by S. L. Viehl
I pulled the laser up and out of the way. “Checking up on my work, boss?”
Her white eyes were tired, her once-immaculate tunic ruined. “I am replacing you, Healer. Stop and rest for an interval.”
The Hsktskt hadn’t rested while they were here. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve been performing surgery for seventeen hours without ceasing.”
“Is that right?” My nurse nodded. I started the post-op scans. “I’m up for another seventeen more. Go on, Tonetka, take a rest yourself.”
“It is not a matter of discussion, Cherijo. Until I retire, you remain my subordinate,” she said, and plucked the scanner from my hand. “Go. You may not have another opportunity for some time.”
With a helpful push from the nurse, I stepped away from the table. “Okay. Thanks.”
My legs were numb from standing in one place for so long. I hobbled out from surgery into the general hospital area. Several of the nurses stopped me to consult on post-op cases. So far my patients were stable or improving. Once I was satisfied, I slipped out of the building into the ruins of what had been the NessNevats’ largest settlement.
Until the Hsktskt showed up.
The nurses had brought me bits and pieces of information while I operated. The death toll stood at approximately two hundred thousand. Search teams were still sweeping through the formerly populated areas, but evidently Reever’s theory was right, they hadn’t found anyone still alive. A special construction crew had been sent down from the Sunlace to excavate the mass graves that would be needed.
An estimated ten thousand more natives had been taken from the planet. Slaver goods, if they survived the Hsktskt preference for raw flesh, and the jaunt to Faction-occupied space.
The survivors numbered only eight hundred fifty-two. Most of those were children who had evidently hidden in nooks and crannies during the assault. It was theorized that their weaker life signs hadn’t registered on the Faction’s proximity scanners.
Or perhaps, I thought, the bastards couldn’t be bothered and had just left them here to die.
I sat down on a battered section of wall.
It wasn’t a wall anymore. Not since the Hsktskt had stopped by.
A year ago I’d delivered five Hsktskt infants during a hostile visit by two of the Faction to the FreeClinic on K- 2. At the time, I’d gone so far as to help the reptilian warriors leave the planet without violence. In gratitude, the female had promised to name one of the young after me—the equivalent of being made a Hsktskt godmother.
Godmother to the Hsktskt. Godmother to the butchers who had done this.
Somehow I didn’t think the NessNevat would appreciate my dubious honor. Had the pair I’d helped taken part in this?
“Cherijo.”
Reever walked up behind me. I glanced at him without enthusiasm. “Hello, Duncan. Pull up a chunk of rubble. I’m taking a break.”
“You have been busy.”
“Yeah, I have.” I stared at the dust and rings of sweat on his black garments. “You, too.”
He brushed at his trousers with a half-hearted swipe.
“We began to dig out the lower level of a collapsed learning facility. As scans revealed all the children within were deceased, we discontinued the effort.” He said all of it without inflection. I was too numb myself to react to his usual prosaic manner. “You called me Duncan.”
I raised my gaze to his. “That’s still your name, right?”
“You never call me Duncan.”
This seemed like a really stupid conversation to be having. “Sure I do. Just not very often. I’ll go back to Reever, if you want.”
“I have no preference.”
“Maybe I should. The last time I called you Duncan, you kicked me out of bed.” I toed a bit of scorched rock around. “So, what else would you like to talk about? The weather? Seems nice down here for summer, if you ignore the smell of the decomposing bodies and the smoke from those fires they haven’t put out yet. What do you think of the natives? Not that there are a whole lot left. Their kids are pretty good at fooling executioners. How about the view? Once the crew finishes digging those graves, they could pull down a few of these building remnants, maybe—” I jammed my fists against my eyes. “God.”
“Don’t blame yourself for this.”
“Don’t waste a perfect opportunity to say I Told You So.” My hands dropped away. I had no tears, not even for myself. “Remember? I brought five Hsktskt into existence. Five future Hsktskt butchers. Mayer was right. I should have killed them, and their parents.”
