“Is Kirrah’jasa sorry for our body-sharing?” Steady gray eyes searched her face. No guilt, no regrets, just asking…
“No, Irshe’jasa, never sorry. Just …I’m sort of surprised at myself, it’s not like me at all…” One black eyebrow raised. “Yes, it must be like me, I did it. And I’m not even a little sorry! And I want to do it again! I am concerned that we do not misunderstand one another. You know my Navy may be coming, perhaps in one hundred twenty days or less. You know I am oathbound to them.”
“As I am to Talam. And I know there may be fighting before then, and that my life serves your orders. This is a time between those times.” Kirrah goggled inwardly a moment at the man’s simple acceptance of things-as-they-are, and even more when Irshe added:
“Again? How soon?”
Somewhat later that morning, they got back to the job of saving their nation, of bringing the planet’s technology into the equivalent of nineteenth century old Terra, of preparing the Talamae to greet the Regnum, and preparing the planet’s inhabitants to rejoin humanity and the greater Civilium society. One thing at a time…
Chapter 29 (Landing plus eighty-five): “Only resting”
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.” Ambrose Redmoon, ancient Terran author
Akaray whooped and laughed as he raced excitedly up and down the twenty-meter deck of the newest ship in the Talamae Navy, the Flowerpot II. Captain Og’drai at the helm was positively beaming, and Maka’ra the shipwright and Wai’thago the blacksmith, standing together by the port rail, seemed lost in an orgy of mutual congratulations.
Not that they didn’t deserve congratulations, Kirrah admitted. The small steam-turbine vessel was finally performing to her expectations. The latest modifications to the propeller design had done the trick… coarser pitch, that made all the difference. They were steaming across the small lake beside the city of Talameths’cha, making an honest eleven knots - twenty kph according to the wristcomp’s inertial nav readout, and this, to everyone else’s awe and wonder, was straight into the evening breeze.
Smoke and a few sparks trailed out astern, and the early evening air was filled with sounds not heard on this planet before - the whirr and hiss of the turbine, the rumble of the driveshaft, the grinding rattle of the gearpump recirculating the condensed steam. To say nothing of Akaray’s laughter, she added mentally - I don’t think I’ve heard that since I met him.
At this rate, modification on the other three steam ships should be done in four or five more days, and meanwhile the swivel-mount mortars could be tested: two firing forward, one midships on each side, and two at the stern. A pair of fore-and-aft rigged masts completed the vessel’s eclectic design. Sail power was needed to stretch the fuel supply at opportunity. Kirrah’s concerns about efficiency had been borne out fully, and with all the firewood they could carry, the turbine could be operated only about a day and a half before exhausting its onboard fuel.
But according to the best estimates of the Talamae sailors and Fleet-Captain Schmado’s educated opinion, under sail alone they could outpace the O’dai excise ships as long as they were sailing across or into the wind. Downwind, the disadvantages of shorter waterline length and the drag of the unused propeller was too much to overcome. However when under steam power, the new ships would be unbeatable. It appeared this world was about to be introduced to a whole new set of naval tactics.
As the western sky began to color orange and yellow with dusk, they turned toward the shipwright’s docks. This took them past a half kilometer of Talameths’cha waterfront, where the many newly-energized activities were drawing to a close with the day’s end. A section of docks was untenanted, where the fleet of barges sent to carry the stranded O’dai sailors home had left a few days ago. Another section of waterfront was crowded with the hundred or more fire-rafts they still kept in reserve against enemy ships. They soon approached their home docks. Captain Og’drai ordered the steam valve turned to “bypass” a conservative sixty meters out, and they coasted and rowed to their moorings by the light of torches just set out.
