Free The Lost Era: Well of Souls: Star Trek by Ilsa J. Bick Page B

didn’t pulse.
    “I don’t think it hit an artery,” she said. She was aware of how filthy her hands were, and she tried wiping them clean on her pantaloons: a hopeless task. “We need to get you to a doctor, and ...”
    Her eyes dropped to a spot on his right side. Her breath sizzled between her teeth. “Oh, no.”
    There was another stain on his tunic, further down, along his right side. At first, she thought it was merely blood from his arm, but then she saw the stain grow before her eyes.
    “Oh, no,” she said again, “oh, no, no.” With trembling fingers, she tugged up his tunic until she found the wound. Her heart iced with fear. The knife had sliced into Halak’s side, arcing down from the edge of his rib cage to the small of his back. She guessed that he must have turned, trying to deflect the blow with his arm, and only been partially successful. If he hadn’t turned, the knife would have stabbed down into the exposed angle of his neck made by his collarbone and shoulder blade: a lethal wound.
    But this wound, my God, it looked bad, and they were far from anyone who might help them and ... Stop. Batra gnawed on her lower lip, forcing her galloping thoughts to slow, shoving down the scream that balled into the back of her throat. She couldn’t help if she panicked.
    Gently, she probed the wound. As soon as she peeled the edges apart, Halak moaned.
    “No,” he said, his voice barely audible. His face had gone so pale his eyes looked like sunken, dark pits in a field of dusky chalk. “No, leave it, leave it, stop ...”
    “Quiet,” Batra said. “I have to see how bad.”
    Halak subsided into silence. The small muscles along his jaw jerked and quivered as she moved her fingers over the wound. She breathed out. The wound wasn’t gaping, probably because the knife was sharp. Her eyes roved the fabric of the tunic. Its edges were not frayed, so the knife hadn’t been serrated. That was good, and in that, he’d been lucky. A serrated edge would have snagged on the way out, ripping and tearing at Halak’s flesh and causing more damage.
    Think, think, what’s there? Her mind worked over what she knew. She remembered enough basic anatomy—comparative xenozoology had been a required course for her undergraduate work—and the most vulnerable organ in the path of the knife would have been Halak’s right kidney. She didn’t think the knife had gone in that deeply, but it was sharp enough to slice through fabric without fraying the edges. It couldn’t have been a stiletto either, because the wound was a slash not a puncture. Probably curved. Her eyes ran over the wound track. And very sharp.
    She paused, her fingers poised over Halak’s skin. “I’ve got to pull the edges apart and see how deep.”
    “Go,” said Halak. His voice came out as more of a grunt, and shiny beads of perspiration sprouted along his forehead and trickled in rivulets down his cheeks. “But hu ... hurry. Not sure I can ... stay ... stay conscious ...we’ve got ... we’ve got. ...” He broke off, panting, unable to finish.
    “I know. We’ve got to get off the street,” said Batra. She licked her lips. “Hang on.”
    She eased the cut edges of his skin apart. They came away with a slight, moist, sucking sound. As if a stopper had been pulled, dark red blood gushered out and spilled down along Halak’s side to soak into the waistband of his trousers. But, as Batra watched, the flow diminished to a thick, steady stream. Not pulsing, so no arteries had been cut. Batra’s careful eyes inspected the wound. There was a thin ridge of fat, stained orange, just beneath Halak’s skin, and she saw where the knife had sliced through muscle. She couldn’t tell, but she didn’t think the knife had hit his kidney or gone into his abdomen.
    “How ... how bad?” Halak whispered.
    “Bad,” said Batra. She rolled his tunic back over the wound. “Not as bad as it could be. But we’ll need a doctor to know for sure and