Rev steeled himself for a moment, then entered sickbay. A civilian whose name escaped him was asleep on one of the beds, her eyes closed. A tube ran from her arm to a small, square piece of equipment, and another tube ran back to the base of her neck.
“What’s with her?” he asked HM2 Guerrero.
“Just a virus. We’re scrubbing her blood, and she’ll be back in action in a couple of hours.”
“Contagious?”
“Not particularly.”
Theoretically, they shouldn’t have health-threatening viruses aboard the ship, which had been scrubbed before departure, and all of the humans had gone through antiviral procedures. But viruses were clever little bastards, and more often or not, either some got past the quarantine efforts, or they mutated to take advantage of the viral void.
Sometimes, the ones that mutated were the worst. There’d been cases of entire ships being wiped out, the ships sailing into eternity with a ghost crew. So, any mention of a virus aboard a ship was met with concern.
Rev stared at the woman for a moment, wondering if she was Patient Zero in what would kill them all. But if Guerrero wasn’t concerned, that was probably an overreaction.
“Doc Rima?” he asked.
The Navy corpsman shot a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the rear of sickbay. “She’s in her office.”
Rev nodded and walked back. He didn’t know why Rima had summoned him, and he was nervous. With his injuries and the rot, he wasn’t the same hard-charging Marine he was when he was twenty. He didn’t feel particularly bad now, though. But each time Rima discussed his health, it seemed like the numbers kept getting worse.
So, whatever the good doctor was going to tell him was something he didn’t want to hear. That, he was sure of.
He rapped on her doorsill and entered. She was looking at some charts on the bulkhead, but she turned at his entrance, motioned at a chair, then sat down behind her desk.
“Thank you for coming, Rev.”
“Anytime for you, Iris. You know that,” he said with a forced laugh.
“How’re you feeling?”
Here it comes.
“OK, I guess. No worse.”
“Good, good. No nausea?”
Rev shook his head. “Not really.”
“I wouldn’t expect it yet. Your numbers are holding steady for the moment.”
It took a few heartbeats for that statement to sink in. He’d fully expected to hear that his numbers had skyrocketed, but she just said that they were steady?
“Um . . . if my numbers are steady, why did you want to see me?”
She looked at him in confusion for a moment before it dawned on her. “Oh, you thought I was calling you here about you?”
“I didn’t know, Iris. That’s what it always is, right?”
She gave a low chuckle and said, “Maybe so.” Then she coughed, cleared her throat, and got more serious.
“No, it’s about Sergeant Randigold.”
“Eth? What’s wrong? Isn’t she recovering from the fight?”
“From the injuries, sure. She’s fine. But you know how your rot accelerated after your accident.”
“Yes . . . ?” he said, not wanting to hear what he feared next.
“Well, it’s the same with her. They’ve gone crazy, in fact. I’ve upped her Criosol to the max, but I’m worried, to be honest.”
“How long?” Rev asked.
He felt like he’d been hit over the head with a sledgehammer.
Eth? Her?
“I can’t tell. It depends on if the acceleration levels off. It could be months. It could be years. But that’s not what I’m worried about.”
“There’s more? Worse than the rot?”
“That’s not what I meant. It’s just . . . I’m not supposed to share any of this. Patient-doctor and all, but I think . . .”
“You think what?”
She looked over Rev’s head and pursed her lips before meeting his eyes again. “When I told her, she said nothing. Her expression never changed.”
Rev let out a sigh of relief.
“That’s just Eth. She’s not very, you know, open about her feelings and stuff.”
“And that’s a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, her reaction’s not normal. It was as if she didn’t care.”
Rev’s expression must have told her that he wasn’t understanding. Randigold was Randigold. She was as strong as they came. After all the crap she’d been through in her life, she had to be strong.
“Does she have any friends?” Rima asked.
“Friends? Everyone likes her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Rev scrunched his eyebrows together as he tried to think. He was right in that everyone liked Randigold, but as he thought back, he wasn’t sure she really had any close friends. There’d been that short period of time when it looked like she and Weld might be a thing, back after the fight on Grum, but that had evidently fizzled out.
After another moment, he said, “Not that I can think of. She’s always been a bit of a loner. But what does that have to do with her rot?”
“You’ve got Miko, right? You can go talk to her when your numbers go up.”
“Well, yes, but . . .” he started to say when he understood her point. “You’re saying she doesn’t have anyone to talk to.”
Rima shrugged. “I asked her if she did, and she said she didn’t need anyone.”
That sounds like her, he had to admit.
“What else did she say?”
“Almost nothing, and that’s what concerns me. And her face was expressionless, even taking her prosthesis into account.”
