Page 3 of Rebels Rising (The Intergalactic Union #3)

Cadmus

T he infirmary was close to the hangar bay, which helped to get Bromm there quickly. I laid him down on a soft-looking cot, the sheets folded and ready on the bedside table but the cot itself was unmade. I wasn’t a doctor, but I knew it was to avoid stains from bodily fluids. I’d landed myself in the hospital enough times during my youth, though my injuries were through pure stupidity rather than actual illness. A broken bone here and there was nothing compared to… whatever was going on with Bromm.

I didn’t bother making the bed first, unsure what Henrik was going to do. I didn’t think he would need to perform a surgery, but I didn’t want to waste time if I was wrong.

‘I need to help the other colonels with the supplies. You good here?’ Hum’Rit asked, one foot already out the door.

‘Yeah. I’ve got it from here,’ I said, awkwardly settling in on the small chair beside the cot to wait for Henrik to catch up, my body folding unnaturally to make myself fit.

I didn’t envy him staying behind to deal with Artemis. I knew she had strong feelings for Bromm, but the level of love she displayed in her distraught reaction to almost losing him, it was clearer than ever that those feelings ran deep. She loved him, and she was practically ready to tear off anyone’s head just for daring breathe wrong around him.

I was pretty sure the only thing that saved Henrik was the fact that he was the only one capable to helping Bromm. Even then, it had looked like her internal struggle to let him work on her lover was going to lose.

It was quick thinking for him to give her a job to do to help. I’d never been in love like that before, so I couldn’t imagine how she felt. I’d been infatuated or intrigued, but it never lasted. I wondered if these new feelings developing for her would last at all. Sure, she’d let me get intimate with them earlier, but I saw her anxiety over letting me in even that much. It made more sense once feelings were securely off the table, but…

Watching her react that way over Bromm, I realised no one had ever reacted that way to me before. My father was my only family, my mother’s death making him cold and detached towards everyone, including me. Every time I’d gone too far in my attempts to get his attention and landed myself in the hospital with a cut or a broken bone, he’d merely rolled his eyes, paid the bill, and told me to be more careful. He never stuck around, and I had no real friends who cared enough to either. I’d always been on my own.

But witnessing that love from the woman I’d just helped shatter into one of the most beautiful orgasms I had ever witnessed fall apart over another man, it made me want that. With her? I didn’t know. I didn’t even know if that was a possibility now that I was aware of the true depth of their feelings for one another. I may have been a homewrecker in the past, but I wasn’t about to try to wedge my way between these two. I wasn’t completely heartless.

I watched him now, the rise and fall of his chest so slow I wondered if I was just imagining it. It was alarming, and I wondered where the fuck Henrik was. Surely Artemis wouldn’t keep him from tending to him.

Where was he?

He turned the corner at that moment, assuaging some of my fears and I sagged in relief. He took one look at Bromm and rushed over, checking his pulse. He relaxed a miniscule amount when he seemed to find one, though the tension in his shoulders refused to fully abate. Bromm still wasn’t doing well, and I knew without having to ask that his condition remained critical.

‘Do you know what any of the medical equipment is for?’ Henrik asked. He wasn’t asking for himself, but to test medical knowledge.

‘Some,’ I admitted. ‘Been hospitalised enough times to figure out a few things.’

‘Ever been intubated before?’

‘Sorry, can’t say that I have.’

He hummed thoughtfully, pulling some sort of tube-like device out of a drawer. It was in a metallic wrapper, but he didn’t open it yet. Instead, he placed it down on a little table with wheels that I’d missed in my initial perusal of the room and led me towards the handwashing station.

‘Scrub thoroughly,’ he ordered, taking up a position beside me at the other sink.

I followed his command, nervous about what he was going to ask me to do but willing to do it. For Bromm. For her.

Artemis’s anguished expression flashed through my brain, lodging itself deep and refusing to budge. A part of me that I never even dared to imagine existed thawed at the memory. I never wanted her to feel like that again.

The strength of those feelings was powerful enough to freeze me in my tracks, my hands stilling beneath the stream of water that continued to wash away the grime on my hands.

