CHAPTER TWENTY
Cavalon woke to find a weapons belt draped across his chest. The laser pistol he’d had before had been replaced with a sleeker, dark chrome gun of similar size. He had to assume it was a plasma pistol from the station’s armory, or at least he hoped.
He lifted his head, then sat up slowly, expecting a surge of nausea to overwhelm him, but none came. His head spun, but once upright, he felt normal. Decent, even. His raw throat still ached, and he didn’t think he’d ever find cause to consume food again. Otherwise, he didn’t feel half bad. He rubbed his stomach, grateful it had given up on trying to murder him.
While he’d slept, the once-empty room had been transformed into a makeshift medbay. Six cots sat against the walls with stacks of aerasteel cases between them, lined with biotools, cartridges, and various other medical supplies. But not a Sentinel to be seen.
He hoped that didn’t mean the Drudgers had arrived. Not that he’d lament missing out on all the fun, but he’d feel a little bad if he’d managed to snooze through the whole thing.
He fastened the weapons belt around his waist and walked out into the brightly lit hallway. At the end of the corridor toward the air lock, Warner and two others stood post.
Cavalon headed the other way, toward a light murmur of chatter. The next doorway stood ajar, and inside the remainder of the Sentinels had taken up shop. Emery and two other soldiers snoozed on cots in one corner. Another two chatted quietly between themselves while chewing on bricks of brown gravel that Cavalon assumed were MREs. The dark-haired woman who’d given him the shot sat cross-legged against the wall on the other side of the room, cleaning her gun methodically.
A half dozen filled warp cores lined one wall, casting the room in a soft blue glow that reminded Cavalon of the vast network of glass tunnels under the oceans of Viridis. Only without the school of immanis sharks hovering, looking hungrily down at the humans watching them. Though Cavalon thought he might prefer the vicious, six-meter-long sea creatures to the horde of Drudgers that might be lurking outside.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, but considering how far along the Sentinel’s base-camp efforts had come, he assumed it’d been at least an hour or two. The efficiency with which they’d put all this together impressed him. It was as if they’d run the “abandon ship to the nearest defunct Apollo Gate” drill dozens of times. And, being the oh-so-helpful tool that he was, Cavalon had slept right through it. Just like that, he’d become a totally useless outsider again.
He stepped into the room, finding a clear piece of wall away from the others to lean against. He let out a sigh, louder than he’d intended. The soldiers eating MREs looked over at him passively, but soon returned to their soft chatter.
He didn’t know any of them, and he could only imagine what they thought of him. To them, he was just the guy who’d started a fight in the mess less than four hours after intake. The guy who was so obviously not a soldier, everyone seemed to immediately know. And the guy who’d somehow ended up here, alive and well, even though their friends were all dead.
His eyes drifted over the six soldiers, and despite his sincerest objection, his mind tallied up the reminder of those he’d seen in the SGL. Fourteen total. Only fourteen of the two hundred people on the Argus were here.
A mass twisted in his gut with a realization—because by all rights, he should have been on that dreadnought when it went down. Rake sending him on that mission had been a fluke—a temporary lapse in judgment by an otherwise rational mind. Or maybe she’d wanted to test his mettle, see if her shit-cutting exercises had sunken in. Either way, if she hadn’t forced him onto that Hermes, he’d be dead right now.
He didn’t know why being alive upset him. It’s not like he’d asked Rake to pull him into all this. It wasn’t his fault. The remaining Sentinels didn’t really seem to care, or even notice.
Regardless, an annoying, bitter weight that felt suspiciously like guilt had lodged itself deep in his gut.