“Minimal damage,” he responded.
“What the fuck is minimal damage? Are you talking about yourself? Or the ship?” Chloe exclaimed. “Damn it! I’m coming up.”
She crossed to the observation window to check on the crews in the ships in the bay and halted in horror. There were men limping from all three, but she instantly saw that Damon and another man were carrying a third.
Wrenching the door open, she raced across the bay to meet them, skidding to a halt when she saw that it was Jared they carrying. She clapped a hand over her mouth when she saw the blood. “Is he …?”
“He is only unconscious,” Kane said, his voice strained.
Dragging her gaze from Jared, she looked at him and saw that he wasn’t in much better shape that Jared. He was bloody all over and there were blackened holes burned in his flight suit to dispel any hope that it was Jared’s blood and not his. Damon, she saw, was also wounded, his face pale. She moved away when she realized they were near to dropping themselves and that she’d held them up.
She glanced around a little frantically. “Medic! We need a couple of medics over here!”
Damon and the other man—she didn’t know his name—settled Jared on the deck a little roughly and dropped to the deck themselves. She rushed to help Kane when she saw that he was trying to sit down.
“Get away, Chloe!” he growled. “I will fall on you and hurt you.”
Her chin wobbled, but she backed off, struggling to keep from crying as she watched him drop to his knees and then fall clumsily onto his side.
Two men approached them that she assumed were medics. One moved to Jared and the other to Kane.
After examining them briefly, they got up and left again. Chloe watched them as they headed into the shuttle. Reuel, she saw, was examining his men’s wounds. Almost as if he felt her attention, though, he lifted his head and glanced toward her. He studied her for a long moment and strode toward her, moving past her to study her men before he returned. “They will recover.”
Blinding anger boiled up the instant he said that. Balling her hand into a fist, Chloe punched him in the belly. She thought for a few moments she might have broken her hand, but she wasn’t about to let on that it had hurt her far worse than it had him! “You bastard! They’re shot all to hell and gone!”
He caught her wrists before she could injure herself more. “They are cyborgs, Chloe!” he said tightly. “It would take far more damage than they have sustained to destroy them. They will live.”
Chloe felt her throat close with hope. She turned to look at Jared and Kane again. “They aren’t going to die?”
“No. The medics will extract the projectiles that are preventing the wounds from closing properly and then their nanos will repair them.”
She swallowed convulsively. “But they’re hurt.”
“They are damaged, yes, but they will recover.”
Her lips tightened. “But they’re in pain, right? They feel pain?”
Something flickered in his eyes. “We feel everything that you would feel.”
“Well that isn’t alright!” she screamed at him. “It isn’t alright with me for them to be hurt, damn it! It isn’t OK just because they’re going to live!”
His lips flattened with anger for a moment. “It is not alright with me either, Chloe. We did what we had to to survive.”
It took all she could do to keep from bursting into tears. Her shoulders slumped as the fight went out of her. Reuel released his grip on her wrists, studied her for a long moment, and finally pulled her close and held her. “They will be alright, I promise you. I regret that they were injured in the raid, but, the gods willing, they will not have to take part in another.”
Chloe nodded, comforted by his embrace and his words. “Could you get someone to move them to their bunks, please? The floor’s cold. I don’t like for them to be cold, not after … Xeno-12.”
Chapter Fourteen
Chloe discovered when Reuel pulled away to look for someone to move them that all the cyborgs were staring at her. Feeling her face heat with discomfort, she turned away, moving back to crouch beside Jared.
She’d never felt more separated and different before, she realized, and yet she didn’t feel distanced from her own men. Somehow, when she looked at Damon, Jared, and Kane, she felt far closer than she ever had before.
Those thoughts, naturally enough, led her to the rest of her crew and dismay jolted through her. Sebastian had been hurt, too, and she had no idea how badly.
He’d been able to respond, she told herself, watching anxiously as the medics returned and removed the slugs from Jared and Kane. Blood welled again when they had, but when they had applied pressure for a few minutes, she saw to her relief that the bleeding had stopped.
The men Reuel had summoned came to carry Jared and Kane, and to help Damon to their bunks. She followed them until they reached B deck, where all the crew quarters were and then, after searching her mind to recall where the gun turret was located, jogged down the corridor to find Sebastian. Lucien and Thor were already with him. Touching Lucien’s shoulder, she crouched down to look at Sebastian.
