The First Alarm: Anja's View
The attack came in the dead of night, under a sky as black and starless as polished slate. Anja stood her first official watch on the eastern perimeter, the section she herself had identified as their blind spot. The freshly sharpened spear Kenji had given her felt like a cold, heavy extension of her own arm. The fear was a familiar knot in her stomach, but it was a cold, focused fear now, not the frantic terror of the rooftop. This was the work Jaya had trained her for: to watch, to listen, to anticipate.
She wasn't listening for a roar. She was listening for a whisper.
And then she heard it. Not a splash, but a soft, wet, scraping sound from the shadowed gap just south of her post, where the old grain barge met the main pontoon. It was the sound of a hull brushing against their defenses. Her heart seized. It's my alarm. They're here.
Instinct, honed by Jaya's relentless drills, overrode the impulse to scream. She spun and brought the butt of her spear down hard on the large, hanging piece of sheet metal beside her post. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! The raw, ugly sound shattered the night's silence. Before the echoes could fade, the great alarm bell on the central tower began to ring, its deep, solemn peals a call to arms.
The flotilla, a sleeping creature, exploded into controlled chaos. "To your posts!" Jaya's voice, amplified by a simple speaking-trumpet, cut through the din from the main watchtower. "Hold the perimeter! Fire teams, to your stations!"
The air filled with the pound of running feet on wooden planks. Anja reached her designated post just as two smaller, faster scavenger rafts broke from the darkness, the men aboard screaming a high, wild howl meant to incite terror. The first wave of grappling hooks flew through the air, arcing against the dim emergency lights. Many slammed into the dense, reinforced "thorn nets" Anja had helped design and became hopelessly, uselessly entangled. A surge of cold, fierce triumph shot through her. My plan worked.
Frustrated, the scavengers drove their rafts directly against the netting, trying to tear their way through. A scavenger, his face a mask of rage in the gloom, got a handhold on the net directly in front of Anja. For a split second, she froze, the image of the man on the signal post flashing in her mind. Then, a voice, hard and clear, screamed in her head: Not again. I won't be helpless again.
Adrenaline surged, hot and clean. She grabbed a heavy, metal-weighted buoy from its rack—a piece of equipment she had placed there herself during Jaya's drills—and swung it with all her might. There was a sickening crunch of bone, and the scavenger vanished with a splash into the dark water. Shouts of rage echoed from the rafts. A sharp whistle cut through the din—a signal from their leader to retreat and regroup. The first probe had been repelled.
The Breach: A Fisherman's View
Leo stood his post on the southeastern flank, the sharpened fishing gaff feeling flimsy and inadequate in his hands. Around him, five other fishermen—his father's crew—held similar makeshift weapons, their faces tight with a fear they were all trying to hide. The alarm bell's frantic ringing echoed across the flotilla, a sound that made his heart hammer against his ribs.
"It's just a probe," his father, Tomas, said from his position at the center of their small defensive line. His voice was steady, reassuring, the same tone he used when the weather turned foul on a fishing trip. "Jaya's got the western flank reinforced. They'll hit there first, get bloodied, and run home with their tails between their legs."
Leo wanted to believe him. He wanted to believe that their hastily woven single-layer netting and their makeshift spears would be enough. But the fear in his gut told a different story.
"Why are we even here?" Marcus, the youngest of them at barely twenty, asked from Leo's left. His hands trembled on his spear. "We're fishermen, not soldiers. We should be with the women and children in the shelter."
"Because this is our home," Tomas replied, his voice carrying the quiet authority that had made him a leader among the fishing crews long before the argument with Rupa. "And when wolves come for your home, you don't hide. You stand. You fight. You make them pay for every inch of ground."
He moved down the line, checking each man's grip on his weapon, adjusting stances, his presence a calming force. When he reached Leo, he placed a heavy hand on his son's shoulder.
"You afraid?" Tomas asked quietly, his voice meant only for Leo.
"Terrified," Leo admitted.
"Good," his father said. "Fear keeps you sharp. Just remember—you're protecting your mother, your brothers. Maya and that new baby girl of yours. They're just two platforms away. That's what you think about when the fear gets too loud. Not the enemy. Just them."
Leo nodded, his grip tightening on the gaff. His daughter was three weeks old. He'd barely slept since her birth, listening to her tiny breaths in the night, marveling at how something so small and fragile could exist in this harsh world. The thought of scavengers anywhere near her filled him with a cold, focused fury.