Randigold was always a little hard to read, and having half of her face a prosthetic mask only added to it. Her heavy use of sarcasm sometimes rubbed people raw, he knew, when they couldn’t see she wasn’t being serious.
To Rev, Randigold had been his guarantee. She was the meanest IBHU, the one who was always in a rush to the fight. He knew that if he gave her a mission, she would get it done or die trying. And she’d almost died several times. She’d lost her legs twice.
The image of her sitting legless, back against the barrier on Mistworld, dead Naxli in front of her, was Randigold. Nothing could take her down.
Except maybe herself?
“You’re scaring me, Iris. You don’t think she’ll, you know . . . ?”
“I don’t know. She’s too difficult to read. But I think she’s taking this hard.”
“Can’t you hook her up to the autopsych?” Rev asked.
“Not without a reason, and not without her permission.”
“Don’t you think this is a reason?”
“In my heart, yes. But as a doctor, I’ve got my protocols.”
“But you think I can do it, right? That’s why you’re telling me this.”
“You do know what she’s going through. More than about anyone.”
“But I’m not a psychiatrist. What the hell do I know?”
“You know about being an IBHU with the rot, Rev. And she looks up to you.”
Rima was putting a lot on his shoulders, and he was in a bit of a panic. If she was contemplating suicide, which is what he feared, what if he said the wrong thing and pushed her to that?
But what if he said nothing and she did it anyway?
“I’ll do it. Any hints on what I should say?”
“Just be yourself, and be there for her. Let her open up. That’s what she needs.”
* * *
“Hey, Eth, can you meet me in the armory,” he asked, just happy that she responded.
He’d been afraid that she’d already done something stupid.
“Sure thing, Sergeant Major,” she said, sounding like the old Randigold.
Maybe we’re overblowing this. She sounds normal.
But he couldn’t ignore what Rima had said.
“OK, then. I’ll see you there.”
He jogged to the armory, hoping it was empty. It wasn’t. Daryll was there, fiddling with an IBHU.
Rev didn’t look to see whose it was. “Can you give me the armory?”
“Yeah, I guess. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just need it to talk with Randigold.”
Concern washed over his face. “Is she OK?”
“Sure, I just need to talk to her.”
“I hope so. She’s not been herself lately, and I’ve been worried.”
What? Daryll knows something is off with her, too? Why didn’t I see anything?
Rev was supposed to know what was going on with his Marines. Maybe with Tomiko and the girls and being too busy with the bigger picture, he was forgetting the key tenet of a leader: take care of your Marines.
He vowed right then and there that he’d make a better effort at that. They deserved that from him.
“She’s been a little out of sorts, but I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t going to tell Daryll what was going on with her. It wasn’t his place to do that.
“Well, OK. But you tell her that if she needs a willing ear, I’m here. She’s special, you know.”
Rev raised his eyebrows. Was that just a friendly offer, or was there something more to it? But first things first.
“She’s on her way, so if you could . . . ?”
“Oh, sure. I’m outta here.”
He turned off his T-scope and gave the armory a quick once over. He spotted a used burrito wrapper on the floor, picked it up, and tossed it. Evidently satisfied, he left.
Daryll had always been an odd duck of sorts. The son of a retired three-star, he could have gone into the Corps with a leg up on everyone else. But he’d chosen to become a tech with a defense firm and had gotten to be the go-to man for IBHU maintenance.
Does he like Eth?
This was coming too fast for Rev. First, that Randigold was getting sicker. Then, that she might be having a mental breakdown. And now, maybe Daryll has a thing for her?
He shook his head. That last one was relatively unimportant. He had to find out where Randigold’s head was at.
Two minutes later, Randigold came into the armory. Her eyes widened when she saw the IBHU in the testing rack, and she stepped forward in alarm before she realized that it wasn’t Cruella de Vil.
She sniffed and asked, “What’s up, Sergeant Major?”
It was only then that Rev didn’t know what he was going to say. She looked fine to him, but he trusted Rima that Randigold wasn’t fine.
Just jump in, Reverent.
“What’re your numbers?”
She looked confused by the question for a moment before her eyes hardened.
“That bitch,” she snapped.
“She’s concerned, Eth.”
“Doesn’t make no difference. That’s private information,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Your numbers.”
For a moment, Rev thought she was going to refuse, but she relented and said, “One-seventy-seven and thirty-one-point-six.”
Rev grunted. Those weren’t good, especially rising so fast, but . . .
“Mine are one-eighty-eight and thirty-two-point-one.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, and she choked out, “I didn’t know.”
“No one knows, except for Tomiko. And now you.”
“I . . . I just . . . I’m so sorry!”
“It is what it is.”
“How long . . . ?”
“Six months. A year. Who the hell knows?”
She looked away from him and was silent for twenty long seconds as Rev just stood there.
