“The Donnie went up behind us, Cap. Guess the marines didn’t hold. She’s gone,” Alex said in a subdued voice.
“The six attacking ships?”
“I haven’t seen any sign of them since the explosion. I’d guess they’re toast.”
Holden nodded to himself. Summary roadside justice, indeed. Boarding a ship was one of the riskiest maneuvers in naval combat. It was basically a race between the boarders rushing to the engine room and the collective will of those who had their fingers on the self-destruct button. After even one look at Captain Yao, Holden could have told them who’d lose that race.
Still. Someone had thought it was worth the risk.
Holden pulled his straps off and floated over to Amos. Naomi had opened an emergency kit and was cutting the mechanic’s suit off with a pair of heavy scissors. The hole had been punched out by a jagged end of Amos’ broken tibia when the suit had pushed against it at twelve g.
When she’d finished cutting the suit away, Naomi blanched at the mass of blood and gore that Amos’ lower leg had turned into.
“What do we do?” Holden asked.
Naomi just stared at him, then barked out a harsh laugh.
“I have no idea,” she said.
“But you—” Holden started. She talked right over him.
“If he were made of metal, I’d just hammer him straight and then weld everything into place,” she said.
“I—”
“But he isn’t made out of ship parts,” she continued, her voice rising into a yell, “so why are you asking me what to do?”
Holden held up his hands in a placating gesture.
“Okay, got it. Let’s just stop the bleeding for now, all right?”
“If Alex gets killed, are you going to ask me to fly the ship too?”
Holden started to answer and then stopped. She was right. Whenever he didn’t know what to do, he handed off to Naomi. He’d been doing it for years. She was smart, capable, usually unflappable. She’d become a crutch, and she’d been through all the same trauma he had. If he didn’t start paying attention, he’d break her, and he needed not to do that.
“You’re right. I’ll take care of Amos,” he said. “You go up and check on Kelly. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Naomi stared at him until her breathing slowed, then said, “Okay,” and headed to the crew ladder.
Holden sprayed Amos’ leg with coagulant booster and wrapped it in gauze from the first aid kit. Then he called up the ship’s database on the wall terminal and did a search on compound fractures. He was reading it with growing dismay when Naomi called.
“Kelly’s dead,” she said, her voice flat.
Holden’s stomach dropped, and he gave himself three breaths to get the panic out of his voice.
“Okay. I’ll need your help setting this bone. Come on back down. Alex? Give me half a g of thrust while we work on Amos.”
“Any particular direction, Cap?” Alex asked.
“I don’t care, just give me half a g and stay off the radio till I say so.”
Naomi dropped back down the ladder well as the gravity started to come up.
“It looks like every rib on the left side of Kelly’s body was broken,” she said. “Thrust g probably punctured all his organs.”
“He had to know that was going to happen,” Holden said.
“Yeah.”
It was easy to make fun of the marines when they weren’t listening. In Holden’s navy days, making fun of jarheads was as natural as cussing. But four marines had died getting him off the Donnager, and three of them had made a conscious decision to do so. Holden promised himself that he’d never make fun of them again.
“We need to pull the bone straight before we set it. Hold him still, and I’ll pull on his foot. Let me know when the bone has retracted and lined up again.”
Naomi started to protest.
“I know you’re not a doctor. Just best guess,” Holden said.
It was one of the most horrible things Holden had ever done. Amos woke up screaming during the procedure. He had to pull the leg out twice, because the first time the bones didn’t line up, and when he let go, the jagged end of the tibia popped back out the hole in a spray of blood. Fortunately, Amos passed out after that and they were able to make the second attempt without the screaming. It seemed to work. Holden sprayed the wound down with antiseptics and coagulants. He stapled the hole closed and slapped a growth-stimulating bandage over it, then finished up with a quick-form air-cast and an antibiotic patch on the mechanic’s thigh.
Afterward he collapsed onto the deck and gave in to the shakes. Naomi climbed into her couch and sobbed. It was the first time Holden had ever seen her cry.
Holden, Alex, and Naomi floated in a loose triangle around the crash couch where Lieutenant Kelly’s body lay. Below, Amos was in a heavily sedated sleep. The Tachi drifted through space toward no particular destination. For the first time in a long time, no one followed.
Holden knew the other two were waiting for him. Waiting to hear how he was going to save them. They looked at him expectantly. He tried to appear calm and thoughtful. Inside, he panicked. He had no idea where to go. No idea what to do. Ever since they’d found the Scopuli, everywhere that should have been safe had turned into a death trap. The Canterbury, the Donnager. Holden was terrified of going anywhere, for fear that it would be blown up moments later.
Do something, a mentor of a decade earlier said to his young officers. It doesn’t have to be right, it just has to be something.
“Someone is going to investigate what happened to the Donnager,” Holden said. “Martian ships are speeding to that spot as we speak. They’ll already know the Tachi got away, because our transponder is blabbing our survival to the solar system at large.”
“No it ain’t,” Alex said.
“Explain that, Mr. Kamal.”
“This is a torpedo bomber. You think they want a nice transponder signal to lock on to when they’re makin’ runs on an enemy capital ship? Naw, there’s a handy switch up in the cockpit that says ‘transponder off.’ I flipped it before we flew out. We’re just another moving object out of a million like us.”
Holden was silent for two long breaths.
“Alex, that may be the single greatest thing anyone has ever done, in the history of the universe,” he said.
“But we can’t land, Jim,” Naomi said. “One, no port is going to let a ship with no transponder signal anywhere near them, and two, as soon as they make us out visually, the fact that we’re a Martian warship will be hard to hide.”