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Eaten from the Inside Out
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Captain Blake flung open the door to the infirmary, two soldiers following closely behind. He stopped abruptly when he spied Boris, still sitting motionless at Dan Carparso’s bedside, a heavy hand placed upon the young man’s forehead, calming him as he tossed fitfully in his sleep. The young man was deathly pale and had a sickly sheen of sweat upon his face. As Blake approached, Carparso cried out in a dream, his body convulsing, and his eyes opening for a second, fevered and staring, before he slumped back down into his pillows.
Blake motioned absently to the soldiers behind him, and they turned and left the room, the sound of their agitated conversation disappearing down the corridor.
He waited expectantly at Boris’ side, but the big man remained focused on Carparso; Blake thought that he heard him whispering quietly under his breath.
“How is he?” asked Blake at last, but the big man showed no reaction.
“Boris,” he said a little louder, placing his hand upon the man’s shoulder.
Boris jumped as if he had been awakened from a dream. As he spun around in his chair, he brought his hand up from his side, and Blake gasped as he saw that the man held a pistol. He stepped back in surprise. Boris’ eyes seemed to take a moment to focus, and then he smiled up at Blake, carefully placing the pistol inside his jacket.
“My apologies,” he grunted, then turned back to Carparso who still murmured feverishly in his sleep.
“What the hell is going on, Boris?” cursed Blake. “He was awake just yesterday — I was talking to him. And now they tell me he’s in a critical condition!”
“He’s finding his way back,” muttered Boris quietly without looking round. “It is a difficult process.” He placed a restraining arm over Carparso’s chest as the young man attempted to sit forward, still lost in a fever.
“So why the hell was he allowed up in the first place, then?” demanded Blake. He returned to Boris’ side, looking down in concern at the injured soldier. “He’s too sick to be allowed out of bed, Boris, and I told you not to leave him unattended.”
Boris let out a quiet laugh.
“I’m not talking about getting out of bed, Captain.”
“Well, why have my men just seen him up on the flight deck? I’ve had everyone searching for him up top. I don’t want him —”
Boris looked around sharply, a deep frown upon his heavy brow.
“They have seen him?” he asked urgently, glancing back to Carparso as he cried out once more in his sleep.
“Find his way back from where, Boris?” asked Blake uncertainly. He felt a familiar pang of anxiety in his stomach as though he already knew the answer.
“This may be good news and bad,” muttered Boris, turning back to the bed. Blake noticed him place his hand back inside his jacket.
“Be cautious,” muttered Boris. “As a matter of precaution, order your men to ignore any sightings.” He slowly took out the pistol, placing it upon the chair beside him. “Tell them Carparso is still in a state of shock, and must be left alone if they see him. They must not speak to him, Captain. This is very important.”
Blake felt as though his mind was racing ahead of him. He had so many questions, and yet no frame of reference with which to form them. Every thought that sprang into his mind seemed to be a step further upon a route to madness.
“Do not fear, Captain,” replied Boris, upon seeing Blake’s look of concern. “He is a fighter.”
“He’s just a kid,” murmured Blake, looking sadly towards Carparso, who struggled, clutching at his bed sheets. His jaw clenched tightly shut as he moaned quietly to himself. “I don’t understand — I thought he was getting better. The doc said that his shoulder wasn’t that bad, that it should be healing. You said he got hit by one of those demons — are you sure it’s not poison or something? There must be something we can do, Boris.”
“His injury was slight,” sighed Boris with a shake of his head. “I have explained all this, Captain. It was his exposure to the atmosphere of the Heavenfield. You yourself must understand. His recovery will be long and difficult. He must come to terms with the new worlds that are opening up to him. He must choose whether to stay in this world or be lost forever. We all must make this choice eventually, Captain, it is just that some have it forced upon us before their time.”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Boris smiled grimly, but Blake turned away, unable to hold his gaze.
“Do not worry, Captain, he is strong. You have good soldiers. And they have a good leader.”
Blake didn’t answer. He stood motionless, lost in a world he was losing his grip on, as he watched Carparso struggle to return. He felt the weight of his own fears and doubts as a force pushing him down, threatening to drown him.
“Let me know if there’s any change in him,” he croaked at last, then turned and stumbled out of the infirmary in a daze.
* * *
Colonel Boynes sat alone in his dimly lit cabin, staring into space, his cold meal untouched upon the desk in front of him.
