In the end, the doctors on the ship constructed medical models of my injured body to study and practice on till they were ready to perform the surgeries necessary to repair the worst of the damage. They also cloned tissues of various types to replace parts of my body they considered too badly damaged to heal more naturally. Nano-bots were prepared as well, these being specifically designed to help heal the worst of the damage more quickly. My injuries included broken bones, puncture wounds that damaged some of my internal organs, and third degree burns over large parts of my body. I suspect that if the doctors on Earth attempted to repair the damage my body sustained in that accident, I would have died, or at least been badly handicapped afterwards. Eri, the head of the ships medical team responsible for rebuilding my shattered body told me all this much later. By then, FNS Destiny, the ship I was on, had left Earths solar system about two months previously and I no longer had a way home, or even to make contact with anyone I’d left behind.
When FNS Destiny’s doctors finally woke me, I was far from fit. Honestly, I could barely move and my mind was so sluggish I couldn’t understand what was going on around me at all. I was suffering, in pain, and all I wanted to do right then, was to go home and die in peace, surrounded by my family. At the time I never considered that I would survive everything I was going through. Nor could I have ever imagined how I would go on to be someone as loved, feared and respected as I have since coming to the Federation. I have been told I am loved by the people I’ve saved through my actions, feared by those who would prey on the weak, the defenceless and the innocent, and respected by most, even many of those who I’ve spent the last five years fighting. As it happens, I’ve even been able to recruit a few pirates and slavers to work for the Federation as spies and in a small number of cases, to work more directly within the Federation Navy instead of continuing on their previous course of preying on the Federation and its citizens.
When I eventually regained awareness of my surroundings, I noticed there were two odd looking people watching me and monitoring unfamiliar equipment near my bed. When I say ‘odd looking’, I mean that while they were generally humanoid in shape, there were subtle differences. At the time, I was too befuddled to notice the details of those differences, at least, not at first. They glanced at me when I opened my eyes but didn’t say or do much, not at first. For my part, I just lay there quietly taking in my surroundings for a while. In retrospect, though I did not know where I was just then, it is interesting how a medical bay on a ship from a different star system can look so much like a room in a hospital on Earth. There was even the faint antiseptic smell in the air. It seems to be an almost universal truth that hospital rooms would look and smell like this.
After I’d gathered my thoughts I tried to ask where I was. My throat was parched and sore and when I tried to talk, I couldn’t get more than a faint hissing sound out, my vocal chords just wouldn’t work at all. One of the two people looked over at me again and seemed to notice my distress, probably because I had an involuntary swallowing reflex from the pain in my throat. I tried to suppress the reflex simply because it hurt so much. The one who noticed my distress, reached over and picked up a tube of liquid, then gently held a nipple on the end to my mouth. I took a sip and carefully swallowed the liquid. The dryness and pain in my throat began to ease almost immediately. I noticed the liquid was not water, or at least it didn’t taste or feel like water in my mouth. Actually it was a little oily in texture but it did have quite a pleasant citrus flavour. In any case, it seemed to be very effective at coating my mouth, lips and throat, relieving the dry feeling and the soreness a little. Until then, not a word had been spoken by any of us. I closed my eyes then opened them again and turned to look at my companions once more. As I said earlier, something about these two, or at least about their appearance, didn’t seem quite right to me. When I looked more closely, I realised that while they were generally humanoid in shape, the proportions seemed to be wrong and not everything was exactly where I expected it to be.
The differences didn’t make them look grotesque or even ugly, just different. One was about 1.9 metres tall, the other slightly taller, perhaps two metres. Their heads were an odd shape, similar though not quite the same shape as a human head. I did notice their heads were proportionally similar in size to a human head. They both had beautiful, large, almond shaped, emerald green eyes. Their mouths and noses were quite small but were set in about the right place that I would expect with a human. Their skin was a light olive brown colour and their close cropped hair was a blue black colour. The ears appeared reasonably normal in size and shape but seemed to me to be set a little high and sat very flat against their heads. As I lay there observing them, I began noticing other subtle differences between their physical appearance and that of a human. They had arms that seemed a little long in relation to their bodies and their legs seemed to be a little short. They each had what appeared to be three fingers with something like an opposable thumb on either side of their hand. They also seemed to be quite thin but with well defined muscles. One of them, the shorter one, seemed to be quite soft in approach with some additional curves the other was missing. The one with the curves also had what appeared to me to be breasts so I decided this one must be female simply because that was a context I understood. They were both wearing what appeared to be a uniform of some kind. This appeared to be a skin tight one piece outfit. It was a light blue/green colour, and they seemed to have small silver pins on their shoulders and collars. The one who I’d labeled as female wore three of these pins on each collar lapel and three on each shoulder. The other one of these people had two pins in each location.