From their position, they could hear the sounds of battle from the western flank—the crack of the pulse rifle, the shouts of defenders, the clash of metal on metal. But their section remained quiet, almost peaceful. The moonlight painted the water in shades of silver and black. Their nets drifted gently in the current.
"See?" Marcus said, his voice tight with nervous hope. "It's all happening over there. We're safe here. We're—"
The first impact was a violent, tearing crunch that shuddered through the entire platform beneath their feet. It wasn't a grappling hook; it was something far more brutal—the reinforced prow of a heavy scavenger raft, bigger and more solid than the smaller skiffs attacking the western flank, slamming directly into their hastily woven netting.
The net tore like wet paper.
For a single, frozen second, Leo's mind refused to process what he was seeing. The net—the barrier they'd spent hours reinforcing just yesterday—was simply... gone. Shredded. A massive hole gaped before them, and through it poured a wave of screaming, armed men.
They moved like animals, like a pack of starving wolves finally finding prey. Their faces were hidden in shadow, but their weapons—crude blades welded to pipes, heavy wrenches wrapped in wire, sharpened rebar—caught the moonlight. There were at least a dozen of them, maybe more, and they were fast.
"Hold the line!" Tomas roared, his voice cutting through the paralysis of shock. "FOR THE COOPERATIVE!"
But the line didn't hold. It shattered.
Marcus, on Leo's left, raised his spear with trembling hands. A scavenger's blade—a jagged piece of steel welded to a length of pipe—cut through his defense like it wasn't there. The young fisherman went down with a cry of pain and terror, clutching at his side where blood was already spreading, dark and fast.
Leo's gaff clashed against a scavenger's weapon, the impact jarring his arms so badly he nearly dropped it. The man was bigger than him, stronger, his eyes wild with a feral, desperate hunger. Leo blocked another blow, then another, his arms screaming in protest.
Around him, the defensive line was collapsing into chaos. Two of his father's crew were already down. The others were backing up, their faces masks of terror, their weapons forgotten. The scavengers were everywhere, a dark tide surging past them toward the residential platforms.
Toward Maya. Toward his daughter.
"Fall back!" someone screamed. "Fall back to the second line!"
But there was no second line. They were the second line.
Panic, pure and absolute, seized Leo. His training—the few hours Jaya had managed to give them—evaporated like mist. His only thought was to run, to get to his family, to get them to safety before the wolves found them.
He stumbled backward, his gaff falling from nerveless fingers, and started to turn toward his dwelling—
Then he heard his father's voice, not shouting this time, but a sound deeper and more terrible: a roar of pure, bone-deep fury that cut through the chaos like a blade.
"NO!"
Leo turned and saw Tomas charging directly into the heart of the breach, his heavy, iron-tipped gaff swinging in great, devastating arcs. He wasn't retreating. He wasn't defending. He was attacking, one man against a tide, and the sheer impossibility of it, the suicidal bravery of it, stopped everyone in their tracks for a single, crystalline moment.
A scavenger went down, clutching his shattered knee. Another stumbled back, blood streaming from a gashed shoulder. Tomas fought with the strength of a man who had spent his entire life hauling nets against the weight of the sea, his movements economical, brutal, and terrifyingly effective.
"STAND WITH ME!" Tomas bellowed, his voice hoarse but unbroken. "STAND AND FIGHT!"
And something broke in Leo. Not his courage—he'd lost that already. What broke was the carefully constructed wall between the man he was and the man his father had always believed he could be.
He thought of Marcus, bleeding on the deck. He thought of Maya, holding their daughter in the dwelling just two platforms away, trusting that someone—that he—would keep them safe. He thought of every meal he'd shared on these platforms, every story told by Leela, every sunrise he'd watched with Kenji while waiting for the fish to run.
This place was his home. These people were his family. And his father was fighting alone.
"FOR TOMAS!" Leo screamed, a sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest that he didn't recognize as his own voice. He snatched up a fallen spear and charged back into the fight.
To his left, he heard the same cry echoed: "FOR THE COOPERATIVE!" It was Niran, the old mender, his weathered face a mask of grim determination. And beyond him, two of the other fishermen who had started to flee, rallying, turning back, forming a ragged, desperate line behind Tomas.
