Bessany Weyman woke from a fragmented memory of falling walls and the howling roar of the tornado and wondered how long she'd been unconscious. She lay without moving, trying to determine exactly where she was and how badly injured she might be. She could feel pain, dull and frightening, along her back and legs where something heavy pinned her down. She was cold, too, and realized the tornado had knocked down enough of the building to let the freezing night air howl through the shattered remains of the rec room. She could hear the blizzard's shrieking winds, but was so completely buried, no snow had reached her.
Gingerly, she tried to move, and found that she was pinned fast beneath the rubble. Some of it shifted ominously and she froze, heart pounding in renewed terror. Then, dimly, she heard voices, recognized Herve Sinclair and Ed Parker and Elin Olsson, shouting above the moaning of the wind. And somewhere farther away, someone was screaming in mindless agony. Bessany strained to hear and realized Sinclair was moving through the ruins, shouting names, trying to find people. Bessany cried out, "Herve! Herve, I'm trapped! Help!"
"Bessany?"
"I'm here! There's rubble on top of me—I can't move!"
The project director called faintly, "Ed, help me! Bessany, keep shouting so we can find you. Most of the lights are out and we can barely see!"
Bessany kept calling out, "Here! I'm over here! I think I'm under part of the doorway!"
Rubble started to shift above her. Bessany sobbed aloud, flinching and bracing herself for the worst as heavy slabs of plascrete teetered and moved with an ominous groan. She heard a wordless shout . . . Then the heaviest, largest slab lifted, freeing her. Bessany scrambled through the smaller debris, wincing as injuries along her back and legs protested the injudicious movement. The heavy plascrete fell as her rescuers dropped it, then someone helped her up—
Bessany gasped in shock.
The hand around her wrist was clawed, clawed and furred along its whole length. Bessany jerked her gaze up, squinting through the near darkness, and made out a towering, heavily furred shape, nearly eight feet tall against the driving snow. Light from one of the side labs that had remained miraculously intact spilled out into the darkness, revealing the last face she had dreamed she would see, tonight.
"Chilaili!" she cried. "What—how—?"
"Bessany!" Herve Sinclair shouted behind her. "Run!"
She turned, shaken and still off balance, and found the project director rushing toward her. Ed Parker was at his heels. Both men brandished makeshift clubs. It took a long, slow second to realize they thought she was in danger, that the Tersae standing above her had come to attack them. "No!" she shouted, suddenly grasping it. She stepped between the katori and the onrushing men. "Herve, Ed, no! It's Chilaili!"
They paused, panting, a meter away.
"Chilaili?" Herve frowned.
"Yes! She pulled me out of the rubble."
"Bessany Weyman," the tall Tersae said urgently, "many of your nestmates are still trapped. We must dig them free, quickly. This rubble is not stable and the cold will penetrate quickly, lowering their chances of survival. And someone must start a fire or we will all freeze to death, myself included. This is not suitable weather to be aboveground without shelter and warmth."
Bessany scrubbed her forehead, willing the fog in her brain to recede, and brought down her hand to find it red with blood. She scrubbed it off on her shirt. No time, yet, for minor injuries. "Right." She stared at the damage, peering toward the source of light spilling out into the snow. "My God, it's the med lab still standing!" And since the med lab's lights still blazed, the power plant itself was undamaged. That single fact might well mean the difference between life and death.
Sinclair wrapped her up in a coat scavenged from the debris. "Yes, most of it was spared, thank God. In fact, several of the labs survived pretty much intact. Enough to provide some shelter, anyway. We've already shifted the less-badly injured into several of them. Power's out in most, but it's still better than being out in the open."
"How long was I unconscious?" she asked sharply.
"Almost half an hour."
Bessany blanched. If she'd remained unconscious much longer, she might well have frozen to death. There must've been just enough heat trapped under that solid rubble to keep her alive long enough to wake up and shout for help. "If the power's off in most of our shelters, we'll need wood for building fires . . ."
"There are many trees down," Chilaili offered. "I had to climb over them to reach your nest. I heard the twist-wind from the top of the cliffs and knew it had passed over this place. I hurried, Bessany Weyman, as fast as I dared."
Bessany's throat tightened. She touched Chilaili's arm, shuddering as the wind whipped stinging snow through the broken walls of the recreation room. "Thank God you did. I'll ask why you're here later."
Chilaili gave Bessany her strange, head-bobbing nod. "Yes. It is more important to find the trapped ones first."
