Flynn, Michael - The Wreck of The River of Stars by Flynn Michael

Author:Flynn, Michael
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2007-09-05T11:26:35+00:00

If Bhatterji’s life was a performance, he could not logically object to an audience. Akhaturian and deCant watched amazed from their nook as the fighters struggled past them. The Least Wrangler would have darted out to separate them, but deCant, more sensibly, restrained him and contacted the bridge where, it being the early morning, Gorgas had just taken the watch from The Lotus Jewel. Then, the wrangler called Dr. Wong.

But Wong was already in the spinhall, bag in hand. “Stop it!” she cried, stepping from the slidewalk.

“Stop it this minute!”

It would not be fair to say that the doctor broke up the fight. It was more that the fight had come to an end of itself. Bhatterji had finished meting out and Corrigan had finished accepting, and by good fortune the two had finished together. The acting first slumped to the floor and, to the surprise of Wong and the file:///K|/eMule/Incoming/WreckofTheRiversofStars,The.html (211 of 424)5-9-2007 13:26:53

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others who were now arriving, one by one, Bhatterji reached out a hand to help him up. Corrigan pulled himself up along the arm and his eyes met those of his assailant.

“I wouldn’t hurt her,” he said in wounded reasonableness. “I would never hurt her.”

Corrigan’s tone startled Bhatterji, who looked more closely at the deck officer and studied him with a frown. “Then see that you do not,” he said. “Inany way.”

Corrigan understood. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

By this time, Gorgas had arrived from the bridge and had stepped between the two, though Corrigan and Bhatterji continued to stare at each other with a strange and puzzled wonder. The Lotus Jewel had arrived too, at Gorgas’s heels, but hearing that last exchange between her friend and her onetime lover, turned abruptly and fairly ran into the slidewalk exit.

The Clinic

Wong treated the first officer for his wounds. “This will hurt,” she told the man hopefully and was pleased to see him wince at the application of the swab. “I can’t believe the two of you were fighting.”

“I wasn’t,” Corrigan said. “Bhatterji was fighting. I just happened to be there.”

Wong frowned. “You shouldn’t make light of it. Brawling among officers is a serious matter.”

“You’re sounding like Gorgas,” he chided her. He took the cold pack she offered and held it against the swelling around his eye. “Besides, Bhatterji wasn’t serious.”

Wong prepared a suture. “It looked serious to me.”

“I’m not dead,” Corrigan pointed out, for Miko had passed along what the engineer had said after Evermore’s tumble.

Wong approached with the suture. “Is it numb yet?”

Corrigan touched his cheek. “No.”

Wong inserted the needle anyway. “This won’t take long.”

“Will I have a scar, afterward?”

Wong paused and looked at him. “Why? Do you want one?”

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“I thought it might give me a dangerous look.”

Wong snorted and bent to her task. She had to lean close to him to stitch him up and Corrigan, enduring the needlework patiently, slowly became aware of her as a woman. Corrigan did not know the LEOn well. He had dealt with her only in his official capacity but he had found the doctor gentle and caring on those occasions.

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