They were no match for the scavengers' brutality. They were fishermen and menders, men who knew how to tie knots and patch nets, not how to kill. But they had something the scavengers didn't: they were fighting for something more precious than their own survival. They were fighting for the people they loved.
Leo found himself shoulder-to-shoulder with his father, their weapons moving in a crude but effective rhythm—Tomas breaking the enemy's guard with his heavy gaff, Leo stabbing at the openings. A scavenger lunged at them, and Leo's spear caught the man in the shoulder. The resistance of flesh, the hot spray of blood, the man's scream of pain—it was nothing like fighting the sea. It was visceral and terrible and real.
For a glorious, terrible ten seconds, they held.
Then the weight of numbers overwhelmed them.
A heavy blow caught Tomas in the side, driving him to one knee. He swung his gaff one last time, catching his attacker across the face, before two more scavengers were on him. Leo saw his father go down under a flurry of blows, saw the blood spreading across the deck, saw—
A searing, white-hot pain exploded in Leo's side. He looked down, almost curious, and saw the dark, spreading stain across his shirt. His legs, which had been holding him upright through sheer will, suddenly buckled.
The world tilted violently. The sounds of battle became distant, muffled, as if he were underwater. He hit the deck hard, the impact barely registering through the strange, floating numbness that was spreading through his body.
Maya, he thought, the name a prayer, a plea. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The baby...
His vision was narrowing, darkening at the edges. Through the tunnel that remained, he could see figures moving—reinforcements finally arriving, their voices cutting through the chaos. Someone was shouting orders in Jaya's commanding voice. The scavengers were falling back, their assault finally broken.
Then his father's face filled his vision, impossibly close. Tomas was crawling across the blood-slicked deck toward him, his own wounds forgotten, his weathered face twisted with a father's desperate fear.
"Leo! LEO!" Tomas's hands pressed against Leo's side, trying to stem the bleeding. "Stay with me, son. You hear me? You stay with me!"
Leo tried to speak, tried to tell his father it was okay, that he'd stood, that he'd fought, that he hadn't run. But the words wouldn't come. The darkness was pulling at him, insistent and cold.
"He's bleeding out!" Tomas roared, his voice cracking. "HAKEEM! I need Hakeem NOW!"
Footsteps pounded on the planks. More hands joined his father's—rougher, more clinical.
"I have him," a calm voice said. Hakeem. The old healer's face appeared above Leo, his expression focused and sure. "Tomas, let me work. Get pressure on your own wounds before you bleed out too."
"My son—"
"—will live if you let me do my job," Hakeem cut him off firmly. "But I need space. Kenji! Help me get him to the clinic. Carefully—keep pressure on that wound."
Leo felt himself being lifted, the movement sending fresh waves of agony through his body. He tried to cry out, but only a weak moan escaped. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness finally claimed him was his father's face, Tomas mouthing words Leo couldn't hear but understood perfectly:
I'm proud of you.
Then the darkness rushed in, but it wasn't the cold, final darkness he'd feared. It was the merciful darkness of unconsciousness, his body surrendering to the healers who would fight for his life while he couldn't.
The Command Tower: Jaya's View
High in the main watchtower, Jaya was the calm center of the storm. With her naval binoculars, she tracked the enemy's movements, her mind a cold machine of tactical calculations. The pulse rifle beside her, charged by Anja's solar array, hummed with contained power.
"They're testing us," she murmured to Soraya, the young woman she'd been training as a gunner. "Looking for the soft spots." Her gaze swept the perimeter, noting the solid defense on the western flank and the successful alarm on the eastern side. "Anja's work is holding."
Her binoculars settled on a larger figure on one of the rafts, a man directing the others, a firebomb held ready in his hand. "Target the one with the firebomb," she commanded. "Lead him by a hand's breadth. Fire!"
The rifle cracked, a sound that split the night. The beam of coherent light hit the scavenger with brutal accuracy. "Good shot," Jaya murmured, already scanning for the next threat. She watched as the two smaller rafts regrouped, then her eyes widened in understanding. This wasn't the attack. This was the distraction. Her binoculars swung south-east. "Gods below," she breathed.
The larger black skimmer, the mother ship, was moving. It had used the feint to circle around, and now it turned its reinforced prow directly toward the flotilla's oldest, weakest flank—the residential platforms. They're going for the families.