They dug through the rubble in teams, freeing more people, locating more coats and distributing them. Herve selected four men who had escaped with only minor cuts and bruises, put them into rescued cold-weather gear, roped them together for safety's sake, and sent them out with lights to bring in wood while the search for survivors went on. Chilaili was a godsend, lifting heavy slabs it would've taken three or four men to shift. They found some people unconscious, others badly injured and screaming with pain—and some who lay ominously still, crushed and broken or surrounded with sickening crimson stains where they'd bled out through arterial damage.
Bessany worked with shaking hands, trying not to look into the faces of friends who had died in the rubble. She concentrated on guiding or carrying the still-living toward shelter, helping the uninjured reach whichever side lab was closest and ferrying the badly injured to the med lab. Salvatore di Piero, their construction engineer, had rigged a temporary wall of thick plastic sheeting across the jagged hole torn in one corner of the latter.
Grigori Ivanov, their surgeon—dazed and bleeding from multiple cuts—was finally pulled free. He leaned against Herve Sinclair while Bessany bundled him into a coat, then Chilaili literally carried him into the warmth of the med lab. Bessany followed at their heels while the others continued searching the wreckage. Her hands and face were frozen and the wind whipped through her long hair like knives. She stumbled toward the med lab in a deep fog, telling herself she was more fortunate than most—she was on her feet and functional. And still alive. She couldn't bear to look at the bodies they'd placed in a snow-covered stack to one side, awaiting burial once the living had been cared for.
They slipped past the curtain of plastic sheeting and warmth enfolded them. The relief from just being out of the wind was a tonic. Salvatore was busy examining the walls, shoring up the ceiling in places where the plascrete had cracked. The wounded lay on beds, on examining tables, on the floor, many of them moaning or crying out in harsher tones. Chilaili set Dr. Ivanov gently on his feet and braced him with one powerful arm.
He leaned against her for long moments, not even questioning her presence. He struggled visibly to still the shaking of his hands. Then he straightened with a grim look in his eyes and raked his glance across the lab, taking in equipment and supplies that had been spared and the appalling number of injured. He said only, "Bessany, can you help me as triage nurse?"
She nodded woodenly, so tired she was reeling on her feet.
"Life-threatening injuries first, everything else second," Ivanov said, then waded in.
Bessany followed her instincts and checked the unconscious first, figuring that anyone who was still knocked out suffered potentially far more serious injury than those thrashing around and screaming. She lost track of time, moving from one critically injured colleague to another, calling urgently for compresses or Dr. Ivanov's surgical skill. Ivanov performed miracles, doing emergency surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging, while dazed volunteers splinted broken bones and bandaged the less severely wounded.
At some point, Bessany glanced up to see Chilaili squatting beside one of the equipment mechanics, whose leg lay at an alarming angle, an injury far enough down on the triage list, nobody had reached him yet. Chilaili felt carefully for the break, then slipped something into the man's mouth for him to bite down on and moved her big, clawed hands purposefully. She set the broken bone with one easy movement. The mechanic screamed; then Chilaili gently tied a splint in place and pulled a blanket around his shoulders, murmuring something soothing to the suffering man before moving on to the next person in need of care. People stared at the tall, powerful Tersae as she moved amongst them. It was so unlikely, seeing her here, treating the injured.
Bessany had to swallow tears. Unlikely only in context, she realized. Chilaili was a trained healer. She doubtless had enormous experience setting broken bones and treating shock and blood loss. The effects of shock were essentially the same in all warm-blooded animals and a broken bone was a broken bone, whether it was part of a horse, a human, or a Tersae huntress. The only part of her gentle ministrations that seemed so jarringly out of place was her willingness to help humans at all, when Chilaili's species had declared unilateral, total war against the colonies.
She's come to repay the debt for saving Sooleawa's life, Bessany realized, watching Chilaili crouch beside a pile of food stores along the wall, which somebody else had scavenged. She broke open cans with her bare claws. She handed out food to those too injured to walk, even sent someone out with basins to collect snow, to melt for drinking and cooking water.
Through a blur of exhaustion, Bessany found herself thinking, My God, with Chilaili's help, we might just survive this. Tears stung her eyelids again and clogged her throat. How many of them would have died in the rubble without Chilaili's strength to shift the heavy debris before they froze to death? She couldn't even hazard a guess. Bessany scrubbed her eyes fiercely with the backs of her hands, which only smeared blood across her face, some of it hers, most of it other people's. She tugged off the coat she'd forgotten she wore, pulled her shirt loose, and wiped blood and tears from her face with the hem. Her hands shook so violently, she could barely control them, and her knees had gone dangerously spongy.
