"Look, this is touching and everything, but are you going to let me work on her shoulder, or not?" Dobrescu demanded.
"What?" Cord looked up as the medic tapped him with a foot, then stood. "Where did you come from?"
"I said I don't have much use for civan," the warrant officer replied. "Never said I didn't know how to use one," he added as the first of the Vashin appeared on the walls.
"Oh," he added. "The cavalry's here."
Roger opened his eyes and groaned.
"Crap," he muttered. His ribs hurt like hell.
"Water?" Dobrescu inquired sweetly. The medic had dark rings around his eyes, but he looked as mischievous as ever.
"Well, since I'm alive, I take it we won." Roger took a sip from the proffered camelback, then grimaced. "What was the egg breakage?"
"Pretty hefty, Your Highness," a new voice said, and Roger turned his head just as Pahner sat down beside his bed. The captain looked as if he hadn't slept in far too long, either.
"Tell me I look better than you two," the prince said, and winced as he levered himself very gingerly into a sitting position.
"Actually, you probably do," Pahner replied. "Doc?"
"Four broken ribs and contusions, mainly," the medic said. "Which is no big deal with His Highness." He grinned tiredly at Roger. "I kept you under for a day just to keep you out of the way and give your nannies a chance to begin the repairs," he added. "You can start moving around whenever you like."
"It hurts like... heck," Roger noted.
"That's good," Dobrescu told him, and stood. "It might keep you from doing stupid things."
He tapped the prince lightly on the shoulder and walked out, leaving him with Pahner.
"You're alive," Roger said, returning his attention to the Marine. "That's good. How are we doing otherwise?"
"Just fine," Pahner replied. "The breakage was bad for the Shin, both in Nopet and Mudh Hemh. But they'll survive. The Gastan is talking about letting some of the Krath settle in the valley, since the Shin own both citadels again."
"The company? Diasprans? Vashin?"
"Low losses," Pahner reassured him. "We didn't lose any Marines, not even Despreaux—who, I note, you haven't asked about. We lost two Vashin, and a Diaspran. That's it."
"Good," Roger sighed. "I was going to ask about Nimashet as soon as I'd asked about business."
"I won't tell her about your priorities," the captain said with a rare smile. "But I'll note that I approve. And at least we've solved the whole problem with Cord and Pedi."
"What problem? I knew something was going on, but I couldn't tell what."
"Ah, you were asleep for that." Pahner's smile segued into a grin, and he shook his head as he pulled out a bisti root and cut off a slice. "The Gastan wasn't all that happy, either, although he wasn't showing it. It turns out she's pregnant."
"Pedi?" Roger asked. "When? How?" He paused a moment, then shook his head, an almost awed expression on his face. "Cord?"
"Cord," Pahner confirmed. "While he was recovering. He didn't have any memory of it."
"Ouch. Oh, and the whole 'I cannot use my asi that way' thing... Oh, man!"
"Yes," the captain said. "Which was why she couldn't tell him whose child—children—they were. He assumed she'd had... a fling, for want of a better term. Add to that that she was considerably less than half his age but that he was... interested in her anyway, and—"
Roger laughed, then clutched at his chest in pain.
"Oh, my. May-December romance, indeed!" he got out, almost crying between the laughter and the pain.
"So now the Gastan has a new son-in-law, who's older than he is," Pahner acknowledged. "And from what Eleanora and I can figure out, it's even more complicated than that. Since the Gastan's oldest son, Thertik, managed to get himself killed, Pedi is his legal heir. But a benan can't inherit his position. There have been a handful of female Gastans in the history of the Shin, although they're very rare. It's more common for a female heir's consort to inherit the title. But a benan is required to follow his—or her—benai wherever that leads, so he can hardly stay home to rule the tribes. Unfortunately, a benan's children can inherit. So Cord's children—the Gastan's grandchildren—are the legal heirs to the overlordship of the Vales."
"And since Cord insists on following me off-planet..."
"Precisely," the captain agreed with a thin smile. "I hope you'll pardon me for pointing this out, Your Highness, but the three of you have a positive talent for leaving chaos in your wake. Well, to be fair, I suppose I shouldn't include Cord in that. Not, at least, until we met the Lemmar and his sense of honor got him into all of this!"
"I think you're being too hard on him," Roger said with a laugh. "As far as I can tell, he fought the good fight to resist his attraction to Pedi. It's not his fault that he lost in the end—especially not with her taking such unscrupulous advantage of him when he was unconscious and unable to resist her advances!"
"You would come up with something like that," Pahner told him, shaking his head in resignation. "And I suppose it actually is sort of funny, in a way. But don't you dare laugh when you see them. They're like a couple of teenagers. It's worse than you and Despreaux."
"Oh, thank you very much, Captain," Roger said, and chuckled. Then grimaced as the chuckle claimed its own stab of pain.
"Or Julian and Kosutic. Or Berent and Stickles. Or, God forbid, Geno Macek and Gunny Jin, for that matter." The Marine sighed, rubbing his head.
"I'm sorry, Armand." Roger reached out to his bodyguards' commander. "I know we've laid burdens on you that were unnecessary, and for that, I apologize."
The captain looked down at the hand on his arm, then patted it and shook his head.
"Command challenges just make life more interesting," he said with a faint smile. "Although, after a certain point, they do tend to drag you down." He shook his head again. "For example, I would really appreciate it if you could stay out of one-shot range for the foreseeable future."
"Sounds like a good idea to me," Roger acknowledged, settling back against his pillows and feeling very carefully of his chest. "Of course, it never occurred to me that the bastard might have one."
"It wouldn't have occurred to me, either," Pahner admitted. "And I can't say that the fact that he did makes me very happy. But at least he didn't drill you clean."
"I don't understand why he didn't," Roger said thoughtfully. "I thought once one of those things locked onto your breastplate, you were pretty much screwed."
"Pretty much," Pahner agreed. "But from the looks of your armor, you managed to twist sideways just as he hit the tractor-lock. It didn't lock squarely. Instead of depositing the explosive charge at right angles, it hit you obliquely and a lot of the force of the explosion leaked sideways across the face of the plate. It was still enough for the shock damage to break your ribs, disable about sixty percent of your armor systems, and knock you unconscious. But it never managed to blow a scab loose, and you were lucky, Your Highness. Your anti-kinetic systems lasted long enough to keep it from doing anything worse than pounding your ribs—hard. Doc Dobrescu wouldn't have been quite so cheerful about the state they were in if you didn't have an even better nanny pack than the Corps gets issued. I know they still hurt like hell, but they're rebuilding fast."
"I know I was lucky," Roger agreed, still exploring his chest gently. "It just doesn't feel that way."
"Maybe not," Pahner said somberly. "But if he'd manage to blast that scab loose, all the anti-k systems in the galaxy wouldn't have helped you. And if they'd failed, the concussion alone should have turned every bone in your torso into paste." He shook his head. "No, Your Highness. You definitely were lucky. That's all that saved you—well, that and those souped-up reflexes of yours. I don't know if anyone else could have turned enough to take it at a survivable angle."