I opened my mouth to ask where I was and who they were, but once again, only a horse whisper escaped my lips. The one with the liquid offered it to me again. This time I took a much larger mouthful before holding most of it in my mouth and just letting it slowly trickle down my throat. As it went down, I could feel it soothing my throat some more. After I’d swallowed it all, I tried to speak again. This time my voice was a little stronger.
I asked, “Where am I? What happened?”
The female tilted her head to one side, raised her hand with the palm facing me and spoke in a language I didn’t understand. Her voice was soft and had a sort of pleasant sing song quality to it, a little like the inflexion that Scandinavian people on Earth have, but of course, I had no idea what she said. She must have noticed my puzzled expression because the expression on her face changed. She gently touched my arm to calm me, then walked over to one side of the room where she picked up a small box. As she walked, I noticed her gait was reasonably normal but quite graceful. She brought the box back over and placed it on a table next to the bed I was on. She adjusted some controls and a flashing yellow light lit the top of the box. After a few seconds of flashing, the light turned a solid blue. After the light went to solid blue, she spoke to me in her sing song voice again. About a second later her voice came from the box but now speaking English.
“Be calm,” she said, “We will not harm you, you are safe now. This device will translate for us”
I nodded then tried again, “Please, where am I? What happened?”
About a second later, my voice came from the box, but this time it was in the language I assumed these people spoke, complete with the sing song cadence.
The female listened and then spoke again, “You are on the deep space explorer vessel FNS Destiny, you had a very bad accident in your ground car. Some of our crew were nearby and decided they needed to rescue you. They told me that if they had not intervened, you would have died because your vehicle caught fire with you trapped inside. Please be patient, we are not permitted to tell you much more than that at the moment, we must ask others to continue this conversation with you. Please wait and we will ask them to speak to you. First though, I need to examine you to see how the healing is progressing. When you came here, you were very badly injured. You’re still not fully healed, not yet.”
My mind w
as spinning a little at this news, unable to gain any traction, and of course I grasped on to one of the most unimportant facts in everything I’d been told so far.
I asked, “FNS, what is that?”
She replied, “Federation Navy Ship. Now please lie still while I check your progress.”
She ran a number of strange looking instruments over my body, checking the readouts on various displays I couldn’t see as she went. Sometimes, the two medical technicians would mutter a few words to each other before running a different instrument over some part of my body or other. While the translator device translated everything they said, it was still unintelligible medical jargon as far as I was concerned.
The one who’d spoken to me previously turned in my direction and said, “Your healing is progressing quite satisfactorily, you are responding very well to the treatments we’ve been giving you. You need to rest for a while longer and then someone will be able to come and speak with you. We will leave you to rest for now. I shall return later.”
They left me alone then. I must admit, I hadn’t been able to process very much of what they’d told me till then so it took some time for the information I’d been given to finally penetrate. As they left, the door closed quietly behind them and I could see no controls for it. I wondered if I was a prisoner. Not that I could have escaped anyway as I could barely move let alone walk, and I still had no idea at all where I was. In that instant I realised how incredibly isolated and alone I was feeling.
Suddenly, as I lay there on my own, my mind began to kick in, replaying what I was told. Deep space explorer FNS Destiny? I had never heard of anything like that. And the people who’d just left, they didn’t quite look human. Who and what are they? At the time, I simply had no idea at all. While their intentions so far seemed to be decent enough, I really didn’t have any kind of clue about what they planned to do with me. An irreverent thought entered my head about Aliens probing me but I quickly pushed it aside. I lay there for some time, waiting for them to return. Eventually, fatigue, and my weakened state won out so at some point I dozed off. I dreamed of fire and pain till eventually a light touch on my arm woke me with a start. The female who’d spoken to me earlier was there watching me.
She said, “You were crying out in your sleep, I think you were having a bad dream. Be calm, you’re safe now.”
I muttered an apology, embarrassed at my show of weakness before nodding an acknowledgment as she stepped away from me. As I looked around the room, I noticed that now there were four of these people. I recognised two of them as the ones I’d seen previously, but I didn’t know who the others were. The male I’d seen previously came over with a bowl of gruel. It didn’t look much but it smelled OK. He told me I should eat. I thought about it for a moment but quickly decided I might as well because I was starving and reasoned that if they wanted to hurt me they’d already had plenty of opportunity. Besides, the female assured me I was safe now and for some reason I can’t explain, I chose to believe her. The food tasted a little bland but was palatable enough so I ate my fill then drank a little more of the soothing liquid.
