A Brother's Debt (16 page)

Her reaction made it clear she hadn’t given up hope, despite his efforts, not that he blamed her. Now though, she was bitterly disappointed.

Torn between leaving Zialla to cry herself out, and wanting to comfort her, Step hesitated outside the door, until the decision was made for him.

“STEP! WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM DOWN HERE.” Jay’s voice carried all the way from the cargo bay.

Step hesitated a moment longer, and then turned away from Zialla’s cabin to hurry along the corridor and down the stairs. “What’s the problem?” he asked as he entered the cargo bay.

“This guy’s injured,” Jay answered, “and he’s out of it. I need your help to get him out of the pod.”

When he saw the injury Step was surprised he hadn’t noticed it when the pod opened. The crewman from The Green Star had been shot in the side with a laser weapon of some kind. The injury was serious, and looked to have been made from reasonably close range.

Step supposed he hadn’t seen the hole in the man’s side because Zialla’s outburst had distracted him before he really got a look into the pod.

“That doesn’t look good,” the former scout pilot remarked unnecessarily. “You take his shoulders, I’ll take his feet,” he said, reaching into the pod.

A muted moan as he was lifted from the pod, and another when he was set down on the couch in the med unit, were the only indications the crewman from The Green Star gave he was still alive.

“What do we do now?” Jay wanted to know. His first glance at the injury had told him it was beyond his rudimentary first aid skills, and he suspected there was nothing either of them could do for the guy. Only a fully qualified doctor, with better equipment than that available in Gambler’s Luck’s med unit, could save him in his opinion.

“I don’t really know, Jay,” Step admitted. “Like you I only ever took the basic first aid courses. I can clean the wound up and cover it with a sterile dressing, but that’s about it. Even if I had better equipment I wouldn’t know what to do with it.

“All we can do is keep an eye on him, and hope he makes it to Onegal; he can get proper treatment there. Between the three of us we should be able to manage. Go and get Zialla, she’ll have to take a turn keeping watch over him while I change our course and get us moving.”

A few moments after Jay left Step heard him shouting at Zialla. He tuned the noise out and concentrated on what he was doing; carefully cutting his patient’s clothes from his body, so he could check for any other injuries.

“What!” Zialla demanded to know before she was even fully through the door. Her belligerence was spoiled by a loud sniff as she fought her tears, and the gasp the sight of the naked man on the couch drew from her.

“Anyone would think you’ve never seen a naked man before,” Jay said, prodding Zialla forward so he could follow her into the med unit.

“I’m twelve, of course I haven’t seen a naked man before,” Zialla snapped, tearing her eyes away from the nude figure on the couch to round on Jay.

Jay was unperturbed by her response. “Pity your first one had to be such a poor example,” he remarked. “You’d have been better off having me as the first man you saw naked, rather than that out of shape mess,” he gestured to the man on the couch. “Then you’d know what a man is supposed to look like.”

“Jay!” Before Step could say anything more Zialla responded to the engineer’s comment. “I’ve seen you with your top off; you look more like a Sagar than a man, why would I want to see any more of you than that? I’d rather see Step naked. If I had to see either of you,” she added hastily, her cheeks flushing as red as her eyes.

“Before this conversation becomes any more disturbing,” Step spoke up. “Zialla, I need you to keep an eye on this guy once I’ve done what I can for him,” he said, grabbing up a scrap of the man’s clothing and draping it over his groin to hide his manhood from the young girl; a pointless move he realised, but he did it nonetheless. “I’ll come back and take over from you once I’ve got us headed to Onegal, but between now and when we get there I am going to need you to take a turn watching over him.

“Jay and I will watch him as much as we can, but I need to keep an eye on the bridge, and Jay needs to look after the engine room. We can’t be in here all the time, especially since we need to get at least some sleep. When neither of us is available, you are going to have to stay in here and watch him in case anything happens, okay?”

“What about my family? We have to find my family. We can’t go to Onegal!”

“We’ve talked about this, Zialla.” Step continued cleaning the wound as best he could while he spoke, thankful the injury had been caused by a laser weapon, and not a blade of some kind. “We don’t have the fuel to go after any of the other pods. We went after the one that was closest to us, and this is who was inside. I am sorry it wasn’t one of your family, but there isn’t anything else we can do at this time, we have to get to Onegal; that’s even more important now.

“This guy needs proper medical treatment. We don’t have the equipment here to look after him properly, and even if we did none of us knows how to use it. It would probably have been better if we had left him in the pod, but since we didn’t know he was injured until we opened it, and we don’t know what effect a second dose of the cold-sleep drugs will have on him, we can’t risk putting him back in there.”

“So you’re just going to forget about my family?! What kind of man are you?!” Zialla demanded angrily.

“A man who understands the realities of a situation, Zialla,” Step said in a firm voice that kept the young girl from voicing whatever it was she had been about to say. “When we get to Onegal we’ll work out what to do. For now, you’ll do as I’ve told you and keep an eye on this guy when asked.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Mr Dollier, Sir, we’ve received word Gambler’s Luck has requested docking permission.”

Turning away from his computer, Grange Dollier looked up at his second and bit back a sigh of distaste. He wasn’t impressed with what he saw, but the man was the best of what he had available. His previous second hadn’t survived his return to Barth following his failure to retrieve Carboni’s package from Gambler’s Luck in flight; neither had the two men who returned with him. “Find out where he is to dock and put men to watch the ship when it lands. I want to know the instant Velkin leaves his ship.

