Corso used the communicator that Scourge had given him earlier to contact TooVee and take the ship out of lockdown.
"Damn you!" Ky cursed him as she preceded him up the ramp of the ship. "I should have fought you harder. We could have saved Scourge."
"No, Ky, we couldn't, and he knew it," Corso muttered through the mist forming in his brain. "Don't let his sacrifice go to waste. Get us out of here."
He leaned against the wall to regain his balance, depositing a dark, slick handprint and followed her to the cockpit on legs of jelly before dropping, limply into the navigator's chair.
Ky engaged the repulsors and retracted the struts. "Fucking forcefield," she grumbled, jamming her thumbs down on the firing buttons on the steering yoke. Bursts of plasma blasted the framing walls until nothing remained but sparking wires and rubble.
Full thrusters barreled them down the corridor and into open space where Ky engaged the sublight to put as much distance between the ship and the asteroid as possible. Five minutes, ten, fifteen—her heart sank when the detonation flared across the rearview monitor. A pristine argent glare ballooned in an ever-expanding ring, the back half winked out of existence as it crossed the event horizon and the front edge of the energy ribbon rippled their way.
She fastened her harness and engaged the shields, preparing for the impact then glanced over to Corso to make sure he'd strapped in. Her heart bounded from the pit of her stomach to the back of her throat. Corso slumped in the seat, eyes closed, chin on chest, legs splayed apart with a pool of blood forming on the floor, dripping steadily from the hand that dangled over the armrest.
The energy wave hit the ship, lifting the stern, almost upending them and sent them hurtling into the Drift. Proximity alarms blared, and her mind accelerated to avoid the peril of certain collision as she scanned the field in desperation for one big, fucking rock. Just one was all she needed. She expanded her perception further into the Nulastine. There! A shadow at the edge of her reach, she hit the sublights and rocketed forward, racing for his life.
Braking with thrusters, she eased toward the behemoth, the size of a small moon, rotating slowly, pocked with impact craters. She skimmed across the surface looking for an entrance, a cavern, a haven to shield them from the debris that thumped and skidded along the shields.
A gaping maw appeared on the port side, and she altered course. Repulsors online, she guided the ship into the darkness, exterior floods lighting her way as she extended the struts and landed. She fired one anchoring harpoon into the rock, fumbled with her harness and fell to her knees at Corso's side.
He'd tumbled from the chair when the wave hit and now lay still, so still, his hair soaking in the blood already shed and the stain on his jacket expanding out from his shoulder.
"No! No-no-no-no!" the denial burst rapid fire from a throat so tight it hurt to speak. "TooVee!" she screamed, never removing her eyes from Corso's face. "I can't...I can't lose you, not this way. Please love, not like this."
She rolled him onto his back, searching his neck for a pulse, and breathed again when she found it. Faint but there. "TooVee!" she screamed again, brushing Corso's hair back from his face with trembling fingers. He's so cold. She stripped his jacket and then her own, removed her shirt and tied the sleeves around his upper arm in a rough tourniquet.
"Here Mistress," the droid said as it rounded the corner into the cockpit. "Oh, my," it exclaimed when it saw the situation.
"Where the hell were you?" Ky spat. "Never mind. Get him to the med bay and do a scan. And if he—"
"Yes, Mistress, I know," the droid interrupted as he lifted Corso from the floor. "If he dies, you will push me out the airlock, or crush me into oblivion, or..." The droid continued his list of possible fates until he deposited Corso on the medical bed and began the scans while Ky retightened the tourniquet.
The droid perused the readout on the side of the scanner that had run the full length of Corso's body. "He's lost a lot of blood, Mistress, and the basilic vein in his upper arm has been quite severely damaged. Kolto alone won't stop the bleeding in time. He needs immediate surgery and a transfusion. If he lives, he may still lose his arm."
"Then get that damned med-probe busy. Now!"
Ky helped TooVee strip Corso's shirt, while the med-tech droid hovered above the bed on the gantry arm attached to the wall.
TooVee placed a mask over Corso's face to feed him oxygen and inserted a needle into his right arm to provide fluids from a bag that now hung by his head. The med-droid began work on his injury. Spray nozzles and vacuuming tubes cleansed the blood away while other, more delicate instruments worked inside the gaping wound. TooVee assisted with additional clean up, mopping excess blood and liquids from around the area with clean gauze.
