Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(48)

“Let’s hope nobody backs out of their parking spot in a hurry,” Major Renner says.

“We need to be clear and in the black before Murphy catches up and blows us into stardust,” the colonel says. “We got exceedingly lucky with that exchange. If they had been below us instead of above, we’d be an expanding cloud of debris right now.”

“Not bad, though,” Major Renner grins. “Punching a destroyer in the nose, with a little OCS.”

“No, not bad at all,” Colonel Campbell agrees. “But we probably killed a dozen sailors on that destroyer just now. I’m not going to feel proud about that any time soon.”



Murphy coasts to the underside of Independence Station and onto our tactical display again a few minutes later, but they’re not pulling military acceleration.

“They’re trailing debris,” the tactical officer says. “We hurt ’em good.”

“Four kinetic hits at knife-fight range. Wouldn’t be surprised if those went halfway from bow to stern,” Major Renner says.

We are well away from the station, coasting ballistically with all the active sensors turned off again, doing what Indy does best. With every passing minute, we’re putting more and more empty space between us and Murphy, Independence Station, and Earth.

“Anything on active?” Colonel Campbell asks.

“Some short-range ship-to-ship comms. Nothing directed our way, though.”

“We just stole an OCS out of the docking clamps and shot it out with a fleet destroyer,” Major Renner muses. “Why isn’t half the remaining fleet looking for us with all their active sensors running?”

“Good question. This whole thing stinks from top to bottom.” Colonel Campbell reaches into the holographic plot display and draws a trajectory with his finger.

“Do a corrective boost, and bring us around the other side of Independence. I want to get a better idea of what’s going on. Passive sensors only.”

“Aye, sir.” The XO reads off the new course data to the helmsman.

“Three-second burn, on my mark.”

“Three-second burn, aye.”

The pleasant numbness wrapped around my left hand is slowly giving way to a decidedly uncomfortable throbbing ache that gets sharper by the minute. The meds in the trauma pack are wearing off. I stick my left hand underneath my right armpit and grimace at the pressure. I didn’t spend much time yet thinking about what’s underneath that trauma pack—or rather, what isn’t there anymore—and I don’t really care to.

“Mr. Grayson,” Colonel Campbell says.

“Sir?”

“You look like absolute hell. Go to sick bay and have the medical officer look at that. You’re bleeding all over my CIC, son.”

I manage to muster a half-cocked grin. “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

I turn and walk toward the CIC hatch, leaving Indy’s command crew to their work. Now that it looks like we won’t blow up in the next few seconds or minutes, I suppose I have the luxury of seeing to my own battle damage.

When I step through the hatch and into the passageway beyond, the tension goes out of me like the oxygen from a decompressing airlock, and I just feel drained. We made it through to Earth, against all odds. I should be in a fleet mess right now, eating fresh food and catching up on messages from Halley and my mother. Instead I am in a battle-weary warship again, on the run from our own people, and on my way to see how much of my left hand I’ll get to keep. Right now I very much wish I had stayed on New Svalbard with Sergeant Fallon and her fellow HD grunts.

Not the best idea you have this week, I think, and the voice in my head has a heavy Russian accent.





CHAPTER 13





Indy’s medical specialist is a female corpsman named Randall. She’s an E-6, a staff sergeant like me, and I’ve seen her in the NCO mess often, but we’ve not had any interactions other than me picking up some no-go pills from sick bay a few times on our trip from New Svalbard.

“The broken nose I can fix in about five minutes,” she says when she has examined my various defects. “Won’t even leave a mark. That hand, though. How’d you manage that?”

“Reached in front of a muzzle. I think the blast did more damage than the bullets.”

“Oh, they both did their share,” she says. “Trauma pack meds wearing off yet?”

I nod and grimace in reply. She scoots back her examination chair and gets up. Indy’s sick bay is tiny, just a little room about twice the size of my berth, and much of it is taken up by the treatment and surgery chair. There are lockers lined up in front of one of the bulkheads, and she opens one and takes out an injector unit. I try to ignore the searing pain in my left hand while she draws up a dose of whatever it is she’s about to give me.

“This will take the edge off. I don’t think you’re a dope seeker.” She winks at me and scoots back over to the treatment chair. “Annnnd . . . here we go.”

I feel the pinprick of the needle in the hollow of my left arm. Almost instantly, I feel a wave of dizziness and nausea flooding my brain at an alarming speed.

“Hang in there for a second, and it will pass,” Corpsman Randall says. “Feels bad at first, but it gets better.”

“It gets better” is a massive understatement. A few moments after the initial feeling of intense nausea that almost makes me throw up, a massive wave of relaxation and relief washes over me. The pain in my hand goes from almost unbearable to nonexistent in just a few seconds. I let my head tilt back against the headrest of the chair and let out a loud sigh.