Ma huffed in a demented determination, clenching and wrenching. Boris’s eyes were white-wide with horror. They stumbled, knocking over a table, kicking through the grocery sacks; food packages spilled across the floor.
Aghast, Vadim pulled his stunner and tried to take aim at the lunging, lurching Boris. Ekaterin saw his mistake at once, and snarled, “Give me that!”
She plucked the stunner from his fist, dropped to one knee, and fired.
Her shot took Ma Roga square in the head. Buzzed by the nimbus, Boris fell back wheezing and flung the knife away. It spun clattering under a burning bunk. Blood streaked scarlet on his neck and hands.
“Boris, carry Ma out! Vadim, get Ingi and Jadwiga out!”
“I’ll see what I can do about this fire,” said Enrique, passing her up. “Hold your breath and go.”
Yes, he was the only one wearing protective gear; his suit would give him some shielding from the heat, and full protection from smoke inhalation. Trained for all levels of chemical laboratory emergencies, he was, if not exactly calm, focused and unpanicked. Ekaterin turned to helping drag the distraught Jadwiga.
They heaved back out the door. Ma was a dead weight, Jadwiga worse for her squirming, but they manhandled everyone down the long ladder with no broken necks. They all stumbled a few meters off and turned to stare.
Burning bedding was pitched from the side window, and more through the door and over the porch. A few more miscellaneous flammables followed, flames choking out as they fell and bounced; and then, at length, Enrique, his white suit only a shade scorched. He climbed carefully down. “Got it out, I think,” he panted. “The cabin won’t go up, but don’t go back in till we’re sure.”
“Why,” gasped Vadim to Ekaterin, hands on his knees as he caught his breath, “did you shoot Ma?”
Shortly, she would be sick and shaking. In this stretched present, she was still floating on an adrenaline high the like of which she hadn’t felt since that incident of destruction in a Komarran jump-point station docking bay, lord, over five years ago. “Couldn’t you see? Boris wasn’t trying to knife Ma. Ma was trying to knife Boris.”
And then, presumably, Ingi and Jadwiga, in descending order of difficulty. And then turn the knife inward as the flames licked up, like some mad makeshift barbarian funeral sacrifice?
Boris and Ingi both nodded. Boris was not-quite-crying; Jadwiga was blubbering; Ingi could not look any paler, but his face was set and shocked. “Why?” he cried.
Ekaterin wished she didn’t understand this so very clearly. She struggled to put it in terms everyone here would grasp. “I suppose… she thought we were trying to take her family away. And she tried to take you back in the only way she knew how.” Murder, suicide, and a pyre all in one swift, final, defiant denial.
“That’s crazy,” whispered Ingi. Though Ekaterin thought Boris and Vadim saw, at least a little. Enrique stood back, as sober and polite as a stranger at a wake for none of his own. But Ekaterin bet he was taking it all in.
“It was a mistake,” Ekaterin went on. “We didn’t intend any such thing, necessarily. We could have talked it out. I should have been more clear…”
Through his smoke-smudged faceplate, Enrique’s brows twitched as if to argue this last, but he made no comment aloud.
Ekaterin sat on the ground with a jolt, cross-legged, and commenced to digging out her wristcom from under her suit sleeve. The trouble with emergency buttons was that when you were in the middle of the dratted emergency, there was no time to go for them. All you had time for was, was, grabbing a stunner and shooting. Which, she supposed, was why Miles kept making her take those self-defense-course refreshers every dratted year.
God. Whatever else this day wanted from her, she had nothing more to give it.
Three tries with her shaking finger, and she managed to stab the screamer button. The response, at least, was gratifyingly instantaneous.
“Armsman Pym? I want backup.”
Ekaterin was grateful that she actually had time to finish her bland hospital dinner before Miles boiled in. Even he had to suffer a forced delay in the hallway, as the nurse on duty ushered the visitors into their required protective garb. Armsman Roic in his brown-and-silver duty uniform leaned over to half-salute-half-wave at her through the lead glass in her door, his smile anxious. She waved back in a good simulation of cheer, which seemed to comfort him.
After final inspection by the nurse, Miles was at last allowed to enter, Enrique trailing amiably. Ekaterin was relieved to see the two wore only standard disposable gowns over their clothes, with medical-style face masks and gloves, the simplest level of protection from contaminants. If Hassadar General’s experienced radiation unit wasn’t panicking about her, no one else needed to. Miles had left his cane in the hallway with Roic, which slowed his rush to her bedside to a mere limp. She could feel the heat of his hands through his oversized gloves as he grasped her own, any more expressive oh-god-you’re-all-right hugs thwarted by her—temporary, she trusted—quarantined state.
“Have you been home?” she overrode his beginning babble.
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’d have been here sooner, but there were people. In lines. Well, more climbing over each other. Eventually I channeled my Inner Piotr to shake them off.”
Enrique nodded, looking vaguely impressed.
She could just picture that—a useful trick, if sometimes startling. “I fielded a call from Aurie and Nikki before dinner. Nikki was a bit frantic, but I think I talked him down. You need to go home—no, first you need to stop wheezing. Then you need to go home and calm them, too.” She added after a moment, “Though Aurie says the twins are pretty oblivious, so far.”
“Right. Right.” He drew a long breath through his mask.
Enrique seemed more put-together—he’d evidently had time for a shower and a change of clothes since their return from the zone, and maybe a meal, or more likely a food bar shoved into his hand by Martya in passing. He had a meditative air, which was just the look one wanted on one’s expensive imported scientist, although on what track his train of thought would exit his labyrinthine brain was often a surprise. But it appeared he’d had time to debrief his eyewitness account directly to Miles.
“What’s going on out there?” she asked. “Did they put Ingi, Jadwiga, and Boris together in one room as I’d asked?” Whatever would follow tomorrow, tonight the traumatized little family needed to be together. Save one, she was reminded.
Miles nodded. “Not quite procedure, but your argument prevailed, given their similar levels of exposure. I haven’t had a chance to meet them yet, though I did glance through their window. Sitting in their beds and eating their dinners, it looked like.”
That did sound reassuring. “And Ma Roga?”
“They have her in a private locked room with a Hassadar guardsman stationed outside the door, regulation when treating an arrestee. She’s recovered from the stun all right. Seems to be silent and surly rather than combative, the nurses say.”
Ekaterin hitched up the sagging neckline of her unflattering hospital gown. “She hasn’t actually been arrested yet, has she? Because we need to think about that one.”
“The radiation isolation is enough to keep her locked down for the moment.”
“All right.” She rubbed her forehead. “Miles, your district is exhausting.”