The Insurrection

Yet calm came at last, and her eyes opened once more. She was in a hospital, she thought, turning to the window. On a planet with a small, warm sun that could be neither planefiess Aklumar nor cool, barren lssa and so must be

Cimmaon. Which meant that the Republic had won... or lost. She smiled with a ghost of real humor as she pondered the question. Was she a victorious hero in a conquered hospital? Or a miserable POW, doctored by her captors? There was ongg'ity one way to find out, and she reached for the call button, dismayed by the languid, weary weakness o pounds her muscles.

Her door opened within seconds, and she turned her naked head slowly, blinking against tears and light dazzle, as a woman in nursing whites entered. It took endgg'ess seconds to clear her eyes enough to read the tiny letters etched across the nurse's medical branch caduceus. "rRN," they said.

So they'd won; no Rump commander would permit POW'S to wear the Republic's insignia, and her eyes closed again as relief ate at her frail reserves. Then she felt cool fingers in the ages-old, feathery touch as her pulse was checked and forced her eyes back open, staring up into a plain, serene face.

"How--was Her throat was dry and she felt a sudden surge of nausea, but she tried again, grimly. "How long?" she husked, and the rusty croak which had replaced her soprano appalled her.

"A little over a week, Commodore," the nurse said calmly, and offered her a tumbler of half-melted ice. She held the plastic straw to Han's cracked lips, and Hah sucked avidly, coughing as the water ran down her desiccated throat. It was only when the nurse finally removed the straw, gently disengaging Han's weak fingers from their almost petulant, childlike grip, that her words penetrated.

A week.t Impossible! And yet...

"A week?" she repeated, cursing the haziness of her thoughts.

"Yes, Commodore," the nurse said serenely, and touched a switch. The bed rose under Han's shoulders, and she clutched suddenly at the side rails, eyes rounding in pure astonishment as vertigo flashed through her.

She was a naval officer, and no hospital bed was going to make her whoop her cookies! The nurse watched her a moment, then shrugged and held the button down until Hah sat bolt upright, wondering dizzily if her pride was worth such physical distress.

But the vertigo slowly diminished. The bed still seemed to curtsy gently and nausea still rippled, but it was better. Perhaps if she told herself that often enough she would even believe it. She focused with some difficulty on the nurse's nameplate.

"Lieutenant Ti

Her eyes were huge holes in a thin, gray-green face, sores covered her lips, and 'dark mottled patches disfigured her complexion.

Her hairless skull seemed obscene and tiny on the bony column of her neck, and her collarbone was a sharp ridge at the neck of her hospital gown.

Rad poisoning. She'd seen it before, but, her detached, dizzy mind decided calmly, she'd never seen anyone look worse and live. Her brain went back to that final nightmare instant of consciousness, seeing her helmet polarize again.

Close, she thought. Her impression of the fireball reaching out for her was all too close to the truth.

"Captain Tsing?" she asked hoarsely. "Lieutenant Kan?" "Both alive, Commodore," Lieutenant Ti

"Hhow bad?" She gestured weakly at herself.

"Not good, sir, but you'll make it. I'd rather let your doctor give you the whole picture." "When?" "He's on his way now," the lieutenant said.

"I expect-- The door hissed open and a small, cherub-faced man bounced in, smiling so hugely she wondered whether she ISVSSECTO was mole amused by his antics or resentful of his abundant energy.

"Good morning, Commodore Li!" he said briskly, and her eyes widened at the harsh, sharp-edged vowels of his New Detroit accent.

They dropped almost involuntarily to his uniform insignia.

"Yes," he gri

"Could be worse," he said frankly, "but not a lot. It was all touch and near-as-damn-it-go, actually. At the moment, you weigh about twenty-eight kilos." She flinched, but her eyes were steady, and he nodded approval.

"You were lucky it was only a nice, clean fighter missile,"" he went on. "On the other hand, you'd already have checked out of our little hotel ff you'd had the shielding of an escape pod. I understand the bridge pods were buckled and your crew got you out just in time, as it were." "H-how many?" she husked.

"From the bridge?" He looked at her compassionately. "Five counting you." She winced, and he went on quickly. "But overall, you did much better. Over half your crew got out safely." Her lips twisted. He was right, of course; fifty percent was a miraculous figure. But ff over half had survived, almost half had not.

"As for you, you got an awful dose, but your chief of staff seems to have unusual tad tolerance. He got you and your lieutenant picked up and hooked to blood exchangers in time, but even so, it was a rough forty-eight hours. We've managed to scrub you out pretty well, and the cell count looks okay, but it was tight, ma'am. Really, really tight." "Don't look much like I made it anyway," Han rasped. "Ah." Llewellyn nodded. "You are a bit the worst for wear, Commodore. We doctors should, after all, be honest. But you'll improve quickly now we can get you off the IV'S and put a little weight back on you." He examined her face critically and rose briskly. "But for now, I want you to go back to sleep. I know, I know--was he waved aside her half-voiced protests his-comy just got here. Well, the planet isn't going anywhere, and neither are you. We've got you scrubbed out, but you have seven broken ribs, a cracked cheekbone, a fractured femur, and a skull fracture--just for starters. I'm afraid you're going to take a while healing up from that." Hah blinked at him, wondering where the pain was.

They must have her loaded to the gills with painkillers, she decided, which helped explain her wooziness. His last words seemed to echo around a vast, dark cavern, and she realized dimly that the cavern was her own skull. She blinked again and let herself sink into the lightheadedness. The sun patterns on the ceiling danced above her, weaving the pattern of her dreams.

The next few days were bad. Hah was sick and dizzy, and she hated her surrounding forest of scrubbers and monitors. The instruments were silent, but she knew they were there--probing and peering for the firs sign of uncorrected damage. They were part of the technology which kept her alive, and she hated them because they were part of what confined her to her bed.

It took long, hard effort to attain her normal calm, and it slipped away abruptly, without warning. She hated her loss of control almost as much as she did her weakness, and that loss showed when Lieutenant Ti

Hah tried reason. It didn't work, so she pulled rank, only to find that medicos are remarkably impervious to intimidation. And finally, she resorted to a hell-raising tantrum which would have shocked anyone who knew her and, in fact, shocked her--but not as much as the flood of tears which followed.