But I didn’t have time to mull over the internal assault because Henrik started blowing my hands dry with a portable hand-dryer, and then he handed me a pair of rubber gloves. They were the same kind those asshole scientists from The Program wore, white and snappy, difficult to put on over damp skin, and I did my best to tune out the memory of all those kids on metal tables, wired to machines and IVs with stars only knew what being pumped inside them. Or of those four bastards cutting into the boy that Artemis cared so much about.

Or the way she practically exploded them with her kickass abilities.

It was sick, the act itself horrifying to watch, but coming from her it was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen. Not the killing or the gore, but how fucking badass she was.

Once again, Henrik jolted me out of my thoughts, though this time through the sound of tearing followed by the metal wrapper crinkling as he crumpled it to throw in the bin.

Focus, Cadmus . You’re needed right now. Daydream later.

‘I need you to hold his head back and keeping his chin down so I can insert the tube,’ he informed me, and I tried to push aside my hesitations over helping with a medical procedure. I wasn’t typically a squeamish guy (made evident by my reaction to all the death and gore at Artemis’s hand) but the fact that this was Bromm was what made me so tentative. Sure, there was no cutting into his skin and wriggling about his insides, but there was still a device being shoved down his throat. My task didn’t allow for much room for error, so I told myself I was confident enough to assist.

When I had him in the right position, Henrik began inserting the tube which he’d lubed up with some sort of gel to help it slide in with less trauma to his oesophagus or lungs. Once inside, he taped it to his face to keep it in place and attached the end to a machine by the cot. A beep sounded, followed by two more and then a whirring sound before Reece’s chest rose and fell with an exaggerated, artificial movement.

We both breathed a sigh of relief at having the additional assistance of the intubation. Seeing him on the brink of death without any identifiable cause had shaken me more than I cared to admit, so I kept avoiding the emotions all together. No point in mourning him when he wasn’t dead yet, and no point in worrying when he already had so many people fussing over him already.

The trio of combat instructors finally arrived, arms laden with boxes filled to the brim with medical supplies, some so much that they were struggling the keep them contained.

‘Where do you want them?’ Stanson asked in his gruff, no-nonsense voice.

Henrik waved noncommittally behind him. ‘Just find an empty spot over there. I’ll go through them once we’re off the station.’

They did as instructed, stacking them neatly out of the way before all three joined us at as we stood watching Bromm.

‘Is he going to be okay?’ Hum’Rit asked beneath the anxiously writhing mass of his beard, which didn’t surprise me. Bromm may have only been a cadet here, but he was still a Griknot prince, after all.

‘I don’t see why he won’t be, but I also have no idea why his body stopped functioning in the first place,’ admitted Henrik, worry lines creasing between his eyebrows. ‘I’ll run some tests with the equipment I have available here, but I think it’s more a matter of wait and see.’

The thundering of dozens of booted footsteps and the occasional squeak of a rusty wheel sounded just outside the room, quickly followed by body after body rushing past the open door, the carts full of small children dispersed throughout. Many of the children were still wailing but were ignored in the rush. A few soldiers looked inside the infirmary curiously as they passed but moved on when they saw Bromm lying prone on the cot with the breathing device sticking out of his mouth.

Only a few clicks later, Xander joined us with Adara still dangling from his neck, arms and legs clinging to him tight while he kept her aloft with an arm beneath her rear and the other hand splayed across her back. It was large enough to span almost the entire expanse, though there wasn’t much to begin with since she was so small, and their size difference was suddenly starker than ever before. It hadn’t escaped my notice that she was a dinky little thing, but her personality was so loud large that it made up for it. Now, like this, she looked so frail and fragile.

She glanced over at Bromm, her face pale and pinched with worry and stress. Xander followed her line of sight, his expression mirroring hers as he took in our downed friend.

‘He’s okay?’ he asked.

‘For now, yes,’ Henrik repeated.

‘Artemis?’ I asked, noting her absence.

‘Here,’ she said, stepping past the crowd of soldiers outside. Notably, the boy was no longer strapped to her chest but riding on the back of the beast as it walked a step behind her as she entered with her hands held carefully in front of her.

Her fleshless hands.

