When Sister Nancy awoke, she was already in a stretcher and was about to be whisked away to the clinic. She demanded they stop so she could learn what had happened to Liberty and the rescue team.
Overhearing, Sister Rachael came near and looked down at the trembling pilot. “All alive and well, except for some bumps and bruises. Like you, they all experienced acceleration black-out, so the docs are going to do some tests and keep a close watch for a couple of days.”
Nancy thanked the older member with her eyes, then turned her head to look at the helicopter. Its battered fuselage, broken rotor, and missing tail somewhat resembled a dead chicken. “Vortex ring state — we were falling.
How did we survive?”
Sister Rachael raised her eyebrows. “Guardian angels?”
“You mean our friends on Pad Three?”
Rachael
nodded.
Late that evening, Kibi slipped through the darkness to find Ilika waiting in their secret grove. They shared a deep kiss before either spoke. She carefully felt his head, and found the swelling almost gone.
“For eight wonderful minutes,” Kibi began with a mixture of humor and frustration, “we thought we had discovered the mission. Then purple-hair had to ruin it with, you know, reality.”
Ilika laughed. “She has a nick-name for you, too, and it’s also about your hair.”
NEBADOR Book Seven: The Local Universe 203
“What!”
“You’ll have to ask her. But believe me, she’s deeply impressed by you, is very glad we’re together, and likes the whole crew, especially after today.”
Kibi glowed for a moment. “But we didn’t save that senator, Chelsea’s father, and we broke the helicopter.”
“And saved six lives.”
“Well . . . yeah . . .” Kibi said as she squirmed. Then she spoke more firmly, with one word coming from her native language. “But what’s the damn mission?”
The following day, Liberty was still under observation, not to mention grieving for her father, and Shawn was at her side constantly.
That left Ilika, of Ashley’s friends, to pick her up at the hospital.
Ashley, with several bandages still covering parts of her face and neck, spoke little on the flight back to Lyceum. Ilika sat beside her in companionable silence, then carried her suitcase to her room.
As soon as he was gone, she hurried to the hospice center, where she found a doctor at Jenny’s bedside.
“Hi, Ashley!” Jenny whispered. “I heard you got a bunch of cuts.”
“Yeah. They’ll heal, but no gymnastics for me for a while! What happened to you?”
Jenny looked at the doctor.
“Hello, Ashley, I’m Brother Kenneth. Jenny has already given me permission to tell you everything. Her immune system is failing, and she has pneumonia, one of the more difficult strains, so we’ve had to fill her with antibiotics.”
“Will that . . . allow her to work on her music?”
“Maybe a little, for short sessions, with lots of support from the clinic, good nutrition, and you at her side. But she tells me there’s another problem.” He looked at Jenny.
“I’m starting to hear it, all of it, all the time, and I can’t separate out the voices anymore. It’s like . . . wherever it’s coming from, they’ve decided time’s up, and if I haven’t done something with it by now, I never will.”