by neetha Napew
He didn’t like that, and shoved them back. “You refuse to understand my point of view.”
“I’m a doctor, Xonea. I understand perfectly.” I planted my hand on my hip. “Most of the surgery I performed when I was Senior Healer was as a result of attacks on this ship. Actually, I don’t know why I’m complaining-if you kill everyone before they get to Medical, I can take some vacation time.”
“You are part of HouseClan Torin, Cherijo.”
So now it was down to emotional blackmail. “I took an oath to do no harm first.”
“Your oath will not protect your daughter.”
Somehow he knew my maternal instinct was just as ferocious as the Jorenian need to protect the House-Clan. But then, they hadn’t elected Xonea Captain for nothing.
“All right.” I gave up. “Show me what you’ve got.”
Thirty minutes later, Xonea finished running the last of the juvenile combat-training simulations in the environome, and shut down the program. “What say you now, ClanSister?”
“Besides uncomplimentary things about your lineage?”
He grinned. “You would not insult our ClanParents so.”
“Don’t push me, pal.” I finished skimming over the last of the training text from a data pad. “Okay, I’ll admit, they’re very clever.”
Rather than try to fight, each child would be assigned a “safe place” where they would go during an attack on the ship. If someone boarded the ship and tried to grab them, they could disable their attackers by hitting them with a pressure infuser disguised as a wrist ornament. To prevent accidental injections, the wrist units would only function after an activation signal was sent out from Command.
However, the compound used in the wrist units was the reason why Xonea needed Medical’s blessing.
“Tell me one thing-why use drugs instead of some kind of zap ray or toxic poison?”
“Your report detailing the methods you used to liberate the Hsktskt slave depot inspired the idea.” My ClanBrother popped out the program disc and handed it to me. “I thought you might approve, as this method does not kill the attacker.”
“No, it only paralyzes and renders them completely helpless for several hours. Convenient, if you want to rip their intestines out without a lot of fuss and mess.” I wondered if Squilyp would sign off on this, and how much trouble I’d get in for punching out my boss if he did. “What if the attacker simply tries to shoot the kids?”
“All children will be assigned a drone unit, which will be programmed to escort them to their safe place, secure, and guard them.” At my expression, he made a quick gesture. “I know it is not infallible, but it is the best we can do at present. Will you test the adult program with me now?”
I certainly felt like beating up something. Might as well be the guy responsible for that. “Sure.” When he put on cortgear, I frowned. “Do you have to record it?”
“Indulge me.”
Another hour passed-this one much more attention intensive-then I finally pushed myself up from the practice mat and called it quits. “What are you doing to me? I don’t remember it hurting this much when I sparred with you two years ago.”
Xonea dried the sweat from his face and chest with his tunic. “I am throwing you harder.”
My abused muscles made me groan. “Gee, thanks.”
“Your physical condition has improved.” He helped me to my feet. “Stretch. It will help.”
As I went through the limbering exercises that obsessed him, Xonea walked around me, sizing me up. “You have regained the weight you lost, and your muscle tone appears more defined.”
“That mean I’m in better shape?”
“Yes. Your reflexes and response time have im-proved.” He took off his cortgear. “Have you spoken to the Oenrallian about the crisis on his homeworld?”
“Not yet.”
Dhreen, the alien pilot who had taken me to my first offworld position at the colony on Kevarzangia Two, was not in my good books altogether yet. He’d started out pretending to be my friend while spying on me for Joseph Grey Veil. Although he had redeemed himself by helping me and Reever escape Terra, I still had my doubts.
So did Xonea. “He has been avoiding staff meetings since returning to the ship from Terra. Talk to him, if you would, and discover what you can. Report back to me.”
Xonea and Dhreen had been good friends, once upon a time, but the Oenrallian’s deception had put him on the Torins’ persona non grata list. “If it turns out to be safe for us, do you still intend to go there?”
“As long as the sojourn presents no threat to the crew, yes.”
