Cauldron of Ghosts by David Weber & Eric Flint

Author:David Weber & Eric Flint [Weber, David & Flint, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781476736334
Amazon: 1476736332
Goodreads: 18143937
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2014-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 37

Victor gazed down at the recumbent form on the narrow bed. “When was the last time she was awake?”

“It’s been twenty hours,” said Cary. “We’re getting worried.”

“Karen’s condition seems to have worsened a lot recently,” said Stephanie. “Starting a week ago. Before that, her deterioration was more-or-less steady but didn’t change much from day to day.”

Victor wasn’t surprised. Given the young woman’s injuries, she had to have a tough constitution just to have stayed alive this long.

“All right,” he said. “It’ll pose some risks, but we don’t have any choice. We’ll move her tonight.”

Cary frowned. “Move her? Where?”

“And why?” added Moriarty.

“Never mind the ‘where.’ You don’t need to know. As for the ‘why,’ we have access to a regeneration unit. It’s not the sort of full-fledged unit a hospital would have, so we won’t be able to heal all of the damage. But at least we can stabilize her condition and keep her alive.”

“For how long?”

“Medically speaking, for years. The political situation is likely to pose the real hazard.” Victor turned away from the bed. “I’ll send people over to pick her up. They’ll be here just after nightfall. Have her ready to go.”

“Ready…how?”

He shrugged. “As best you can.”

“Not a chance,” said Stephanie firmly. “She can’t even stand up.”

Since Karen’s legs were missing below the knees, she couldn’t walk out under her own power. Victor was searching for an alternative. Simply carrying the woman out on a litter could be done, of course. There wasn’t really that much risk involved. After nightfall, unless there was someone specifically spying on them—in which case, the authorities were already alerted and the hammer was probably about to fall anyway—they could only be spotted by one of the surveillance cameras that were scattered throughout most of the seccy quarters.

But the lighting in the corridors was pretty poor. Anyone monitoring the images would be able to determine that one live human body was being carried by two other people, but they wouldn’t see enough detail to tell exactly what was happening. Illness, an injury of some sort, it could be a number of things. It would be easy to disguise everyone’s features enough to throw off automatic face recognition software—even assuming that Mesan security had good enough images of the three women in the first place.

So, a little disguise…misdirection, rather…

“We won’t carry her out on a stretcher. We’ll carry her slung by the shoulders, one person on each side. I’ll have the two people who pick her up act casually, even convivially. If the incident does get picked up by a surveillance camera, anyone studying the recording is likely to think Karen just got drunk at a party and two friends came to take her home.”

Stephanie and Cary looked at each other.

“That’ll work,” said Stephanie, with a hard little smile on her face. “Everybody knows seccies are a bunch of souses and drug addicts.”

“It might be a little rough on Karen,” said Cary, “but she’s tough enough to take it. And she’s light enough that the two of us can lift her.

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