When I finished eating, my two ‘old friends’ moved over to the monitoring equipment while the other two turned to face me. These two appeared to both be males based on my previous classification of the people I’d met till then. Both looked to be a round two metres tall and had the same colouring as the others though one had deep sapphire blue eyes. One also shared the lean physique of the other two but he wore a Midnight blue one piece suit, similar in cut to the two medical people and had six silver pins on each of the lapels and on the shoulders. The other person had a heavier build, and was rather more solidly muscled than his compatriot. He wore the same cut of skin tight outfit as the others, but it had what appeared to be a digital camouflage pattern in shades of Grey. As I took all this in, I realised he looked like he could be a very dangerous person. I decided it would not be a good idea to get the wrong side of him. One of the two, the one with the Midnight Blue suit, spoke to me in their language, including the sing song cadence. A few seconds later, the translator box repeated what he’d said to me, but in English.
“I am Captain Carlon.” He said, “You are in the medical bay on my ship the, the deep space explorer vessel FNS Destiny. This vessel is on a scientific mission. In case you hadn’t already noticed we’re not from your home world. I am willing to answer some limited questions for now but we will need to talk to you further because you can tell us much about your world and your people. I believe your species calls itself human, is this correct?”
I replied “Yes we call ourselves human.”
Then I asked, “How long have I been here? Can you take me home? My family will be worried.”
As I said all this Captain Carlon raised his hand and started to answer the questions I’d already asked: “You have been on this ship for eighty seven of your days now. I am afraid we cannot take you home just yet, we are a long way from there and are heading in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we have a schedule we need to keep. We will try to help you return home but will not be able to do so for some time.”
I just groaned at this as I felt myself beginning to slip into a depression. I’d been on this ship for nearly three months. Katherine, my wife would be frantic with worry. I even found myself starting to worry about her financial security. After a few minutes of me just staring at Captain Carlon, I turned on my side with my back to him. Tears came to my eyes and I cried myself to sleep, grieving for all I felt I’d lost. Of course, it wasn’t very long before I realised that I was just wallowing in self-pity.
I woke sometime later to an empty room, still depressed, still grieving for what I felt was my lost family and feeling terrible, even guilty for the worry they must be feeling with my apparent disappearance. I worried about how hurt they would be, probably feeling I’d just walked away from them. They couldn’t even hold a funeral for me as there would not be a body. I thought about all that was happening to me and honestly had no idea how to deal with it, not then. I started thinking of crazy schemes, born of desperation, to find a way home. Of course, none of those schemes were even remotely viable, I simply knew too little about the environment I was in. A little later, the female I’d spoken to first, walked into the room to check on me. She walked over to me with a look on her face that I didn’t recognise right then. I found out later this was the facial expression she used to denote sympathy and compassion. Since then, Ive seen that expression on her face many times, usually when she is trying to help someone in her professional capacity as the ships senior doctor.
She looked at me for a while before speaking, “You must be devastated about everything that has happened to you. You were very badly hurt in an accident, then find out you can’t return to your family and you are on a ship that is completely outside of your experience. This will become easier for you with time but you have no context you can use to make sense of your experiences right now. My people like to think we are a fair and compassionate species. Please be patient, I promise we will try to help you find your way home. It will just take a little time. Before you can do anything else though, you need to take some time to recover from your injuries. This won’t happen overnight, our medical technology is very advanced and powerful but still, much of your healing can only proceed at the pace your body can sustain. After you have recovered, we need to reach our home port. Then I promise, we will try to help you find your way home.”
She gave me a minute or so to process what she’d told me then asked, “Could you tell me what your name is please?”
I looked at her and thought about what she’d said. Even in my confused state, it was clear to me I wasn’t going home anytime soon, that simply wasn’t an option. Nor could I just sit here and pine away or wallow in self pity, and throwing a temper tantrum like some kind of spoiled brat clearly wasn’t an option either. Somewhere in the background of all this thinking, it occurred to me that my mind was finally beginning to work again. I realised I ne
eded to be a lot more cooperative with these people. I needed to give them a reason to want to help me. Of course, I was still suffering from shock, but I needed to deal with the current situation first. I could deal with the rest as I learned more. I decided I should answer her question to break the ice a little.
I said “My name is Colin, Colin Gordon.”
I continued, “I must apologise for my behaviour when I found out about all this. I should apologise to the Captain as well. Could you tell me your name? I can’t just say, hey you, whenever I want to attract your attention.”
She seemed to smile before replying, “My name is Eri. Don’t worry too much about the Captain. He already understands.”
I said “Thank you. I’m pleased to meet you Eri.”
I then asked “So, what now?”
She made a funny sound that I learned later was a laugh and said, “For now you need to rest a little more. We need to help you regain your strength, and then talk to you about your world and your people. We also need to help you to start thinking more positively, and teach you something about living in the Federation, at least till you can find a way home. The most important thing though, is to help you to get back on your feet, both literally and emotionally. You already know you will be out here for some time, so in return for your cooperation, and a promise that you won’t try to hurt any of this ship’s crew or other Federation citizens, we’ll teach you what we can about life in the Federation and try to help you find your place in our society till you can return home.”
Star Man 1: Star Bourne Page 2