III. Return Stroke

Carolina woke up feeling cold and tired and hungry, but more than anything she woke up feeling alive.

She'd been badly hurt before. She'd clawed her way back from forced unconsciousness so many times that it was almost becoming routine, but she still never got tired of that little thrill of accomplishment when she blinked up at the sky, made sure her arms and her legs all worked, and she breathed, she just breathed. She didn't often take time to feel just good enough, to recognize the sheer effort that went into maintaining the baseline she typically struggled to leave in the dust. So she stared up at the sky, and grinned, and lived.

And all right, yes, whatever drugs were numbing the pain were probably helping a lot with the whole euphoria thing.

"Hey, boss," said a soft voice at her side, and her smile widened, because it was Wash. It was Wash sitting with his knees pulled up tight to his chest, it was Wash alive and breathing and not sprawled in the sand with his chest all torn up. His armor still bore the deep grooves and gashes, but the wounds had been packed with biofoam, and his helmet was back on. He looked calm and competent, and damn, he was holding an MRE that smelled like the most incredibly wonderful thing in the universe right now.

"You bring enough to share with the class?" she said. Her voice was hoarse but strong.

"Yeah, this one's yours," he said. "Saw you moving around like you were thinking about waking up, and South's not gonna be back for a little while, so." He shrugged, held the tray out, self-conscious. "Do you think you can sit up?"

"Sure." Reminding herself sternly of her immobilized shoulder, Carolina managed to push herself into a sitting position, ignoring the little twitch of Wash's hand that was an abortive attempt to help her up. She took a sharp breath, but the pain wasn't nearly as overwhelming as she'd been expecting. "How are you doing? You weren't looking so good."

"My ears are still ringing," Wash said. "South thinks I've got a concussion on top of the whole, uh." He looked down at his chest, then shook his head and handed her the MRE, along with a pouch of water. "Yeah. And South's pretty hurt too, I think. Snuck off to go throw up once."

Carolina started a frontal assault on the dubious food, scooping it out in rapidfire bursts. "I wouldn't be surprised if she's the one with the concussion. Is that where she is now?"

Wash shook his head, watching her eat with a sort of terrified awe. Right. He hadn't seen the more mundane consequences of a speed unit-induced high before. She was vaguely aware that the painkillers were making her sort of dizzy and nauseous, but she was hungry enough not to care. After a few awkward moments, he shook himself and said, "No, I think she was looking for a working radio, some way to break the jamming signal. I think she's hoping to contact the Mother of Invention."

"Good plan," Carolina said, but she glanced over at the Hornet's husk, no longer smoking, and her cheery mood started to fade when she remembered that her helmet was still at the bottom of the ocean somewhere. When she remembered what else was missing. "How long was I out?"

Wash blew out a long breath. "I was out for most of it, too, although apparently South decided I was safe to wake up once I started to snore. According to my chrono, it's been about ten hours."

"Ten hours," Carolina said, experimentally. That sounded about right, judging by how much better she felt. "No word from the others?"

Wash actually looked away. "No. Sorry, boss."

"In this case, no news is probably good news. Can't imagine a reason why the bodies would be missing-" Except she could, she could imagine a dozen reasons why someone might want three armored Freelancer corpses, but she really didn't need that image in her head right now. "-so if they're not around here, they've got to be up and moving around. Maybe they're back home, and they'll be sending a recovery party once they regroup." And that was a nice image; a quick, unexpected reunion, lots of tears and professional medical care for all. The mission failure was kind of a given at this point, so even that wouldn't sting so much.

Right. Except for the part where they'd missed their first scheduled check-in with the Mother of Invention almost five hours ago, so any recovery parties should've come and gone long ago.

"Yeah," Wash said. He actually sounded convinced. "They're probably okay." But his shoulders were hunched, and he kept stealing glances at her and then looking away.

"Something on your mind, Wash?"

"I, uh," He shrugged, shook his head. "I probably shouldn't have tried that EMP, you know? I figured the damage would be pretty localized if the Hornet crashed. We wouldn't be in this mess if I hadn't-"

"The guy had a grenade, Wash. Not your fault. Besides," she added, and pointed her fork at him for emphasis, "I think you've already managed to literally beat yourself up about it."