I wiped a streak of sweat from my cheek. “And this combat training? You’re really going to make me do it?”
“You serve as a member of my crew.” He tossed me his tunic. “As such, you will fulfill all training requirements.”
I blotted my face. “I liked pilot training better, and I was awful at that. I mean, look at me.” I waved a hand around. “I’d make a lousy warrior. You know that.”
“Your size remains your greatest disadvantage. If you would agree to train with bladed weapons-“
“She already knows how to use them.”
I swiveled around to see Reever standing just inside the door panel. “Only when I can’t get my hands on a lascalpel. Hi, Duncan. What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” my husband said as he leaned back against the panel and regarded my ClanBrother. “Why is my wife wiping her face with your garment, Xonea?”
“We’re just sparring,” I told him.
Now he looked at me. “For what purpose?”
“I’m going to be inspecting the new combat-training programs Xonea has lined up for the crew.” I nodded toward the console. “This was just a trial run.”
“I will need the inspection completed within the next week,” my ClanBrother said.
Reever folded his arms. “Indeed. Have you relieved Cherijo of her Medical duties, to provide time to complete the assignment?”
Xonea glanced at me. “I was not aware that I needed to.”
“I’ll talk to Squilyp about switching some shifts with me.” I walked over to the door panel, and took my husband’s arm. “Let’s go. See you later, Xonea.”
For a moment, I didn’t think Reever was going to budge. Then, with a small nod toward my ClanBrother, he left the environome and entered the gyrlift with me.
As soon as the doors closed, I started on him. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I get the impression you don’t think I can handle this.”
Reever stopped the lift. “Xonea knows you are already overloaded with your responsibilities in Medical, and yet he gives you more work.”
“Xonea isn’t the issue here. I am. I’ll take care of my job.” I started the lift again. “I’m not your slave anymore, Reever. Try to remember that.”
“You were never any good at it when you were.” He touched my cheek with one finger, tracing something. “I do not like seeing his bruises on your skin.”
“Good thing I heal fast, then.” The lift stopped, and
I got off with him. “Look, these programs are going to be used for training the children. I need to make sure they’re safe. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt for me to learn a little self-defense.”
“I will protect you and Marel.”
“Uh-huh.” My mouth curled. “And what about when you’re tied up saving someone’s planet or something?”
He dropped his hand. “I will show you what to do.”
I didn’t want that. Reever and I had spent too many years at odds with each other already. Sparring together would only create a whole new set of problems. “Xonea plans to make everyone undergo this training. Like the pilot program. You had no problem with me learning how not to crash a launch.”
He stopped in front of the computer archives section, where he was currently working on updating the ship’s linguistic database. “I was scheduled to report for duty five minutes ago.”
“So
you’re late. Let them give you a tardy slip.”
“I have much to think about, Waenara. May we discuss this later?”
I’d lived with him long enough to know the polite formality was a smoke screen. I’d loved him long enough for it to hurt when he shut me out like this. “Duncan-“
He rested a finger against my lips. “I am not angry with you, nor do I think of you as my property. I am only concerned with Xonea’s intentions.”
That thawed the rest of my internal frost layer. “He only wants what’s best.”
“As do I.” He kissed me, the way he would Marel, on the forehead. “Until tonight, wife.”
As I watched him go, I heard someone else moving away from me in the opposite direction. I turned my head in time to see someone in a resident’s green tunic disappear into the unoccupied gyrlift.
I confronted Qonja Torin in his quarters a few minutes later. Having to wait for another gyrlift hadn’t improved my mood.
The resident, on the other hand, acted very surprised to see me. “Healer Cherijo.” He stepped aside and indicated I should enter.
I did, and waited for the door panel to close before I attacked. “Why are you following me?”
He went over to the food prep unit. “Would you care for tea? I have programmed some Terran blends.”
“I’d like an answer. Now.”
