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Everything happened in flashes at the end. The big red sun vanished as the ship’s shadow swept over me. I realized I was inside the ship’s blasted-open maw. The impression of being swallowed was very intense. Shiny, floating bits of destroyed Macros drifted around me. Twisted chunks of hull tapped and slammed into my feet and torso. It was like hitting a mass of glittering, metal confetti. One piece starred my helmet. Then I hit something solid, spun around, and knew no more.

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When I woke up, everything was fuzzy. In my head, I mean, not visually. I hadn’t the will to open my eyes yet. I heard Kwon on the next rack, arguing with a med-tech. The med-tech’s voice was female.

“Sir, you need to stay—” she said.

“I’m fine,” Kwon complained. “I don’t want to lie here anymore. I don’t care about the other leg either, it will grow back.”

“There could be blood-clots—”

“Nanites will eat those. You fuss like my grandma.”

I turned my head toward the voices. That hurt. It really did. Opening my eyes was worse. They felt glued shut, and I swear some of the flesh on my corneas was ripped off as I forced them open.

I saw right away it was a new med-tech—a female this time with vaguely Asian features.

“Kwon,” I said. It came out as a croaking sound.

“Hey, it’s the colonel!” Kwon said. He put a massive paw on the med-tech’s shoulder and used her as a prop to heave himself into a sitting position. Any normal woman would have been knocked down. But this girl was like everyone else on the expedition, sturdy and full of nanite enhancements. She made a squawking sound and staggered, but managed to stay on her feet.

“Kwon,” I croaked again.

He loomed near. I could see him now. He had one leg and one arm. He balanced with his one hand on the med-tech’s shoulder. She looked annoyed and alarmed. I tried not to look sick. Kwon was the only person in the medical brick that looked happy. He had a kid-like grin on his face.

“What is it, Colonel?” he asked me, as if I were a king giving him my final words.

“Get your ass back in bed,” I said.

Kwon looked disappointed. He turned with a grunt, hopped back to his rack and flopped onto it. “I’m fine,” he said. “Really.”

I laid there for a minute, watching Kwon and the med-tech. Kwon complained while the tech worked to touch up the IV lines and tape down a few flapping instrument leads that were attached to his body. I felt vaguely nauseous to see Kwon like that. We could give him prosthetics of course. Fake arms and legs made of nanites that were better than anything made in the past. But it still wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t have sensation in his limbs, and there would be health problems associated with missing body parts. There always were. We couldn’t regrow his original flesh. Nanites could do fantastic cellular repairs, but they had to have something to work with. They couldn’t rebuild missing limbs from scratch.

I had a sudden, upsetting thought.
What kind of shape was I in?

I lifted my head and tilted my chin down to my chest. The process was slower and more painful than usual. I’d suffered a hard blow to the head and neck, that much I was sure of. But I had no idea if I was missing a foot or an arm. I licked my cracked lips, and looked down.

Right hand, left hand—check. Two of the fingers were wrapped up, but they were still in there. I could wriggle them and move them. The legs didn’t look so good, however. The right was in a cast. The left—the end of my left foot looked funny. It was exposed and bluish-purple. Maybe the med-tech had been in the middle of wrapping it up when Kwon had decided to go on a safari and distracted her. That foot looked like a cookie with a bite missing.

I eased my head back down onto the pillow. Two-thirds of a left foot remained. Three toes—the smaller three—were missing. I was already bargaining with it. Could have been worse, I told myself. I’d almost died out there.

The med-tech loomed over me. Her young face hovered like a moon. “I’m Ning. How are you doing, Colonel?”

“Just peachy, Ning,” I said, faking a smile.

“You’ve lost a lot of—everything. But you’ll live.”

“Did you cut off anything other than the foot?”

Ning winced and glanced down toward my missing foot. “You’ve been peeking,” she said. “Only the foot is gone.”

“What’s your name mean?” I asked her.

