Part 2
The woman, B'Elanna, leaned down and looked me in the eye, her hands gripping my shoulders.
"You're gonna be just fine," she said.
I nodded. "My mom, she…"
"Never transported before, huh? What's your name, little guy?"
"D'Argo. And I'm not little."
"And your mom?"
"She's Aeryn. Look, is she…"
She smiled and did the comm tapping thing too. A second later, I was blinking under a glare of bright, clean light. A bald man dressed like the other ones was standing in front of us.
"Please state the nature of the medical emergency," he said.
The man from the transport pod was already running a wand thing over Mom. I don't think she knew we were off the transport pod yet, but away from the heat, she was already waking up a little, and making small, whimpery noises. The bald guy hurried toward her, as B'Elanna explained.
"This is Aeryn, and her son D'Argo. They apparently had some sort of…incident aboard their shuttle, and…"
"Yes, very nice, an incident, but what are the injuries?" the bald man snapped.
"Mostly superficial wounds," the man with the wand thingy called out. "Some burns on her hands, and apparently something called heat delirium, whatever that is…"
"Sebacean? Never heard of it. Start up the dermal regenerator, Mr. Paris. We'll take care of the superficial wounds first, then see what we can do about the rest of this."
"You might want to crank up the air," I interrupted.
They suddenly remembered I was there. The man called Paris looked a little guilty, and said to me "Don't worry, little guy. We'll take care of your mom."
"That's great, thanks for that and everything, only just saying, that'll go faster if you crank up the air. Sebaceans can't process extreme heat. She won't start coming out of it until you cool her down a little."
Paris pressed some buttons on one of his consoles. "I'll run some cooling fluid through the panels in the bio-bed. I…"
He was interrupted when the doorway swooshed open and a tall woman with long, pulled back hair came in. Paris looked up from my mom and said "Captain!"
"Report, Mr. Paris. How are our vistors?"
"We're towing in their ship as we speak. The boy, D'Argo, appears to be uninjured. We're still examining his mother."
The new arrival crouched down on the floor beside me. "Hi there," she said.
I shrugged. "Hi."
"I'm Captain Kathryn Janeway, and this is my ship, the U.S.S. Voyager."
"Yeah, hi, I got all that, the ship and everything, it's very nice. But what are you? Cause I know you aren't PK, you didn't know about the heat delirium, and your translator microbes totally piked on Sebacean, so…"
The captain had that confused look that Mom gets a lot when dad and I get really into stuff. "It's nice to meet you, D'Argo. Our ship is equipped with a universal translator, do you know what that means? It means that we can understand you when you speak to us."
This lady had no clue at all. "Yeah, you understand me, all right. Because I am speaking to you in English! Are you humans? I think some of you might be humans. That's so cool. I've never seen another human. I mean, I've heard about them and all, but…"
"Oh?" she was smiling now. "Heard about them from whom?"
"My dad. I'm half, you know. Or, maybe you don't know. I mean, you have loads of scanners and thing, but your translator microbes are obviously defective, and your diagnosan doesn't know the first thing about treating a case of heat delirium…"
"I don't know what that means," she said, still smiling, but in a kind of serious way. "But you guessed right that some of us are human, D'Argo. Some of us are other species too though. Our ship is part of a Federation that's made up of all different races."
"Uh huh. Look, if it's gonna be awhile, can I go check on our transport pod? Mom's out, and I'm like the co-pilot, you know? So I gotta check on stuff. And I have to get our Comms working so we can call Dad to come and get us. Have you guys got some kind of consumables refrig I can borrow for a bit? Cause we were on a supply run, and some of it needs to be stored. Well, if the fire and the explosion and all that didn't frell it all to hell and Hezmana and everything…"
"Actually, we wanted to talk to you about happened," she said. "To you and your mother. To your ship."
"Yeah, so we were in the transport pod, and then there were sparks on Mom's display and this big blue light, and then I don't know cause I got knocked out or something. So can I go?"
She pulled up a stool, and then pulled up another one. "Come sit with me for a moment, D'Argo. D'Argo. That's an interesting name."
"He was this Luxan guy my mom and dad knew. He died saving a bunch of people and I got born while all that was going on. He has a son called Jothee who comes to visit us. He's my bud."
"I see. How old are you, D'Argo?"
"I'm turning eleven cycles in two monens and a half. Jothee's coming for my party and he's bringing me a qualta blade. A real one, not junior size. Dad doesn't think I'm ready for it, but he didn't think I was ready to be co-pilot either and today I was and I sent out the beacon and got us saved."
"Yes, you did. Saved from what, is the question. Can't you tell me anything else about what happened, D'Argo? How did your ship get damaged?"
"Blue light, like I said. Might have been a wormhole. We…oh, frell. Frell, frell, frell. Frell!"
She was watching me with that little smile again, but this wasn't funny at all. "My fault," I realized. "My fault…"
"How so?"
"Well, normally, I watch for those. That's kind of my…" I remembered, too late, about talking so much. Dad always says Mom is a little too paranoid about stuff like that and that it's great I have inherited his curious mind, but Mom is real hard-core about it, and…well, I hadn't given last names or anything. So that was good.
"Well, usually I watch for them," I finished, a little more cautiously. "But…"
"But?" the captain prodded.
I tried not to look at Mom. "But she let me sit up front."
"And?"
"And I never get to sit up front. Look, is Mom gonna be okay? Cause if it's only heat delirium, she really should be coming around a little bit. You know?"
The captain glanced over at the bald guy. "Doctor?"
"Well, considering that she's a species I've never seen before, this would only be an educated guess," he said. "And of course, I can't guarantee that any of my readings are necessarily…"
"Doctor!"
He flipped his scanner closed. "She's already IS coming around. Vitals are stable, temperature is holding steady. Superficial wounds have all been taken care of. But like I said, I have never seen her species before. She's very nearly human, but there are some significant differences. I can't know what's normal here."
Finally, he took his first good look at me. "Is there anything you can tell me about what to expect here?"
Oh frell, this was so bad. Mom hates the heat delirium. I had only seen it once, well, seen it bad, anyway, and Mom wouldn't even talk about it. Dad told me once that it's the one thing in the whole wide verse that stone-cold scares her, and here it was…
"D'Argo?" the captain said again.
"Right. Um, shakes for awhile. Probably some wicked head pain. And she'll feel hot for a day or so. Dad said that last time, it took that long for her body to be able to regulate its temperature again. He was wicked freaked about it, too, but Pilot has been around tons of Sebaceans and says that's normal, that it takes a little longer to come out of it every time, and that the shakes and stuff are a sign you're gonna be okay."
He picked up the scanner thingy again and aimed it at me. "And you are unafflicted?"
"Like I said, I'm only half. So, can I talk to my mom now? And you were gonna get me on the transport pod so we can send my dad a message to…"
"One thing at a time, D'Argo," interrupted the captain. "Doctor, your patient?"
"Unconscious, but as best as I can guess, from mere exhaustion. She'll wake up on her own when she's ready."
"Keep an eye on her and report to me as soon as she's awake. B'Elanna, take the boy to his ship and see what can be done to salvage their supplies and get things going again. But remember that a ship that small won't have a comm range like Voyager does. He might have better luck contacting his family through our equipment."
"Yes, Captain."
"I'll send someone by in about an hour to collect him."
B'Elanna nodded. "If I might make a suggestion?"
"Oh?"
"Ensign Wildman."
There was that smile again. I didn't get it, until I met Samantha Wildman later, that she was the mom of the only kid on the ship---and her kid, like me, was a half.
