The Romulan War_ Beneath the Raptor's Wing (Book 1) - Michael A. Martin [88]
Taking care to stay in a corner and out of the way of the furious-looking Tellarite medical team, Brooks noted that the dead seemed to have succumbed either to the weapons burns and blood loss they had sustained during their encounter with the Romulans, or to the effects of cold and decompression that had followed the failure of their charred and battered escape craft’s environmental system. But as far as Brooks could tell, none of these men and women would have survived for as long as they had but for the efforts of the civilian pilot, now among the dead, who had brought them aboard her vessel moments before making a hasty departure from the besieged surface of Deneva.
Once the medical staff had finished stabilizing the two survivors, Brooks asked one of the medics on duty for permission to speak with the lone MACO who had regained consciousness. Grudgingly, the pig-faced medic allowed her a few minutes to sit beside the young man, who identified himself as Corporal John Sheehan.
“Were you on Deneva as part of a Starfleet contingent?” Brooks asked, once the young trooper—who she could see now was really little more than a boy, an effect accentuated by his red buzz-cut hair and rather prominent ears—had given his permission.
“No,” Sheehan said, still flat on his back on one of the medical beds amid a forest of bandages, flexible tubes, and fluid-filled bags. “I was part of the Deneva garrison. Almost finished with my first one-year tour. Hey, do these pig-faced guys really know anything about treating humans?”
She offered him a gentle smile. “Until the rendezvous with the hospital ship Barnard later today, we’ll have to consider the Skev the best doctor shop in town.”
He laughed, gallows humor being a standard survival tool in any MACO trooper’s kit. “We have a few ground bases in this sector, especially on strategically important planets. Just in case the Romulans somehow make it all the way down to dirtside.”
“Looks to me like they did,” Brooks said. “Any idea how?”
Sheehan shrugged, which prompted him to wince in pain. “My guess is the Vulcans sold us a lemon. Damned Romulans figured out how to game the whole early-warning thing. We were up to our eyeballs in a Romulan assault force before we even knew what was going on.”
Must have been beamed down from orbit, she thought. Like that transporter gadget they have aboard Enterprise.
Unable to contain her curiosity, she said, “Did you see any Romulans up close?”
His eyes grew large and distant. She presumed he was reliving sights, sounds, and smells that she was grateful never to have experienced herself.
“I did,” he said very quietly. “Shot two of ’em down, right after they broke through our perimeter.”
“What do they look like?”
His expression told him that her question had struck him as a non sequitur. “Under their helmets, you mean? Sorry, I didn’t want to risk taking the time to peek. Adams tried to do that, and he got a nice new cauterized skull-piercing for his trouble.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brooks said, and meant it.
A stricken expression crossed Sheehan’s oddly young-old face. “Where are the rest of the guys in my unit?” he said, his tone shifting from grim to plaintive.
Brook’s first impulse was to explain that one of the doctors would soon bring him up to speed, wrapping all the bad news in sugar and a trained bedside manner.
But this wasn’t Earth. Whether it was appropriate or not, she couldn’t bring herself to leave this poor kid to the tender mercies of the Tellarites.
Very slowly and quietly, she told him the truth. Through her tears, she read the list of names she had assembled from the MACO dog tags the medics had taken from the bodies of the dead.
Afterward, she returned to the quarters Shav had issued her, far too exhausted at the moment to try to complete the interview she had begun with the captain. All she could think about was the poleaxed