Rhodes opened his eyes after another conversion cycle, and after a few more minutes of lying on his back, he pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the mattress.
Fisher didn’t reappear. He stayed silent and invisible.
Rhodes sat slumped and looked down at his feet. Now what was he supposed to do?
Fisher still didn’t make himself visible. Rhodes would have expected Fisher to make his presence known by now.
He still didn’t show up when Rhodes got to his feet and took a few unsteady steps around the room. The doctors put him in a private room by himself. He would have preferred being in the same hold with his subordinates.
The minute he thought that, he accessed the interface with the other SAMs without meaning to. He didn’t think he could.
He automatically connected with Dash and Rocky. Interfacing with them caused Rhodes to interface with Oakes and Rhinehart at the same time.
Rhinehart was just sitting up on the edge of his own capsule in another private room in the Ero’s medical bay.
Dietz and Oakes were in the battalion’s capsule hold. Dietz was working on the computer terminal. Oakes sat at the table writing something on a piece of paper.
Rocky turned his horse head in Rhodes’s direction. “Captain?” Rocky looked around. “Where’s Fisher? He isn’t damaged, is he?”
“I’m not sure where he is or what he’s doing. He was fine the last time I woke up.” Rhodes turned his attention to Rhinehart. “How are you, Lieutenant?”
“I feel like trash, Sir. I really wish I could go back to sleep, but that will only make me feel worse.”
“Are you in pain? Is everything working?”
“I’m okay,” Rhinehart croaked. “My face hurts, but the doctors say that’s just swelling and it will go away.”
Rhodes widened his interface. He could access The Grid now, too. He located Rhinehart’s room, passed down a corridor, and entered it to find Rhinehart sitting up the way Rhodes had just seen in the interface.
Rhinehart burst into a grin when he saw Rhodes. “I didn’t think you’d make it, Sir.”
“Neither did I. I might even have wished a few times that I didn’t make it.”
Rhinehart laughed.
“Thank you for bringing me in,” Rhodes went on. “And thank you for taking over when I got hit. It makes me feel better to know I have people like you who can step in if anything happens to me.”
Rhinehart curled his lip at the surroundings even though no one was here for him to curl it at. “This operation doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence, does it, Sir?”
“No, it doesn’t.” Rhodes jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to check on Dietz and Oaks. Are you feeling strong enough to come with me?”
“I might as well.”
Rhinehart heaved his big body off the capsule and hobbled across the room. His presence gave Rhodes another excruciating wave of relief. Someone was back.
Oakes and Dietz were fine, too. Rhodes saw that through the interface. Now the battalion just needed to get the other five back.
Then they’d be in business—but not before the doctors and technicians figured out everything that went wrong during the last battle.
Rhodes and Rhinehart limped out of the medical bay and headed for the battalion’s capsule hold.
“Have you heard anything about when the others get out of stasis?” Rhinehart asked.
“I haven’t heard anything—but I didn’t ask. I’ve just been trying to get back on my feet myself.”
Rhinehart nodded. “Me, too.”
“Did the Emal damage your implants at all?” Rhodes narrowed his eyes at Rhinehart’s face. “You do still look a little puffy around the eyes.”
“I had a splitting headache when I woke up. The doctors thought it was just the swelling, but Rocky said it wasn’t. He said it was a problem, so they fixed it.” Rhinehart glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was listening.
The Ero crewmen streamed back and forth past the two men. None of the crew so much as glanced at Rhodes and Rhinehart.
“Those two doctors are so much better than the three at Coleridge Station,” Rhinehart murmured under his breath. “I’m so glad they’re coming back with us.”
“We’ll still be stuck with Neiland, Montague, and Irvine,” Rhodes pointed out. “They aren’t going away.”
“I wish they were,” Rhinehart snarled.
Rhodes didn’t get a chance to answer before the two men entered the capsule hold. Oakes jumped up when he saw them. “Sir! I didn’t know you were up and around.”
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He shook hands with both of them and then Oakes and Rhinehart hugged.
Dietz stopped what he was doing and came over to them smiling, but it was a suspicious smile with no warmth in it. He didn’t try to get closer to Rhodes or Rhinehart.
“Welcome back, Sir,” Dietz began. “It’s good to see you back on your feet.”
“Thank you, Sergeant—and thank you for helping me on the planet. You saved the whole battalion.”
“I’ve been trying to tell him that,” Oakes chimed in. “He won’t listen.”
Dietz squirmed and shuffled his feet. “Naw. I was just trying to save my own ass and I needed the rest of you to make it happen.”
“Well, we all made it back this time,” Rhodes cut in. “Let’s go down the hall and see what’s happening with the others.”
Rhodes used his interface to find the rest of his subordinates. For some reason he couldn’t figure out, the Ero crew put all five of the battalion members in one room together. Rhodes and Rhinehart were the only ones who got private rooms.
It couldn’t be because Rhodes’s and Rhinehart’s injuries were so bad. If that was true, Rhodes would have been the last to wake up.
That didn’t matter, though, because they all made it back in one piece—or as good as. Rhodes could accept just about anything else as long as they all survived.
There wasn’t a lot to see beyond the readings on each capsule. They all read as normal. The soldiers inside went on sleeping. Rhodes couldn’t talk to them.
He wouldn’t have been able to do anything if he saw anything wrong with them anyway, but at least he could satisfy himself that all his people were okay.
