The Haunted Way (Champions of the Crystal Book 5)

Chapter 5.2

There was a slight delay before the main airlock cycled, and Sabrina wished they would hurry up. Her doubts about this course of action had never really abated, and she wanted to get it over with so she could turn everything over to someone else to worry about. It was an urge she recognized as uncharacteristic, though perhaps understandable, but after all, part of why she was doing this was her own tenuous grasp on her identity. She could not possibly help Ford while she was so in need of help herself.

The two orderlies seemed harmless enough at first glance, though they were older than she expected. Sabrina realized she knew nothing about Homeworld's health care structures, or in fact anything about their culture beyond the specialized area of the Wayfarer program. It was anything but comforting. Maybe, she thought, her unpleasant memories of Scotty's reconstruction were responsible for the escalating adrenaline response she was trying to talk herself out of.

She lingered in the doorway as the orderlies maneuvered the floating pallet next to Ford's infirmary bed. To physically help them remove him from his ship seemed too personal a betrayal, and she wasn't feeling rational enough to make herself do it anyway. It's not as if he's conscious so I could comfort him, she thought, trying to drown out the voice in the back of her mind shrieking, No, this is wrong, wrong!

Every step back down the hall, trailing in the wake of the pallet, got harder to take, as if something dense and unyielding were pulling at her ankles. Never could she recall her instincts and her mind being in such bitter conflict.

A faint moan from the pallet shocked her into stricken immobility. She knew she had sedated Ford adequately for transfer; she'd had Rudolf check and recheck the dosage. His Pharon abilities could be used to resist any chemical influence, given time and practice, she supposed, but why? What did he sense that made him feel it imperative to wake? Was he picking up her own uneasiness, or was it something else, some danger sense that she was oblivious to?

She felt him come fully awake in her mind even before her eyes registered movement on the pallet, and she was already shouting a warning before her conscious mind caught up and she was rushing forward into the blur of movement and energy that suddenly exploded into the corridor. The orderlies fell back, too stunned even to cry out, and she tripped over one of them as she struggled to reach the pallet.

"Ford!" she shouted desperately, reaching out for him. One of her fingertips brushed his sleeve, and in the next second her wrists were caught in his bruising grip. She understood in that moment that he thought the orderlies had been taking him away from her.

"It's okay, it's okay," she kept saying, knowing all the while that it wasn't. He wasn't going to agree to this; she'd been crazy to ever think it. They'd be lucky if he didn't accidentally kill everybody aboard The Oasis in his attempts to defend them both. She had to get the orderlies out of here.

Before she'd even finished the thought, they had vanished. She felt the power working through Ford as he made the transfer and reached out with his mind to undock The Adventure. "Ford, wait, we have to—"

He swung his legs off the pallet and adjusted his grip on her, urging her to keep pace with him toward the control deck. "I don't know what they've told you," he growled, "but this was not a good idea."

"I'm getting that," she sighed. "Ford, calm down, please! Nobody here wants to hurt you."

"Nobody here wants to help me, either," he retorted. "Sit down and don't interfere!"

A flash of indignation at his brusque order made Sabrina swallow the plaintive "I want to help you!" she had been about to utter. She sat down at the secondary control panel and folded her arms. Well, she had wanted things taken out of her hands, hadn't she, she scolded herself. Ford, even mentally unbalanced, wasn't that bad a trade for Homeworld's paranoid guardianship. At least, she hoped so.