"Runner!" Jaya snapped at the young boy waiting at her feet. "Get to the eastern winch team! Tell them to release the submerged fire-keel nets on my signal! Go! Now!"
Just then, an orange flash lit the decks below. A firebomb, thrown with a high, desperate arc, had sailed over the netting and struck the tarpaulin wall of the clinic. "Fire! Clinic fire!" a panicked voice screamed from below.
For a moment, Jaya's cold focus wavered, her gaze fixed on the growing orange glow. Hakeem was in there. The wounded. But she forced her eyes away, back to the binoculars. She could not afford distraction. The skimmer was accelerating, a dark, unstoppable wedge aimed directly at their heart.
The Clinic: A Healer's War
The clinic was an island of harsh, steady light in the chaos of the night. Hakeem had lit every available lamp—the precious fuel be damned—because he needed to see. A surgeon worked in the light. A butcher worked in darkness. Tonight, he refused to be a butcher.
He was packing a deep gash in a young deckhand's shoulder, his hands moving with the practiced economy of forty years tending to the wounded, when the first wave of casualties from the breach began to arrive.
"Hakeem! HAKEEM!"
Two men stumbled through the clinic entrance, carrying a third between them. It was Marcus, the boy barely out of his teens, his face the color of old ash, his hands pressed uselessly against the spreading darkness at his side.
"Gut wound," Hakeem assessed instantly, his mind shifting into the cold, clinical space where emotion had no place. "Get him on the table. Now."
They laid Marcus on the wooden examination table that Hakeem had reinforced with salvaged steel. The boy's eyes were open but unfocused, his breathing shallow and rapid—the first signs of shock.
"You're going to be fine, Marcus," Hakeem said, his voice calm and authoritative as his hands flew over the wound, cutting away the blood-soaked shirt. It was a lie, of course. A blade wound this deep, this close to the intestines, with their limited supplies and no real surgical facilities... but the boy didn't need truth right now. He needed hope.
"It hurts," Marcus whimpered, his voice young and frightened. "Hakeem, it really hurts."
"I know, son. I know." Hakeem pressed a folded bandage against the wound, applying firm, steady pressure. Too much and he'd cause more internal damage. Too little and the boy would bleed out in minutes. It was a balance measured in heartbeats.
His assistant, Amara—a woman who had been a veterinary nurse in the Before-Time—appeared at his side with their last bottle of antiseptic solution and a needle already threaded with their precious catgut sutures.
"Shock protocol," Hakeem ordered. "Elevate his legs, keep him warm, watch his breathing."
He was just beginning to clean the wound, his mind calculating angles and depths, when the door burst open again.
This time it was Chen, Amara's brother, his arm hanging at an unnatural angle, bone visible through torn flesh. Behind him came a woman screaming, clutching her bloodied hand. Then another. And another.
The trickle became a flood.
"Amara, I need you on triage," Hakeem commanded, never taking his hands from Marcus's wound. "Sort them by severity. Critical cases to me, everything else you handle. Move!"
She nodded once, her professional mask sliding into place, and turned to the growing chaos of wounded streaming through the door.
Hakeem worked on Marcus with the focused intensity of a man who had spent a lifetime in emergency medicine. The wound was worse than he'd initially thought—the blade had nicked the intestinal wall, and he could see the beginning of peritoneal contamination. Without proper antibiotics, without a sterile surgical suite, the boy's chances were grim.
But he'd be damned if he'd give up without trying.
"Suction," he muttered, using a crude hand-pump to clear blood from the wound cavity. "Irrigation. I need to see what I'm working with here."
His fingers probed gently, carefully, feeling for the extent of the damage. The blade had been jagged, tearing rather than cutting cleanly. It would take at least thirty sutures to close properly, and even then—
A scavenger's firebomb, thrown high and desperate in the confusion of the battle, sailed over the defensive netting and struck the tarpaulin wall of the clinic. The impact was a dull thump, almost gentle, deceptive in its simplicity.
Then the flames came.
The oil-soaked cloth exploded in a sheet of orange fire that raced up the wall with terrifying speed, feeding hungrily on the tarred canvas. The heat was instant and overwhelming, a physical force that drove everyone back. Thick, acrid smoke billowed into the room, turning the clear air into a choking fog.