An hour later, Kirrah, Akaray, Irshe and the senior teaching staff were at dinner in the courtyard of the ‘Stone in a River’ school. As the dishes from their appetizer course were being removed, Kirrah’s wristcomp alarm sounded. She glanced at it, smiled, opened her mouth to speak. The alarm bells began to ring on the north wall. Sour, worried looks were exchanged at the sound - two high notes and one low, ‘enemy approaching’. Quickly setting aside their half-eaten meal, Kirrah, Irshe and corporal Mastha’cha mounted their horses and trotted briskly the few blocks to the nearest gate. Inside the gate a cluster of worried-looking farmers and merchants from outside the walls were gathered. Irshe was first up the tower’s inside ladder. As Kirrah arrived at the top, the light of a glowing maroon sunset picked out the approaching column of Wrth horsemen three kilometers to the northeast across the plains. As they watched, a straggling family of farmers came galloping down the north road on three over-driven draft horses, two riders each. Another pair of horses was visible hurriedly being mounted at the nearest farmhouse. Down Falling Ash Road behind them, the quick tramp of feet announced the arrival of two platoons of longbowmen.
“Irshe! What is this? They agreed to stop fighting! They have already begun grazing outside Malame’thsha!”
“We will know in another five bhrakka, Warmaster”, Irshe replied. Yeah, they’re not in a big hurry, they’ll be at the gates in another twenty minutes, Kirrah translated the time units almost without noticing. The archers were already deploying along the top of the wall. Shortly the ladder clattered again as Peetha swarmed up to join them, her slim shadowed figure breathing deeply, but not noticeably winded by the kilometer jog and twelve-meter climb.
“Warmaster, at your command!” the younger woman saluted, then followed Kirrah’s gesture toward the northeast. “Is that the alarm, Warmaster? That is no war party… see, they are not travelling in fires of thirty, it is a peaceful caravan.” Kirrah sighed with relief.
When the Wrth arrived under the gates shortly thereafter, it became obvious their intentions were not hostile. The elder leading the caravan introduced himself as Paltok’a. In the torchlight at the gate, he looked very old, white-haired, the outside two fingers and half of his left hand missing from an old injury. Peetha whispered to Kirrah that he was the eldest of the Wrth elders, respected for his past deeds but with few remaining close friends, and little political influence in council. After introductions, Paltok’a announced that he had brought the Wrth children for training, according to the terms of the treaty between Wrth and Kirrah. Which was a little different from the treaty between Wrth and Talam which Kirrah had understood to be the case, but this seemed a poor time to quibble over details. As the fifty or so riders dismounted, their true statures quickly revealed them as a collection of children, ranging in apparent age from eight or nine to fifteen Standard years.
“Gods, Peetha! Where will we put fifty children for the night?”
“Warmaster, they should sleep in their own tents outside the walls. Let me assign warriors to assist your new students setting up camp.”
“Please do. New students! We don’t even have a school for them! I was not expecting them so soon!”
“We have Stone-in-a-River school…” began a calm voice so close behind them that Kirrah whirled and Peetha’s Kruss bushknife came half out of its new sheath.
“Issthe! How do you do that!?” Kirrah near-gasped.
“I regret startling you both, Warmaster, Peetha. I only wish to tell you that Stone-in-a-River school could send teachers to the children’s camp, until space can be found in the city. If you would describe what you want them to learn.”
“That would be very helpful, Issthe. Did you come all the way up on this wall to tell me this?”
“No, Kirrah Warmaster. I came to tell you we have a new patient you need to hear. I regret carrying new burdens to you,
but time may be short.”
So this is what a Talamae hospital looks like, Kirrah thought as she stepped through the door from the school’s inner courtyard behind Issthe. A light fragrance filled the air from a small brassier, and dim but adequate light from a few candles showed clean plaster walls and a spotless stone floor. Along the walls, ranked shelves held dozens of bottles and jars, a few bunches of leaves and some whole plants. In the center of the room was a padded table bearing a man’s pale form. There was a priest at the head and another at the foot of the table, standing quietly, palms raised facing one another across the length of the recumbent man, almost as though praying.
Issthe walked to the patient’s side and took his left hand in hers, in the same grip the Talamae used in greeting, fingers around the wrist at the base of the thumb. Her right hand rested lightly on the back of the man’s left hand, then moved up his arm to rest on his shoulder.