Ky's body couldn't decide whether to be numb or jitter with worry and teetered back and forth like a manic seesaw. She paced and fretted, imagining the worst, remembering the best, and hung suspended in the hell of waiting.
"Mistress," TooVee addressed her, "we can repair the vein and close the wound, but we have no whole blood stores on board except for those matching Lord Scourges blood type, and it is not compatible. Master Corso is not likely to survive."
"Then fucking take mine," snapped Ky. "I'm a universal donor."
"As you wish. We should start the process now and have everything at the ready. The transfusion can begin after the bleeding is stopped. To do otherwise would waste the limited supply you can provide."
Ky lay down on the bed next to Corso's while TooVee rolled a machine in between and inserted a needle into her arm. The machine whirred to life. She settled back on the pillow to watch the shallow rise and fall of Corso's chest and the feathery flutter of his hair when caught in the air currents from the wall vents.
"We cannot take more than three hundred fifty milliliters, perhaps four hundred at most before you start exhibiting signs of blood loss, Mistress. We could lose you both," stated TooVee nervously.
"What about plasma?" asked Ky. "Surely you have some on board."
"Yes, perhaps. We have some artificial plasma which may be of benefit if the whole blood transfusion stabilizes him. It's the red blood cells that are the concern."
"Then he can have all of mine. Do you hear me? All of it, just save him."
The droids worked, and she'd never felt so useless.
"The vein is shunted and repaired," stated TooVee.
The scanner continually monitoring Corso's vitals began to chime, his breathing became erratic, and his accelerated heartbeat stumbled.
"Start the transfusion now," barked Ky.
TooVee attached the other tube to the needle already inserted in Corso's arm and flipped a switch. The crimson gift flowed from her heart to his, drop by steady drop, and hope was carried with it.
Time dragged by on stubborn feet, and when the transfusion machine began to beep, Ky realized she had given all she could, and suddenly wished she had a God to pray to. Corso's survival was no longer in her hands, and any petition to the cosmos would be wasted, her prayers just empty words. Every spacer knew that the universe was a stone-cold bitch that ate her young, and she would find no consolation there.
Thirty-six hours shuffled by, each tick and tock marching along in single file, the steady cadence maddening in its precision. TooVee tended her wounds, fetched fresh clothing, and brought food, which went untouched. She refused to leave Corso except to use the 'fresher and even that sent waves of panic rippling down her spine.
They'd had to revive him once, his body arching up and thumping back to the bed, one, two, three times, the flat line finally lurching upward in a spike, the most glorious sight she'd ever beheld. She stayed by his bed, using stims to augment her natural requirement for little sleep. What if she wasn't there to say hello? What if she wasn't there to say goodbye?
Her mind twisted and turned on her, fangs sharp with accusation and dripping with guilt.
'Damn it all! He shouldn't even be here, and life with me is going to get him killed.'
In the three and a half years they'd been together, this had been the longest they'd ever been alone. The improbable love for him had blind-sided her; abrupt and swift as a runaway speeder in a crosswalk. The precise moment when he became the center of her existence couldn't be named, and it wrenched her heart to consider the price he paid for being there.
He shouldn't have to split himself into different faces, and already she could see the toll. The expectations he set for himself were higher than any man should have to reach, and he deserved the chance to be whole and at peace.
He deserved a quiet life with sun on his face and dirt under his nails, covered with sweat and proud of the work of his hands. Routine should set the course of his days, dawn and dusk rotating in perfect harmony—sharing it all with a good woman and a passel of kids playing in the yard.
She sighed and settled back into the chair, scrubbing her fingers across her forehead in a vain attempt to wipe the slate clean. Perhaps Largo had been right, and she should have cut him loose two years ago before love had set its hooks so deep neither could escape. He'd never leave her, and she wouldn't leave him and the choice to love her had robbed him of his dreams and nearly his life.
'Stars, there has to be an answer. I just can't see it.'
The rustling of blankets and stirring of movement from the bed jolted her off the seat. "TooVee!" she yelled, standing over Corso, afraid to touch him, afraid not to.
His eyes rolled beneath lids now pale and veiny above lashes that fanned black as raven's wings across the tops of razor-edged cheekbones.
"Don't," he mumbled in between ragged breaths. "Don't."
A single tear slipped down the side of his face that she caught on the edge of her finger. He flinched at her touch, and his lids sprang open, eyes wild and unfocused as he fought against the restraints holding him in place.