Chaos erupted. The wounded who could move scrambled away from the spreading flames. Amara grabbed a bucket and started throwing water, but it was like trying to stop a flood with a cup.
And there, on the far wall, directly in the fire's path, was the small wooden cabinet that held their last, precious supply of antibiotics, sterile bandages, and surgical thread. Everything they'd managed to salvage from the drowned hospitals, everything they'd received in the aid barrels, the thin line between infection and survival for every wounded person on this flotilla.
Hakeem's hands were still pressed against Marcus's wound, still holding the pressure that was the only thing keeping the boy alive. Under his palms, he could feel the rapid, fluttering pulse, the warmth of blood that wanted desperately to escape. If he let go, even for thirty seconds, Marcus would bleed out.
But the cabinet was ten feet away. And the flames were closing in on it fast.
The impossible choice crystallized in an instant of perfect, terrible clarity.
Save the boy on the table—one life, immediate and pleading—or save the supplies that could save a dozen others in the days and weeks to come.
The healer's oath: First, do no harm.
But what was the greater harm? To let one boy die, or to condemn future wounded to infection and agonizing death because he'd chosen sentiment over pragmatism?
Time seemed to slow. Hakeem was acutely aware of every detail: the crackle of the flames, Marcus's shallow breathing, the weight of his own hands on the boy's abdomen, the heat growing more intense with each passing second.
Forgive me, Marcus. Forgive me, but I cannot save you. I have to save them all.
His mouth opened to give the order—to tell Amara to forget the fire on the wall, to get the cabinet, to save what could be saved—when a figure burst through the smoke-filled doorway.
It was Anja, her face streaked with soot, her eyes red from smoke, carrying two sloshing buckets of seawater. She didn't pause, didn't ask permission. She hurled the first bucket at the base of the flames with a grunt of effort, then the second. The fire hissed and fought back, but the deluge created a temporary gap in its advance.
"Bucket brigade!" she shouted over her shoulder, and two more figures appeared behind her—Kenji and Niran—carrying more water.
The relief that flooded through Hakeem was so intense it was almost painful. He hadn't realized he'd been holding his breath.
"Anja! The cabinet!" he roared, never taking his hands from Marcus's wound. "Get the supplies!"
She understood instantly. While Kenji and Niran fought the flames with more buckets, Anja plunged through the smoke toward the cabinet. The heat must have been incredible—Hakeem saw her flinch back, her hands raised to protect her face—but she didn't stop.
She grabbed the cabinet's handles and pulled, her legs driving against the wooden floor, her muscles straining. The cabinet, heavy with its precious contents, barely budged. The flames licked closer, and Hakeem saw her eyes widen with a flash of panic.
"It's bolted!" she cried, her voice cracking.
"Then unbolt it!" Hakeem snapped, his usual gentle bedside manner burned away by necessity. "Use the multi-tool! Anja, we need those supplies!"
She fumbled at her belt, her fingers trembling, and pulled out the small toolkit. The screws holding the cabinet to the wall were rusted and stubborn. Each one seemed to take an eternity.
Meanwhile, more wounded were arriving. A woman with a dislocated shoulder, screaming in pain. An older man with a deep laceration across his forehead, blood streaming into his eyes. And then—carried between two exhausted defenders—Leo, Tomas's son, his side a mass of blood, his breathing shallow gasps.
"Table two!" Hakeem barked at Amara. "Get Leo stabilized. I need to finish here."
But there was no table two. There was only the table, and Marcus was on it, and the boy's pulse was weakening under Hakeem's hands.
The smoke was getting thicker. Hakeem's eyes streamed, his lungs burned, but he couldn't—wouldn't—let go. Just a few more seconds. Just long enough to get the bleeder tied off, to get the wound packed, to give the boy a fighting chance.
"Got it!" Anja's triumphant shout cut through the chaos. The last screw came free, and she wrenched the cabinet away from the smoldering wall, dragging it across the floor and out of the fire's reach.
At the same moment, Kenji's and Niran's frantic bucket brigade finally won its battle against the flames. The fire, deprived of fresh fuel and drowned in seawater, sputtered and died, leaving behind a scorched, smoking section of wall and the acrid stench of burned tar.
Hakeem looked up from Marcus's wound—finally packed and holding—and met Anja's soot-streaked face across the smoke-filled room. No words passed between them, but the understanding was absolute. She had saved him from having to make a choice that would have haunted him for the rest of his life.