“Is he…?” Issthe’s eyes touched the priestess at the man’s head, a young woman about Peetha’s age.
“Ladyship, he rests, but he has slipped below consciousness and his ath’la grows ragged and restless. Much blood was lost reaching us. We may not hear his words again.” Behind her, Kirrah heard a soft sigh escape Irshe, and as softly, the name:
“Ana’the.” And then with a shock, she recognized the border guardsman who had been with Irshe’s squad when they first met, the young man who had gone ahead to alert the town of their approach, the very first Talamae archer to hit a target with her new longbow. This pale figure breathing so shallowly had escaped her recognition, which for some reason she found intensely embarrassing.
“Issthe, do you know his injuries?” she asked.
“I suspect blood is leaking inside his chest,” the priestess replied. “Here is the arrow we removed from his back. It looked just deep enough to reach the back of his heart.”
“Can you…” Kirrah began.
“Can you help him?” Irshe breathed.
“…help him?” she finished, in unison. “Would your ath’lae’mara not fix him?”
“We have done all we can. The bleeding from his back has stopped, and from the other, minor arrow wound, but if it continues inside… he is already very weak. I am sorry, Kirrah, ath’lae’mara does not ‘fix’, not like mending a torn garment.”
Irshe, who had taken the offered bloody arrow in his hands, lifted it and said: “This is an O’dai quarrel. Ana’the was on patrol to the southwest, south of the river Geera. How did he come here?” The priestess at Ana’the’s head replied:
“The city guard brought him. His horse was seen swimming across the river at dusk. A merchant’s son pulled him from the water barely conscious and called the guards, who brought him to us directly.”
“Issthe”, Kirrah said. “I have seen you work wonders with other injuries, I have felt your hands myself. But if you can do nothing further, let me try.”
“Kirrah, of course. How may we assist?”
“Turn him over, I need to put part of my suit on his back.” Strong hands gently lifted the sheet the man was lying on, rolled him carefully onto his face, and lowered him back on the table. The woman at his head carefully positioned his face to ease his shallow rapid breathing. A low moan escaped his lips as his position shifted.
Kirrah swiftly opened her suit and separated the shallow backpack. Issthe and the other priestess carefully removed the poultice which had stopped the bleeding, exposing the 2-centimeter angry red mouth of the wound under the man’s left shoulder blade. Kirrah placed the suitpack over his lower back and withdrew two diagnostic probes on thin cables. The blunt tip of one she inserted a centimeter into the wound, the other, a short needle, went into a vein in the crook of the man’s elbow. The suitpack busied itself for a moment, then diagnostics flowed across the screen of the nearby wristcomp.
“You are correct”, she said. “He is bleeding slowly, probably from a nick in the back of his heart. His chest is filling with blood and crowding his… his breath.” Damn! Can’t say ‘lungs’. Should have read a medical vocabulary into the wristcomp. “This device will help. I will need a basin.” One of the younger students who had somehow joined them hurried to comply. Kirrah watched the suitpack’s analysis scroll down the screen:
< Severe blood loss:
< tachycardia, coma and death imminent >
< Thoracic edema: significant pulmonary dysfunction >
< Recommend immediate surgery to arrest hemorrhage >
< Recommend immediate drainage of thoracic cavity >
< Recommend immediate blood transfusion:
< type O haemoset 3b or 4 >
< Recommend anti-infective Salvitoxa or Orthocillin-C >
< Recommend immediate care by qualified medical personnel>
Kirrah authorized the “immediate surgery”. Under half a dozen watchful and wondering pairs of eyes, she used the wristcomp’s screen to guide the active end of the first probe to extend itself deeper into the man’s back wound and clip itself to the back of his rapidly beating heart. There its tiny claws unfolded and clamped shut the spurting three-millimeter nick in the heart muscle, and extruded a fast-setting biopolymer adhesive that tightly and thoroughly glued the wound shut. She then reconfigured the probe as a drainage tube, and the suitpack began pumping the pooled blood out of his chest, up the tube and out a drain into the ready basin.
