It had been a good week, and I was on my feet again. Limited duty, per Doctor Mackey's orders, but at least I was out of the medbay. Which is to say, I was no longer sleeping in the medbay. I was, currently, in the medbay, talking to the doctor. In the last few days, he had seen over a dozen people complaining of ringing in their ears and headaches. The most recent casualty was Lawson Braithwaite, who was so severe he couldn't stand without vomiting.

"It's the damndest thing, Commander," Doctor Mackey was saying. "Blood tests aren't showing anything, and the symptoms are inconsistent. Nothing more than mild tinnitus with some, ranging up to Mr. Braithwaite's incapacitation."

"Has anyone recovered?"

"No, and I've followed up with everyone. It's possible there are much more cases with the mildest symptoms who are just ignoring them. But the longer the symptoms linger, the more likely people will report them."

"Could it be something that wouldn't show in a blood test? Some kind of parasite or something?"

"That's possible, but I performed an MRI on Mr. Braithwaite. Nothing out of the ordinary. I hate to guess about these things, but I think it may be some reaction to an external stimulus. Haven't there been a lot of missions in the irradiated areas of the planet lately?"

I ran my hand through my hair. "Seven drops in five days. But there's been a decontamination crew on the Leopard at every pickup. Ray's even gone along a few times to make sure it was done right."

Mackey nodded. "And so far I've only had two mech techs report these problems. Actually, there's a thought." He grabbed a noteputer and pulled up a list of recent patients. "Of fourteen people reporting these symptoms, there's been one mechwarrior, two mech techs, four from engineering, and seven from various support departments."

I turned to a wall console and logged in. Lisa maintained a file listing every time a crewmember left and returned to the ship. I pulled it up. "Other than Lawson, none of these people have been planetside since we got here."

"That's another strike against some kind of contagion," Mackey said. It wasn't unusual for someone to pick up a cold or stomach bug or something more intimate after arriving at a new planet, but that would be much harder to do for people who had never left the ship.

"You think it's something wrong with the Argo?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't like to speculate. But it does seem to be most prevalent in those who are on board most often." He paused, staring at the wall. "In fact," he went on after a moment, "I think it may be specific to Alpha pod. Mech techs and pilots tend to spend a lot of time in the forward section of the ship, not to mention deployments. Sometimes they even sleep there. Engineers work all over the ship, but not as much in Alpha pod as elsewhere, since it's not undergoing extensive repairs. They do sleep in Alpha pod, though."

"So something's wrong with Alpha," I said. "Which explains why nobody from supply is having problems. They've all been handling procurement on the ground."

"It makes sense. Then again, medical staff are here all day, and they haven't reported any problems. That could be a sampling error, there's only a few of us. I'll ask everyone, though. It's possible some of them have mild symptoms they haven't reported."

"Do that." I pushed the page button on the console. "Lorne, come to medbay, Lorne to medbay." I looked back at Mackey. "Anything else?"

"Just one thing." He ducked into his office and emerged with a box. "Your new arm," he said, and slit the tape.

I watched as he pulled the prosthetic out of a block of packing material. It was dull plastic more or less the same color as my skin, with a hand at one end and an arm-sized socket at the other.

"It's a Type 3," Doctor Mackey said, handing it to me. "Not cutting edge by any means, but practical for most uses. You'll be able to bend the elbow and open and close the hand, which can also be swapped out for more specialized tools. The fingers are designed to allow individual control, but that will take a long time to master. You won't have feeling in the prosthesis, so you'll have to be careful to avoid damage. Hot surfaces can be particularly dangerous. Ready to try it on?"

I held the new arm against what was left of my old one. It was missing my scars and freckles. The color wasn't quite right. The middle finger wasn't slightly kinked from a break ten years earlier. Still, it was an arm. Seeing it there wasn't as jarring as seeing nothing had been. My field of vision didn't feel unbalanced. "I guess so," I said. "Is this a hammer-and-nails situation, or do we just use tape?"

"We use vacuum. A liner goes on your residual arm, which then goes into the socket. These electrodes attach just above the liner. They're how you'll control the prosthesis. Then a sleeve stretches from the socket to the bare skin above the electrodes, and a built-in electrical pump draws out any air to create a seal." He removed each item from the box as he mentioned it, laying them out on an exam table.

"Sounds like this thing'll be attached better than the last one," I said.

"Unfortunately, it only sounds that way. If you decide to sit next to any more exploding missiles, you'll lose this one just as easily."

"So. How long until I get the chance to sit next to an exploding missile again?" It was the question that had been eating at me since it had happened, the only question any injured mechwarrior cared about: When do I get to fight again?

"One thing at a time," Mackey said. He pulled on a pair of latex gloves. "You'll need lots of physical therapy and practice with the prosthesis. I'll give you a list of exercises you'll have to perform regularly. What you're able to do and when you're able to do it will all depend on how quick your progress is." He rubbed my stump with some kind of lubricant gel and started to roll the liner onto it.

"Anyone home?" It was Lorne's voice from the medbay entrance.

"Back here," I shouted. He appeared a moment later.

"Reporting as—"

"Something's wrong with Alpha pod."

Lorne looked offended. "No it isn't."

"Doc has had 14 people in here, including four of your staff, complaining of ringing in the ears and headaches. It's more common the more time they spend in Alpha. We've ruled out an infection or something like that, so we think it's an electric or mechanical issue with the pod itself."