She looked surprised. “I think it means ‘tranquility’,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. Good name for a nurse, I suppose. What happened to the rest of my foot?”

“There was a puncture in your suit.”

“Ah yes,” I said, remembering the Macro that had done the deed.

“The foot was frozen, and there was other damage. We had to take off that piece. Your legs are both broken as well, but they are healing very fast.”

“Nanites are wonderful things when you are hurting,” I said, feeling the familiar itch and tingle in my legs. “All the Macros were kicked off the ship, I assume?”

Kwon crinkled his sheet as he heaved himself up and leaned toward me. “We killed the last ones that survived the blast,” he said. “What you did was
killer
, sir! I’ve never seen something like that!”

I chuckled. “I barely remember it.”

“We’ve all watched it like twenty times.”

“Watched it?”

“Your suit recorder caught it all, right out of your faceplate. The cruiser looked really cool when it swallowed you. We should watch it again. Hey Ning! Put the vid up on the ceiling screen again.”

“Uh,” I said, putting up my hand, “I’ll check it out later, Kwon, if you don’t mind.” I had no desire at all to relive my near-death experience.

Kwon huffed in disappointment. “Well,” he said. “It was cool.”

I glanced over at him. His command of English had grown since he’d joined up with Star Force. He still had an accent, but now he sounded like most of my marine recruits: young and exuberant.

I had a sudden thought then, an alarming thought. “How long have I been out?”

“About fourteen hours,” Ning said. “You were in bad shape, Colonel. Really it was—hold on sir, you need to stay in bed.”

I didn’t use her as a prop, but I did heave myself out of bed. It hurt badly and my head swam. I reached for leads and needles and began plucking them off my skin.

“Sir, you really need to listen,” Ning said. Her small hands pressed against me, but I ignored them.

“I’m sorry, but I’m pulling rank here. I’ve got to get back to the bridge.”

“You tell her Colonel,” Kwon said. “Don’t let Ning boss you.”

Lieutenant Joelle Marquis showed up then, while I struggled to shoo away Ning and get out of bed. Marquis began fussing over Kwon. Her blonde curly hair hung limply around her face and she wore an expression of sick worry. I was glad Kwon at least had someone who really cared about him. Those two had seen each other through a lot of trials in a short amount of time.

I pulled on my battle suit, noting the scarred surface. The nanites had been working on it, but it still had plenty of pits and divots. I stopped at Sandra’s brick on the way to the bridge. I felt a pang of fresh pain, seeing her still in there. I turned to Ning who had followed me. “What happened to the other med-tech? The guy who used to run this place?”

Ning pressed her lips together, forming a tiny line with her mouth. She gestured toward another medical coffin. Inside was a turnip that I recognized: a corpsman named Carlson. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry.

“How’d that happen?” I asked Ning.

“He stayed with the turnips,” she said with a shrug. “The Macros caught him and tore him up, but they left the rest here for dead.”

I looked at Sandra next, and found her condition unchanged. I wasn’t sure if I felt good or bad about that. Seeing her in there made me want to keep moving, however. While I was still breathing, she had a chance. They all did.

I walked slowly out of the brick’s airlock. As the hatch closed behind me, I could still hear Ning complaining. Medical people always hated it when their patients walked out on them.

On the bridge, I found things were under control—barely. The enemy cruiser had maintained its distance and had not fired additional missiles. The drones we’d fired at the last missiles chasing us had taken them out. In short, we were under no immediate threat, but we’d suffered a lot of damage and a fair number of casualties.

“We’re still not able to maneuver freely,” Major Sarin told me as I reviewed the situation through bleary eyes. “When you took out the nose of the ship, you damaged our steering jets.”

I ordered a steady stream of coffee, sandwiches and a hot towel. I figured I needed a shower, but it could wait until after the briefing. “All right,” I said after the reports had all been made. “Now, give me the bad news. What’s that Macro cruiser up to? How long until we hit the next ring?”

 Major Sarin glanced at Gorski, who cleared his throat. “You sure you want to hear that now, Colonel?”

