With reasonable skill, Sean wrapped Nevvis’s arm and hit it with the spray. The bandage bubbled and hissed as it cleaned the laceration before it constricted, pulling the gaping wound closed. The stream of blood slowed to a trickle.
Satisfied, Sean wound the bandage around his bloody hand a couple of times, which stemmed the bleeding significantly. He then turned his attention to Taymar, who was doing her best to ignore them both. When Nevvis held out Taymar’s bloody hand, her wrist still secured in his grip, she leveled a gaze at Sean so filled with contempt and loathing it was as if it were a physical thing reaching into his mind.
“Bloody hell,” Sean whispered, staring into her savage gray eyes and seeing the weapon Targer had talked about for the first time.
“Dicci, Taymar! Enough already!” Nevvis said, giving her arm a shake. “Open your hand and let him wrap it so we can go get sealed up. These bandages aren’t going to slow the bleeding for long.”
Taymar continued to stare daggers into Sean, but she opened her palm, spreading the gash that the chipped handle had made and starting the fresh stream of nearly black blood seeping down her arm.
Sean pressed the pads against her palm and wrapped it into place. He could feel her eyes trying to bore a hole in his head as he worked, but he refused to look at her and kept his thoughts focused on his job in hopes of blocking her out of his mind. None too soon, they were patched up enough to make it to the medbay without leaving a trail of blood to mark their path. “Follow me,” he said, turning for the exit.
The converter beeped a warning, and all three of them paused to watch the shards of broken glass disappear into nothing.
“Pity we didn’t wait just a few minutes longer,” Sean said.
“Pity indeed.”
Taymar said nothing as they headed for the medbay.
Chapter 11 - Medical
Finally outside her prison walls, Taymar sucked in every detail as they traveled the narrow corridors, though they were not as narrow as the Shreet ship’s had been. They could have walked three across, had Nevvis not insisted on keeping her in front of him. Most of the walls were backlit with soft, glowing light, making them appear smooth, like milky white glass. Taymar longed to run her hand along the surface, except that Nevvis still had the one nearest the wall twisted behind her back. He kept just enough pressure on it to remind her that he was there. As if she could forget. His mind still pressed against her every thought. His scent still filled her nostrils. But so did the sweet tang of blood. Taymar smiled as his other hand, the wounded one, clamped down on her shoulder. At least she’d shared a little bit of her pain.
That she had lasted as long as she had against him still shocked her. Why hadn’t he just tagged her to unconsciousness? She reached into his mind, hoping to tease the answer out of his thoughts, but found it as impenetrable as it had ever been. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe she had somehow blocked him. Maybe her five months away from Drani had given her some sort of temporary immunity to his shakiu.
A tingle of pain ran from her temples to her toes in answer to her speculations.
Nevvis only chuckled in response, which drew a confused look from Captain Sean. When Taymar tried to delve into his mind for information, Nevvis tapped her shaki with more than a tingle.
Fine, she thought, turning her attention back to the ship. It had to be huge. They had been walking for what felt like forever. The corridor twisted right and left, and the captain was constantly ducking down one of the endless offshoots into a new hallway that looked identical to the one they had left. Occasional displays of blinking lights and pictures popped up on the walls as the group passed, fading back to milk with their departure. Both Nevvis and Captain Sean ignored them. She was just wondering what purpose they could possibly serve when a small group rounded the corner in front of them.
Two of the people looked like Captain Sean. Well, not exactly like Sean. Neither of them had hair growing out of their faces, but they were the same species to be sure. The other two looked like nothing she had seen before. Neither would have come past her shoulder had they been standing on their toes. Assuming they had toes. While everyone else she had seen on the ship wore the same dark blue pants and shirt, these beings wore long black robes that dragged on the ground behind them. They spoke simultaneously in high-pitched squeaks that were just starting to eat away at Taymar’s brain, when they looked up and saw the captain. All four instantly stopped, standing against the wall to make room. One of the tall men tipped his head to Sean as he walked by, but nothing was said. Taymar twisted around as they passed to watch the creatures scurry away and nearly tripped over her own feet as Nevvis pushed her toward another corridor.