Herve Sinclair touched her shoulder. "Bessany. We're past the worst now. Dr. Ivanov suggested you sit down, get some rest and something to eat."
She nodded. "All right. I won't argue."
The project director stared thoughtfully at Chilaili, who moved out into the teeth of the storm again to search for more supplies. "At some point, I'd very much like to know what she's doing here."
"So would I," Bessany agreed in a low, shaking voice. "I think I can guess her reasons, but we need more than guesswork. If I'm right, she's come to pay the debt for Sooleawa's life by warning us an attack is coming. Probably as soon as the weather clears."
Sinclair blanched. "We can't possibly fight, Bessany. Even if we had weapons . . ." He gestured at the broken walls. "We're simply not defensible. And evacuating is out of the question. The tornado smashed the hangar. There's nothing left of the aircars, not even much rubble. Most of them were apparently sucked up and carried God alone knows how far." His voice shook. "From the look of things, the tornado barely grazed the recreation hall, or we'd all have been sucked out with them."
Bessany shuddered. "I don't suppose any of our communications gear survived?"
Herve shook his head. "We haven't found it yet, if it did. The SWIFT unit's completely gone, along with the room it was in. The field radios are missing, too. Our main radio transmitter is smashed and the tower's down, twisted into useless junk. We'll keep looking, but I'm not very optimistic."
God, we can't even call for help. . . .
Bessany swayed sharply, fighting waves of exhaustion.
"You're weaving on your feet," Herve said gently. "Come on, let's get you into one of the other shelters, get some food into you."
Bessany let him pull the coat around her shoulders again, let him steer her outside and across the rubble field to the geology lab. Seven refugees huddled around a blazing fire that had been built in one corner, next to a window cracked open slightly, just enough to let the smoke out. Elin Olsson presided over the fire, keeping it properly stoked. The petite geologist, blonde hair streaked with dark stains, greeted Bessany with a wan smile and scooted over enough to give her room to sit down. The elfin geologist handed her a ration pack with three of the high energy bars they carried while doing field research. Bessany ate one without tasting it and washed it down with cold water from a basin of melting snow.
As she sat beside the crackling fire, watching the flames dance across the carefully stacked wood, her own injuries finally made their presence felt. From scalp to toes, the ache of bruises and multiple stings where she'd sustained cuts and scrapes spoke of the abuse she'd suffered. Her hands were shaking and all she really wanted was to lie down and sleep for about a year.
Elin glanced up and met her gaze. "Bessany?"
"Yeah?"
She expected the geologist to ask about Chilaili. Not for the first time, Elin Olsson surprised her. "Do you think the military help the Concordiat promised will get to us in time?"
Before the Tersae attack us?
The unasked portion of that question reverberated between them. Bessany shook her head. "I don't know, Elin. I just don't know." She bit her lip. "I kept sending messages to my brother-in-law, but he never answered. After Alex's death . . ."
Elin, who knew the whole story, reached over to wrap a comforting arm around Bessany's shoulders. "That wasn't your fault, hon."
Bessany shook her head. "No. I know it wasn't. But John Weyman tried to contact me, afterward, and I never answered his messages. I couldn't. Just couldn't." She closed her eyes over burning salt water. "God, Elin, I was so stupid. . . . And now we really need his help, I'm afraid he's returning the compliment."
"I can't imagine he would deliberately ignore you, Bessany. Or any message from Thule, come to that. He's probably just out on the frontier, fighting the Deng invasion," Elin insisted quietly, "and hasn't even seen your messages. So don't blame yourself, okay? None of this is your fault."
Bessany sighed. Elin was doubtless right, of course. It wasn't her fault and John Weyman probably wasn't spitefully ignoring her. But she knew only too well that even when the promised military help finally arrived at Thule, there was very little chance that help would be directed toward them. The mines were the critical installations on Thule—not a battered group of scientists huddled in the wreckage of their research lab. She said in a low voice, "If they can get to us, they will. If." She lifted her gaze from the heart of the flames and met Elin Olsson's frightened glance. "But even if they do manage to bring a fighting force out here before we're overrun, this station is dead last on anybody's priority list for defense."
It was dreadful, watching the elfin geologist come face to face with that bleak assessment. They weren't defensible, wouldn't have been, even before the tornado. They couldn't evacuate, neither by air nor by ground, not with most of their equipment wrecked or simply missing. Walking out was impossible, not with as many seriously injured people as they now had. And Bessany was far too experienced even to hope the cavalry would come over the hill in time.