Citadel: First Colony by Kevin Tumlinson Read Free Book Online Page A

It sounded like a group of men some ways off.
    “Hey!” he called out. “Hey, we’re here! Over here!”
    He quickly made his way back to Lissa’s side. “Here! Here in the brush!”
    It took several minutes, but soon he could hear shouting and the sounds of people pushing through the undergrowth. In moments, four Blue Collars broke through to the clearing where Thomas and Lissa had landed.
    The four men paused at the edge of the clearing, taking in the scene. One of the younger seemed, for a moment, to be staring strangely at Thomas, but then all four men pushed ahead and hurried toward them.
    “Lissa,” one Blue Collar said, kneeling beside her.
    Lissa coughed again, and blood spattered the corners of her mouth.
    “It’s ok,” the young man said with a strong, reassuring tone. “We’ll get you out of here. You’re going to be fine.”
    The four men began tearing the sleeves from their jump suits and breaking limbs from the trees, fashioning a makeshift stretcher for the injured woman. Thomas felt completely useless as he sat with burned hands, forced to watch them.
    One of the men bent to take a look at Thomas and his burns. “These are bad,” he said. “You hurt anywhere else?”
    “Shoulder,” Thomas said. “I don’t think it’s dislocated, but I wrenched it pretty good.” Briefly, Thomas thought about the pain he’d felt in his arm earlier, but if it was sprained, the pain was being masked by his other injuries. He wondered if it was a good or bad thing for one potential injury to be forgotten in light of several others. Wonder what else I’ve banged up , he joked with himself. Internal gallows humor.
    The man nodded. “Can you walk?”
    “Yeah, I’m good.” He nodded towards Lissa, “I think she may have a punctured lung, though. Pretty bad. Is there a medic back at the crash site?”
    The man shrugged. “Maybe. There’s a field medic in the BC crew, and the White Collars are supposed to have at least one doctor. Whether they survived or not ... ”
    Thomas didn’t need him to finish.
    “They were setting up a camp when we left. The scrub ... that Somar guy ... he was in charge,” the man practically spat. “The camp isn’t far. But you two were thrown pretty deep into the brush.”
    Thomas wasn’t sure if he’d heard the man right. Scrub? He hadn’t heard it much, but he was pretty sure that was slang used to describe the Esool. Somar—the Esool Captain who had helped everyone get strapped in and prepared for the crash. The man who had helped save humans when he could have thought only of himself.
    How could anyone still be a bigot in this day and age? Shouldn’t that world have died off long ago? Some things, Thomas supposed, just stayed the same as long as humans were at the heart of the equation.
    Thomas decided that this wasn’t a good time to point out the foibles of racism and struggled to stand again. The man helped him, carefully taking hold of his elbows and lifting Thomas to his feet. Thomas glanced up through the trees. “We must have been launched out of the door pretty fast to be thrown so far. The brush may have been the only thing that kept us from going splat.”
    The young man, Alan, stepped up to them. The other two were gently putting Lissa on the stretcher. “You saved Lissa,” he said stoically. “If not for you, she would have died in that explosion.”
    Thomas studied him for a moment. It was as if there was something unspoken there, some hint of a conversation unsaid. “Seemed like the thing to do,” Thomas said finally.
    Alan nodded and returned to help the others in getting Lissa on the makeshift stretcher.
    “Don’t mind him,” the man beside him said. “He’s always been a little weird. He reads too much.”
    Thomas almost laughed. “I didn't think anyone read anymore.”
    The man laughed and helped the others to lift the stretcher and carry Lissa toward the edge of the clearing.
    Thomas looked around and, despite himself, had to smile.