“That would make you as callous and indifferent to life as the Faction,” he said.
“Maybe. Then again, maybe I might be able to look at these kids and not feel like a co-conspirator to this massacre.” I studied my hands. There was a fine, dry residue of powder on them from my gloves. No blood. At least not the kind I could see. “I don’t know how to handle this, Reever.”
He moved closer. “Call me Duncan.”
I had no choice. I had to laugh. The sound erupted, raw and wild. I choked it back as soon as I could. It seemed obscene, especially here, among these ruins.
“Your anger and self-recrimination will not change what has happened here,” Reever said.
“I’m not angry.” I was a authority on the subject. It didn’t feel like this. “You’ve seen me angry.”
“Yes.”
“You had every right to turn me down.” I had put this off long enough. “I was using you.” I stared back at the fragments of stone below my footgear. “I’m sorry about that. You deserve better.”
I chanced another look at him. He was a block of stone himself, staring back at me. In spite of my black mood, my lips twisted. “This is where you gracefully accept my apology, Reever.”
“You do not—” He halted, muttered something in an obscure language I couldn’t decipher, then added, “I will never completely understand human females.”
“I’m not exactly a role model,” I said, and jumped down from the wall. “Want to take a walk? I should stretch my legs before I head back.”
We picked our way through the vestiges of the thorough-fare. Avoided the broken bodies being stacked for burial. We reached a small clearing where the supplies were being coordinated and sorted for the survivors. The rescue team had everything under control—Jorenian efficiency was phenomenal during times of crisis. I looked over some medical gear as we walked around it.
“They’re going to need more than medicines and food,” I said. “Most of their adult generation is gone. They won’t be able to rebuild—” Reever’s hand pulled me to a stop. “What?”
The mask hadn’t cracked, but something showed through it. “I would like to hold you.”
Far be it from me to argue. “Sure.”
We were both dirty, sweaty, and smelly, so we cancelled each other out. The feel of his body soothed me. His scarred hands rubbed in circles over my back. It was a nice feeling. The first I’d had since landing on this devastated world.
“What are you thinking about?” he asked against the top of my head.
“All these children, left orphaned. Stranded. Alone.” I heard the hitch in my voice and shuddered against him. “I keep pushing myself past it. And I go right back again. Want to hear something awful? I wish you’d never updated the linguistic core. They keep calling for their parents. Praying. Begging their dead mothers to wake up. And all I can do is repair their bodies.”
He was inside my mind before I said another word. I expected to find myself paralyzed again, but this time he let me retain control over my limbs. Or maybe he was too tired to make me into a statue. Our thoughts entwined. Reever’s cool, white soul cloaked me against the horrors I’d seen.
For a moment, I let myself snuggle against him, body and mind. I needed this. I wish I could be like you. Disconnect myself from all these emotions.
They are part of you. He was remembering when we had been this close, back on the ship.
May
be you should let me go. The last time we did this, we nearly started fistfighting.
We can be friends.
I was dubious. Friends?
We can try. I know what you shared with Kao Torin is beyond us. Yet—
I cut him off. Try your luck with one of the Jorenian women. I’ve got to get back.
The link ended. When I would have stepped back, Reever’s arms held me in place. His mouth brushed over my brow. Tenderness, from Reever. What would be next? Smiling and laughing? And what was I doing, letting him get this close to me?
“Joey.” No change to the flat set of his countenance, I saw. “When this is over, will you spend time with me again?”
“Sure.” As soon as I had a complete psych-eval.
He released me. “I will walk back with you.”
I went back and had one of the nurses drag Tonetka out of my surgery (we referred to it as assisting the Senior Healer). I watched my boss strip off her protective gear as I sterilized for the next case. Weariness made purplish shadows beneath the Jorenian woman’s eyes. It wasn’t good for a woman her age to work like this. I didn’t tell her that. I liked my head where it was attached.
“Your color is better,” Tonetka said once she had inspected me. “I want you to take regular rest intervals of at least ten minutes between cases.”