‘Stars above!’ I shouted in alarm, rushing over to her despite not knowing what to do. I stopped before I could reach her, not wanting to harm her further. Henrik was right beside me, his face pulled wide with horror. Adara gagged and Xander looked away, his skin taking on a rather ugly shade of green while the instructors staggered away.

But as we stood there uselessly, her silvery bones began to disappear beneath tendons, muscles, and then skin that knit together over the top. Within a click, she was flexing her completely healed hands and shaking them out like she’d experienced nothing more than pins and needles. I imagined they’d be pretty tender after that , but this was another level.

‘Sorry,’ she said sheepishly, but there was a distance to her apology. She wasn’t even looking at us, her gaze fixed firmly on Bromm. It was as if she didn’t even notice that her hands were nothing but skeletal extensions on her arms mere moments before.

Henrik leaned heavily against me, his breath leaving his chest in a whoosh. He looked exhausted, his eyes practically closed and his body slumping as if the weight of the world had suddenly crashed onto his shoulders. I wrapped an arm around them to keep him steady.

‘Where are the others?’ I asked now that I was satisfied she was here and safe. I refused to think about why I was more concerned about her than the others.

‘T took… his mother to a room to give them someplace quiet to mourn,’ Foryk said, his large form managing to outdo Xander’s, now the biggest man in the room as he stepped through to join us. Like Artemis, his gaze was firmly set on Bromm.

‘Reece is still in the cart with the kids,’ Dorian said, a step behind Foryk with Urman at his side.

The room was becoming far too cramped with so many bodies, but no one complained. The instructors left to give us more space, their presence no longer needed, and Foryk took the opportunity to settle in on the floor beside the cot. The action seemed to jog Artemis into gear and she positioned herself in the chair I’d vacated at Henrik’s entrance, gripping Bromm’s hand between hers with a tenderness that made my chest ache.

A moment later a ping sounded through the room’s speaker system, and a hologram formed on the far side of the room. A woman’s face appeared, and I startled as I recognised her as our flight instructor, Group Captain Eloria Stanson. From the background, I surmised she was inside a cockpit.

‘Captain,’ she addressed Xander.

He stood up straight ready to respond but the silver-haired Yu’Rom female shook her head. ‘Sorry, Cap, but I was referring to the other captain.’

He frowned and looked at the rest of us in the room, but he was the only captain here.

‘Captain Artemis,’ she elaborated to our even greater befuddlement. ‘This is her spacecraft, yes?’

‘No one’s ever referred to me with that title before,’ Artemis mused from her seated position. Her hands still gripped Bromm’s, but she’d twisted her body to look at the hologram.

‘Now they have,’ GC Stanson said with a gentle smile that quickly dropped. ‘But this isn’t a personal call. The enemy are breaking down the quarantine shield. We must make haste if we are to leave Nova Station in one piece. I need coordinates to plot our course.’

‘Just get us out of here and we can determine our course when we’re clear of the danger. There are coordinates already in place, but we can’t head there just yet so ignore them for now, but make sure to keep the current coordinates on hand as they’ll be our final destination eventually.’

GC Stanson gave Artemis a curt nod. ‘Understood, Captain.’ Then the hologram dispersed and we found ourselves staring at the blank space where her face once was.

We stood around awkwardly as we each attempted to process everything that had happened. Referring to Artemis as the Captain had clearly thrown Xander for a loop, and it was amusing to watch as he studied her with a barely veiled concoction of emotions ranging from confusion and curiosity to flat out envy.

It should be fun to sit back and kick my feet up for the show as he attempted to wrangle some control of the situation back, and I had no doubt he would. Yet, after everything we had just been through, I didn’t think it would be so easy for him. This was Artemis’s ship, she was more knowledgeable of The Program than all of us combined, and she was abundantly more capable than us as well thanks to her enhancements.

I was eager to learn more about them and what she could do, and I wondered if she even knew the extent of her abilities.

A startled gasp drew me from my thoughts and back into the present moment. I was immediately on guard, especially when I noticed the way Foryk had jumped up and was leaning over Bromm, Artemis mirroring his pose.

It was easy to see what had caused their distress, however, because a blue glow was radiating out from beneath them. The same blue glow that I’d seen emanating from Artemis on the station when she’d used her abilities, only this time it wasn’t coming from her.

It was coming from Bromm.