He was still brooding upon yesterday’s events and his run-in with Captain Blake. He went over the conversation again and again in his mind; not for the first time, he questioned his ability to fulfil his duties as a commander. There was a time, before all the nightmares of the Heavenfield, that he would have had that Exile thrown straight into a cell; and Captain Blake would be facing a court-martial before he knew what had hit him. But here he was, aiding Blake. If his superiors discovered that Exile — well, he wouldn’t be collecting his pension, he joked wearily.
He felt old, he thought to himself, leaning back in his chair and rubbing his eyes tiredly. No, not old, but empty perhaps; insubstantial. Since returning from the Field, he felt somehow less solid, as though he hadn’t quite made it back to reality, or had left something behind in that godforsaken place.
He sighed again, pushing his plate away, and picked up a sheet of paper from the pile of documents that littered his desk. He read out the list of names in a tired monotone:
“Baine: missing — presumed dead. Brooke: missing — presumed dead, Carparso: wounded. Fosse: killed in action. Franks: killed-in-action...”
Barely a third of his men had returned from the Battle of Maunsworth Field, and only a handful had escaped unharmed. What a waste, he cursed to himself. What a horrific waste. He thought sadly of the weeks ahead; he would have to notify all those families of the loss of their sons and daughters; that would be the hardest part for him. But at least they would discover the truth — or at least whichever version of the truth he would be allowed to offer them. At present, he and his men were pariahs, trapped aboard a ship that had set sail under the cover of darkness and a radio blackout. The story of the Heavenfield was a political disaster, and everything possible was being done to bury it without a trace. Boynes wondered idly if they were destined to sail the Atlantic forever, quietly forgotten. He felt sure that many of his superiors would be quite in favour of that scenario.
Boynes jumped, torn from his brooding thoughts by an urgent knock at his cabin door.
“Enter,” he called, his voice cracking slightly as he spoke. The hatch groaned open and a lieutenant poked his head through the gap. Boynes glimpsed a clear and crisp moonlit sky beyond.
“Sir, Commander Haddam requests your presence on the bridge immediately.”
Boynes pulled himself wearily to his feet, glancing at his watch as he grabbed his jacket from a hook, and followed the lieutenant out on deck.
“It’s two-thirty in the morning, Lieutenant, is everything alright?”
His breath steamed in the chill night air as they made their way along the gangway and up a short flight of steps. He felt the lazy roll of the ship upon the waves, and for a moment thought he caught a faint sound like a distant roar above the throbbing of the vessel’s engines.
“We’ve just received a transmission, sir,” reported the lieutenant in a low voice, leading Boynes up towards the bridge. “A helicopter is on an intercept course; they have requested permission to land. Their transmission frequencies check out but they won’t identify themselves.” He gave an anxious look to the dark skies as he held open the door to the bridge.
“A helicopter? This far out?” muttered Boynes.
“Too far out to be civilian, sir.”
Boynes looked up at him in concern.
“No one should be aware of our location, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir,” he replied quietly. “Commander Haddam, sir.”
Boynes went to step through the hatchway when he caught the faint noise again, carried softly upon the wind. It was unmistakable this time; the deep chatter of rotor-blades, still some way off in the night. Boynes strained to listen, then jumped as a klaxon split the air, and in an instant the ship erupted into a frenzy of activity.
“This is not a drill, general quarters, all hands, man your battle-stations! All hands, battle-stations!” came a harsh voice, echoing across the night. “Darken ship — I repeat, darken ship.”
In an instant, the few lights around the vessel were extinguished, and the ship was no more than a shadow upon a moonlit sea.
“What have we got, Commander?” asked Boynes as he strode on to the bridge. Everything in the room was illuminated in a dim red glow, and Commander Haddam, a short, stocky man, looked up from his displays as the colonel entered. “How the hell did anyone find us out here?”
The commander, his features harsh in the monochrome light, shook his head and went back to studying the display panel.
“Beats me, Colonel,” he muttered. “Their challenge codes are valid, but they’re sure making me nervous. Hail them again, Lieutenant, tell them if we don’t get a straight answer from them they will be treated as hostile.”
“No reply, sir,” came a voice from the shadows. “They’re less than three miles out.”
“What’s your view, Colonel?” asked the commander gravely. “You know I’m in the dark about this whole mission; all I know is that my orders came from way up.”
Boynes hesitated a moment. He felt that familiar tension in his stomach, and a feeling that something squirmed behind his eyes.
“Colonel? We need to know now. Do you have any idea who this might be? Lieutenant, prepare the order — SAMs and repelling fire on my —”
“Let them land, Commander.”
Boynes’ voice was monotone and distant; he felt as though he were listening to someone else’s words.
“Let them land.”