Battletech #44 - Falcon Rising by Robert Thurston

Author:Robert Thurston [Thurston, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, High Tech, Space warfare, Interplanetary voyages
ISBN: 9780451457387
Publisher: New York ; Roc, 1999.
Published: 1999-01-30T06:00:00+00:00

17

Elizabeth Hazen Medical Center

Ironhold City, Ironhold

Kerensky Cluster, Clan Space

28 February 3060

"Diana, she may not open her eyes for days, weeks," Joanna said, her voice unusually soft, probably because hospitals seemed to demand lowered voices. "She may be in a coma, for Kerensky's sake."

Diana did not even look over her shoulder, but instead continued to stand by the suspension shell in which Peri's body seemed to float, even though it was clearly connected to a double bank of diagnostic and medicine-providing equipment. It looked eerie, especially with the complex of tubing around it, leading into the shell and then through narrower lines of tubing into various parts of Peri's body. Although dressed in a hospital gown that seemed draped on her, Peri's arms, legs, and face still showed the dark and purple bruises of her beating. A medtech had told them that the attack should have killed her. However, she had been improving slowly but steadily since her suspension in the transparent shell, where curatives were administered at intervals through tubes.

Joanna realized as she looked at the body in the shell that she had not thought of Peri in years. Peri had long ago flushed out of the same sibko that had produced Aidan and Marthe, when she and Joanna met again. Aidan had fled Ironhold, and Ter Roshak had sent Joanna and a peculiar tech named Nomad to seek him. When they finally found him, he was with Peri at a scientific outpost on the planet Tokasha. By that time, although neither Joanna nor Aidan would know of it until years later, Diana had been conceived and would be born a few months after Aidan's departure. Joanna felt sick to her stomach. She did not like to think of natural childbirth.

"Diana, your first bloodname trial is tomorrow. Hanging around this place is not going to—"

"Shut up, Joanna."

Normally Joanna would have reacted to the insolence, but this time her old falconer instincts kicked in and told her to allow Diana some latitude. She did not want anything to interfere with the edge Diana would need to win a bloodname.

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