Sean was regarding them both with obvious disapproval as he paused in front of a closed door. Bushy red eyebrows pushed together to form lines over his nose. His mouth seemed set in a permanent frown. The reason for his scowl wasn’t clear. His mind kept shifting between Nevvis’s blood-soaked arm and Taymar’s captured wrist, but he didn’t say a word. He just turned and swiped his hand in front of the opaque white wall, and then stared at the closed door expectantly.
After several long, quiet beats, the doors slid open to reveal a shuttle disturbingly like the one in the medcom back on Drani. A solid row of cushioned seats lined three of the white interior walls and, like at the medcom, they all stepped into the shuttle and stood. Nobody spoke.
Just as the doors slid closed, midnight black fingers slipped around the edge of one panel, halting its progress.
“Pardon me, sir,” said a willowy woman as she stepped into the shuttle and stood nearest Captain Sean. “I have been trying to catch up to you for the better part of an hour.”
Taymar looked up at the woman and stared. Standing taller than anyone in the shuttle, the woman’s sharp, chiseled features and nearly black complexion were striking. Even her graceful, abbreviated movements as she turned to face the front made her seem more like a sculpture than a living person. Taymar had seen spots that black, but never a whole body. Jaren wasn’t even that dark, and he had the darkest skin she had ever seen. Without a doubt, the woman was beautiful and she wasn’t half as intrigued by Taymar as Taymar was by her. The woman graced Nevvis and Taymar with a cursory glance, and then focused her full attention on Captain Sean. “I knew if I stalked the deck shuttle, I would find you eventually.”
Sean just smiled. By poking around in the woman’s mind, Taymar figured out that her name was Daniil, but telepathy wasn’t needed to work out that the two were close friends. Sean’s warm, broad grin was enough.
With a subtler closed-lip smile of her own, the sculpture continued. “We are being called to section A of the Branite system to rescue a research vessel that has gone cold and is drifting toward Shreet space. Shall I change our heading?”
Taymar glanced from Sean to Daniil and finally to Nevvis, whose mind was as blank as always. They were playing a game. Their minds told her that Daniil had already changed their course, and neither Sean nor Nevvis were surprised to hear about the other ship. But why the show?
“Throw out the ores, Commander. And you need to be telling the crew to put their shoulders into it, won’t you?” Sean said.
The sculpture nodded, a movement of pure grace. But she wasn’t thinking about Sean’s orders. She was wondering why a ship like the Regal would be called to such a mundane task. As Taymar poked around in Sean’s mind, she found him not quite so forthcoming with information, and what little he did reveal quickly dried up.
No doubt to change his train of thought, Sean turned to Nevvis just as the door slid open. “You weren’t expecting the Tanku to send any more cargo ships this way, were you?”
Shoving Taymar before him, Nevvis stepped off the shuttle and scuffed his throat. “It’s hard to say what he will do. I think we are safe for the moment, though.” There was more than one message in thos
e words.
After traveling another trail of curving corridors, they finally arrived at a large blue door. The panel slid open, and she knew from the smell that it was a medical compound. As if driven by a will of their own, her legs peddled backward until she hit the hard wall of Nevvis’s stomach. A sliver of ice slid across her spine; drumming heartbeats filled her ears and swallowing became impossible.
Nevvis tightened his grip on her wrist. “Taymar,” he warned. “There are two ways to go through that door. I would rather you walked, but I will drag you if I have to. Either way, you are going.” Although his words were harsh, his actions were tender as he attempted in his way to reassure her. He used the injured arm to guide her forward, pressing her close to him as they entered, kneading away the tension in her mind with his telepathy the entire time. “There won’t be any tests. I give you my word. Besides,” he added as another drop of blood fell from the already soaked bandages, “I’m bleeding on the rug. Now let’s go.”
