Semua Bab The Surrogate’s Blade: Bab 261 - Bab 270

Kovac gives us the storage bay behind treatment because every real bed on Saint Lark has a coughing person in it."Eight minutes," she says, shoulder against the door. "Maybe ten if legal keeps arguing with the woman who thinks my captain is awake."Sarah looks at the strip of blood running down Kovac's forearm."You need that wrapped.""I wrapped it.""That is a blood pressure cuff.""It has pressure."Kovac shuts the door before Sarah can answer.The storage bay smells of wet canvas, iodine, old oxygen, and fish from the box we keep pretending is only equipment. Three crates are stacked under the broken vent. Nadia kneels beside my son with her sleeves shoved up. The doctor has the field unit's local panel on an oxygen crate. Copper contacts hang from it.Seven's blood smear sits in a shallow dish.Leo's waterproof bag sits on the other side.Between them, my son fusses in the fish box, not crying yet. He keeps working toward it.The field unit has no Board key now. Seven took that.

Kovac finds a pencil before she finds a bandage.That tells me plenty about Saint Lark."Deck liability," she says, ripping the back off an inventory form and slapping it onto an oxygen crate. "If you people are going to perform illegal experimental medicine in my storage bay, I want rules I can pretend I hated."Sarah stands at the door with a towel over one arm and a knife under the towel."That sentence contradicts itself."Sami, sitting on a coil of rope with a split lip, raises his hand."Am I nephew?""Pipe consultant," Kovac says without looking.Sarah mutters, "Do not promote him."Kovac writes at the top of the form:STORAGE BAY PROCEDURE / TEMPORARY / EVERYONE DENIES LATER.The doctor looks pained. "That is not a sterile header.""Neither is the floor."Nadia kneels beside the fish box, sorting supplies into piles: clean enough, dirty but usable, no, and ask Kovac if desperate.

The field unit prints on the wrong machine.That is how the next bad thing starts.Kovac's old medication label printer in the treatment bay coughs awake after three years of printing nothing more dangerous than soup inventory.One white label slides out.Then another.Then six.Kovac stares at it."No."The printer continues."I said no."Sarah lifts a label with the tip of her knife.Nadia says, "Do not touch it.""With what part of me?""Any part attached to you."Sarah turns the label toward us.INFANT SOURCE / TEMPORARY REGISTRATIONANCHOR: SECONDARYVESSEL: SAINT LARKSTATUS: PENDINGKovac's face goes blank in a way I do not like."That printer is not networked."The doctor takes another label with forceps. "Pharmacy inventory?""Old local system.""Local to what?""The boat."Leo speaks from the storage

The second decline is quieter.That makes it worse.No alarm.No printer.No visible heat crawling up the treatment bay wall.My son simply stops accepting the dropper.Nadia tries once, twice, then lowers her hand and watches his mouth close around nothing."No," she says.It is the smallest word in the room.Everyone hears it.The field unit panel sits on its oxygen crate with new wires braided into Kovac's local battery pack. The doctor has built a release line from a surgical clamp, two copper clips, and Sarah's belief that every important thing should be breakable by hand.Sarah tests the release every few minutes.The doctor hates this.The release works."He is tired," I say.Nadia does not let me keep the gentle version."He is spending more to stay in the same place."Leo says through the comm, "Second contact possible.""No," I say.Immediate

The old sea light is not a lighthouse.Renn lied about that.Or remembered it wrong.Or wanted a word that sounded more human than floating warning buoy with rusted solar panels and a cracked service cage.Saint Lark slows near it after Kovac threatens the engine room, bribes a deckhand with soup, and tells the legal woman that sealed authority does not include navigation unless she can swim faster than diesel.The buoy rises from gray water three channels west of the ferry lane.Gold paint flakes off its side in diseased patches. Birds sit on top and look offended by history.Renn stands beside me at the rail with one wrist cuffed to Sarah's belt.She hates this arrangement.Sarah enjoys that privately."That?" I ask.Renn squints through rain."Looked bigger when people were dying."Kovac, behind us, says, "Most things do."The baby is below with Nadia, the doctor, Leo, and the panel.