“Of course. Just a moment.” Qonja prepped a single server, then came over to sit in front of me. Very natural, as if he stalked people every day. “I am interested in crew behavior.”
Ice chips wouldn’t have melted in his mouth. “But you’re not following them around.”
“You are a prepossessing subject.” He took a data pad from the table between us. “I have been observing and recording your interactions for some time. It is most engrossing.”
I wondered how engrossing he’d find having a server dumped over his head. “Really.”
“Your parenting methods, for example.” He switched the pad to “display,” and turned it to show me. Jorenian pictographs crowded the small screen. “Your approach is quite unique.”
“You’re documenting all this?” I swiped the pad and checked the file. He had pages of notes. “Why?”
“As I have said”-he spread his hands out-“I find you absolutely riveting.”
Either he was joking, which wasn’t funny, or he was serious, which was worse. I pressed a key, erased the entire pad, then tossed it back to him. “Don’t ever do this again.”
“I mean no harm to you, ClanCousin.”
I went to the door panel. “You’re here to study medicine, resident, not me. Is that clear?”
“As you wish.” He came after me. “May I make one request?”
“No.” Out I went.
As Marel was still in school, I opted to change out of my sweat-stained tunic before I talked to the other problem child on the ship.
I found Dhreen in central launch bay, working beneath one of the shuttles. Kneeling by his feet was Ilona Red Faun, the Navajo girl who had once been my clone-brother’s lover.
“Is he making you hand him the tools?”
Beautiful dark eyes that had been adoringly fixed on Dhreen’s oversized feet flashed toward me, and filled with feminine suspicion.
“No, patcher. I offered to help.”
We weren’t friends, Ilona and I-more like uneasy allies. After Jericho had nearly beaten her to death for betraying his underground to the League, I’d saved her life and hid her from my clone-brother. She and Dhreen had subsequently become lovers, but I secretly doubted there was any love on her side of the arrangement. Ilona Red Faun had been raised to do whatever it took to survive, and evidently she thought that required belonging to a man.
Oh, knock it off, Cherijo, one of my inner voices chided. Like you and Reever are role models for normal relationships.
“You’d better watch him-he’ll make you work overtime.”
“I will remember that.” The graceful Indian girl rose to her feet. She’d traded her customary two-piece Navajo biil garments for a pilot’s flightsuit, and had looped her two long dark braids into a gleaming, woven crown. Dhreen’s promise-to-marry earring, according to Oenrallian custom, sparkled at the top of her right ear, where she’d pierced it through the auricle. “What brings you here?”
“I need Dhreen for a minute, if you can spare him.”
The Oenrallian was already crawling out from under the shuttle. Like Ilona, he also wore a flightsuit, but grime and some kind of blackish fluid spattered his. Short, pumpkin-colored hair stood on end around two short, red nubs that served as his ears. Sort of. He had pallid skin with the faint, yellowish tinge of good health, and big, innocent-looking amber eyes. A less-sparkly, male version of Ilona’s ear bauble encircled one of his almost-ears. For some reason, every time I saw it, I thought it should be looped through his nose.
Dhreen grabbed a cloth as he got to his feet and wiped his hands, but his spoon-shaped fingers needed a thorough scrubbing. “Hey, Doc.” He flashed a grin. “What’s developing?”
“I need to discuss the situation on Oenrall with you.”
His grin faltered for a moment, then he scanned the area. There were a handful of other crew members working around us. “We should chat in my accommodations.”
A need for privacy. Not promising. “All right, but if this is another song and dance, Dhreen, I’m going to strangle you.”
“Give me another blip. I have to cap off this beam emitter. Ilona, go inside and shut down the power cells.” He crawled back under the hull. “Doc, would you hand me that hand welder?”
I looked down at the pile of tools beside his footgear. “What’s a welder?”
“It looks like one of your suture lasers.”
I picked up a black-handled tool that vaguely resembled the medical instrument and bent to show it to him. “This thing?”