"Amara, take over here," Hakeem ordered, his voice hoarse from smoke. "Keep the pressure steady. I need to see to Leo."
He moved to where Tomas's son lay on a makeshift pallet that two defenders had hastily constructed from salvaged boards. Leo's face was the color of old parchment, slick with sweat despite the cool night air. His breathing was shallow, rapid—his body was in shock, trying desperately to compensate for the blood loss.
Hakeem's experienced hands moved quickly, cutting away the blood-soaked shirt. The wound was a vicious slash across Leo's lower left side, deep enough to have penetrated the muscle wall. Blood was still seeping steadily from the wound despite the crude field dressing someone had applied.
"Talk to me, son," Hakeem said, his voice deliberately calm and conversational as his hands probed the wound's edges. He needed Leo conscious, needed to assess for internal damage. "Can you hear me?"
Leo's eyelids fluttered. "...hurts..." he managed, the word barely a whisper.
"I know it does. That's actually a good sign—means your nerves are working." Hakeem caught Anja's eye as she set down the rescued cabinet. "Anja, I need the antiseptic solution and the curved needle with the heavy catgut. And bring me two of the clean bandages."
While she retrieved the supplies, Hakeem gently palpated Leo's abdomen, watching his face for signs of peritoneal inflammation. If the blade had penetrated the intestinal wall...
But Leo's abdomen was soft, not rigid. The defensive muscle guarding that indicated a perforated bowel was absent. Hakeem let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
"You're a lucky man, Leo," Hakeem said, beginning to irrigate the wound with the precious antiseptic. The fluid ran clear—no sign of bile or fecal matter. "The blade missed everything important. You're going to have an impressive scar, and you'll be sore for weeks, but you'll live."
"My... my father..." Leo's voice was stronger now, the pain and the antiseptic's sting pulling him back toward consciousness.
Hakeem's hands paused for just a moment, and Anja saw the flicker of something—sorrow, perhaps—cross his weathered face. But when he spoke, his voice remained steady.
"He brought you to me himself. Wouldn't leave until he knew you were being cared for." It wasn't exactly a lie—Tomas had been there, had refused to abandon his son even while bleeding from his own wounds. Hakeem simply didn't mention that Jaya had physically dragged Tomas away to get his own injuries treated, that the old fisherman was currently two platforms away, also fighting for his life.
Leo relaxed slightly, and Hakeem returned to his work. The wound needed to be closed in layers—muscle first, then the subcutaneous tissue, then the skin. It was delicate work, requiring steady hands and strong light. Thank the ancestors for Anja's solar array; without it, he'd be doing this by flickering lamplight, risking infection with every shadow.
"Amara," Hakeem called over his shoulder. "How's Marcus?"
"Stable," she replied, her voice strained but professional. "Bleeding is controlled. Pulse is stronger."
"Good. Start him on prophylactic antibiotics. Half the usual dose—we need to ration what we have." He looked back down at Leo, threading the curved needle with practiced precision. "This is going to hurt, son. But I need you to stay still. Can you do that for me?"
Leo's jaw clenched, and he gave a tight nod.
The suturing took twenty minutes of painstaking work. Each stitch had to be perfect—tight enough to close the wound, but not so tight as to strangle the tissue and prevent healing. Leo bore it with gritted teeth and white knuckles, only the occasional hiss of pain escaping.
"There," Hakeem said finally, tying off the last suture. "Fifteen stitches. Your wife is going to have to be gentle with you for a while."
Despite everything—the pain, the fear, the exhaustion—Leo managed a weak smile at that. "Maya's... never been gentle... in her life..."
"Then you'd better heal fast," Hakeem replied with a gentle humor that masked his own exhaustion. He applied a clean bandage over the closed wound, wrapping it securely. "Anja, help me get him elevated. I want his legs up, core warm. We need to get his blood pressure stabilized."
As they worked to make Leo comfortable, the door burst open once more. It was Mira, Tomas's wife, her face wild with panic.
"My husband—my sons—I heard Leo was—"
"Leo is here, and he's going to be fine," Hakeem said quickly, intercepting her before she could see the full carnage of the clinic. "He was wounded in the defense, but the injury is clean and closed. He'll need rest and care, but he'll recover fully."
