Aneni by Daniel C. McWhorter

Author:Daniel C. McWhorter [McWhorter, Daniel C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Underhill Press, LLC.
Published: 2022-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

June 25, 2056, 21:04 GST

Medical Bay Four, Hades One

Dylan slowly opened his eyes. He was lying on his back in a bed—a hospital bed, with rails up on both sides. Monitors hung above his head, and a slow, rhythmic beeping sound filled the air. He felt something on his face—a plastic tube stretched between his ears. Two small protrusions filled his nostrils, each delivering a steady stream of cool, pressurized air to aid his labored breathing.

His eyes darted around the small, dimly lit room. He was alone, but at least two people were talking nearby. They spoke softly, and he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

He felt a sudden urge to cough. He tried to stop it, but his burning lungs convulsed uncontrollably. He hacked several times, the last cough so violent that he thought he’d hacked up part of his lung. He hadn’t, but the acrid taste of smoke and blood filled his mouth. His head hurt too, and his eyes watered—the faint light above him burned his retinas like a laser beam.

“Are you alright, Mr. Harris?” a female voice asked from the hallway.

A woman appeared in the doorway. She wore the white and gray uniform of the station’s medical personnel. It consisted of gray trousers with a white stripe down the outside of each leg and a white, tight-fitting jacket with gray stripes down each arm. A red and gold embroidered caduceus filled a fist-sized space above the left breast.

“Yeah,” Dylan said, his soft voice more gasp than whisper.

“You’re lucky,” the nurse said as she approached his bedside. “Another couple of minutes and you would have been dead.”

Dylan reached up to massage his sore throat. “I feel dead,” he croaked.

The nurse quickly scanned the monitors. “Well, you’re not—at least not according to these things.”

“What happened?” Dylan asked.

“What happened is that I saved your ass, bro!” A familiar voice sounded from just outside the doorway.

Josh entered the room, stopping at the foot of Dylan’s bed. “You were white as a ghost when I found you…I thought for sure you were dead.”

“Five minutes, Josh,” the nurse said as she turned toward the doorway. “Mr. Harris needs his rest.”

“Sure thing, Mel. Thanks for letting me see him.”

The nurse disappeared into the hallway.

“What happened?” Dylan asked again.

“I’m not gonna lie to you, man…we’re kinda fucked. It was a coordinated strike—three bombs here and at least three at Kepler.”

Dylan inhaled deeply through his nose. “Why?”

“We don’t know…Bolin and his people are trying to find the perpetrators now. I heard that it may have been some Earth Firsters who pretended to be part of the delegation from Luna, but that’s just speculation at this point.”

“Lily?”

Josh shifted nervously. “Uh, well, we’ve lost contact with the surface. Whoever hit us knew what they were doing—life support is down over most of the station, main power is offline, and…”

“And?” Dylan hissed.

“Uh, and we’re crashing. They knocked out our stabilizers, and the engineering deck has a hole in it big enough to drive a semitruck through. Damage control is working on it, but it’s going to take time…probably more than we have.

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