"Dead."
"You have assumed command?"
"Yes."
"Then I think you should organize a landing party and come to the Leningrad. Have you an operational shuttle?" Brunner turned to one of his officers, who nodded.
"Yes. For God's sake, what is happening?"
"I will tell you when you come."
"Sergei. My wife….."
"Not like this. Gather your party and come."
Brunner ordered the landing party assembled, and met it at the shuttle dock. Among those he found there was the nurse, the only medical persona that could be spared, whom he had been so aware of two days before. He tried not to look at her. With a knotting throat and a rising anxiety he could not contain, he guided the ship himself into the open receiving dock of the Leningrad.
One other shuttle craft entered behind them, landing also on the dull white metal floor, but no more. The bay doors were closed slowly and the dock began to repressurize. But in his drunken state the very sound of it was like her name hissed by witches.