The Cold Between. Elizabeth Bonesteel

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       PROLOGUE

      T minus 25 years—CCSS Phoenix

       Sixty seconds to detonation. Please evacuate the area.”

      Kate ran toward the Phoenix’s infirmary, grumbling with frustration. When she’d told Captain Kelso they could evacuate quickly she had expected more than five minutes’ notice, and now there was no way they’d transfer everything in time. They had moved their patients and started shifting the most essential drugs, but she had fewer than half her everyday remedies, and almost no tools at all. At this rate, she would be practicing frontier medicine on the nine-week trip back to Earth. If anyone had a heart attack or a compound fracture in that time, Andy Kelso was going to be dealing with some injuries of his own.

      She passed one of her clinicians running in the other direction, his arms full of vacuum-sealed pouches. “Last of the antigen packs,” he told her.

      “I’ll get the scope,” she called over her shoulder. “Stay in the res wing.”

      “Aye aye, Chief!” She heard his pace pick up.

       “Fifty seconds to detonation. Please evacuate the area.”

      She turned and entered the infirmary, frowning at the number of people still rummaging through the shelves. “Didn’t I tell you people to get the hell out of here?”

      Amy was shoveling topical healers into a bag. “Big bang,” she said tersely. “People will be bleeding.”

      “Not if it goes as planned,” Kate reminded her, opening a cabinet and pulling out a portable medical scanner. Her scalpel kit followed, and she took a moment to strap it around her arm.

      “What part of this mission has gone as planned?”

      Kate was not the only one who laughed at that. Tension release, she knew; they’d all be less manic once this was over, and they had the long ride home to reflect. She would have time to digest what had happened, and figure out how to tell Tom the story without scaring the hell out of him. She didn’t want to end up using all her precious shore leave dealing with his feelings of protectiveness, but she supposed it served her right for marrying a man who hated the Corps.

       “Forty seconds to detonation. Please evacuate the area.”

      “Okay, that’s it,” she declared, clapping her hands. “Everybody out. Now. That’s an order. Move your ass or I write you up.”

      The others tightened their arms around their loads of supplies, and turned to leave. Amy glanced back at Kate. “You coming?”

      “You think I’m planning on dying here while you assholes run off?”

      Amy waited while Kate grabbed the microscope. The two women ran up the hallway together, heading for the bulkhead separating the residential wing from the ship’s main engine room and weapons locker.

       “Thirty seconds to detonation. Please—”

      “‘—evacuate the area,’” Kate and Amy finished simultaneously. They exchanged a smile and passed through the open bulkhead, following the long hallway through the residential area and into the main cafeteria. There they found the medical staff seated around one long table, strapped into the sturdy chairs. Raban, Kate’s head nurse, had saved her a seat.

      She would tell Greg СКАЧАТЬ