Exile's Throne

by Rhonda Mason

  “Vayne, prep a splint, we need to set her arm,” she said, mostly to give herself enough breathing room to attempt the lung reinflation procedure.

  Noar must have handled the head wound, because he murmured that he was going to check on Benny.

  Tia’tan’s monitoring strip warned of critically low blood oxygen levels. Her abdomen was definitely filling with some sort of fluid. Kayla felt for the location of the ribs, said a prayer that she didn’t hit any nerves, veins, or arteries, and inserted the needle into Tia’tan’s chest cavity. The syringe filled with air as she drew back on the plunger.

  That was right, wasn’t it? Man, she hoped so. She stuck Tia’tan a second time, drawing off another fifty ccs of air, but that was all she dared do. She was already introducing a possible infection to the lungs, and if she’d done the wrong thing… No time to think about that now. She hushed everyone and listened to Tia’tan’s left lung again. Better. Not perfect by any means, but she was breathing easier. Thank the stars.

  “I need to examine Tia’tan’s head wound, then clean and treat as many of the external wounds as I can, but that’s going to have to wait until we get her upstairs.”

  “Are you sure we should move her?” Vayne asked. He looked terrified by the idea.

  “We have to. She needs to be on a ventilator, and she’s lost a lot of blood.” A lot. She was going to go into cardiac arrest again if they didn’t move quickly. “Plus I need to get antibiotics into her, among other things.”

  Kayla could see the mutilated body of Toble from the corner of her eye and it was killing her. “Can someone cover Toble, for the love of the void?” A rebel rushed in to help.

  They worked quickly to stabilize Tia’tan for the move. Hekkar and the rebels cleared wreckage from around her and laid down the backboard. They’d already set up a gurney. Noar held her down by the shoulders as Kayla directed Vayne how best to set her broken arm bone. He could do it with much greater accuracy using his psi powers. Tia’tan thrashed weakly at the movement, startled to a greater level of consciousness by the new pain. Her eyelids fluttered and she gasped something out. A word? A name?

  “Benny,” Noar said, “she’s worried for Benny, I can feel it.” He bent closer to her, whispering something soothing, which Kayla promptly tuned out. She didn’t give a damn about Benny right now, or any of the crew. It was their fault this had happened, that Toble had been mutilated and Tia’tan lay near death.

  Vayne held Tia’tan’s straightened arm immobile and Kayla applied a dermalplast to the skin where her bone had broken through. She quickly wrapped it in a coolant cuff to help reduce the swelling. Tia’tan passed out as Kayla splinted it, which was another worry, since Tia’tan likely had a massive concussion and shouldn’t be allowed to sleep.

  How the frutt would she know?

  Noar immobilized her neck and head with the braces the rebels had brought, Vayne tied her legs together, and Kayla gingerly laid her broken arm on her chest before covering it with the other.

  “We’re going to treat her like she has spinal damage, since we have no idea if that’s the case or not.” Kayla looked up at Vayne. “Shift her onto the backboard, then lift her onto the gurney. I know you want to be gentle with her, but believe me, fast is better.” She tried to convey the extreme importance of what she’d just said. “The best way you can help Tia’tan right now is to get this over with.”

  When Vayne nodded, Kayla scrambled to stuff medical supplies back in Toble’s case. “Make sure the lift is waiting,” she said to a rebel. All around them the crews’ comms chattered as people called back and forth where they were and where they were headed. Natali had ordered several rebels to the medical station that Kayla was headed for, and it sounded like Ida was going there with another stretcher.

  “Can you be my eyes and ears for this?” Kayla asked Shimwell, one of the rebels who had accompanied Noar. She would rather have Hekkar, but he was in no fit state at the moment, not with Toble’s ruined body only paces away. “We need to figure it all out, and the next few hours could be telling, but I can only focus on Tia’tan right now.”

  “I’ve got it,” Shimwell said. “And I’ll send the injured crew up after you.”

  With that, she abdicated any and all responsibility for handling the massive shit storm they’d entered, leaving it up to Natali and everyone else to manage the details and keep her loved ones safe.