Mira's legs nearly gave out with relief. "And Tomas? Where is my husband?"
The clinic fell silent. Hakeem's face, which had been so professionally calm while working on Leo, suddenly looked every one of his seventy years. Anja saw Amara turn away, her shoulders tight.
"Mira," Hakeem began, his voice gentle but heavy with a sorrow he could no longer hide. "I'm so sorry. Tomas... Tomas fell at the breach. He held the line long enough for reinforcements to arrive. His stand saved us all. But his wounds..."
He didn't finish. He didn't need to.
Mira's face went blank, shock insulating her from the immediate impact of the news. She stood frozen for a long moment, then seemed to fold in on herself, aging ten years in ten seconds.
"Can I... can I see my son?" she whispered.
"Of course." Hakeem guided her to Leo's pallet. "But he needs to rest. He's lost a lot of blood."
Mira knelt beside her eldest son, her hand trembling as she smoothed the hair back from his forehead. Leo's eyes opened at her touch.
"Mama," he whispered. "Papa... where's Papa? He was right there..."
Mira's face crumpled, but she held herself together with a fierce effort of will. Not here. Not now. Her son had just survived death; she wouldn't burden him with it. Not yet.
"He's being cared for," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "Rest now. I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."
As Leo's eyes drifted closed, Mira looked up at Hakeem, and the old healer saw in her face a question she couldn't ask aloud in front of her son: How do I tell him? How do I tell him his father is gone?
Hakeem had no answer. Some wounds, he had learned in his long years as a healer, had no salve. Some pains had no medicine. All he could offer was the silent promise that when the time came, he would be there to help carry that terrible burden.
For now, though, Leo was alive. Stable. He would heal.
And in a night of so much death, that single victory felt like a miracle.
Around him, the clinic had transformed into a scene that would haunt his dreams. Every available surface was covered with the wounded. The air was thick with smoke, blood, and the low moans of pain. Amara moved between patients with grim efficiency, triaging, prioritizing, making her own impossible calculations.
The door opened again, and this time it was Jaya, her armor scorched, her face a mask of controlled fury.
"The attack is broken," she announced without preamble. "The skimmer is crippled. They're retreating."
A ragged cheer went up from those conscious enough to understand. But it was a hollow sound, muted by pain and exhaustion.
"Casualties?" Hakeem asked, his hands still working on Leo's wound.
Jaya's expression was grim. "Tomas is dead. Three others killed in the breach. Twelve wounded, seven seriously." She paused, her gaze sweeping the smoke-damaged clinic. "Including your assistant's brother."
Hakeem looked up sharply at Amara, who had frozen at her patient's side, her face suddenly blank.
"Chen?" she whispered.
Jaya gave a single, curt nod.
For a moment, Amara swayed, and Hakeem thought she might collapse. But then she took a deep, shuddering breath, closed her eyes for a count of three, and returned to her work with steady hands.
"Later," she said, her voice barely audible. "I'll grieve later. These people need me now."
It was the most devastating display of courage Hakeem had witnessed in a lifetime of bearing witness to human strength. A woman, learning of her brother's death, choosing to push the grief aside because her duty demanded it.
This, Hakeem thought as he continued his work, is what we're fighting for. Not just survival. But the preservation of our humanity in the face of impossible choices.
The single lightbulb overhead—powered by Anja's solar array—flickered once but held steady, casting its harsh, uncompromising light over the wounded, the dying, and those who refused to let them slip away into the dark.
Outside, the sounds of battle were fading, replaced by the shouts of damage control teams and the low, mournful wail of someone who had just learned of a loss.
Inside the clinic, the real war—the war against death, pain, and despair—continued in the steady rhythm of heartbeats, the whisper of bandages, and the quiet, fierce determination of healers who would not surrender.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
The Shelter: Leela's View
The shelter was a reinforced storage hold in the heart of the main barge, the air thick with the smell of damp metal and the quiet, terrified whimpers of children. Leela sat in the center of the small, huddled group, her back against a solid steel bulkhead. The only light was a single, dim, battery-powered lantern that cast their shadows, huge and trembling, against the walls.
Outside, the battle was a terrifying symphony of muffled sounds: the frantic ringing of the alarm bell, the sharp crack of the pulse rifle, the animalistic howls of the attackers, and the sudden, violent shudder that ran through the entire flotilla as the scavengers first made impact. A small girl, Elina, began to cry, a high, thin wail of pure terror. "I want my papa," she sobbed, burying her face in Leela's side.
