between cargo and the living pods, an eerie thin corridor full of supports and pipes and catwalks and storage.

The images in his head were all bad. The worst was Colin. He could see Colin whole and then not-whole. Over and over, like the picture wouldn't leave his mind. He barely felt the jerk as the cart stopped. Marcelle had a hand on his arm, and was helping him off before he understood they'd returned to the suit locker. His clothes were there, but of course hers weren't. She put on Colin's clothes, and did a second quick wrap of his arm before she let him put on his shirt.

As he followed Marcelle up the ladder into B-pod, he had to stop and hold on with both hands to keep from falling. She leaned down into the hatch Ix told them to go up, a worried look on her face. “Are you okay?”

“Dizzy.”

“Come on, then. We'll find a place to rest.” She braced herself on the rim and held her hand down to him. It took him three tries to grasp it with his good hand.

She had taken his hand a lot today.

She pulled, and he came up the ladder, slowly, step by step. He crawled out of the hole and fell onto his side, breathing hard.

Marcelle picked up his arm. “It's bled through.” She supported him into a nearby hab. They had no trouble getting in—probably once more a gift from Ix. The hab was empty, and smelled stale.

She closed the door hard and double-checked with Ix to make sure it was locked.

He had to lean on her to get into the bed.

His shirt was caked to the bandage. He barely managed not to scream when she pulled it free. “That's deep,” she murmured. “Good thing I brought something to close that with.” She wrinkled her nose. “Let's get clean first. You've got blood everywhere.”

She stripped him the rest of the way without blushing or teasing. Her calm strength let him relax as he stood under the water and she sponged blood and sweat from him. Then they were both naked and in the shower. They didn't talk, which he was grateful for. It wasn't very much like Marcelle to be quiet, and it was what he needed. To just stand and feel the water.

The shower stayed on longer than usual, recognizing the two users or perhaps helped by Ix. The water seemed to pick the fear up from his skin and wash it away one thin layer at a time. He left the shower before she did and dried himself off as best he could. His cut still bled, and he stained the towel.

By the time Marcelle emerged, wrapped in a towel herself, he had stretched out on the bed with his arm flung up by his ear and the other hand trying to put on enough pressure to stop the blood.

She pulled on her underwear and Colin's T-shirt and came to him. She wiped the cut clean with an astringent pad and filled it with a sharp-smelling paste. “This will keep it from getting infected.”

“You were good back there,” he murmured. “Fast. Might have saved our lives.”

She bound the edges of his cut with thick, clear tape, then wiped the excess medicine and blood off his arm. Her fingers felt warm, gentle. “That was the most awful thing I ever saw. Colin. I can't . . . I can't believe it.”

“I know.”

“Do you know it's not your fault?”

He didn't have an answer. If he'd gone back to trade suits, if he had been stronger, if he had been more graceful . . .

She gave him one of her looks, the one that said
no nonsense and listen up
, the one that made him feel like a recalcitrant child. Then she said, “You did your best. We all did. You saved us both by sending me over the traverse line. Otherwise, I'd be dead, too. And you. Colin . . . Colin hesitated when you didn't. You can't blame yourself for that.”

She was so damned earnest. “I'll try not to.” It felt like a faint promise, but not quite a lie. Colin's death seemed so big, and so awful.

She checked the work she'd done on his arm, left her fingers on his shoulder. “I get it that they wanted to steal the cargo. I guess we learned a lesson there. But why hurt people?” Her voice sounded thin and high, like she might break. “Why kill Colin? What did they get out of that?”

Her fingers had tightened on his shoulder, and the human contact felt good. “I have no idea.”

“We almost died,” she said.

“We might die yet. Who knows what other surprises that ship has for us?”

“I want to live.” She bent over him and kissed him on the lips. He didn't have the strength to turn away, and before he knew it he was returning her kiss as enthusiastically as she was delivering it. She smelled like stale sweat and fear and concern, but it was also the scent of life. He could feel it in her pulse, in her lips, in the way she put weight on him carefully, avoiding his arm.

He was already naked under the towel.

The heat of her erased the pain in his arm and the robot spiders and everything else he should be thinking about. It almost erased the pain of the last sight he had of Colin.