I shake my head. “Me? No. Ask her what she wants.”
He sighs. “She’s in an induced coma, Mickey. Her mental state started to deteriorate while she was in the scanner. It’s possible the combination of the magnetic fields in the scanner and the double dose of ferrous contrast I gave her contributed to the reaction—sorry, if so. When I saw what was happening, I put her under so that I could drop her temperature and hold her stable until we decided what to do. Her personnel record says you’re her medical proxy, so it’s your call.”
“But…” I open my mouth, then close it again. “No, she was fine. She was better. She said she was feeling better.”
He shrugs. “That’s how it goes with these things sometimes. They used to call it ‘talk and die syndrome.’ You hit your head. It hurts, but you walk away. Then a few hours or maybe even days later, something lets go and you stroke out. When the bleed is in the dura it’s pretty simple. You drain the hemorrhage and wait for it to heal. It’s trickier when it’s deep in the brain, though. It’d be pretty straightforward if we’d gotten to her right away, or even within twenty-four hours of the injury, probably, but at this point there’s a lot of fluid in the cavity, the interstitial pressure is dangerously high, and the area of the injury is unfortunately close to some vital stuff.” He points to the display again. “See the mass effect there? You’ve got significant compression going on in the…” He hesitates when he sees my expression, then shakes his head and continues. “Anyway, we’ve got a few options. I can keep her on ice and hope that it heals on its own. That’s the safest approach, but it can take a while, and the longer she’s down, the more likely she loses some function. I can bring her temperature up and give her coagulants. That speeds things up, but then you risk an ischemic stroke. I wouldn’t recommend going that route. Or, we can go with microsurgery. That’s the most aggressive approach, obviously. Probably ends with either a complete recovery or death. High risk, high reward, you know?” He runs a hand back through his hair. “So? What do you think?”
This is easy. I know what I want. I want Nasha alive. I’ve already opened my mouth to tell him to go with the conservative route when a second question pops into my head.
What does Nasha want?
I know the answer to this one too, of course. Nasha would have given her answer as soon as she heard the word aggressive.
Nasha wants to be exactly who she was before.
If she can’t have that, Nasha wants to be nothing.
I close my eyes, breathe in deep, and then let it out.
“The surgery,” I say. “Do the surgery.”
Burke’s eyebrows jump up toward his hairline. “You sure? I would have bet a week’s rations you’d go with option one.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he says, and taps something into his tablet. “We’ll want to bring her temperature back up and get some meds into her to reduce the pressure before we go in. Should have her prepped and ready to go by this time tomorrow, give or take. After that, the surgery itself will take a couple of hours at least. By nine or ten the next morning, we should be able to get a fix on how she’s responding. Maybe check back then?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Thanks, Burke.”
“Sure thing,” he says. “And hey, Mickey? Get some rest, huh? Honestly, you look worse right now than she does.”
GET SOME REST. Solid advice, you smarmy bastard.
I try. Honest to God, I do. I go up to my rack and climb into bed and lie there in the darkness and stare up at the ceiling and think about what I’ll do if Nasha dies on the table. If I killed myself, would Marshall bring me back?
Do I care if he does?
Doesn’t matter. Nasha won’t die. The universe owes me this one.
I’ve died enough for both of us, haven’t I?
I WAKE TO a pinging ocular. I guess I finally fell asleep after all.
<Command1>: You are required to report to the Commander’s office immediately.
<Command1>: Failure to do so by 08:30 will be construed as insubordination.
Good morning to you too, Marshall.
It’s 08:18 now. That gives me time to run through the chem shower and throw on clean clothes before stepping through Marshall’s door at 08:29.
“Barnes,” he says from behind his desk. “Sit.”
I do.
He stares at me.
I stare at him.
He leans forward and plants his elbows on the desk. “So?”
“The mission did not go entirely as we’d hoped, sir.”
“Yes,” he says. “I gathered that from the fact that Gomez felt compelled to return to the dome to pilfer a half dozen missile warheads from our armory, and that you returned a day later without eight percent of our remaining Security officers and one hundred percent of our rovers.”
I sigh. “Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. We lost Lucas to an indigenous form that we hadn’t seen before. I’m not sure there was a real way to avoid what happened, but I’ll take responsibility. As far as the rover goes, I actually didn’t expect to bring it back to the dome. I was hoping to use it as trade goods when we reached our objective, but unfortunately we were forced to destroy it before we got there to prevent it from falling into the hands of another rival group.”
His jaw tightens, and his eyebrows creep toward one another at the bridge of his nose. “I see. And how did you manage to escape this rival group after destroying your only means of transportation?”
“We destroyed all of them along with it, sir. We used two of Berto’s warheads to blow the rover’s plasma chamber. The resulting explosion was impressive.”
“You…” Marshall says. “Well. Yes. So I would imagine. Unfortunate that you lost the vehicle, but points for ingenuity, I suppose.”
“In any case, by the time we got to where we were going, we had nothing left to bargain with.”
“And yet, both you and Gomez told me quite clearly yesterday that you had struck a deal to get the bomb back.”
“Yes,” I say. “We did.”
“Was this a lie, Barnes? Because I have to tell you, I’m not likely to take that calmly.”
“No, sir, it was not a lie. We do have a deal.”
“Tell me, Barnes.”
And so, I do.
I GO STRAIGHT from Marshall’s office to the caf. There’s no way in hell I’m going to war on an empty stomach, and I’m pretty sure there’s no point in me saving up kcal anymore. The place is half-full, but I pick up my food and find an empty table. I don’t much feel like chatting. I’ve finished my quarter-rabbit and I’m halfway through a pile of stewed tomatoes when Berto takes the seat across from me.
“Hey,” he says. “You’re living large again this morning, huh?”
I shrug without looking up. “Don’t expect to be back here today.” I scoop up a forkful of yams, chew, and swallow. “Don’t expect to be back here at all, honestly.”
“Wow,” he says. “That’s morbid. How’s Nasha?”
I look up, then back down at my tray. “In a coma, getting prepped for brain surgery.”
“Oh.” He shuffles potatoes and crickets around on his own tray, but doesn’t take a bite. “That’s weird, right? She seemed fine when we got back.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Weird.”
We eat in silence then, until Berto has cleaned his tray and I’m scraping up the last of my yams.
“I’m taking the lifter up,” he says then. “When the shit goes down, whenever that is. You should come with me.”
I look up. “What? Why?”
“I was in the Security ready room earlier. They’re not gonna want you going down into the tunnels. Amundsen still remembers you freezing under fire with Cat two years ago.”
I look down at my hands, then back up at him. “I didn’t freeze. My ocular glitched.”