The door behind them slid closed with a soft whoosh and Taymar tried to turn toward the sound, but Nevvis’s grip held firm. She glanced up. His infuriating golden eyes stared back silently, demanding her compliance. There would be no tests. Nevvis never broke his word. That knowledge did little to abate her fear, though, as Sean’s keel jumped into motion the instant he saw Nevvis’s bloody arm.
As Nevvis tried to guide Taymar toward a nearby bench, two technicians converged on his wound, eventually prying her from him, to his obvious dismay. “Tay, sit right there. Do not move,” he ordered as they dragged him to a similar bench across the room. Taymar glanced around the room and considered making a run for it, but what was the point? If she even made it past the blue door, which was unlikely, where would she go then? Nevvis’s invasive presence in her mind intensified, but she ignored him and took in the surrounding details.
The keel they called Dr. Lats and two technicians had Nevvis’s arm stripped of the makeshift bandage and were attacking it with a sterilizer wand and a handheld scanner. She watched with mild interest as they positioned a fist-size disk just above Nevvis’s shoulder and released it in the air. The silvery object hovered above Nevvis’s skin for a second, making tiny darting movements. Then, in a sudden burst, it spun. Long, skinny legs snapped out from the sides, extended downward, and attached themselves to Nevvis’s arm like a mutant spider seeking the best hold on its prey. Judging from the way Nevvis’s face abruptly relaxed, Taymar guessed it was a nerve-blocking device. And a creepy one at that.
The ordeal of mending Nevvis’s arm lost its urgency as they began knitting the gash back together with a laser fuser, so Taymar surveyed the room. After all, it wasn’t the first time one or both of them had been sliced open in a fight. She had to admit, though, this time she had gotten him pretty good. A tiny smile slipped through her iron resolve. She had still lost, but not as spectacularly as usual.
Machines covered nearly every spot of wall space around the small treatment area. Some were flush with the wall or set behind the same milky white panels as the ones in the hallway. Other contraptions stuck out on rotating balls so they could be pulled and twisted in any possible direction.
Along the wall beside each bench/bed combination was a small table, some dotted with bottles and tubes. Others were bare. Taymar twisted her head to find the one by her. A small vial half as long as her pinky finger lay on its side just out of arm’s reach near an opened hypo-injector. They had probably been in the process of reloading the device when she and Nevvis walked in. Still steadily taking in the details of the room and being careful not to pause too long on any one thing, Taymar let her thoughts bounce around as she tracked back to Nevvis. He was watching the technicians. That suggested he hadn’t heard her thoughts. Good.
As if on cue, the doctor stepped away from Nevvis and snatched the vial she had been targeting off the small table. After snapping it into the injector, he handed it off to one of the waiting technicians and plunged his hands into a small, glowing blue chamber tucked into the adjacent wall. “Your arm will be sore for a while,” he explained, hands still bathing beneath the pulsing light. “But if you will avoid knife fights in the immediate future, I think you will survive.”
“I’ll keep that foremost in my mind,” Nevvis agreed as one of the white-clad technicians removed the spider contraption from his shoulder. Nevvis waved off the technician when he reached up to administer the injection. He gave his arm a healthy shake and then twisted it around to survey the damage. Only two thin red lines remained to mark the place of Taymar’s impressive effort. She was disappointed. Probably sensing her thoughts, Nevvis turned and pointed at Taymar. “I think you need to use that thing on Taymar as well. Her hand is sliced up and she has several cuts on her leg that look pretty bad.”
At the mention of her name, Taymar jumped off the bench and stood ready for the keel’s attack. To her satisfaction, he appeared no more thrilled with having to deal with her than she was with him. Good. Taymar widened her stance to center herself and met the doctor’s eyes. “I will hurt you, keel,” she said, her voice pitched low and steady.
“I don’t doubt that,” the doctor answered, reaching for the laser-fuser. He spread his arms out to his side and took a step toward her. “Just please be kind enough to keep it clean. I can’t stand the sight of my own blood.”