  Kayla arranged the defib device and the blood charger on Tia’tan’s chest, then gave Vayne the go-ahead to lift her telekinetically. Hekkar and Shimwell slid the backboard under her, strapped her on, and then Vayne lifted her onto the gurney. The monitoring strip warned of worsening vital signs and Kayla’s chest constricted.

  “Hurry,” she said, and took one last look at Toble’s lifeless form. I still need you.

  19

  Vayne covered Tia’tan’s body with his mind, laying psionic pressure on her like a smothering blanket in order to keep her perfectly still as he rushed the gurney along. Every instinct screamed for him to slow down, be cautious, handle her like glass, but the fear coming off of Kayla in waves had him flying down the corridor.

  She mentally chanted Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop, and while he didn’t know if she meant him or Tia’tan’s heartbeat, the end result was the same: Vayne kept running, Kayla beside him.

  They arrived at the nearest medical station without incident, and were met by several well-armed rebels. No one spoke except Kayla. She ordered everyone around relentlessly, getting things ready and in place before moving Tia’tan into a bed. He watched his sister’s nimble fingers flying over consoles and doing up tubes, none of which he had the first clue about. Her face was screwed up with frustration and intense concentration as she worked. Being in the dark was killing him. Every twitch and moan from Tia’tan had him holding his breath. He had to know what was going on as it happened, or he would lose it. He brushed at Kayla’s mental shields, promising without words that he would only listen, not disrupt her at all, and begging her to open to him. If she wouldn’t…

  He shut that dark line of thought down instantly. Kayla saved him by letting him into her mind.

  While Kayla looked so capable outwardly, inwardly her thoughts were a mess. She didn’t know where anything was in the room, or even what half of what she needed should even look like, considering it was five hundred years old. She cursed her limited medical knowledge, the Yari’s refusal to accept input from Toble’s modern-day devices, and the person or persons who had done this to them all. She was convinced she was going to accidentally kill Tia’tan with her ineptness, and just as convinced Tia’tan would die if she did nothing. She hated this ship and every crew member on it quite vehemently in this precise moment, and she wished desperately that there was someone—anyone—on board who could just tell her the right thing to do. She hesitated, becoming stymied in all the choices and what ifs.

  “You’re doing great, Kayla,” he said aloud. “Keep going.” Please keep going. She had to, because who else was there?

  She blinked, her eyes refocusing, and gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks,” she said, then, back to it, shouted, “Where the frutt is my hot water?”

  By now she had Tia’tan breathing oxygen from a mask, hooked up to lines bringing in blood and fluids, and being treated with antibiotics. She set Vayne to washing the blood from Tia’tan’s left side so they could assess the injuries more fully. She unwound the bandage from Tia’tan’s head, examining the gash across her forehead that had bled so profusely. When she didn’t freak out or send everyone scrambling with another set of orders, Vayne realized that, like most cuts to the scalp, it probably looked worse than it was.

  Ida arrived with Noar, two rebels, and Benny on a gurney. The captain immediately took charge of Benny’s treatment, leaving Kayla free to focus on Tia’tan.

  “Thank you,” Kayla said to the captain, then switched her focus immediately. “Noar, I need you, since you’re the only other person in the room who knows how t
o operate imperial medsticks.” She gestured to the open kit on the table beside her. “Can you start on those cuts on her thigh while I run some diagnostics?” She didn’t even wait for a reply.

  Vayne withdrew from Kayla’s mind. When had he become so useless? He wanted to help, knew he should do something, but he was paralyzed. The scene was so familiar. His mother had lain in that bed, wracked by horrible agony after Dolan had used his machine to rip the psi powers from her mind… again. She hadn’t been bloody like Tia’tan, but she’d been just as close to death.

  Natali lay there.

  Erebus, the night he died.

  Jinto, who had been his favorite aunt.

  Kerryn, who was his lover at the time of the coup.

