Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch #1) - Ann Leckie Page 0,133
black tendrils that pulsed and quivered, that led back to my mouth. Another retch forced me to close my eyes and the thing came all the way free with an audible plop into the container. Someone wiped my mouth and turned me over, laid me down. Still gasping, I opened my eyes.
A medic stood beside the bed I lay on, the slimy green-and-black thing I had just vomited up dangling from her hand. She stared at it, frowning. “Looks good,” she said, and then dropped it back into its dish. “That’s unpleasant, citizen, I know,” she said, apparently to me. “Your throat will be raw for a few minutes. You…”
“Wh…” I tried to speak, but ended up retching again.
“You don’t want to try to talk just yet,” said the medic as someone—another medic—rolled me over again. “You had a close call. The pilot who brought you in got you just in time, but she only had a basic emergency kit.” That stupid, stubborn sail-pod. It must have been. She hadn’t known I wasn’t human, hadn’t known saving me would be pointless. “And she couldn’t get you here right away,” the medic continued. “We were worried for a little bit there. But the pulmonary corrective’s come all the way out, and the readings are good. Very minimal brain damage, if any, though you might not quite feel like yourself for a while.”
That actually struck me as funny, but the retching had subsided again and I didn’t want to restart it, so I refused to acknowledge it. I kept my eyes closed and lay as still and quiet as I could while I was rolled over and laid down again. If I opened my eyes I would want to ask questions.
“She can have tea in ten minutes,” said the medic, to whom I didn’t know. “Nothing solid just yet. Don’t talk to her for the next five.”
“Yes, Doctor.” Seivarden. I opened my eyes, turned my head. Seivarden stood at my bedside. “Don’t talk,” she said to me. “The sudden decompression…”
“It will be easier for her to keep silent,” admonished the medic, “if you don’t talk to her.”
Seivarden fell silent. But I knew what the sudden decompression would have done to me. Dissolved gasses in my blood would have come out of solution, suddenly and violently. Very possibly violently enough to kill me even without the complete lack of air. But an increase in pressure—say, being hauled back into atmosphere—would have sent those bubbles back into solution.
The pressure difference between my lungs and the vacuum might have injured me. And I had been surprised when the tank blew, and preoccupied with shooting Anaander Mianaais, and might not have exhaled as I should have. And that had probably been the least of my injuries, given the explosion that had propelled me into the vacuum to begin with. A sail-pod would have had only the most rudimentary means of treating such injuries, and the pilot had probably shoved me into a bare-bones version of a suspension pod to hold me until I could get to a medic.
“Good,” said the medic. “Stay nice and quiet.” She left.
“How long?” I asked Seivarden. And didn’t retch, though my throat was, as the medic had promised, still raw.
“About a week.” Seivarden pulled a chair over and sat.
A week. “I take it the palace is still here.”
“Yes,” said Seivarden, as though my question hadn’t been completely foolish but deserved an answer. “Thanks to you. Security and the dock crew managed to seal off all the exits before any other Lords of the Radch made it out onto the hull. If you hadn’t stopped the ones that did…” She made an averting gesture. “Two gates have gone down.” Out of twelve, that would be. That would cause enormous headaches, both here and at the other ends of those gates. And any ships in them when they’d gone might or might not have made it to safety. “Our side won, though, that’s good.”
Our side. “I don’t have a side in this,” I said.
From somewhere behind her Seivarden produced a bowl of tea. She kicked something below me, and the bed inclined itself, slowly. She held the bowl to my mouth and I took one small, cautious sip. It was wonderful. “Why,” I asked, when I’d taken another, “am I here? I know why the idiot who hauled me in did it, but why did the medics bother with me?”
Seivarden frowned. “You’re serious.”
“I’m always serious.”
“That’s true.” She stood, opened a drawer and brought