Gunn and Salvo Box Set: Books 1-4: Galaxy Run, Friendly Fire, Calypso End, Bygone Star by Joshua James

Author:Joshua James [James, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-23T23:00:00+00:00

Part 3

The Dead

37

Salvo grunted as she rolled onto her stomach. She had cracked her head hard against the floor when she fell, and she was having trouble focusing her eyes.

At least her implant seemed to have reconnected. It was a relief to have the old, familiar data there, even when it was currently calculating the depressingly low odds of their survival.

She finally lifted her head to find Gunn bent over Regency, looking like he was about to fall apart.

“What happened?” she groaned.

“The Wave,” Gunn said, trying to lift the girl. Regency was dead weight in his arms. “Her brain must have…Earth’s moon, Salvo, I’m an idiot…”

Salvo sat up, rubbing the back of her head. “What about that noise?”

“I don’t know! Okoli hasn’t restarted the ship, and we can’t steer until he does, and the atmo’s out, and who the hell knows what the Breaker managed to do to the hull…”

At his best, Salvo trusted Gunn with her life, but he’d always been a little soft-headed when feelings got involved. She tried to stand, and her head spun, so she settled for scootching closer on all fours. “Gunn, leave her.”

“Leave?” Gunnison looked up at her in horror, and Salvo snatched at his wrist.

“I’m not firing on all thrusters,” she said, “and I don’t know the first thing about hard-light. I’m not positive I could get down there on my own even if I did. I’m not going to be any more helpful to Okoli than you would right now…but I do know my way around a med kit, okay? So you go down and see what Okoli needs, and I’ll stay here and help Regency.”

Gunn wasted one second they didn’t have looking down at Regency with a regretful expression. Salvo knew from experience that he’d rather hurl himself into a black hole than disappoint the people he cared about. If he could take the hit on Regency’s behalf, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

If he knew how badly her head was pounding right now, he wouldn’t leave her alone—which was exactly why she didn’t tell him. She didn’t need a protector at the moment. She needed someone to get down there and make sure they didn’t all die out here.

It was a mark of how much Gunn trusted her that he laid Regency back down, patted Salvo’s shoulder, and took off without a word. She could hear his boots thumping away down the corridor into the distance.

Under other circumstances, Salvo wouldn’t have minded a trip to the med bay herself, just to make sure there was no permanent damage. Instead, she pulled herself into a kneeling position beside Regency.

Okoli had said that he’d backed up Regency’s memories, but Salvo didn’t think the girl would appreciate being left as a series of binary code with no body. She put her hand to Regency’s throat. The girl’s heart was still beating, but she wasn’t breathing. Okay, she was basically brain dead, but not completely shut off. Salvo could deal with that.

She gently turned Regency’s head to the side, examining the little connector port behind the girl’s ears.

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