For Love and Glory

LIV

When Lissa swam back to herself, she was unharnessed, afloat in free fall. Hebo’s anxious hands went to and fro across her. “Are you all right?” he gasped through the blood that masked him in red and bobbed loose in fire-drops. “Are you okay, darling, darling?”

“I… think… I am,” she mumbled. “You?”

His laugh leaped. “I’m awake.”

Stars gleamed in the constellations of home. To one side shone Sunniva.

Later, when they had won back to full awareness, taken analgesics to deaden the pain that filled them and the healing medicines prescribed by the medic machine that examined them, cleansed themselves, and shared from a bottle of whiskey, they could recall what they had done.

“Two-three broken ribs apiece, minor damage elsewhere, nothing that won’t mend pretty soon,” he said. “Christ, though, that was a near thing. A tad more would’ve killed us.”

She was too weary for triumph. “And we killed so many,” she mourned.

“It was them or you. I have no regrets.”

“Romon—”

“Yes, he did warn us, knowing it’d cost him his life. But I’m fairly sure he already suspected he and Esker were doomed. What reason would the Dominance have to let them live to tell their story?” Hebo gazed out at the stars. “Well, be that as it may, there at the end he was a brave man. I’ll honor his memory.”

“How did he warn you?”

“Something few humans know nowadays, and no nonhumans. Macbeth received Duncan as a guest, then murdered him in his sleep.”

“We’d better call Asborg.”

“Yes, and urge them to call Earth. And to dispatch a squadron to yon system, just in case; but I expect Earth and the Forerunners’ll be quick to reclaim their own.” Hebo smiled. “I don’t expect they’ll take what we’ve got away from us. In fact, they can’t, if we squirt the data along with our message. We’ll have enough to keep us busy for a good long while to come. Lord knows what we’ll find.”

“Greatness?”

“Fun, anyway. Discovery is, don’t you agree? Now let’s start Hulda off for Asborg at a nice, easy half a gee, make our call, and rest.”

“And rest and rest,” she sighed. “Sleep and sleep.”

He smiled rather wryly. “I hope we’ll be in shape to use some of this last flight better than that. We’ll be mighty short on privacy for weeks or months, groundside.”

“There’ll be time afterward,” she promised. “Always.”