"Yeah," he said. This time he very definitely did not sound convinced. Then he straightened, and she realized he was getting a transmission on his helmet's comm link. "It's South," he said, before she could even get her hopes up, and then added, "Yeah, she's awake now. Any luck?" He paused, then said. "Got it. See you soon."

He turned to Carolina. "No joy on the radio. Whatever's putting out this jamming signal is probably what was messing with the Mother of Invention's sensors in the first place."

"Right," Carolina said. Sensors had been ghosting all day over this area, screwing with their intel, but the narrow window they had to take out the leader of the Resistance had been awfully hard to pass up. She'd been cocky and pissed at Texas and pretending not to be nervous about leaving Maine behind in the infirmary instead of watching her back, and so she'd kept a lid on her doubts when the Director had briefed them on the mission. Excellent tactical decision-making all around.

A little inner voice that sounded annoyingly like a certain locksmith of her acquaintance chimed in with, Now who's beating herself up?

With a sigh, she shoved the empty tray aside and stumbled to her feet. "I'm gonna scout around a bit, get my bearings." She paused, automatically flicking her eyes to the place her HUD would've been if she'd been wearing her helmet, then sighed. "I guess I'll stick within visual range in case you need me. Try to get some rest."

"Sure, boss," he said, with the tone of someone who fully intended to remain hyper-vigilant and awake for the foreseeable future.

The stormy evening had given way to a relatively pleasant late morning, and the ocean seemed almost laughably nonthreatening now, cool and placid. Now that her thoughts didn't feel quite so much like they were outrunning her ability to hang onto them, now that her footsteps were steady and sure in the shifting sand, plans were finally starting to crystallize in her mind, contingencies. It seemed most reasonable to assume that York and North and Connie were alive. The alternative suggested forced inaction, sitting on her ass to wait for a rescue while someone else did all the clean-up. That was unacceptable.

They could be back aboard the Mother of Invention, in which case a recovery team would certainly have been sent by now, for the three sets of armor, if nothing else. Or they could be somewhere else on the planet, also cut off from home, out of range of Wash and South's armor comm links, doing... what? Proceeding with the mission? Looking for a ride off-planet?

They could've been captured, she thought, but that thought led a bit too easily to the continuation, and killed.

"A tactician's game," the Director had told her once, when he was in one of his more voluble, lecturing moods, "is an inherently dishonest one. You cannot approach the battlefield with all possibilities in your mind, arming yourself with absolutely everything you know to be true, because that is how you make yourself vulnerable. Sometimes sacrifices must be made, of the body, yes, but also of the mind.

"Sometimes you must meet an enemy on their terms and bring only the parts of you that can stomach the lies."

She allotted herself one moment, the space between one breath and the next, to think about York, just to picture the lopsided grin and the harsh new scars, the warm hands on cool skin, the drawl fading to a nervous laugh, almost shy, because this was what counted, this was what mattered. For some reason utterly beyond her comprehension, it mattered so much.

She breathed.

A distant figure was moving toward her, and even without the optical zoom her helmet would've provided, she could make out South's awkward, stumbling gait. She still had one arm pulled tight against her chest and was none too steady on her feet. Not surprising; the ten hours Carolina and Wash had spent sleeping meant South had to have been keeping watch. It took her a very long time to notice Carolina, out on the beach, and she stumbled into a new intercept trajectory.

"You're awake," South called, when she was finally within earshot.

"So are you," Carolina said. "Get back to Wash, take some meds, get your eight hours. That's an order."

South really must've been tired, because her little parting flip of a salute had only the slightest hint of a fuck-you to it. This was definitely the right call, Carolina knew that much. Stumbling into an unknown situation half-cocked would get them all killed. Ten hours or eighteen hours, they'd still be running to catch up, and hell, she'd always been good at running. She squared her shoulders and looked back out over the water.

She thought about all the parts of herself she couldn't afford to lose.