“That’s it.” He reached out to take it, his spoon-shaped fingers closing around mine.
Without warning, the ship destabilized, and the tilt threw me forward against the shuttle. Something blew, then a burst of light and heat swept up my arm as Dhreen shouted. Smoke poured out from under the shuttle, and Ilona staggered out just as the ship righted itself. I was flung backward onto the deck.
“Healer, shut it off!” she shouted.
The tool in my hand was busily burning a hole into the shuttle’s hull, but before I could react, the beam shut off by itself. I put it down, then saw a narrow stream of orange blood seeping from under the shuttle.
“Dhreen!”
Ilona crouched down beside me. “What have you done to him?”
“Nothing. Something exploded.” I crawled under, coughing on the smoke. Dhreen wasn’t moving. “Come on, help me get him out!”
Between us, we managed to drag him out onto the deck. The front of his tunic was smoldering, so I tore it open, and found a two-inch entry wound in his right lateral chest. Dark-orange arterial blood pumped out onto his abdomen and formed a spreading pool under his shoulders. “Signal Medical-hurry!”
“You shot him!” She jumped on me instead, wrapping a strong arm around my neck and jerking my head back by the hair. “I’ll kill you!”
Having my air cut off made protecting Dhreen’s body and breaking her hold a challenge. “It... was... an accident!” I dug my hands in, breaking the choke hold, then pushed hard with my legs. It threw us both backward, with me landing on top of her.
I scrambled up, panting and furious, and when she launched herself at me again, I grabbed her by one braid and slapped her as hard as I could. By that time the launch bay crew had rushed over to us. “Somebody take her and signal Medical for me!”
She held a hand to her face and muttered vile things in Navajo as one of the engineers led her away.
I went back to work on Dhreen. In the background, I heard a voice say, “Medical, emergency, central launch bay. Pilot Dhreen has been wounded.”
One of the other pilots knelt beside me. “How seriou
s are his injuries, Healer? Shall we transport him to Medical for you?”
“Really bad, but wait for the team.” I pressed my ear to his chest. Judging from the gurgling breath sounds and the irregular cardiac rhythm, whatever had blasted the hole in his chest had also punctured the Oenrallian’s lung/heart on the right side. I kept one hand jammed down on the wound as I rolled him onto his side. From the size of the exit wound, it must have nailed the right hepatic lobe, too. “Signal Medical again. Tell them to prep a cardiothoracic team.”
“You’re not operating on him,” Ilona hissed from several feet away. “You did this to him!”
“Someone had better, and soon, or he’s not going to make it.”
The Senior Healer and a medevac team got to the launch bay at about the same time I’d slowed the bleeding with makeshift pressure dressings on either side of the wound.
Squilyp bent down to help me transfer Dhreen onto the gurney. “Gods, Cherijo. How did this happen?”
“Something hit him with a point-blank pulse blast to the lower lateral chest with a thirty degree up angle. Massive cardiopulmonary trauma and liver damage. Scan him.” Beneath the fingers I had pressed to his throat, I felt Dhreen’s pulse fading. “He’s flagging. Move it, people!”
Ilona abruptly went nuts, and flung herself at me again. “You’ve killed him!”
One of the engineers dragged her away. Then the Omorr and I pushed Dhreen’s gurney out into the corridor. On the way to Medical, I initiated the infuser line as Squilyp continuously scanned his vitals.
“Extensive residual pressure damage in the soft tissue and viscera of the upper torso,” Squilyp said, and handed me a syrinpress. I injected Dhreen with adren-alisine to help his traumatized lung/heart keep pumping. “What was he working on?”
“Some emitter thing under a shuttle, but I was handing him a laser tool when the ship rocked. It may have accidentally gone off.” We guided the gurney around a corner and through the main entrance panel to Medical. “Surgical team prepped?”
“Scrubbed and waiting for you.”
“Us. I can’t patch up this many holes by myself.” Sweat stung my eyes. “We’ve got to work fast, too.”