“Sure I will. The same way you have, right?” I snapped my mask up over my face. “Go do your rounds, boss.”
My next patient was a diminutive girl with a mangled lower limb. The regenerators couldn’t locate a viable vessel in the crushed leg. Gangrene had set in, causing extensive tissue necrosis. I was forced to amputate. While I performed the hideous necessity, the nurse sponged sweat from my eyes. Okay. A few tears, too.
“How old is she?” I asked, after I sealed the stump with the laser.
“Two and a half revolutions,” the nurse replied.
“Damn it.” I stripped off my gloves and threw them down. Beneath outrage, guilt quietly gnawed at me. The nurse called for the next case. They kept coming. Terrible burns. Broken bones. Compression damage. Massive internal trauma. Three more amputations.
One of the children with grievous head injuries died on my table before I ever touched her. I had just sterilized and turned around to find the nurse gently closing the wide, blind eyes. It shook me down to my heels.
She’d made it this far, only to die?
The damage was too extensive, an inner voice argued. No one could have survived four days of waiting for treatment. Not in her condition.
No one else had died on my table. I’d been able to save them. Had my former patients come here and wiped out these people? Destroyed hundreds of thousands of lives? Shot this little girl in the head?
How was I going to live with it, if they had?
The Omorr passed by, stopped, and studied the dead child. “What happened here, Doctor?”
“If you need me to tell you, go back to medtech!” I tore the mask from my face, and threw it across the table at him.
Squilyp seemed piqued. “There is no reason to attack me. I’m only trying to offer—”
I reached across the child’s body. Grabbed two handfuls of his protective gear. Hauled him over until our brows nearly touched.
“What? Some more of that superior expertise? Is that what you’re offering, Squid Lips?”
“Release me,” he said, his coloring darkening from pink to puce. “And my name is Squilyp.”
I shook him once, hard enough to make him fling out his three arm-limbs so he wouldn’t fall on the corpse. Just so I had his attention.
“Listen to me very carefully, Squid Lips,” I said. “You want to be Senior Healer? No problem. Talk to Pnor, tell him how wonderful you are. You want to impress Tonetka with your surgical skill? Be my guest. God knows you have enough of it. But never, I repeat, never, get in my face about a patient I’ve just lost. Got it?”
He nodded slowly. I let go.
“Good boy.” I smoothed out the wrinkles I’d made in his tunic, then gave his chest a shove. “Now, get away from me.”
Squilyp stalked over to his table. My nurse had disappeared. I spent a few precious moments cleaning some of the dried blood from the dead child’s face. She’d been a pretty little thing. Just before I pulled the linen over the body, I bent down over and kissed the tiny cool forehead.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”
I donned fresh gear. Shouted for a nurse. Watched as the diminutive corpse was removed for burial. Sterilized the table and my hands. Took the next patient.
It went on through the night and into the next morning. Someone kept bringing me water laced with saline and fed it to me through a tube stuck in the side of my mask.
I kept going. Horror and shame were great motivators.
In the afternoon heat of the second day, I paused long enough to inject myself with stimulants. No one objected. I would have torn their heads off if they had. Another twelve hours passed before I left the table. The only way that happened was by Tonetka yelling, grabbing the front of my tunic, and shoving me away from the laser rig.
One of the nurses pushed me out into the central complex. I couldn’t summon enough energy to walk. I slid down against a broken pillar and closed my eyes against the coming dawn.
The medevac team didn’t notice, or they were too scared to touch me. Didn’t matter. I slept.
The surgical resident assisting Squilyp shook me awake so I could relieve Tonetka. I paused long enough to remove my filthy tunic. The protective gear could only take so much saturation before fluids seeped through to the garment beneath. I didn’t wash the blood off, just put clean gear on top of it.
Three days later, we cleared the last of the surgical cases. The medevac team had worked straight through, halting only to drop, sleep, then get up and continue. I took the bulk of the critical surgical cases. Squilyp and Tonetka shared the balance.