"Shh, my love. Shh," she murmured, her hands firm on his chest, holding him down. "Be still. I'm here."
She repeated the sing-song phrases until the panic subsided and his gaze cleared, fixing on her face with unasked questions reflecting in the depths.
He licked his lips and stammered, "I can't move my arm. I can't feel my hand."
"We had to immobilize your left arm so you wouldn't tear your stitches or cause more damage, and restrained your right to keep the IV in."
He nuzzled his stubbled chin into the palm she cupped around his face and the wellspring of tears she'd held inside flowed like hot wax down her cheeks.
"I thought I'd lost you," she sobbed. "I couldn't live if I lost you. Not like this."
"Hey, now, none of that. Don't cry babe, I'm right as rain. See?" A blush of a smile touched his dry lips, tender and kind and oh, so...Corso.
Damn.
He jiggled the frame of the bed with the tether keeping his IV arm secure. "I need to touch you. Please." His earnest plea traveled from lips to open hand, palm up and fingers stretched in supplication.
"Come here," he said as soon as his arm was freed to pull her down and tilt her head to meet her lips with his.
Her hand strayed across the blanket covering his stomach, and withdrew in surprise and dismay at the obvious tent starting to rise. "Oh no, you don't," she scolded. "I'll not have you passing out with all that blood I just gave you rushing to a place it shouldn't go."
How he managed the pinkish tint that colored his cheeks was beyond her. A sheepish grin accompanied his admission. "Yeah, that too, but, I really gotta pee."
Laughter erupted from Ky, fervent and cathartic, cramping her sides, riding the rim of hysteria until the tears came again, reducing her to wracking sobs and snotty nose he held against his chest.
He clucked and cooed and stroked her hair, as always, comforting her. The teeth of guilt closed mercilessly around her conscience, snapping and shredding until she felt as flat as a ragdoll bereft of its stuffing.
Weary and hollow, having cried the unshed torrents from all those years she couldn't or wouldn't, she raised her head to gaze into the visage of all she held most dear.
His countenance grew pinched with worry, and sadness weighed the corners of his eyes and mouth into perfect parentheses framing his face. For love of him, she dismissed her fear and doubt and returned him to his rightful place as the center of importance. She no longer mattered, and for now, her solitary goal was to see him well and strong.
They remained in the asteroid cave for another forty-eight hours allowing Corso to rest, heal and regain his strength. Kolto, plasma, and antibiotics performed their magic until the only remaining concerns were the numbness in his ring and pinky fingers, lack of full shoulder rotation and the compromised strength of his grip.
TooVee said he might never fully recover, and put him on a regimen of rehabilitative exercises, leaving the final prognosis at 'it'll be what it's meant to be.'
'One more thing to add to the list.' Ky thought as she strapped into the pilot's seat. 'Not only did I almost get him killed; I've crippled him as well.'
"You sure you're up for this?" asked Corso from the navigator's chair. "You've not slept but a few hours in the last four days."
"I've never needed much sleep." A half-assed laugh kicked free from her throat. "Never thought about it before, but maybe it's some side effect of my two-year slumber party at Vitiate's pad."
"Maybe." Corso frowned, buckling the belt across his lap.
"I've got to stone skip out of here," she said matter-of-factly as she performed pre-flight checks, "so if I pass out, chart a course to Untuar IV. Don't use anyplace we've been recently to refuel. The further off the beaten path the better. We've left a blazing trail to follow so far, and I don't intend to repeat that mistake."
"You expecting trouble?"
"Always," she snorted. "It does seem to find me regardless of my good intentions."
She released the mooring harpoon and lifted the ship into the busy traffic of rock and debris careening helter-skelter toward no particular destination, crossing lanes and hell-bent on colliding with the tiny craft.
The universe spun, she became the axis and the nucleus, the ship a mere extension of her will, and all else crawled before them. She was the shuttle weaving weft and warp into a tapestry of time and space in patterns of stone and iron. Fixated on a point at the fringe of perception, her mind expanded, neurons bridged across synapse until all she saw was a brilliant blaze of calculations behind her eyes. She demanded, the ship responded until they broke through the boundary and into the welcoming black of open space and the faint, cold glow of a distant star.
The last thing she remembered was the beauty of Corso's face and asking, 'Are we there yet?' before the shelter of oblivion took her away.