Chapter 5: What the Marshal Ate

Nobody in the med bay answered the Marshal.

Rurik Vossler did, ten minutes later.

The transport had gone back for a second look and found the station still standing and the med bay door lying in the corridor.

He came in at a run, his helmet under his arm, and stopped three paces inside the frost.

"Sir," Rurik said. "Sir, we thought, the roll was called, we thought everyone was..."

"Roll," said the Marshal's body.

The voice was rough from disuse.

It filled the room anyway.

"Sir?"

"Read it again."

Rurik looked around at the reservists in their bandages and the dead Skarn.

He looked at the thin young man on the cot.

He read the roll.

When he came to the end he stopped.

Seven names on the cots had not been on the transport, and one more had never been on the list at all.

"Idris Korrigan," said the Marshal's body. "Husband. Consort. Mine."

The last word cost something.

The big hands flexed at his sides.

"You left him locked in with seven wounded and a swarm in the vents," the voice said. "Hand me your insignia."

Rurik's face went through four colors.

"Sir, he's a Beta, he's nobody, he..."

"Now."

Rurik took the silver pin off his collar with fingers that shook, and laid it in the Marshal's palm.

The palm closed.

Then Dain Korrigan's body turned on its heel and walked out, and the wolf walked after him.

Every man in the room stood very still until the door shut.

Idris stayed sitting on the cot.

"That," he said to the shade, "was you."

"It was not."

The shade's voice had gone thin.

"I did not say any of that. I was standing right here. I wanted him in the vacuum."

"Then who said it?" Idris asked.

"The body," said the shade.

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