“Blood! I need blood! I mean…” Several eyes, already widened at the viewer’s image of the man’s interior and the sight of the gore filling the basin, looked at her in some alarm. Damn, now I have to show them transfusions… “Sorry. Issthe, with this device I can replace some of the blood he has lost. I can borrow a little from a healthy person, but they must be the right type and gnnnn, I don’t have the words, and he doesn’t have the time to explain!”
“You can borrow… Tell us, Kirrah. Whatever you ask, we do.” Calm, dark gray eyes simply accepted what was happening.
“Yes, ok, someone take that third probe, that’s right, the thin string on the other side of the backpack, and pull it out… good… now touch the end and a small needle will come out - that’s right - now stick that against the skin, just a finger prick will do, it will take one drop of blood…” Irshe was first to give a sample.
“Good, now let the probe go back into the suitpack, it will clean itself in a moment, now the next person… good. In a few moments, the device will tell us the best blood for this man… everyone’s blood is different, but between any two people, some can be safely borrowed and some cannot.” Issthe was next, then the other two priests, then the two students. None matched to the satisfaction of the suitpack’s analyzer.
“More people! Find me more people! This will not harm anyone, and it will save Ana’the’s life! Hurry!” Students scurried from the room, Irshe following. In under a minute, a lineup was forming at the door. Three students, rejected as fast as the probe could cycle. Slaetra and Brai’klao, rejected. Two more students, rejected, one just barely. Two more priests, not even close. Peetha, at a run from somewhere… rejected. Tash’ta her maid, rejec… no! A 98 percent match!
“Tash’ta! Please lie down on - on that extra table, thank you, whoever set that up. There, wonderful, this won’t hurt at all…” Hurriedly Kirrah’ fingers secured a probe to the vein in Tash’ta’ elbow and set the suitpack to filter and transfuse blood into the dying man. As soon as the flow began, a deep sigh flowed out of his mouth. Simultaneously the wristcomp’s alarm beeped, and the priests at his head and feet stepped back. Kirrah spun to read the wristcomp’s display, and began tapping keys quickly.
“Kirrah… Kirrah, he is departed,” Issthe said softly.
“What… what?”
“His ath’la, we felt it lift from his body, the body is stilled. I am sorry.”
“Oh, no it isn’t! His heart has stopped, that is all. Don’t look at me like that… just watch!” Kirrah tapped a few final keys, authorizing the medcare program to deliver a dose of chemical stimulant into the man’s he
art and provide a small electrical shock directly to the heart muscle. The body twitched, once, twice. A shiver ran down both arms, and a ragged breath drew in and out, and again, and again. Finally! A reaction out of Issthe! Kirrah thought to herself as the tall priestess rubbed her eyes like a small child on Christmas morning. Everyone else was watching openmouthed, the two priest healers at head and foot with tears running down their faces. Irshe was holding Ana’the’s free hand in a deathgrip, his eyes closed. As the transfusion and drainage continued, Kirrah explained:
“My suit’s healing device has given his heart a powerful stimulus. His heart was only resting, now it has returned to work. With the blood we are adding, he will be weak but probably recover.” The screen beeped again for attention. Kirrah read:
< E/C Cardiostim SUCCESSFUL at 6.0 joules, normal sinus rhythm restored. >
< WARNING: Subject still at risk due to blood loss and possible infection: >
< Recommend continued blood transfusion, additional 2.4 lt minimum. >
< Recommend anti-infective Salvitoxa or Orthocillin-C >
< Recommend immediate care by qualified medical personnel>
Kirrah approved the expenditure of one of her irreplaceable doses of antibiotic, and looked up into Issthe's gaze.
“This healing device is only a small one. When trade with the Regnum begins, we will have a whole building full of devices more powerful than this. On my birthworld, almost no one dies of an injury, unless the head is damaged or treatment is delayed.”
IronStar Page 29