jumped, Aoife, Alex, and Ferdinand were trapped for another hour.
“Very well,” I said. “If you look the other way while both of our ships exit your system, I will personally honor one future request from you that will take no longer than a week to complete and must not harm me or mine.”
“How will I contact you?”
“Post a public request for information on a source of gold dragon scales. I will contact you.”
“Very well, my lady. I accept. But if you go back on your word, I will destroy everything you love.” He said it softly but steel laced his tone.
The blood froze in my veins. He knew. If not about Ferdinand, then about me at the very least.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Your family may yet prove useful to me,” he said. Then with an arrogant little smirk, he cut the connection.
I didn’t trust Richard in the least and expected a barrage of fighters from Santa Celestia at any moment, but the ship’s sensors weren’t picking up anything. I couldn’t keep hesitating. I had to trust that Alex and Aoife could take care of Ferdinand.
I released the manual controls and let the ship take over. I checked our flight plan again then pressed the jump confirmation button. The engine noise changed and ramped up for an alarmingly long time before my stomach dropped and we jumped.
I checked our location, then put the ship in what passed for stealth. We would drift for four days before we could jump again.
Now I had to save Ian. I prayed I wasn’t already too late.
Chapter 27
I had to use the combat armor to carry Ian into the tiny medbay. The diagnostic table took up more than half of the room. I carefully maneuvered Ian onto the table and kicked off a scan before returning to the cargo bay to strip the armor off.
By the time I returned, the scan was done. The report listed his injuries from most to least severe, and it was a long list. The worst injury was internal bleeding from a blaster wound through his right side. That one needed immediate treatment. The report recommended time in a regeneration tank, but that wasn’t an option—this ship had no tank.
The outlook for alternative treatment put his chance of survival at less than 50 percent and that was with his nanos. But if I could keep him alive for the next few days, the doctors on Benedict’s ship could save him. I cut off his shirt, washed and disinfected my hands, and got to work.
I’d had some basic field medicine training years ago. I tried to remember what I had been taught as the diagnostic table walked me through a manual IV insertion. Usually an IV machine would start the IV for you, but this ship’s medbay didn’t have one, so I was on my own.
My hands shook so badly that I had to stop and take a deep breath. I could do this. It took three tries before I hit the vein. I hooked him up to a bag of synthetic blood replacement and moved on to his wound.
The blast had gone straight through. I rolled Ian onto his side, being careful with his IV. I irrigated both sides of the wound, and his blood ran like water. Luckily, the ship had a decent supply of regeneration gel. I pumped the wound full of gel. The regen gel congealed and sealed the hole, preventing him from bleeding out, but he might need another bag of synth blood.
I couldn’t lift him to wrap bandages around his body, so I pressed thick pads of gauze against the wound on his back and taped it tightly in place, then repeated the procedure on his front.
I cut off his pants, then cleaned and bandaged the rest of his wounds. Most were shallow, but he’d lost a few decently sized chunks of flesh to blaster bolts. His heart rate began to slow as the synth blood replaced what he had lost.
With Ian as stabilized as I could make him, I cleaned and bandaged my own wounds. My arm wasn’t bad enough to need regen gel, so I skipped it. I didn’t have time for the pain and Ian might need more before we could jump again.
I turned on the audible heart monitoring on the diagnostic table and piped sounds from the medbay through the ship’s speakers. I would hear if anything happened while I was exploring our refuge for the next four days.