ARISEN, Book Twelve - Carnage by Michael Stephen Fuchs Read Free Book Online

he headed out at the front of both teams.
    * * *
    As medical personnel piled up the last heavy objects in front of the hospital’s double hatch, the five evacuees from the passageway got themselves untangled. All were winded and borderline panicked – all except Walker herself, who calmly reloaded her pistol, holstered it, retrieved her shotgun from the deck, and resumed directing the defense – even as one of her people got her arm wound wrapped up. It didn’t look serious.
    Or she wasn’t taking it seriously, anyway.
    Lovell, getting his breath back as he got the giant ruck of ammo and explosives off his back, could see it in her eyes in an instant: Walker was purely operational now. She was a warrior. And she was never, never going to abandon this post. She would expend every pistol round she had, and every shotgun shell she could scavenge. And then she would spend her life.
    She was home. This station, this ship, were it for her.
    As she finished issuing orders to the front-rank defenders, and rounded on Lovell, he handed her a brace of M9 pistol mags from his bag of whoop-ass, and then said, “Is Doc Park in the lab?” But then he saw Sarah Cameron already moving fast in that direction, not waiting for an answer.
    “That’s affirmative,” Campbell said, taking the mags, putting one in the empty pouch on her belt, and shoving the others in her pockets.
    Lovell nodded at Patrick, who had been shot in the leg – also a through-and-through flesh wound, and also already being wrapped up by a nurse. As Lovell took the huge ruck with the CRRC in it off his back, he asked Patrick, “You okay?”
    “Fine. Good to go.”
    Lovell smiled. “Hey, if you’re gonna get shot, right outside the hospital is definitely the place for it.”
    Patrick flicked him the bird.
    Still, as Lovell looked back and forth between Patrick and Walker, at the faces of these two wounded warriors, neither of them so much as grimaced. Lovell could understand it with Patrick. It was the Marine mentality not to admit that a wound had gotten the best of you. “Never let the bastards see you coming out prone,” was what they always said.
    LCDR Walker, on the other hand… while she might have been in kinetic situations before, as far as Lovell knew she had never been shot at before – never mind shot . On the other hand, she would have treated an awful lot of gunshot wounds, so maybe she wasn’t intimidated by them. Maybe it was the adrenaline making her insensitive to the pain. Maybe it was her protectiveness over her brood, and her understanding of what leadership required – that if she showed pain or fear, everyone under her would succumb to it.
    Maybe she was just a pure badass.
    * * *
    Lovell told Patrick, “Stay and help with the defense. I’ll be back.” And he headed out fast, or as fast as he could dragging a deflated zodiac in a bag and a giant ruck of ammo and explosives, backing through the hospital and finally catching up with Sarah just outside the lab. They both moved inside, fast – Lovell not even noticing the badly wounded Marine, Corporal Raible, lying on his bed just outside.
    Inside the lab, both Dr. Simon Park and Professor Close, the Oxford bioscientist, stood at the back of the room – both looking wide-eyed at the door. Sarah went straight to Park.
    “You okay?” she asked.
    “Fine,” he said. “I figured you’d be coming.”
    “Sorry I didn’t get here quicker.”
    “I’m fine, too,” Dr. Close said.
    Sarah smiled at him. “Good to know.” She looked back to Park. “It’s going to be okay.”
    “I know.” Park didn’t look panicked – he’d been through the wringer enough times now that he didn’t rattle – but Close did.
    Lovell dropped the straps of both bags and then stepped forward, and he looked Park in the eye. “Listen up, Doc. I’m going to need you to gather up everything – all your data, all your research materials, as much as you can carry – and be ready to go.”
    Both