Read Online The Rings of Tautee by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Media Tie-In, Space Opera, American Fiction, Interplanetary voyages, Kirk; James T. (Fictitious Character)
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that he had to.
Chapter Twelve BRUISES, CUTS, BROKEN BONES.
And filth.
McCoy hadn't seen that much filth since he went back in time to old Earth. Although these people couldn't be blamed for the dirt. They had lived for weeks in a crisis situation.
McCoy was working in the cargo decks. The hundred survivors fit better in here than they did in sickbay. Security was carrying the worst of the wounded[*thorngg'^th with shattered limbs, gangrenous infections[*thorn)'ffsickbay, where Nurse Chapel would sedate them until McCoy could get there.
Fortunately he had found no internal injuries yet. And even more fortunately, Scotty's golf contraption was disassembled. Instead of fake green grass and mist off the sea, the deck had been 82 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE transformed into a makeshift hospital and refugee area full of beds, blankets, and wounded.
Tauteeans leaned against walls, and lay, eyes closed, on beds. A few sat on chairs, their short legs unable to reach the ground. They didn't look like children, though. They looked like shrunken humans.
But they weren't human.
Tauteeans were a thin-boned, almost birdlike people.
He doubted that the heaviest of them weighed more than a normal ten-year-old child. The men were no more than five feet tall, and the women were shorter than that. But they had a compelling attractiveness that had something to do with their frailty, and with their delicate bodies. Something that made McCoy want to protect them.
Maybe it was the sense of despair around them.
McCoy had been on rescue missions before, and the survivors always celebrated when they were lifted away from certain death. Then, days[*thorn] sometimes months[*thorngg'later, they felt survivors' guilt. But these people seemed to be feeling it already. Even the ones who weren't seriously wounded closed their eyes and didn't speak much to those around them.
The silence in the bays was unnerving. His voice, blended with that of his current patient, would bounce against the high ceiling, sending mocking echoes throughout.
No one looked, no one watched, not even to see if a colleague was all right. Not even after a 83 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch subspace wave hit, and they all clutched the nearest post, the nearest wall, for balance.
McCoy would have to monitor all of his patients carefully. Despair this deep made a shallow cut deadly; he had learned long ago that people who wished to die often could force their bodies to cease functioning properly.
In fact, he was more worried about their mental conditions than their physical ones. The loss of a house, a dwelling, a plot of land, was bad enough.
The loss of a country was devastating. The loss of a planet, and the destruction of a solar system, was beyond his comprehension.
Not only was the beloved dwelling gone, but so were the land that it rested on and the air that surrounded it. He hadn't returned to his family home, his Earth, in a long time, but if he received news that Earth and her sister planets were gone[*thorn] well, the thought made his breath catch in his throat.
McCoy was working on a man who had cuts all over his hands and arms. One long gash ran down the side of his cheek, and bumps rose from his forehead as if he had been hit with a dozen rocks. The cuts were dirty but not yet infected. McCoy shot the man full of antibiotics and gingerly picked up the man's left hand. McCoy was leery of these fine bones. If he gripped them too hard, he felt he would shatter them with his simple touch.
The man had moaned once, when McCoy touched a particularly deep slash in the upper arm, and then had said nothing else. His breathing sounded loud in the cargo bay's stillness.
THE RINGS OF TAUTEE Then McCoy heard a chair clang. He glanced to his left, past the rows of barrels that Scotty kept for some unknown purpose, and watched a slender dark-haired woman move from person to person. She touched each Tauteean she passed, and spoke softly. They smiled in response. Sad
Chapter Twelve BRUISES, CUTS, BROKEN BONES.
And filth.
McCoy hadn't seen that much filth since he went back in time to old Earth. Although these people couldn't be blamed for the dirt. They had lived for weeks in a crisis situation.
McCoy was working in the cargo decks. The hundred survivors fit better in here than they did in sickbay. Security was carrying the worst of the wounded[*thorngg'^th with shattered limbs, gangrenous infections[*thorn)'ffsickbay, where Nurse Chapel would sedate them until McCoy could get there.
Fortunately he had found no internal injuries yet. And even more fortunately, Scotty's golf contraption was disassembled. Instead of fake green grass and mist off the sea, the deck had been 82 THE RINGS OF TAUTEE transformed into a makeshift hospital and refugee area full of beds, blankets, and wounded.
Tauteeans leaned against walls, and lay, eyes closed, on beds. A few sat on chairs, their short legs unable to reach the ground. They didn't look like children, though. They looked like shrunken humans.
But they weren't human.
Tauteeans were a thin-boned, almost birdlike people.
He doubted that the heaviest of them weighed more than a normal ten-year-old child. The men were no more than five feet tall, and the women were shorter than that. But they had a compelling attractiveness that had something to do with their frailty, and with their delicate bodies. Something that made McCoy want to protect them.
Maybe it was the sense of despair around them.
McCoy had been on rescue missions before, and the survivors always celebrated when they were lifted away from certain death. Then, days[*thorn] sometimes months[*thorngg'later, they felt survivors' guilt. But these people seemed to be feeling it already. Even the ones who weren't seriously wounded closed their eyes and didn't speak much to those around them.
The silence in the bays was unnerving. His voice, blended with that of his current patient, would bounce against the high ceiling, sending mocking echoes throughout.
No one looked, no one watched, not even to see if a colleague was all right. Not even after a 83 Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch subspace wave hit, and they all clutched the nearest post, the nearest wall, for balance.
McCoy would have to monitor all of his patients carefully. Despair this deep made a shallow cut deadly; he had learned long ago that people who wished to die often could force their bodies to cease functioning properly.
In fact, he was more worried about their mental conditions than their physical ones. The loss of a house, a dwelling, a plot of land, was bad enough.
The loss of a country was devastating. The loss of a planet, and the destruction of a solar system, was beyond his comprehension.
Not only was the beloved dwelling gone, but so were the land that it rested on and the air that surrounded it. He hadn't returned to his family home, his Earth, in a long time, but if he received news that Earth and her sister planets were gone[*thorn] well, the thought made his breath catch in his throat.
McCoy was working on a man who had cuts all over his hands and arms. One long gash ran down the side of his cheek, and bumps rose from his forehead as if he had been hit with a dozen rocks. The cuts were dirty but not yet infected. McCoy shot the man full of antibiotics and gingerly picked up the man's left hand. McCoy was leery of these fine bones. If he gripped them too hard, he felt he would shatter them with his simple touch.
The man had moaned once, when McCoy touched a particularly deep slash in the upper arm, and then had said nothing else. His breathing sounded loud in the cargo bay's stillness.
THE RINGS OF TAUTEE Then McCoy heard a chair clang. He glanced to his left, past the rows of barrels that Scotty kept for some unknown purpose, and watched a slender dark-haired woman move from person to person. She touched each Tauteean she passed, and spoke softly. They smiled in response. Sad
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