face with one hand and clinging to him with the other. Their gazes met briefly, and she smiled at him. He smiled right back, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. “I love you.”
She laughed into the mask. He had been saying it to her every few minutes since she had awoken in the trauma bay. Stinger had been right. She was banged up. Both of her feet were covered in a skin healing gel and wrapped in bandages. The medics had pulled a small pile of metal slivers from her feet before cleaning and treating them. She had a bump on the back of her head, and a gash on the hairline up front as well as a mild concussion. Her hands were a mess of cuts and scrapes. She had to take two bags of IV meds to protect her against any viruses or bacteria she might have been exposed to through the used needle sticks.
But it was her lungs, her damaged but healing lungs, that had saved her life. In the most bizarre twist of fate, she had gotten so used to a lower concentration of oxygen that she had been able to survive longer in the broken chamber than a healthy person.
It seemed almost poetic in a way. Her hardscrabble life as a child miner had all but saved her tonight. From the bombs she had dismantled to the climbing and crawling through tight spaces to the quick-thinking that convinced her to take the gas to a space vent, she had used all the skills of her childhood to save everyone on the ship.
“They’re calling you a hero,” he said as she finished her breathing treatment and handed the nebulizer to the medic who had come to check on her.
She rolled her eyes and coughed. Shaking her head, she protested, “I’m no hero. If anything, I’m the biggest dummy on this ship.” She gestured to her battered body. “What the hell was I thinking? I’m not a soldier!”
“And yet you kept pace with Terror and saved everyone,” he insisted.
“Has he woken up yet?” She glanced at the long window that looked out across the infirmary. Directly across the hall, on the other side of the medic station, Terror had been admitted for his injuries sustained in the explosion. He had a broken leg, some cracked ribs and quite a few gashes, but he was alive.
“I don’t know.” With a wry smile, he said, “When he does, we’ll probably all hear about it.”
“You should go down to the shops and get him some oranges if they have them.”
He thought she was joking. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll go down in the morning when they open.”
“Thank you.” She cleared her throat and made a face at the taste of the nebulizer treatment clinging to her mouth. “What about the other one? Pierce?”
“That man has the worst luck in the entire universe. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be twenty-percent original parts soon. If they don’t force him into early retirement, I’ll be shocked.”
“Poor guy.” She frowned. “I hope he recovers quickly. Being stabbed like that has to be awful.” She looked back toward the window. “What about Chance?”
“Still in his medically-induced coma as far as I know.” Cipher bent down to unzip his boots. “I’m not sure how things will shake out for him or his family.”
“Or hers,” she remarked. “If her family or his were working with Reckless and the Splinters, his whole life will be flipped upside down.”
“If he didn’t know,” Cipher replied, standing and toeing off his boots. “He might have been in on it all along.”
She shook her head. “No, he’s not that kind of man.”
“You hardly know him.”
“True,” she allowed, “but I saw his face when he talked about Nika. When we were on the Mercy, he was upset on my behalf and tried to stop Reckless from being so nasty. He wouldn’t have done that if he was secretly some racist Splinter nutbag.”
“I guess.” Cipher decided to reserve his judgment until there were more known facts. He closed the door of her hospital room and activated the privacy setting on the window. With the glass frosted, he peeled out of his uniform shirt and undershirt and took all his gear from his pockets. Exhausted, he tugged his belt free and turned toward the bed where Brook had wiggled over to make room for him. “Ready for bed?”
“Only if you come over here,” she said, holding out her hand. “I need you.”