From the corner of her eye, she caught Captain Sean and Nevvis exchanging smiles. Dar, however, appeared to be absolutely serious. When he was within arm’s length, he reached for her injured hand. Shock flooded from his mind when she gave it to him. The doctor had no idea that Nevvis’s thoughts pressed against her will like coiled rope. Had the Dran not been in the room, Taymar’s response would have been much different.
Dar turned her hand palm up and frowned. “I assume you were holding the knife,” he said, pushing at the flayed skin.
Pain shot up her arm as the cuts began trickling blood, but she didn’t move. “I melted a piece of glass. A piece must have chipped off.”
“Silly me. Glass. Of course.” The doctor glanced over at the captain, who stood near the door. Captain Sean only shrugged. Still frowning, Dar stepped in closer, handed the fuser off to a waiting technician, and took the offered nerve-blocking spider device in exchange. Before he managed to even activate the dread contraption, Taymar yanked her hand free of the keel’s grip and stepped into his personal space. With a quick jerk and a well-placed foot, she sent the tiny doctor sprawling against the table nearest the door.
The room burst into a state of chaos. Taymar’s nerves flared in pain as Nevvis tapped her shaki, but he didn’t touch her. His path was blocked by Captain Sean and a technician who were both trying to squeeze their way around a bed to get to her. As a female technician knelt to help the doctor to his feet, the captain managed to break the impasse near the bed and was heading her way, determination darkening his green eyes. However intimidating his intentions may have been, the captain had no idea how inconsequential his threat he was. The Dran near the door was the real problem, and he hadn’t moved.
Another wave of liquid fire coursed through her system. Taymar stumbled back against one of the beds and forced air into her lungs. That was the key to holding out against the Dran’s shakiu. Focus. She wrapped her mind around the bed and tried to yank it free of the wall, but another wave of pain broke her connection. She managed to send a tray of equipment flying in Sean’s general direction, but before it landed, she collapsed to the floor in agony. Hands grabbed at her arms and legs, but then just as quickly, they all stepped away.
“Tay,” Nevvis said, his face hovering before hers. The pain was all but gone. He left just enough to make his point. “You will not, under any circumstances, hurt the people on this ship. Do you understand me?”
Taymar scooted backward on the floor so she wasn’t directly under him and pushed herself up onto her elbows. A small, bloody handprint marked the floor where she had touched it. “Then they better not try to hurt me.”
“Taymar. I am d
eadly serious about this.”
“So am I.”
For a long moment, they stared at each other in stony silence. The air between them was becoming too thick to breathe when Nevvis finally broke the standoff. He glanced down at the blood trickling from her palm and shifted back on his heels. The rest of the pain vanished. “They are not trying to hurt you. They just want to seal your cuts. Just like they did mine.”
Taymar glanced down at her hand and curled it into a ball. Before she could protest, Nevvis wrapped his hand around her clenched fist and spoke. “No, it won’t be all right. It will get crusty and infected. It needs to be sealed.”
The fact that he could hear her thoughts despite her shields was bad enough. That he could anticipate them was completely unacceptable. But, he was right, which only made it that much worse. “Fine. The keel can seal it, but he’s not putting that spider thing on me.”
Confusion rippled across Nevvis’s face, but it was brief. “The nerve blocker? That’s what you’re having a problem with?”
“I won’t let them use it on me.”
Nevvis cocked his head, his expression incredulous. Everything about him said you will if I say you will, but he finally shrugged. “Okay. No blocker. It’s going to hurt.”
Taymar returned his incredulous expression. “You’re joking, right?”
Without comment, Nevvis stood, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her to her feet. Still holding her arm, he nodded his head toward the scattered equipment and the overturned tray. “You need to pick those up.”
Dar started stammering a thanks-but-no-thanks comment, but before he managed a fully coherent sentence, Taymar teked the tray back onto its wheels and whisked the fallen paraphernalia back onto the shiny surface, ignoring the room full of gawking people as she did it. Her time on Daryus had conditioned her to the shock her telekinesis usually caused. People thought mentally manipulated objects would float through the air like a drunk ghost. Why, she didn’t know. It was no different than moving things by hand.
Shield of Drani (World of Drani Book 1) Page 17