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THIS WAS THE SECOND time in as many months as I had to watch my husband fighting for his life from more than just combat fatigue. I stood over the medical pod, where he lay in a medically induced coma while his arm, from the bicep down was regrown in the laboratory.
“How is he?” I asked the Doctor, looking up at the shell-shocked eyes of the medical doctor who had been on duty for more than a hundred hours at that point.
“He’s fighting.” He replied, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t know what to make of it. I can only assume it’s a combination of the fatigue and the shock of losing a limb. There are no poisons or microbes in his system.”
“That is good, right?” I asked. “Can we revive him?”
“I don’t advise it,” The doctor replied. “We can. But his arm needs time to grow and be stimulated. Letting the limb regrow and fuse while his body rests will be better for him, in the long run.”
It was going to be awhile before we were going to be able to get anywhere. We had been roundly defeated, even though we had captured the Gilbaglian frigate that Destota had nearly given his life for.
Against all the medications, technology and everything else, however, Destota opened his eyes inside the pod and looked directly at me.
“His ability to use adrenaline like a weapon is alarming.” The doctor muttered, pushed a switch on the pod. “Colonel, you must remain in the pod until you have healed enough. You’ve lost an arm and a lot of blood. It will be some days before you are healthy enough to fight.”
Destota ignored the doctor and looked at me. “My men?” He asked.
My throat caught. Not just because my husband simply refused to die, but also with the pain of what I had to tell him. “I...”
The doctor cut in. “Colonel, it is my unhappy duty to report to you that First Sergeant Vearse was killed in action.” He said solemnly, and tears spilled down my cheeks against my will. I had known David Vearse since we were just teenagers, and he had been a fierce, good man.
Destota’s eyes clouded with hatred. “Kelis? Peter? The Marauders?”
“You and Vearse were the only casualties.” I said softly.
“The ship?”
“We captured it. It’s in the Shockwave’s carrier bay, getting dissected. We’re going to have better defenses soon. We burned out almost all of the drives on all the fleet trying to escape from an artificial gravity well that the Gilbaglians projected.”
He nodded. “And your losses?”
I sucked in a breath. “Eight ships, including a dreadnought. We killed five of theirs, in addition to the capture of the frigate you were on.”
“Well done.” Destota said, his eyelids fluttering.
“How long until we can get back to Vandor?”
“There is no more Vandor.” The doctor said stiffly, and I winced.
Destota’s eyes snapped open and focused. “What?” He demanded.
“The Gilbaglians destroyed Vandor completely. And Novela.” I choked on a sob. “There is nothing left. They destroyed the planets, pushed them into the star.”
The blue eyes of my husband flashed with a fury I had never seen before and there was a heavy thunk from inside of the pod. “No, Colonel,” The doctor leaned over the pod. “You must remain in the pod, at least for one more day, sir, until you have healed enough!”
“Let me out.” Destota growled.
“Baby,” I said, as soothingly as I could manage, using a word I only ever used when we were alone. “Rest for a few more days. We have to have time to analyze the technology they used and find a way to defeat it anyways, we are in deep space making repairs, you can’t get out to do anything helpful.”
He sighed heavily, fogging the glass in front of his face. “Two days.” He snapped.
“Two days.” I agreed and then watched him fall back to sleep.
“You didn’t tell him about...” The doctor began, but I made a cutting gesture.
“He doesn’t need to know yet.” I said, putting a hand on my stomach.
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This is the end of Book One of Fallen Empires: Shadow of Eternity, but the story continues in Book Two: Requiem of a Nightmare.
Thank you for reading.
Jeremy Spires