Two hundred of the survivors died anyway.
Tonetka and Squilyp were hauled off by some equally exhausted nurses. I only brushed them aside when they tried to do the same thing to me. Although the surgical cases had been covered, there were more problems that needed attention. Dressings that needed replacement. Suture sites requiring irrigation. A voice crying out for comfort.
So many voices, hands, eyes. All needing me. Nearly as much as I needed to make amends.
In the end Pnor sent Dhreen to take me back to the ship. Jorenians were too polite to kidnap someone. Former Oenrallian traders weren’t as tactful.
One moment I was adjusting a dialisyzer. The next I was being pulled from the equipment by strong, yellow spoon-fingers.
“Dhreen!” My voice was hoarse after days of snapping out orders. “What do you think you’re doing?”
He tugged the scanner from my numb hand. “Time to go, Doc.”
“I can’t. This patient—”
“No, Doc.” He put an arm around my waist.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I have to—”
“Let’s go, Doc.” He dragged me away from the cot.
“You don’t understand, there’s a—”
“Now, Doc.”
When I didn’t budge, he stooped, bent, and slung me over his shoulder.
I argued upside-down the whole way from the hospital to Transport. I had no idea Oenrallians were that stubborn. By the time we reached his launch, I was feeling very much put upon. And light-headed. It showed. His thin lips twisted as he rigged me into the harness the way he would a disobedient child.
“Don’t grimace at me that way,” he said, looking back from the helm before he fired the engines. “I’m just following Captain Pnor’s orders.”
“Uh-huh.” I stared at the viewport as the chilled interior air made me shiver. My eyes widened as I saw the ghostly reflection of my image on the plas. I looked down. My tunic was gone, my undershirt stiff and soiled. I couldn’t recall the last time I sat, ate, or slept. A snarl of hair hung around my cheeks, limp and filthy. I smelled of steriliz
er solution. Dried sweat. NessNevat blood.
“One of the neighboring ally worlds sent replacement relief teams. They’re arriving today. The rest of our people will return to the ship when they land.”
“I should have stayed,” I felt I had to point out.
“Doc, you’re extinct on your appendages.”
“I am not dead on my feet,” I corrected him with great dignity. The change in temperature was making me tired, that was all. A yawn divided my face in half. “Okay. Wake me . . . when we . . . ge . . .”
I woke up in the launch bay as we reached the Sunlace. My body went on strike when I tried to get up from the seat. Dhreen had to lift me out of the rigging and carry me to the gyrlift. He got me to my quarters, then turned me over to a nurse already waiting there.
Things became blurry after that. My garments had to be peeled off my sluggish limbs. My cleanser unit pounded the filth from my flesh. Something warm and bland was urged to my lips. The world went from vertical to horizontal. Someone put on one of my jazz discs. A lonely sax spilled a cascade of abstract notes. The weight of a soft coverlet was drawn over my aching body.
I slept, but badly. My dreams were filled with the hiss of a lascalpel against torn flesh. The pitiful cries of wounded children. The dead eyes of a little girl.
CHAPTER FOUR
Particular Deaths
Sometime during my extended rest interval, the Sunlace transitioned out of orbit away from NessNevat and continued the jaunt along its convoluted route to Joren.
My experiences left me beyond exhaustion. The first time I woke up, I rose only to take care of my immediate needs, then staggered back to the sleeping platform. The second time I tried to stay conscious. My mind and body conspired against me, and I fell asleep sitting up, with Jenner curled in my lap.
It was the kink in my neck that roused me the third time. Yawning, I tried to rub out the cramped muscles while I checked my display.
“Forty hours!”
I signaled the Medical Bay, and demanded to know who sedated me.
“No sedation was required,” one of the nurses said. “Your labors on the planet were most adequate, Healer Cherijo.” She told me most of the sojourn medical team, including Tonetka, were still confined to quarters. Pnor’s orders.