“Make sure the men you posted to watch Fesa have got their eyes open as well, they might be meeting somewhere other than his place. If they are, we need to know where, and when, and we need to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

“This is likely to be my last chance to get the package; if you or your men screw it up you’ll all wish I’d sold you to the We’Oxcas.”

“Yes, Sir.” The man nodded, outwardly showing no fear. “We won’t fail you, I swear it, you’ll have the package by nightfall.”

Dollier didn’t respond to that statement, he had heard such extravagances before; he simply turned his back on his man, dismissing him.

“There’s something else, Sir.”

Dollier turned back to his man, a look of annoyance on his face that made the thug hesitate. “Well! What is it?”

“When Gambler’s Luck requested docking clearance they also requested an emergency medical team.”

“That could be a ruse,” Dollier said after a bit of thought, during which he ignored the man before him. “He could have arranged this with Fesa so he can sneak the package off the ship. Let the medical team get to the ship unmolested, and ambush them after they leave. If they are from Fesa, kill them all and take the package.”

“Yes, Sir.” The thug departed to make the necessary arrangements, leaving his boss to his thoughts.

Chapter Thirty

“What did he say?” Jay asked of Step, as he joined his friend in watching the Chamri from Onegal 3’s port authority climb into his ground-car and depart.

 “They weren’t interested in the attack on The Green Star,” Step answered. “I get the impression, from what the Chamri said, that pirate attacks are a common occurrence out here. Unless they happen within the system they don’t do anything about it, and all they are willing to do about the other three escape pods is issue a notification to any ships leaving Onegal space to keep an eye out for them.” He wasn’t impressed by the response he had gotten, even if he could appreciate what the Chamri had said about the lack of resources available for anything more than system protection. He was too used to Mulnoy space, where the navy protected not only the systems governed by the Mulnoys, but all the space between them, making travel safe, or at least as safe as it could be made.

“What about Zialla?” Jay asked, after looking around the cargo bay to be sure she wasn’t there.

“She’s our problem, not theirs. He phrased it a little more politely than that, but that was the gist of it,” Step said. “He did say there is an order of nuns in the city who run an orphanage. He suggested I take her there.”

“I know the place.”

“What’s it like?” Step had never been inside an orphanage, but the few he had seen had looked like reasonable places for a child without a family to grow up in. The orphanages from his experience were all in Mulnoy space, and operated by planetary authorities, however, and he realised the one mentioned to him might well be very different.

“No idea, I’ve only seen it from the outside. It’s not like I find young kids who need to be cared for on a regular basis. The building looks alright, reasonably well taken care of, and I’ve heard the nuns take in a lot of kids who’d otherwise end up on the streets.

“Are you going to take her there?”

“It might be for the best.” Step shrugged uncertainly, he didn’t like the thought of just abandoning the girl after having rescued her. “I’ll check it out later, see what the score is. How did things go with the med team?”

Jay gave a shrug of his own. “You know what meds are like, never want to give an opinion in case they’re wrong; don’t want to look like idiots. To be honest, they didn’t pay much attention to me. They stuck some tubes in his arm, attached a couple of monitors, and took him away on a stretcher.

“He made it this far, I’m sure he’ll be fine, or as fine as someone can be when they’ve been shot with a laser weapon. They might even be able to wake him up.” He didn’t sound too certain. The only movement the man had made during the seven day journey from where he was picked up to Onegal 3, was to swallow the fluids trickled down his throat. An action both he and Step agreed was involuntary, and not an indication he was improving, or likely to wake up anytime soon.

“I’d best go and send another message to Star Shipping and let them know where their crewman can be found,” Step said. While en-route to Onegal 3 he had used the information in the logs downloaded from The Green Star to notify the freighter’s owners of what had befallen the ship, though he hadn’t received a response. “What’s the name of the hospital he’s been sent to?”

“Onegal Community Hospital.”

Step nodded. “Did you get through to your friend after the paramedics left?”

“I wouldn’t call him a friend, but yes, I got through. He’s sending a truck to pick up the pods, and the rest of the stuff I got off The Green Star.” After spending several hours stripping what he could from the abandoned freighter, Jay had been disappointed to discover the majority of the parts wouldn’t fit when he tried to make use of them on Gambler’s Luck. “I can’t guarantee what sort of price we’ll get for it all, Grey is not the most trustworthy of blokes, he’ll try and screw me as much as he can.”

“Is there anyone else you could take the stuff to?”

“Nobody I know. I might not entirely trust Grey, but I do know him, and I can bargain with him. If we’re lucky he might have some parts for this old bucket.” Jay slapped his hand on Gambler’s Luck’s hull. “If he does, he’ll probably give me a better deal in barter than he will in cash. Plus, he might know of someone with some work for us.”

“Whatever you think best, I’d be bargaining blind if I tried to offload it all,” Step admitted. He left his friend standing there at the top of the ramp, looking out on the spaceport, and made his way through the ship to the bridge. “Are you alright, Zialla?” he asked, popping his head into the crew lounge to check on her.

“Uh huh,” Zialla grunted, which was about as much as she said at any point since they had discovered the occupant of the second escape pod wasn’t one of her family. The only times she had said more was when it was absolutely necessary, and it wasn’t possible for her to communicate with grunts.

“Okay, I’ll be on the bridge if you want anything, and Jay is down in the cargo bay at the moment, he’ll be leaving shortly though.” He left her to whatever she was watching, as unsure how to deal with the girl as he had been when she ran from the cargo bay after the opening of the second escape pod.

Chapter Thirty-One

“Tamerlay House, please,” Step requested of the driver as he settled into the back of the habota he had ordered. As they pulled away he looked out at his ship through the rear window, just to make sure Gambler’s Luck was securely closed up.