Sami, sitting beside Leela, reached out and put a small, steadying hand on the girl's arm. "He's fighting," Sami said, his voice a quiet, solemn imitation of Anja's calm. "He's keeping the wolves away."
Leela pulled them both closer. "He is," she said, her own voice a low, soothing murmur, a dam against the tide of their fear. "And while they fight for us, I will tell you a story. A story from the Before-Time." She pitched her voice to be heard over a sudden, deafening CRACK from above that made them all jump. "It's the story of the Weaver and the Sea."
As the battle raged outside, Leela wove a tale of a clever woman who tricked the greedy sea by weaving a net of moonlight, a net so strong it could hold back the highest tide. Her calm, steady voice was a shield, a small pocket of peace in the heart of the storm. She did not know if they would survive the night, but in this small, dark space, she would hold back the children's fear with a net of her own, woven from stories and courage.
The Fire-Keel Stand: Jaya's View
From her perch in the watchtower, Jaya saw Tomas fall. She saw his line rally. She saw the breach hold, but barely. And she saw the black skimmer, its hum now a low, menacing growl, accelerating, aiming to shatter that fragile line completely. It was time.
"Signal!" she roared at the runner.
On the eastern platform, a red flag waved. Below, a winch team released their lines with a scream of protesting metal.
The submerged web of heavy-duty fishing nets, reinforced with steel cable and weighted to hang just below the surface—the "fire-keel," as the fishermen called it—sprang from the depths. The skimmer, moving at full throttle, plunged directly into the trap. The nets tangled in its propulsion system with a violent, grinding screech that echoed across the water. The engine screamed, choked, and died.
"Pulse team!" Jaya's command was a blade in the night. "Target the engine compartment! Now!"
Soraya swiveled the pulse rifle. She fired. The beam hit the skimmer's hull with a deafening CRACK. The targeted plate glowed cherry-red, then buckled inward. A plume of oily black smoke erupted, followed by a secondary explosion that sent shrapnel flying. The skimmer listed heavily, flames beginning to consume its heart.
Seeing their main vessel crippled and their assault stalled, the remaining scavengers turned their rafts and sped away into the darkness, melting back into the night.
A ragged, exhausted cheer went up from the flotilla, a wave of sound that was more relief than triumph. It was answered by the groans of the wounded and the sharp, urgent calls for Hakeem. The air, thick with the smell of oily smoke and the metallic tang of the pulse rifle's discharge, began to clear, revealing the true cost of their victory: torn nets, splintered platforms, and the grim, quiet work of tending to the fallen. Anja, her work with the bucket brigade done, leaned against the clinic wall, the borrowed strength of adrenaline leaving her in a rush, her entire body trembling uncontrollably.
The larger battle was over, but her own war wasn't finished. Sami. The thought cut through the haze of exhaustion, a single, bright point of focus. She pushed off the wall, her legs unsteady, and joined the stream of people moving towards the heart of the flotilla. She found him in the reinforced hold, still with Leela and the other children. "Anja!" he cried, launching himself into her arms as she knelt.
She hugged him tight, burying her face in his hair, the simple, solid reality of him an anchor in the swirling chaos. He was safe. They were safe. The Cooperative had held. Holding him, she looked over his shoulder at the other children, at Leela's tired but steady face. They had held, but the cost was etched on every platform, in the smoke still rising from the crippled skimmer, and in the empty spaces where friends had stood just hours before. The war had come to their home. And this, she knew with a chilling certainty, was only the beginning.
Outside, the sounds of battle were fading, replaced by the shouts of damage control teams and the low, mournful wail of someone who had just learned of a loss. Inside the clinic, the real war—the war against death, pain, and despair—continued.
But it was a war they were winning. Marcus would survive. Leo would walk again. The supplies had been saved. The light burned steady overhead.
Hakeem looked around at his makeshift hospital—at the wounded being tended, at Amara working through her grief, at Anja organizing the rescued supplies with methodical efficiency—and felt something that surprised him: hope.
They had lost people tonight. Good people. Tomas, Chen, and others who had stood when standing was required. But they had also saved people. They had held the line. They had proven that the Lifeline Cooperative was not easy prey.
Not tonight.
Not ever.