-Bandages
The door broke against our weight, immediately capturing the attention of the two guards outside. I ducked as one of them struck out, but Lakan grabbed the arm and used it to swing up and kick the guard in the face. The guard dropped his weapon, which Captain Jim used to shoot the other one in the shoulder. This gave us enough time to run up to the deck.
There was a brief moment of astonishment on all sides as we emerged from below. Former Officer Devon, the Scabrous crew on all sides, and we all stared at each other, wondering what would happen next. The silence was broken by an angry growl by one of the injured guards, and instantly, there was pandemonium.
Captain Jim started firing. He looked at me and motioned toward the railing, and I ran. Before I'd taken three steps, four fully-clad Scabrous warriors surrounded me. Praying I'd be fast enough, I grabbed onto one of the weapons directed at me, and in anger the warrior swung me into the air. Shots followed, and I was clipped on the arm. There was no time to examine the wound; I just covered it with my other hand and kept dodging the other warriors. Lakan was somewhere to my left, and our Captain brought up the rear...
I slid across the deck, between the legs of one angry Scabrous. I had to scramble to my feet in order to avoid slamming into a spiked shield, only to duck again as someone behind me fired. This strange and dangerous dance continued across the deck as we made our way to the prow. Without looking back, without looking for Aaren below, I stood on the railing, closed my eyes, and fell.
And oh, what a fall. If I had ever regretted leading Aaren off the ship when the summer began, I regretted it a hundred times now. I knew what it was to suddenly be thrown out of touch with the real and the living. I knew what it was to feel the sharp teeth of isolation ripping through my gut. And then...
"Hey," she said, out of breath, watching me straighten up in the longboat. I couldn't rub my side where I'd hit the boat because I was still pressing on my wounded arm. I still felt faint from the fall, and I started to wonder why she didn't pay me back and laugh... She only looked at me sorrowfully for a moment, and then I watched her tighten her still-bleeding hands around the controls of the craft. We swung around and caught Lakan, who landed on his back. His face was pale, or at least the part of his face that wasn't covered by his shaking hands. And finally, we caught our Captain Jim, whose eyes were wide, but the rest of his face solemn.
"Get away from there," he said to Aaren.
"But Dad," she began, "you fell, it - "
"Don't 'but Dad' me, cadet, it's an order. I'll man the longboat." Then he looked at Lakan huddled at the prow. Miraculously, he was asleep. So he looked at me, and then at Aaren, and then said, "Attend to each other. Bandage your wounds."
Aaren and I stared at him. He paid us no mind and fixed his eyes on a spot past us, somewhere between the Asimov sister planets. We were speeding away from the Celerity as fast as we could, but we knew there was no chance of being followed. Captain Jim's heart seemed to be throbbing in his throat as he steered the craft...
"Ow!"
Aaren had pried my hand away from my arm while I'd been watching her father. She didn't look at me and started feeling for something to use as a bandage. I clutched my arm again, and then I watched her. Her long, honey-colored hair fell into her face, which had the same solemn expression as her father's, and the starlight hinted at the violet in her eyes. Then I saw her bloody hands scrounging around on the bottom of the boat. I suddenly felt angry for not doing anything till then.
I instinctively reached for her hands and closed mine over them.
"Marko - "
I didn't look her in the eye, I only looked at her sticky, quivering hands. I swear that somehow I could feel her heartbeat through her fingertips. I let go, and she didn't move. I took the knife from the small cupboard in the boat, took off my shirt, and started cutting it into strips. Aaren took one and tied it around the place I'd been shot. Slowly, I wound the rest around her palms, trying to be as delicate as I could with the person I'd tortured and been tortured by since childhood.
"Thank you," she said softly.
I shook my head. "No," I answered, "thank you."
That night, I felt a peace very different from the one I'd found on Lalita while I watched Aaren fall asleep. The longboat sped on.