I looked at both of them. “I’m not going to lie quietly down somewhere while you two run the show. It’s not happening.”

Gorski sighed. “Okay. We are having trouble steering, sir. We are on course for the ring again, but it will take another day to get there, as we went off course during the battle.”

I nodded and sipped hot coffee. I burnt my tongue and curled my lips at the foul taste.

“As for the enemy cruiser—we’re not sure what it is up to. I thought it would have fired all its missiles by now and taken us out. But it hasn’t. We were out of drones, it was at close range, and it didn’t fire. I understood why when the Macro boarding action was in progress. That made sense. But now they are just waiting, shadowing us.”

I thought about it. “Plenty of reasons are possible.” I said. “They could be out of missiles.”

Gorski shook his head. “Seems unlikely. The other ships fired eight each. Why would this cruiser have none?”

“Maybe they are studying us,” I suggested, “relaying back intel on our behavior before they take us out.”

“Maybe. But the Macros are rarely subtle.”

I had to agree with that. They were the sledgehammers of the galaxy. I snapped my fingers, and was irritated to find that even such a simple gesture caused me a sharp pang. Every inch of my body hurt, itched, or both. “Last time they delayed, they were setting up for these invasion missiles. Maybe they are setting up four more of them.”

Everyone in earshot looked alarmed at this idea. If I was right, we had no way of stopping them. The nose of the ship was a wide-open hole. They would be able to march right in like ants.

“I don’t know,” Gorski said. “It just doesn’t sound like their style. If they had eight missiles full of Macros, I think they would have fired them all at us.”

I agreed. “Whatever they are up to, it won’t be good for us,” I said. “They are waiting for a reason. Somehow it benefits them.”

The rest agreed, but there was little we could do about it. I headed over to where my brainbox pilot worked the cruiser controls with seven arms. Only three were in evidence now, as the ship wasn’t performing any complex maneuvers. Major Welter stood there, watching the machine operate. He had a computer tablet in his hands and tapped at it, making observations and taking notes.

“Welter?” I asked. “Glad to see you survived the battle.”

“Not as glad as I am, sssir,” he said, his speech badly slurred.

Major Welter turned toward me and I blinked, my smile freezing on my face. The left side of his face was a slag of hanging flesh. The eye was loose and weeping. The jaw was hinged, but not completely covered by his ripped-loose cheek. It flapped over his teeth as he spoke. Nanites glinted a silver-golden color in there. They were hard at work rebuilding his face, but I suspected he would carry a scar with him forever.

I turned back to the control system and the brainbox operating it. “I see you are studying the interface.”

Welter nodded with his ghoulishly damaged face. It didn’t seem to be troubling him at the moment, so I decided not to bring it up. Injuries were viewed differently now that we could take horrible wounds and survive. They were less remarked upon by all.

“I’ve been ssstudying this sssystem. I really think I can do it, Colonel.”

“Do what?”

“Fly it. Pilot this cruiser.”

I stared at him. “You’ve only got two hands, man.”

“Yes. But if you watch, the brainbox doesn’t move all those hands at once very often. I would need a copilot for difficult maneuvers. But I can do it.”

I thought about it. I knew the enemy cruisers had better piloting than we did. Their ships had consistently outperformed ours. The brainbox had learned the basics, but wasn’t a gifted pilot. The problem with most computers is they were generalists.

“I could use a real pilot,” I said. “Why don’t you give it a try? But if we get into action, hand the controls back over to the bot.”

“Excellent, Colonel Riggs!” Welter said.

I could tell he was truly happy. A few minutes later, as I left the bridge, I felt the deck slide laterally under my feet. It caught itself, leveled out, then slid again. I paused, wondering if I should go back and countermand my instructions. I looked back from the hatch toward the control system. The rest of the bridge staff stared at Welter as well. He had both hands up on the control board. He waved forward an assistant and indicated colored geometric shapes on the screen that needed touching.