Tiamat’s Wrath by James S. A. Corey

Author:James S. A. Corey [Corey, James S. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novela, Ciencia ficción
Publisher: ePubLibre
Published: 2018-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six: Elvi

Elvi woke herself trying to scream. She didn’t remember the dream, just the sense of overwhelming fear and paralysis. The effort to make herself heard that seemed to go on for hours, even though all it managed was a little groan, loud enough to bring her back to consciousness. It left her in the darkness, drenched in sweat and grateful for another few sleepless hours.

The suite was courtesy of the Laconian state. Two beds, both with autodocs built into them. One for her, the other for Fayez, who, fortunately, was still breathing deeply and heavily. She knew without looking that she hadn’t woken him up. She was grateful for that too. She didn’t turn the light on. Her cane was at her bedside, and she found it easily enough. She levered herself to the edge of the mattress, steeled herself, and swung her legs over. It hurt like hell, but only for a few seconds. Standing up was actually better, and she was leaning on the cane less than she had been.

The night terrors were looking pretty robust, though.

Trying hard not to make enough noise to wake her husband, she went through the darkness to the closet. The servants had left robes for them both, thick, textured cotton with a lining of something that might have been silk. She pulled it on one sleeve at a time, cinched it closed, and made her way out to the courtyard and a stone bench carved with complex mathematical patterns like something out of a mosque.

Her memory of the rescue was spotty at best. She remembered giving the emergency evacuation order to the Falcon. She remembered coming back to consciousness in normal space and calling for help. Crawling through blood and crash couch gel to Fayez. That part was pretty clear. After that, a few lucid moments of trying to cinch a belt around Fayez’s calf as a tourniquet. At some point, she’d decided that she was losing too much blood, slipped her hand into the hole in her leg, and made a fist in there to apply pressure all around. That probably should have been the worst part—her wrist vanishing into the skin of her own leg like a graphics processing failure. What she actually felt at the time was pride at having come up with a graceful solution. The tourniquet had been hard.

They told her she had been conscious when the rescue ship came, but she didn’t remember it. She knew because she’d read the reports that Jen had lived and was being treated somewhere else in the city. That Admiral Sagale had died, half his head ripped away. That Travon was technically listed as missing, since it was possible he could have survived someplace without the arm he left behind.

The casualties among the rest of the crew were similar. About half had survived. No one had come through uninjured. The Falcon had been stabilized too and brought home to be healed. And studied.

Some local animal was making its call.

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