Free A Choice of Treasons by J. L. Doty Page B

to relax, though his right foot was in agony and he couldn’t stop shaking. He reminded himself his right foot was no longer there, but it didn’t seem to care about that and still hurt like hell. The medic’s actions became more frantic and he realized then that he was dying. He didn’t want to die, not here, not this way: lying on a grav stretcher, his mouth filling over and over with blood, cries of the dying all about him. But at that moment he suddenly realized there was something far worse than death.
    He struggled for one last instant of strength, managed to grip the open neck ring of Palevi’s chest plate. He couldn’t pull himself up, but he pulled the marine down to him. He knew what he had to say, and struggled to say the words, just a few simple words, the most important words in his life, “No . . . tanks.”
    “No tanks, sir?” Palevi asked. He looked at the medic.
    The medic shook his head.
    “Sorry, sir,” Palevi said. “They may have to tank you to keep you alive.”
    A long ago memory climbed up out of his stomach and into his throat. York fought to hold onto consciousness long enough to speak. “Please . . . No Tanks . . . The . . . Vincent .”
    “The Andor Vincent , sir?” Palevi asked. “Ah Cap’em, you shouldn’t pay no attention to them ghost-ship stories. Just stories, that’s all they are.”
    York shook his head frantically. He remembered all too well the voices, and the fear, and the pain, and now he had to make Palevi understand. He opened his mouth, pushed the words out with his last bit of strength, “I . . . was . . . on . . . the Vincent .”
    Palevi recoiled as if struck. His eyes opened and his jaw dropped, and for an instant the impenetrable wall of his self-confidence crumbled. The medic’s reaction was no less dramatic, and he and Palevi looked at one another for a long moment.
    York groaned, “Please . . .”
    The medic gave one of those short, simple shakes of his head. At that, Palevi’s face hardened. He nodded at the medic and looked carefully at York, paused for a long moment. “If you gotta go down, Cap’em, I’ll personally see to it you go down clean. No tanks. You got my word on that, one marine to another.”
    York let go, relaxed completely, felt as if he’d been suddenly relieved of a great weight. Palevi would die before he’d break such an oath.
    Something inside his chest turned a somersault and pain sent him to the edge of consciousness. He gasped, choked on a convulsion and his mouth filled again with blood. He coughed it out all over Palevi and the medic.
    “Shit!” the medic swore. “He’s goin’ down.” He started rifling desperately through his kit, but suddenly he stopped and turned to Palevi with a stricken look on his face. “Fuck, Sarge, I’m out of stass .” The medic leaned back, looked up at the ceiling of the boat, shouted at the top of his lungs. “I’m out of stass , god damn it! Cap’em’s goin’ down and I’m out of stass . Somebody get me some fuckin’ stass .”
    For York reality became a distant, abstract thing, and a calm stillness settled into his soul. He was thankful his leg no longer hurt and the pain in his chest receded. Warmth washed over him with an enveloping softness, and then there was nothing.

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 5: HUNTED
     
     
    Lieutenant Magdelena Votak watched the expanding fireball on her screen with a feeling of overwhelming relief. The enemy had been vanquished in the cosmic fires of thermonuclear fusion, and victory was not sweet. That was one of the first things she had learned as a young ensign: victory was never sweet; it was merely a relief.
    “All stop.”
    She cut power to the sublight drive, felt the hull go free.
    “A direct hit, sir,” Anda Gant said. “One hundred megaton warhead; no survivors in that.”
    Maggie looked again at the ball of radioactive fire. “No,” Telyekev said almost sadly. “No survivors. Let’s pick up One and Two .” Telyekev