A soldier injected Eva with a painkiller, and she hobbled with the men up several flights of stairs. The commander assisted her.
She thought the men had been chasing Visitor. Maybe they had, but somehow they knew her and decided she was a more important target. It was clear to her that the situation was confused. She’d need time to figure things out.
Visitor had told her once that there were Hrwang who wanted to tear her limb from limb. The harsh jeering at her flogging made her agree. She hoped the men she was with didn’t belong to that faction.
The soldier on point raised his arm. Everyone stopped.
He took out a tiny device that he snaked through the door frame. Another soldier looked at his tablet and nodded.
The point man opened the door.
Eva was jealous. She wanted one of those.
They moved quickly down the corridor. With the pain meds, Eva was able to put weight on her foot, but she still didn’t move as fast as she should. The commander stayed by her side, holding her arm with his left hand and his weapon with his right. He still looked concerned. Whatever fighting had been going on below them wasn’t finished yet, although Eva hadn’t heard shooting for a few minutes.
They reached the end of the corridor and stopped again at the intersection. The scope came out, the man with the tablet froze, and the commander released Eva. He moved slowly to the soldier with the tablet.
No one else made a sound.
He waved what Eva took to be a warning, then she heard a clattering metal sound.
Eva dove.
Others dove for cover also, but there was no cover in the open corridor other than each other, and the soldiers closest to the grenade took the brunt of the blast.
Eva was flung backwards, another soldier smashed against her.
Most of him lay on top of her when they stopped moving.
Her ears rang.
Blood dripped on the floor by her face, but she couldn’t feel any injuries. The soldier who’d been between her and the blast had fared significantly worse. He’d looked at the grenade as it exploded and the shrapnel had pulped his face. More shrapnel had shredded his uniform and his body. Eva had been directly behind him.
Three more explosions followed and she put her head down behind her dead protector. She felt the floor rock, but didn’t feel a blast.
She looked up and saw two young soldiers from the squad with her throwing grenades down both sides of the intersection. They ducked for cover and there were two more explosions. They leaned back out into the corridor and opened fire with the small, handheld Hrwang pistols, but the return fire was more than they had anticipated. They both ducked back into cover.
Eva grabbed the weapon from the dead soldier who had shielded her. She ran to the wall to her left and crept up to the soldier who’d thrown the grenades. He looked at her and Eva knew he was terrified. Most of his squad was dead or severely injured and he had no idea how many enemy they faced.
And he looked young. Probably just a private.
Eva tried to give him a reassuring look.
“That won’t work for you,” he said.
She shook her head.
“We just have to think...” she started, but he interrupted.
“No. The gun. You’re not in our squad. It won’t work for you. The grenades won’t either. Wait. Can you throw a grenade?”
Eva wished Juan were with her.
“Yes,” she said.
“I don’t care why. I’ll activate, you throw them. You’ll have...” and he used a measurement of time Eva didn’t understand. Probably not long, she assumed. She looked across the hallway and the second soldier engaging the enemy had pulled back from the intersection. If anybody came up that side, she’d be a sitting duck.
The young soldier got behind her and held out a grenade.
“I activate it like this.” His thumb went into a depression. “You take it and throw it quickly, or put your thumb in the same spot and you have a few more...” and Eva didn’t know what that meant either. She assumed seconds.
She looked around at the remnants of the squad and she did not want one of the devices blowing up in her face.
She nodded.
He handed her the first grenade and she threw it down the corridor. There were cries of anguish and another loud explosion. Their enemy had attempted to close.
She threw two more in rapid succession, then threw the next one he handed her down the other direction.
“Good idea!”
Her ears still rang, but he shouted and she could understand him. She still didn’t feel any pain, but she saw a lot of blood on the scrubs she wore. Maybe it belonged to the soldier who’d been flung against her and had taken the blast for her.
The young soldier scavenged grenades from the dead and dying and Eva kept up a steady rain of them down both directions of the hallway. The second soldier who’d initially thrown grenades down the hallway copied the first, and Eva wondered why she was the one doing the actual fighting.
A thick haze filled the corridor and intersection, and she could hear fires burning in both directions. She’d thrown at least ten grenades down the corridor on her side and three down the other. There must not have been as many attackers in that direction.
The two soldiers each readied grenades and she pointed down the far hallway, only taking one of the weapons. The other soldier understood. He lobbed his down the opposite side and Eva moved into the open just enough to get a good follow through on her throw. They both ducked back into cover.