  Vayne had lain in the same prone position, suffering from yet another bout with Dolan’s machine, Natali watching over him, Uncle Ghirhad keeping vigil.

  They died, one by one, bodies finally giving out.

  He’d died there, at least in part.

  And it was happening again. Had Tia suffered brain damage? Would she emerge from this the same, or had she been irrevocably changed, the way each of Dolan’s prisoners had been?

  Had he already lost her when he was just starting to know her?

  Kayla swung the antiquated diagnostic equipment from its cradle in the wall and studied it. “I need the manual. It’s over there, by the lab bench.”

  This he could do. Vayne whisked it from its slot and floated it over to her, holding it open so she could flip through the pages without moving away from Tia’tan. It took a lot of hmming, button pressing, and page flipping, but she was finally satisfied with the settings and hit the start button. The machine hummed to life and started some kind of calibration sequence, if the readout was accurate.

  Kayla finally had a chance to examine the damage to Tia’tan’s left side. She had a series of scratches and lacerations from her chest to her hip, but nothing serious. A massive hematoma was forming over her ribcage, though, and the swelling in her abdomen wasn’t decreasing.

  “Let’s let the scanner do its thing,” Kayla said to everyone. Noar had closed the deeper tissue on Tia’tan’s thigh wounds, and would repair the dermis once the scan was complete.

  While they washed up, Vayne reached out gingerly with his mind, brushing against Tia’tan’s. He was met immediately with a great deal of pain, which seemed to be the only thing she was aware of at the moment, and even that was being reported on an instinctive level. Her consciousness, if it was even still there, was buried so deeply within that he couldn’t reach her.

  Ida joined the others. “Benny is being of sound body, mostly, but blood vessels having popped in his eyes is to lead me on a belief of strangling. Also, marks on his neck have appeared to the shape of hands.” She shook her head. “I am not knowing who has the making of all this. It seems possible not, and he is still unconscious.”

  “But you did know about Officer Kendrik and the others, correct?” Kayla pressed. “They’d been locked up on your orders?”

  “Locked up and drugged,” Vayne spat, furious over the whole thing. They should have freed the prisoners as soon as they found them, then none of this would have happened. Toble wouldn’t have been compelled to check on them once again, and he wouldn’t have asked Tia’tan for an escort.

  “I had my crew to be quarantined, yes,” Ida confirmed. “For health and safety being theirs. But I would never harm them, not in any way of your thinking.” She drew herself up. “I am captain of this ship, their wellbeing of responsibility mine.”

  Vayne turned to face her, unable to keep quiet. “Those sedatives you used were killing them. Only four people had access to their cell, which one of you was it?”

  “You having the access too, apparently.” Ida looked just as furious as he felt. “How am I to know or to know not whether this is one of your doing?” She turned on Kayla. “What was your medic doing there? He could have the knowing of how to drug a body.”

  “He was trying to help them,” Kayla shot back. “And he died for it. He was trying to help your crew, which you should have been doing.”

  “Why was their presence kept from us?” Vayne asked. “You told me and Tia that none of the other quarantined stepa had survived.”

  “It not being your business.”

  “Everything that happens on this ship,” a cold voice said from the doorway, “is my business.” Natali had arrived. “Captain, we will discuss this later.”

  Ida’s lips tightened a fraction, but she inclined her head. “Yes, en’shaar.” The perfect Ordochian soldier, bowing to the wishes of the planet’s proclaimed leader.

  How long would that last?

  The diagnostic machine beeped, drawing everyone’s attention. Images started scrolling on the complink at the lab bench.

  “At least we know it’s working,” Kayla said, sounding hopeful for the first time.

  “The surgeons are on their way,” Natali reported. “They’re packing equipment now. Do you have any special recommendations for them?”

  Kayla sighed. “She’ll definitely need surgery on her arm, has a seriously collapsed lung, probably punctured by a fractured rib, so they’ll need a machine to suck the air out at the very least, and most likely surgery there, as well.” Kayla squinted her eyes closed for a second, as if trying to keep a million minute details inside her skull. “I assume she has a concussion, considering how everything was beat to shit in that room. As soon as the scan is finished I should be able to gauge if she has swelling in her brain. For now they should act as if she does and plan accordingly.”