They would always be okay as long as they lay there sleeping in their capsules.
He wished like anything he could keep them like this. He wished he could protect them and somehow stop the Legion from sending them back into danger.
Nothing would prevent it. These people were alive right now for only one reason—so the Legion could put them in danger again.
Rhodes would rather have gone to face that danger alone if it meant protecting these people. He would gladly have died a thousand times over to protect them from what he knew was coming.
What was coming was a whole lot more of everything that happened on Sulia. The Legion would keep fighting the Emal. It was an unwinnable war.
The Legion would keep throwing their best soldiers in front of the Emal guns which meant the Legion would keep throwing Battalion 1 in front of the Emal guns.
That was Battalion 1’s whole reason for being. It was the battalion’s only function.
Which was worse—dying on the battlefield or suffering the tortures of the damned both on and off the battlefield?
Would Rhodes be willing to suffer the tortures of the damned to protect his comrades in the 249th?
If someone asked him during his life, he would have replied with an enthusiastic yes. He would have been the first to sign up to suffer any torture to protect even one of them—to give even one of them a chance to get off the battlefield alive.
He lived his life that way and he died that way.
Things sure looked different from this side of the line. He’d been suffering the tortures of the damned ever since he woke up with these implants.
He was the damned now. The whole battalion was. They were writhing in torment in this special little version of Hell.
He was damned to this dimension of Hell for the crime of trying to sacrifice his life to save his comrades in the 249th. That’s how he got into this mess in the first place.
Was it really worth it? He was really starting to question that now.
He should have just blown his brains out and gotten it over with if he really wanted to die. He didn’t save the 249th from anything. He just signed them up for more hopeless battles against the Emal.
He never would have come here if he did that. He wouldn’t have to go through any of this.
Oakes startled Rhodes out of his thoughts by nudging him. “Sir? Are you ready to go?”
Rhodes looked up. He’d been standing next to Lauer’s capsule staring down at the man’s rough, bearded face.
Rhodes couldn’t come to any conclusions here because there were conclusions to come to.
He only had two options—end it or keep going. If he didn’t end it, he had to keep going. That was the only truth.
Thinking about ending it accomplished nothing. He wasn’t ready for that yet, which meant he had to keep going.
He was just turning away from Lauer’s capsule when Fisher expanded from the corner of Rhodes’s vision.
Fisher looked around the interface. “Captain! You’re awake!” Fisher frowned. “Where are we?”
“We’re still on board the Ero. The rest of the battalion is still in stasis. Where have you been, Fisher?”
Fisher cocked his head and studied every part of The Grid inside the interface. “I’m not sure, Captain. I didn’t realize you were out of stasis. I just came back online this moment and here I am.” He scrutinized Rhodes. “How long have you been awake?”
“Only a few minutes. Why did you come online before and not now?” Rhodes asked. “You were fine the first time I woke up.”
Fisher inclined his head the other way. “First time? You woke up a first time? So this isn’t the first time you’ve been awake?”
“How could it be when we aren’t in the lab?” Rhodes asked. “I’m walking around the station without you. I’ve been on my own this whole time wondering where you were.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.” Fisher frowned and looked around in confusion. “I can’t explain it, Captain.”
“You better not be malfunctioning again.” Rhodes turned to the other SAMs. “Are any of you malfunctioning? Have any of you suffered any problems since you woke up?”
“No, nothing,” Dash replied. “Everything has been functioning within normal parameters.”
“We’ve been fine, too,” Zen added.
Rhodes checked on Rocky. “Do you detect anything out of the ordinary in Rhinehart?”
“I’m still detecting swelling around his facial implants,” Rocky replied. “Some of the neural junctions are registering a physical pain response, but other than that, he seems to be fine.”
The three men looked fine from the outside. “I don’t like this,” Rhodes muttered.
“I’m sure it’s nothing, Captain,” Fisher told him. “I’m back now and I’m functioning normally.”
“You aren’t functioning normally if you didn’t come online when I came out of my conversion cycle. Something isn’t right there.”
“Don’t go looking for problems that aren’t there,” Oakes chimed in. “Who cares as long as he’s working, right?”
Rhodes dropped the subject, but he still didn’t like it. The smallest irregularity in any of the SAMs gave him a very bad feeling.
He couldn’t do anything about it now. He wouldn’t be able to do anything about it until it exploded in his face and the whole nightmare started over again.
He was just about to turn away a second time and leave the lab when Drs. Osborne and Trudeau walked in.
Osborne raised his eyebrows. “Is there a problem?”
“My SAM just came online,” Rhodes replied. “I’ve been walking around the station, talking to my subordinates, and visiting these people while my SAM has been offline. He also doesn’t remember when I first came out of stasis. He was working fine then. Now he thinks this is the first time he’s come back online. Something’s wrong with him.”
Trudeau consulted his device. “I’m not reading any malfunction in any of your systems.”
“That’s what everyone says right before one of us malfunctions,” Rhodes fired back.
“It’s nothing, Captain,” Fisher murmured. “I’m sorry it happened. I’ll try not to let it happen again.”
“It isn’t your fault, pal,” Rhodes told him. “This had nothing to do with you.”
“We can’t do anything about it until something goes really wrong,” Osborne replied and turned to the remaining five capsules. “It’s time to wake up the others anyway. It’s fortunate that you’re here now. I’m sure your people will be happy to see you.”
End of Chapter 6.