Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [134]
The sooner we could get Baracin to the hospital, the better. I instructed them to warn the emergency room of the suspected spinal injury, and get him to the hospital as quickly as possible. Only then did I head off for what was either my next patient, or the ninth fatality I’d be able to confirm.
I could see the remains of the side door that Baracin had spoken of across the piles of debris. A light on the other side of the door was flickering. Ecram had apparently been stationed nearby.
I worked my way to the side door, not liking what I saw when I got there. A large piece of what had once been a wall looked to have fallen on top of the desk, breaking it almost perfectly in two. I was about to look around further when I saw two diminutive feet sticking out from beneath the desk. Ecram had apparently attempted the age-old trick of getting under a sturdy piece of furniture when the walls were coming down around her. This time, however, the trick hadn’t worked.
I knelt and looked for the upper portion of her body, to verify that she really was as lifeless as she appeared. That eliminated any doubt, as a shard of metal approximately twenty centimeters in length protruded from her forehead.
I reached forward and gently closed her vacant eyes. As I worked my way back into the tattered remains of Protector Baracin’s office, I tried to make some sense of it all. Even Torelius looked lost.
The kelo player’s eyes were haunted. “He won’t go until he knows about Ecram.”
As gently as I could manage, I broke the news of his assistant’s fate to the Protector. He was quite the stoic. While he was quite obviously in grief over her loss, he didn’t allow it to overwhelm him. “Please,” he whispered. “Get me out of here. My people need me.”
With Torelius and me on either side of him to balance, and the two rescuers taking the heavy lifting, we gently carried him out of the building.
As we arrived back in the daylight, and our patient was taken to proper medical care, Torelius shaded his eyes and looked in the direction the missiles had come. “Doc,” he said, “what did we do to deserve this?”
I looked around at the almost-organized chaos. Emergency workers tended to the seriously injured near their transports, while the cuts and scrapes were attended to by everyday citizens. Tahal-Isut were coming together to help the injured in a way that I couldn’t help but admire.
Still, the sight of so much concern for their fellow citizens both buoyed me and made me angry with the Terrinans for inflicting the wounds. “Deserve,” I said. “Nobody deserves any of this, Akree.”
Torelius nodded. “You’re right. I had a feeling this was coming, just not like this.”
Before I could respond, Mareeza ran up and wrapped her arms around me. “Thank Tahal you remain safe!”
I wanted to say that I was naturally going to be safe, as I’m a hologram, without flesh to rend or bone to grind-but I refrained.
“Yes. Thank Tahal. Were there only the two missiles?” I asked, trying to think of potential strategy in the middle of this whole thing. According to the news reports, Terrina Protectorate had been stockpiling missiles for years, but nobody could come up with an exact number. Popular opinion seemed to be that the Central Protectorate would find out how many missiles they had if and when Terrina Protectorate chose to fire them.
“No,” Mareeza said, her eyes dropping to her feet. “There have been reports of other hits in the city. Right now, they think ten missiles-maybe twelve-but those are only estimates.”
Torelius looked down at her, “And they’re sure it’s Terrina Protectorate?”
Mareeza nodded. I noticed some trepidation in her otherwise exquisite features when her eyes turned back to me. “Aeson, one of the hits was in Dockland.”
I had never had an overwhelming sense of panic before, so I wasn’t sure what was happening at first. The idea that the one piece of shelter I had managed to eke out for myself on an alien world might be surreptitiously taken from me by