Heirs of Empire

“Harry?” A hand touched hers, lifted it. “Harry, can you hear me?”

Sean’s rough-edged voice was raw with pain and worry. Worry for her, she realized muzzily, and her heart twisted at the exhaustion that filled it.

“Can you hear me?” he repeated gently, and she summoned all her strength to squeeze his hand. Once that grip would have crumpled steel; now her fingers barely twitched, but his hand tightened as he felt them move.

“You’re in sickbay, Harry.” His blurred shape came closer as he knelt by her bed, and a gentle hand touched her forehead. She felt his fingers tremble, and his voice fogged. “I know you can’t move, sweetheart, but that’s because the med section has your implants shut down. You’re going to be all right.” Her eyes slid shut once more, blotting out the confusion. “You’re going to be all right,” he repeated. “Do you understand, Harry?” The urgency in the words reached her, and she squeezed again. Her lips moved, and he leaned close, straining his enhanced hearing to the limit.

“Love … you … all…”

His eyes burned as the thready whisper faded, but her breathing was slow and regular. He watched her for a long, silent moment, and then he laid her hand beside her, patted it once, and sank back in his chair.

There were other moments of vague awareness over the next few days, periods of drifting disorientation which would have terrified her had her thoughts been even a little clearer. Harriet had been seriously injured once before—a grav-cycle accident that broke both legs and an arm before she’d been fully enhanced—and Imperial medicine had put her back on her feet in a week. Now whole days passed before she could hang onto consciousness for more than a minute, and that said horrifying volumes about her injuries. Worse, she couldn’t remember what had happened. She didn’t have the least idea how she’d been hurt, but she clung to Sean’s promise. She was all right. She was going to be all right if she just held on…

And then, at last, she woke and the bed beneath her was still, and the vertigo and nausea had vanished. Her lips were dry, and she licked them, staring up into near total darkness.

“Harriet?” It was Brashan this time, and she turned her head slowly, heart leaping as muscles obeyed her once more. She blinked, trying to focus on his face, and her forehead furrowed as she failed. Try as she might, half her field of vision was a gyrating electrical storm wrapped in a blazing fog.

“B-Brash?” Her voice was husky. She tried to clear her throat, then gasped as a six-fingered alien hand slipped under her. It cradled the back of her head, easing her up while the mattress rose behind her, and another hand held a glass. Her lips fumbled with the straw, and then she sighed as ice-cold water filled her mouth. The desiccated tissues seemed to suck it up instantly, yet nothing had ever tasted half so wonderful.

He let her drink a moment more, then set the glass aside and settled her back against the pillow. She closed her right eye, and sighed again as the tormenting glare vanished. Her left eye obeyed her, focusing on his saurian, long-snouted face and noting the half-flattened concern of his crest.

“Brash,” she repeated. Her hand rose, and his took it.

“Doctor Brash, please,” he said with a Narhani’s curled-lip smile.

“Should’ve guessed.” She smiled back, and if her voice was weak, it sounded like hers once more. “You always were better with the med computers.”

“Fortunately,” another voice said, and she turned her head as Sandy appeared on her other side. Her friend smiled, but her eyes glistened as she sank into the chair and took her free hand.

“Oh, Harry,” she whispered. Tears welled, and she brushed at them almost viciously. “You scared us, honey. God, how you scared us!”

Harriet’s hand tightened, and Sandy bent to lay her cheek against it. She stayed there for a moment, brown hair falling in a short, silky cloud about a too-thin wrist, and then she drew a deep breath and straightened.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to go all mushy on you. But ‘Doctor Brashan’ damn well saved your life. I—” her voice wavered again before she got it back under control “—I didn’t think he was going to be able to.”

“Hush,” Harriet soothed. “Hush, Sandy. I’m all right.” She smiled a bit tremulously. “I know I am—Sean promised me.”

“Yes. Yes, he did.” Sandy produced a tissue and blew her nose, then managed a watery grin. “In fact, he’s go

“Is everyone else all right?”

“We’re fine, Harry. Fine. Sean’s got some damage to his left arm—he drove himself too hard—but it’s minor, and Tam’s fine. Just exhausted. With you out, Brashan stuck here in sickbay, and Sean ready to kill anybody who suggested he leave you, poor Tam’s been carrying most of the load.”

“Tam and you, you mean,” Harriet said, seeing the weariness in her face.

“Oh, maybe.” Sandy shrugged. “But I haven’t left the ship—Tam was the one who did all the traveling back and forth with the computer.”

“Computer?” Harriet said blankly. “What computer?”

“The computer we—” Sandy started in a surprised voice, then stopped. “Oh. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“We were … going to the valley?” Harriet said uncertainly. “There was some sort of … of defensive system, I think. Did I—” She released Brashan’s hand to cover her right eye. “Is that what happened to me?”

“No.” Sandy patted the hand she held. “That happened later. We’ll tell you all about it, but what matters is we found a personal computer and brought it back. It’s in miserable shape, but Tam’s managed to recover some of it, and it looks like some kind of journal. I think—” she smiled fondly “—he’s been concentrating on it to keep his mind off worrying about you.”

“A journal?” Harriet rubbed her closed eye harder, and her open eye brightened. “That sounds good, Sandy. I just wish I—”

“Harriet.” Brashan interrupted quietly, and his hand closed on her right wrist, stilling the fingers on her eye. “Why are you rubbing your eye?”

“I— Oh, it’s probably nothing,” she said, and heard the strangeness in her voice. Denial, she thought.

“Tell me,” he commanded.

“I—” She swallowed. “I just can’t get it to focus.”

“I think it’s more than that.” His voice accepted no evasion, and she felt her lips quiver. She stilled them and turned to face him squarely.

“I think it’s gone blind,” she said, and heard Sandy’s soft gasp beside her. “All I get is a … a blur and a glare.”

“Is it bothering you now?”

“No.” She drew a deep breath, curiously relieved to have admitted there was something wrong. “Not as long as it’s closed.”

“Open it.” She obeyed, then squeezed it instantly back shut. The glare was worse than ever, jagged with pain even her implants couldn’t damp.

“I … I can’t.” She licked her lips. “It hurts.”

“I see,” he said, and she felt her nerve steady under his composed voice. “I feared you might have difficulties, but when you said nothing—” His crest flipped a Narhani shrug.

“What’s wrong?” She was pleased by how nearly normal she sounded.

“Nothing irreparable, I assure you. But as you know, Israel’s sickbay, while capable of bone and tissue repair and implant adjustment, was never intended for enhancement or major implant repair. Her designers—” he smiled a wry, Narhani smile “—assumed injuries such as that would be treated aboard her mother ship, which, alas, is beyond our reach.”

He paused, and she nodded for him to continue.

“You were struck in the right temple, left shoulder, and right lung by heavy projectiles,” the centauroid explained gently. “Despite the crudity of the weapons used, they had sufficient power at such short range to shatter even enhanced human bone, but the one which struck your head fortunately impacted at an angle and your skull sufficed to turn it.”