After the twin explosions, no one returned fire.
“There either back in cover, or they’re all dead,” she screamed. She felt like she could barely hear her own voice. One of the soldiers nodded understanding. The other didn’t. “Where were we going?” she cried.
The first young soldier pointed in the direction that they’d thrown fewer grenades.
“To a platform at the end,” he yelled back.
Eva wished she knew the layout of the hospital. If they simply made a run for it, they’d be exposed the entire length until they got to the platform, which she had to assume was at the end of the corridor. She wondered what waited on the platform.
They could try to go up over the false ceiling, like she had done earlier, but that would be too slow. She needed a better plan.
Their attackers must have been relying on surprise. They’d only thrown one grenade. They must not have had any more.
Why would they only have one grenade? The Hrwang soldiers Eva was with were loaded.
Irregulars.
The soldiers they were fighting were irregulars. Not sufficiently armed for this sort of combat. Which meant they were probably far down the hallway rather than dead. They were less likely to take risks than professionals.
But she still didn’t have time to sit around and plan.
The soldiers with her seemed to agree. They watched her eagerly for instructions but also grew agitated while she tried to figure things out.
“Listen,” she shouted. “Two hands, two guns. Capiche?” She knew they wouldn’t understand the last word, but they got the idea when she mimed firing two guns, one in each hand. They both nodded. “Two grenades. This way.” She pointed in the direction the main attack had come from. “Two guns backward. Two guns forward. We run. Fast, fast, fast.”
They nodded again, clearly terrified.
But sticking around wasn’t going to save their lives. They wanted to get to whatever was on that platform and other than stripping their comrades for weapons, they didn’t seem too concerned about leaving them behind.
The three got ready, then Eva saw the commander stand. He was missing part of an arm, but his uniform had sealed over the wound. Cool trick.
But now she’d have to drag him along like she’d dragged Visitor up the stairs.
&n
bsp; She wished again that she had shoes. She even debated taking a pair of boots off a dead soldier, but that was outside the realm of what she was willing to do at the moment.
Besides, she reminded herself, they didn’t have much time before the enemy they fought regrouped and tried again.
The soldiers each activated a grenade, and Eva took one in each hand, holding her thumbs on the parts that kept them from detonating.
She couldn’t throw with her left hand to save her life, which is what she needed to do at the moment. If she had thrown a grenade with her left hand in front of Mark, he would have accused her of throwing like a girl. She would have countered with the names of several girls who could throw a softball eighty-five to ninety miles per hour.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t one of them.
Instead of trying to throw it overhand, she was just going to lob the grenade in her left hand as far as she could, hoping to keep anyone’s head down who wasn’t already dead, dying, or hiding in a room.
She hoped there weren’t any patients still on this floor or the one above.
She wondered how much damage to the building infrastructure had already occurred. The grenades were small, designed for close quarters combat, but the hospital wasn’t a bunker. There had probably been quite a bit of damage already done to the building on their floor.
Eva counted on it.
She looked at both men, giving them a signal. The thought crossed her mind that they didn’t seem to have too much trouble taking orders from a woman. She remembered the Lord Protector’s Second Adjutant and she realized that women weren’t as subservient on Hrwang as the Lord Admiral had led her to believe.
She dismissed the thought quickly, put her game face on, and screamed as she ran out into the intersection, lobbing the grenade in her left hand as far as she could. She ducked into cover on the other side and the small bomb exploded. She darted back into the intersection and threw the grenade in her right hand, but instead of trying to get it to go as far as she could, she threw it up into the damaged false ceiling she’d seen on her first pass.
“Now!” she cried and ran straight for the commander.
One of the soldiers followed her, running half backwards, guns blazing behind him. He probably hit the wall more than anything else, but his shooting only needed to keep people’s heads down so they wouldn’t shoot back. Eva reached the commander, grabbed his good arm, and started pulling the dazed man along with her. The second soldier passed them and fired blindly ahead.
Twenty feet down the corridor, Eva’s second grenade blew and she stumbled forward, but kept going. The building shook with the blast, then shook again.
That part of the hospital had finally sustained enough abuse.
Load bearing beams gave way and Eva heard rending metal over the gunfire of her companions. If that didn’t keep her attackers off her back...
The soldier firing behind them swore and stopped firing.
“Run!” he yelled.