“You don’t seem, uh, diminished, like Colonel Bundy.”
“I am a little, but I can do my job. Just like you.”
“But when it gets worse . . .”
“I’ll face that at the time.”
“I can’t . . . I can’t get like that,” she said with the first hint of despair that Rev could hear in her voice.
Rev wanted to assure her, to give her hope, but that wasn’t in him. He wasn’t going to blow smoke up her ass. He’d come to grips with his future, and she’d have to as well.
“It will come someday. And that’s OK. Everyone’s here for you. For us.”
She sniffed and wiped her organic arm across her nose.
“With all due respect—”
“You’ve never had respect for anyone, Eth, and you know it.”
There it was. A small smile, but a smile nonetheless.
“True. OK, without much respect, you’ve got your wife and the girls.”
“Who are a help but a cause of despair, too. Will the girls even remember me? I fear that, Eth. Maybe most of all.”
“Oh, they’ll remember you. What are they, four?”
“Three and a half.”
He suddenly laughed, and Randigold gave him a questioning look.
“I came here to see if you were OK, and you’re comforting me?”
“Sorry.”
Rev waved her off. “But what I said is true. You’re not in this alone. It’s just bad luck that you, me, and Bundy, we’re the first. All of us are gonna get it, you know.”
“It’s not bad luck,” she said.
“Well, maybe not. You’ve lost an arm and two legs. You’ve been augmented and hyper-augmented. Then you were injured. I guess you can say, though, that the fire that made you an IBHU was bad luck, right?”
“No, it’s got nothing to do with luck. I’m being punished,” she said with conviction.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’ve killed people, Sergeant Major. Lots of people. Now the Mother is punishing me, making it my turn.”
Rev took a step back. He never realized that Randigold was so religious or that she was bothered so much about what she’d done as a Marine.
“You’re a good Marine, Eth,” he said cautiously. “You killed as part of your job, to make sure humanity was safe.”
“Like I said, I killed people, too. Mad Dogs, FIS soldiers.”
“So did we all, Eth. Me, too.”
She looked around furtively as if afraid that someone was listening in. “But I enjoyed it,” she almost whispered. “And now I’m paying the price.”
Rev was floored and speechless. How was he supposed to respond to that? She couldn’t really believe that, but the look in her eyes . . .
He knew he had to say something, so he said the first thing that popped into his head.
“If you didn’t kill the Mad Dogs on Safe Harbor, how many of our people would have died. Yes, you killed people, but that saved the lives of countless others.”
That didn’t seem to move her. “Did you enjoy killing?”
She stared at him with a hopeful look in her eyes.
Rev was about to say no, but he paused. He remembered too many: MDS on Safe Harbor, Children of Angels on Alafia. Other nameless enemies where his warrior self exulted in the kill.
Rev was used to thinking that there were two of him. The normal guy, the loving husband, the father, the friend. Then his warrior self, the savage killer. But he knew they were one and the same. He was his warrior self, just as much as the husband and father were.
“Yes, I’ve enjoyed it. I reveled in it.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Rev cut her off.
“And no, I don’t think I’m being punished for that. One of my old boot camp posse, Cali Hu, the rot got her, but she never fired a shot in anger. She never killed.”
He reached out and grabbed her shoulders.
“Look, Eth. I know this is hard. We’ve been dealt a bad hand. But I can assure you that it isn’t because of anything we did. If you want to blame someone, blame all our leaders who got us into the wars. Blame the tin-asses and the noxes for thinking that we don’t matter and they could take what they want. But don’t blame yourself for doing what you had to do in a shitty situation.”
Tears welled in her eyes, and that scared Rev more than anything else. Randigold didn’t cry. She cursed, she insulted, she laughed, she triumphed, but she didn’t cry. Not knowing what else to do, he pulled the shorter woman into a hug.
She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed as the sobs broke out.
“Just remember, Eth. We’re here for you. All of us. Daryll even told me to tell you he’s a willing ear if you need one.”
“Daryll? Our Daryll?” she asked between sobs.
“Yeah, our Daryll. And Micky. And Kelly. And Tum. All of us IBHUs. We’re in this together, like we’ve always been.”
“Maybe,” she said, her voice muffled into his chest.
“No maybe. You’re our Eth, you know. Oh, and don’t you go killing Doc Rima. She only told me because she was worried you’d do something stupid.”
“She was right,” she said so quietly that Rev wouldn’t have heard without his augmented hearing.
He made a mental note to make sure Randigold wasn’t left alone until she could come to grips with her situation. And he knew she would. Despite her guilt at what she’d done as a Marine, she was strong. She’d pull through.
But for now, he’d stand here for as long as it took for the tears to dry up.