  She looked up at Natali. “Tell them to bring any possible medications they think she’ll need. I have no idea if the freshlock on the Yari’s medications works as well as it’s supposed to. I could be pumping expired saline into her right now.” She kicked a cabinet in frustration. “I wish we could transport her to their medical facilities, but that’s obviously impossible.”

  “Good work, Kayla. Honestly.” Natali held her gaze, and something passed between the two ro’haars, a message of support and solidarity that only another ro’haar would understand. “I’ll leave you to it and update Wetham. Let me know what you learn from the scans.” She turned to go, but paused on the med unit’s threshold. “I’ve asked Wetham to notify Malkor and Rigger about Toble’s death. I am truly sorry for you all.”

  * * *

  It was all over but for the waiting.

  Kayla sat on a stool beside Tia’tan’s bed, one eye on the monitor, one eye half closed in sleep. The adrenaline had passed, leaving her depleted. Only the fear that Tia’tan might die at any moment kept her awake.

  “You should rest,” Vayne said. “I can watch her for a bit.”

  Kayla just shook her head. She’d been too late for Toble: she wasn’t going to fail Tia’tan.

  The surgeons had yet to arrive, but Ariel reported that they would dock at any moment. They’d better frutting hurry up. She’d only been able to determine any of Tia’tan’s injuries by having Toble’s medical datapad scan the diagnostic images that the Yari’s equipment had taken, and then spit out a diagnosis, which Kayla had passed on to the Ordochian medical team. She certainly didn’t know which way was up when looking at the abdominal scans.

  Even though the equipment was monitoring Tia’tan’s vitals, Kayla felt the pulse at her wrist herself. Still thready. “For the love of—”

  “Shuttle has returned,” Ida announced over the comms.

  “We’re standing by to offload the equipment,” Natali replied.

  “About time,” Vayne muttered, never pausing in his pacing.

  “There’s still so much to do. The bodies, Toble…” Kayla trailed off, unable to fully grasp the reality that Toble was now dead. The medic had saved her life, had preserved the use of her arm after first Janeen’s attack with the muscle-stiffening drug, then again after the biocybe’s attack during Malkor’s rescue. He’d patched them all up, so many times.

  Grief rose up to choke he
r. She cleared her throat, pushing the feelings down, trying to lock them away so she could stay functional for as long as necessary. “We have to get to the bottom of everything. Who attacked the prisoners? Why? Where have they gone? Or is it one of the dead crew members we found in the room?”

  A little while later they heard boots running down the corridor, orders being called back and forth, and then a small army burst into the med station armed to the teeth with life-saving equipment. She gave a report of all actions she had taken to an efficient man who seemed to be in charge. She ran down the diagnoses she’d made, with caveats, and which medications she’d administered. Then she was politely, but forcefully, urged from the room so that they could take over.

  Benny woke and reported his story to Ida. He said he had gone to the room to change the calorie pack in the food synthesizer and check on the prisoners’ health and wellbeing. Everything had seemed a little off to him. The inmates appeared agitated instead of peaceful, and everyone was eyeing everyone else with suspicion. Then Tia’tan and Toble had arrived, setting off Enska, and the chaos had begun. Others in the room might have attacked each other, or fought against Enska, but Enska was the one who had done the most damage, including killing Toble and injuring Benny and Tia’tan before fleeing.

  20

  THE YARI

  Finally relieved of the duty of keeping Tia’tan alive, Kayla knew she should probably take the chance to rest. No doubt a fresh disaster would wake her in a few hours.

  Instead, she turned to Vayne. “I want to find Zimmerman, Enska, and whoever else now. First. I want to question them without Ida and her crew around.”

  “I like how you think, but with so futile a search to date, where do you suggest we start this time?”

  She told him about Hekkar’s discussion with Tanet and the possibility that Zimmerman and the others could be hiding in the PD itself.