rescue

stood at attention. "Who ordered the guard posted?" the General asked.
The soldier saluted sharply. "General Neldner asked for volunteers, sir. We thought it only fitting."
The General nodded. "At ease, Lieutenant." He shook his head. He smiled once more at Jessica and opened the door.
Jessica stepped through timidly. A curtain obscured the patient's face, and the bedsheets draped most of the rest. All she could see at first was a strong yet delicate right arm.
Jessica walked slowly around the curtain. When she saw who occupied the bed, she stopped dead in her tracks. "CJ," she whispered in stark disbelief. She could see now that the rumpled sheets had hidden the missing legs.
"No need to whisper," the General said, probably in an effort to convince himself, since he was speaking very softly too. "She's still in a coma."
Jessica turned to him with eyes of wonder, questioning.
The General explained. "The captain of the rescue ship knew they couldn't get to her in time—you know, a stealthed ship can't punch a lot of acceleration—so he launched all his life pods on a course to put them between her and Shiva. Think of it as a shield made of life pods." He shrugged. "It sort of worked. Didn't stop the radiation, of course, but it blocked most of the heat and light of the blast." He shook his head. "How she avoided getting hit by a fifty-ton meteor of Shiva armor as the ship came apart, we'll never know. The rescue ship did take a hit, wrecked it good." He laughed. "The captain and the crew all got medals of course." Another pause interrupted the story. "Anyway, the radiation wasn't as bad as it might have been. We used three radical experimental treatments on her, one to flush the radioactive isotopes, one to accelerate full cell replacement, and one to kill the secondary cancers