CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SAHVIN
The three weeks we spent on the Rered Rauner passed more quickly than I expected. Scarlet and Pyrr had brought their dog, Bosha with them because they didn’t want to leave her alone on Dread One. She had doubled in size since we found her in that shop at Tegliar Station. Many of those we rescued had been traumatized in the attack on Farseek or the time they spent in the prison colony. Bosha’s sweet, friendly ways soothed them as they petted her. She probably brought them the first smiles they’d had since they were taken.
I would like to say the journey was uneventful. It was until we reached the rendezvous point with the Kurellis. As soon as we blinked in with the two dreads guarding us, we became ensconced in a space battle with four Sargan battlecruisers. They were attacking the Kurellis and the two dread escort. The Pican ship was not well armed, but we had two dreads with us to even the odds a bit.
While the dreads went after the battlecruisers with guns blazing. They held the Sargan’s at bay while the Kurellis and Rauner moved off. Unfortunately, the Rauner took a bad hit that blew out our star drive and took out most of that compartment. All we had left was auxiliary power which wouldn’t last long.
Our pilot team commed the Kurellis immediately to dock with us with us for emergency evacuation. Then we got rushed rousting all the rescues from their barracks and lining them up to board the Kurellis as soon as their docking tube locked on to our emergency hatchway. There was little for us to pack since we had each only brought one bag.
The Rauner was salvageable had it been someplace like Tegliar Station, but we had neither the parts nor the funds to finance it. Commander Maktu polled the Brigade command representatives of the dreads, and they agreed that it was the best course to abandon the Rauner as soon as it was evacuated.
That meant our rescues from the prison planet would not be going home just yet.
They would be going with us to the next planet rescue planned. We had two dreads on reconnaissance to find the most significant pockets of Uatu people and strategize a rescue operation. The com operator set Commander Maktu up to make the announcement for evacuation. Our teams were set up on each of the four decks to direct our charges to the down tube which would float them down to the emergency exit to the Kurellis.
All while we were running the evacuation, Commander Maktu spoke calmly on the ship-wide com explaining to our passengers that the Rauner had taken a bad hit and systems were failing. They would be much more comfortable on the Kurellis where they would all have private accommodations that they could share if they wished or not.
As each barracks was evacuated, the ship’s AI was signaled to close it off and cut off life support after we confirmed evacuation. People were moving in an orderly fashion but time was running out. We bought an extra hour, maybe two by shutting down life support to all the evacuated compartments. We had already spent more than two hours herding people to the exit and time was running short.
There were so many people filling the corridor, I lost sight of Nora. I wasn’t worried at first until the crowd thinned out. I still didn’t see her, so I tried her com, and she didn’t answer. That’s when I started to panic and began comming the others in the team. Even if she had gone ahead to the Kurellis, she would have received a signal.
Deck B had a hundred barracks rooms off the main corridor, and all of them had been closed and life support cut. There was no way I could search them all before the last ones ran out of air. While I was consulting my team as to Nora’s whereabouts, AI ran a scan of all the barracks on our deck. But it was taking too long.
I started opening rooms manually. I didn’t even have to go in because I would scent Nora if she were inside the moment the door opened. I had checked ten rooms and was starting to feel frantic when AI commed me that there were two lifeforms in Barracks B50. They opened it automatically, and I sprinted down the corridor reminding myself the AI said lifeforms. It meant whoever was there was alive.
The room was brightly lit when I got to it and lunged inside. My Nora was lying on the floor with blood oozing from a wound on her head, apparently unconscious. As I went to her, I heard an angry scream and the flutter of a dragon’s wings as it swooped down at my head. One of our passengers had smuggled an Artaenian dragon aboard as a pet. (I learned what it was after we got it back to its owner.)
I thanked the fates that she was still breathing, she had somehow been knocked out. I picked her up and commed control to send a drone to capture the frightened dragon. Then I commed the Kurellis to have a floating stretcher waiting at the boarding tube to take Nora to sickbay. She moaned, starting to regain consciousness, and put her arms around my neck as I was carrying her.
In sickbay, the AI Medic cleaned the wound on Nora’s scalp and applied a few cc’s of nanite gel. It also sent a squirt up her nose for the concussion. About an hour later, she became oriented enough to tell me what happened. The whole incident left me badly shaken because she could have died had we not found her in time.
The thought of losing my mate nearly made me hyperventilate. It was a stark terror that squeezed my heart. It could literally kill me at this point in our relationship. Without Nora, that wouldn’t matter to me. I loved her that much.