DEATH FELT A LOT like pain.

That wasn't so bad.  Crispin could handle pain.  It was the blood rushing to his head that vexed him.  Then he realized: he was not dead at all.  Somehow.  He was only upside-down, the roof of the cabin below him was just within reach.  His head ached, and when he touched it his fingers came away red.  But his vision was clearing, sharpening as the blood pounding in his head took on new and sharper definition.  Like a blind man, he pawed at the ceiling below him, braced himself against it and undid his restraints.  Despite his best efforts, he fell hard on his side.  He lay there longer than he cared to say - longer than he could guess.

The chairs and console looked very strange the wrong way round, the whole ship made suddenly alien.  He was forgetting something, distracted by shock and pain.  He was only glad that nothing seemed to be broken.  What had he forgotten?

"Sabine!" he tried to cry out, but his voice croaked, rasping like an old woman's.  How long had he been unconscious?  "Sabine!"  There she was, still strapped into her seat beside him, her long hair hanging almost to the ceiling beneath her.  With a groan and a mighty struggle, Crispin pulled himself to his knees.  Still repeating her name - as if doing so might wake her from sleep - he went to her side.  Cradling her to protect her head, he let her free from her seat's crash webbing and lowered her to the ground.  He checked her pulse, held his ear close to her lips.  Still breathing.  Still alive.  If anything, she seemed better off that he was - she wasn't bleeding.

The same could not be said for Kyra's copilot.  The windshield had shattered when the shuttle hit the ground - it was that glass maybe that had cut his head - and the impact had crushed the outer hull of the shuttle, caved it in and killed poor Tracy where he sat.

"Lord... " a weak voice drifted in from his right.  Kyra.  "Lord Marlowe?"

"It's me.  It's all right."  The captain was still hanging in her seat.  She'd managed to avoid being crushed by the impact by mere inches.  "Your lieutenant's dead.  Are you hurt?"

"Think I broke a rib or two... are you?"

"I'm fine, just got cut a bit.  Sabine's unconscious, but I don't think she's hurt."

"And my men?"

Crispin blinked.  "What men...?"  He'd forgotten.  Forgotten about the three dozen guards that had been riding in the back of the shuttle.  Crispin felt the color leaching into his face and turned way.  He didn't want to see the peasant woman's expression.  "I'm not sure, I had to check on you.  I... let me get you loose."  When that was done he stood, stooping just a bit.

He tried the bulkhead door, stepping over Sabine.  The system was dead.  A small voice in the back of his head whispered, That means the shields are down.  They were wide open if whoever had attacked them came back around.  Images of black ships raining fire down on them filled his mind.  Crispin hoped their attackers had been on the ground after all.  That would give them time.