The building shuddered, the floor buckled a little, and Eva went down when the commander stepped on her broken toe. Not even Hrwang medicine was enough to keep her from crying out in agony.
A soldier gathered her under her arms and dragged her until she was able to run on her own. The other soldier helped his commander, still firing ahead with one gun.
When the pain subsided enough that Eva could see, she watched every room to make sure no one lay in wait in any of them. They’d already passed a handful of bodies. None had been in uniform, but they’d had weapons.
The building stopped shaking. Whatever part of the upper floor Eva had brought down on their floor was finished collapsing. Hopefully it bought them enough time.
The corridor stretched on forever and then they were at the end of it. The soldier helping Eva broke away from her and crashed through the emergency exit door. Eva saw a Hrwang combat craft floating in the air at the end of a large, metal grate. She ran across the metal toward into the open hatch without worrying about who was in the craft.
She stumbled and fell.
The grating wasn’t designed for bare feet, and the toe she’d injured twisted painfully in an opening. She fell to her hands and knees and saw below her.
The ground looked miles away.
The hospital skyscraper she stood on the outside of was so massive she couldn’t believe the entire building was all hospital. There had to be more. A hospital couldn’t be that huge.
She looked around and saw many similar skyscrapers.
Shots slammed into the now closed emergency exit door behind them and the soldier dragging his commander along kicked Eva. It hurt, but it worked. She crawled the rest of the way to the waiting combat craft and hands reached her and dragged her inside. She decided she should probably just stay in one of these things. Nowhere else felt safe on Hrwang.
There were no medics on this craft, though.
“Is this all?” a soldier cried.
“Go!” the commander yelled, slumping to the decking next to Eva. He looked at her and nodded briefly before passing out.
Traveling with the Hrwang still disconcerted Eva. Outside the hospital had been cold, but as she was helped out of the combat craft only minutes later, the weather had changed to warm and mildly humid. Trees she could see in the distance looked sparse, like palm trees, and reminded her of parts of Southern California.
Someone dressed in white brought her a wheelchair and she sat in it with relief. It also gave her a chance to look around as he pushed her away from the craft.
During training, she and the other recruits had made several flights on military aircraft. What she saw now reminded her of those times.
Flight line operations.
Men in a variety of uniforms, pilots, soldiers, and technicians, with medics among them, scurried around a large concrete runway. Combat aircraft landed and were serviced, soldiers loading and unloading them. Takeoffs for the Hrwang were simpler than for human aircraft. Everyone not going with the craft scattered, the engines cycled up, and the craft disappeared.
Eva counted twelve to fifteen combat craft being serviced at that moment, but as soon as one left, another arrived. It seemed to her like too much activity for normal peacetime operations, but then, she told herself, it could simply be a hub. Certain bases on Earth were extremely busy during peacetime.
Had been.
Before the Hrwang arrived.
She noted anti-aircraft installations surrounding the flight line, the weapons similar to the ones she saw around Griffith Observatory and Hearst Castle. Not many, not obtrusive, but there.
“Where am I?” she asked, trying to sound innocent and sweet.
“On your way to receive treatment for your injuries,” the medic wheeling her replied.
That wasn’t helpful, she thought. She folded her arms and watched the concrete go by under her wheelchair. Nothing made sense to her. Her rescue from the prison, the meteor strike on Visitor’s island, the attack on the hospital and her rescue from it by soldiers she had thought were attacking it.
Nothing added up.
She wanted answers.
Arriving in a treatment station, Eva was helped up onto a hospital bed. An IV was inserted and she started to feel better immediately. A portable device was wheeled over and used to examine her. Everything was performed quickly and impersonally. Examine. Diagnose. Write on a tablet. Adjust her IV.
Eva couldn’t have even been sure how many people treated her. They were a blur of white coats and uniforms.
Deciding to relax, Eva thought she may have fallen asleep. She became aware of a calm around her. The medical staff must have finished their administrations and moved on. She kept her eyes closed. Sleep might be best. It aided recovery.
Sounds around her became more distant.
A hand suddenly rested on her arm, bringing her back to a more wak
eful state. She opened her eyes and who she saw brought her to a high state of alertness.
The intense stare. The patronizing look. The emaciated face, not as thin as hers, but narrow and wan from the treatment they had both endured.
His smile.
Part smirk. Part genuine.
His hand squeezed her arm as she looked up at him and his smile grew. His eyes watered a little.
“You look terrible, my dear. But it’s still so good to see you,” the Lord Admiral said.
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