Silent Service

CHAPTER ONE

It was so quiet now. Kate Landay lay still, and listened to the blessed silence after the relentless questions, and savored the absence of pain.

Was she conscious, or was this a dream? Or was she dead, and this her first moment of after-life? Right now she didn't care. Later, if there was to be a "later," the curiosity that had been landing her in difficult situations all her life would no doubt kick in; but for the moment she wanted nothing except to be left as she was.

That, of course, was too much to ask. She felt a touch that was human, or at least flesh against her flesh; she heard a voice speaking, that of another female. A voice that was familiar, that she'd never expected or even hoped she might hear again.

"Kate. Kate, don't try to answer me. I'm monitoring you, I'm watching how you react when you hear me. You can go back to sleep in a just a minute, but I need you conscious for a few scans. Unless you're in pain - and you shouldn't be - just relax, just rest. You're safe now, and they didn't do anything to you that I can't fix."

Amy's voice. Amy who had been at her side since Kate Landay was a plebe, a whole career and considerably more than half a lifetime ago.

It really was all right, then; the lack of tactile sensation below her neck must be due to her body's being immersed in regenerative gel. Somehow she had survived, although she couldn't imagine how or why.

"Dr. Salter?" Landay heard a second voice, this one masculine but also familiar. Familiar, yet so long absent from her life that for a moment she couldn't place it - or perhaps just didn't want to place it. And since she couldn't turn her head toward the sound, performing the incredibly difficult task of opening her eyes seemed pointless. "How is she?"

"Conscious, which means you shouldn't be here," Salter answered, with acid in her tone. But it sounded like forced disapproval, as if she said what a physician was supposed to say from habit rather than from real inclination. "But by now she's recognized your voice; see there?"

Salter would of course be indicating the changes in her patient's brain activity, and the man who'd come into the room (or compartment? were they on a ship, or still on the Gateway planet, or somehow back on Earth?) would be looking at the monitor and understanding the readouts and nodding almost absently. His eyes would be on Landay's nude body as she lay suspended in the regen tank, and what he must be seeing would be disturbing even to a person who'd once served as a Ranger in the Sovereignty's defense forces.

Would he be revolted, not just distressed? Landay wondered that almost idly. It had been so long, and her damaged body still had such a dim and tiny spark of life within it, that although she'd clearly just reacted to his presence she couldn't claim to be feeling excited about it. She wasn't feeling much of anything, physically or emotionally, because right now she simply wasn't capable of doing so.

But she heard him when he spoke again, of course, and his voice held neither revulsion nor the pity that would have been worse. He said in a deceptively calm tone that she remembered well even after the passing of two decades in Terran time, "Looks like it was close, Doctor. I guess I almost wasted all those favors I called in."

"Close? Close doesn't count, Joe." Amy Salter uttered a gusty sigh. "She still looks like hell, but she's going to be fine. Kate, you can go back to sleep now. Everything checks out."

"Pleasant dreams," Joseph Costigan added softly, and Landay could have sworn that his fingertips brushed against her cheek as she drifted away into comfortable darkness.

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