"Oh no."

"That's right. What's it going to take to fix it?"

"Well." Lorne rubbed his mustache as he thought. "Nothing irregular has shown on any of our monitors. Which means if something is happening, it's within the physical tolerances of the ship, but is happening in such a way as to interfere with biological functions of some of the crew."

"So how do you fix it?" I repeated.

"We'll have to run detailed diagnostics on everything. Life support, main and auxiliary power, utilities, and everything else before we even have an idea what the problem is."

"So do that. Right now. This has already sidelined a mechwarrior, and we don't have any of those to spare. If it keeps up, it's going to start impacting everything else."

"Yes, sir. Congratulations on the arm, sir."

I looked at my arm. My new arm. Doctor Mackey had been working while Lorne and I talked, and it was attached. I held it up. Bent the elbow. "Thank you, Lorne," I said. "Now get this mysterious problem fixed before it makes the ship explode or something."

"On it." He hurried out.

Mackey handed me a sheet of paper covered front and back with figures doing various stretches and exercises. "Go through this whole routine once a day. You'll check in with me weekly. We'll see how you're progressing, and adjust from there. Any questions?"

My new fingers twitched into a fist, then slowly opened and spread into a wave. "I think I'm good. Thanks, Doc."

"Take it easy," Mackey said as I headed for the door. "I know how you mechwarriors get. Give it time," he called, and the door shut behind me.

I got looks in the hall on the way to my quarters. Several compliments on the new arm. A few who made a point of not acknowledging it. Both were fine. It was all fine. It was good for them to see their commander whole again, confident and unfazed. A capable and effective leader. Until I could get back in a battlemech and prove I was as good as ever, I would have to show it in everything else I did, everything else I'd always done.

I stopped by the lounge. Bakshi was there, playing cards with an off-duty mech tech, half watching an old Succession War holo. I gave them a little wave and made my way to the refrigerator. Opened it with my older hand, pulled out a canned coffee with the new one. Popped the top. Casually raised it toward my cheek and managed to adjust quick enough that it hit my lips instead. Drank a little more deeply than I probably would have before. Left. In the hall, a thumb-sized dent in the can popped back into place as I carefully relaxed my grip.

Back in my room, I tossed Mackey's sheet of exercises onto the bed. There was only one exercise I was concerned with. I booted up the console at my desk and pulled the controls into position. To call my little setup a simulator was an insult to the big, complex, networked machines housed a few levels down. What I had was a game, a heavily-modded version of Mech Jock 3 to be exact. The realistic throttle and stick were nothing a civilian nerd would have trouble acquiring, nice as they were. But they would do.

It didn't take long to realize my new fingers just didn't have the dexterity for the stick. After half an hour of practice, I could move it well enough to pass as a drunk cadet, at least as long as I let my shoulder and elbow pick up some of what my wrist used to do. But the array of buttons and switches was far beyond me now. I moved the throttle to my right side and switched hands. I could move better, more like a sober cadet, but the molded grip was awkward, and reaching some of the buttons meant letting go of the stick almost entirely. Not something you want to do in the middle of a firefight.

No shortcuts, then. I moved the throttle back to my left hand. Maybe Ray could find me a throttle equipped with the controls normally mounted on the stick, but until then I wouldn't worry about weapons or any other functions beyond movement. Being a pilot was about piloting first, after all. Otherwise, they'd stick us in turrets and call us gunners.

I spent the next five hours on that computer, working my way through the game's tutorial and practice areas. It was exhausting. What I could once do with a subtle change of finger pressure and wrist motion now meant coordinating my entire arm and torso only to see the battlemech on screen stagger and fumble about like it was helmed by a tank driver. I was sore. I was frustrated. I glanced over the sheet of exercises, and could see more soreness and frustration in my future.

There was a knock at my door. I stood up, stretched, and tried not to look like I'd spent the entire afternoon playing a video game. "Come in."

It was Lisa and Lorne. She looked grimmer than usual. Lorne nodded approvingly at my quarters as if he'd never seen them before. I knew from experience that his forced casualness was a bad sign. "This can't be good," I said.

Lisa looked at Lorne, who didn't look at either of us, and I caught the barest hint of an eye-roll before she spoke. "Mister Sorenson has narrowed down the issue with Alpha pod." Lorne's head bobbed from side to side, but he didn't take her cue to speak. "It's probably going to fall off within a week," she continued, and Lorne's eyes went wide.

"That is not true," Lorne said, flustered.

"Then please, enlighten the Commander as to your findings," Lisa almost snapped.

"Well, they're not good."

"How not good?" I said.

"There's a vibration. I think that's what's causing the crew's health problems. A vibration at the perfect pitch and volume to be scrambling people's brains, or whatever it is Doctor Mackey says it's doing."

"And?"

"That's all I can say with any certainty." Lisa scowled at that, and I got the feeling she'd already spent some time trying to pry definitive answers out of him. "But," he went on, "I can say, with certainty, that I won't be able to track down the source and address the issue with the ship occupied."

"What do you mean, 'occupied?'" I said.

"There's just too many people on board right now. Too much activity. It's all noise, all interfering with my diagnostics. There's definitely something there that shouldn't be, but narrowing down exactly where will be impossible as long as there are people around."

I felt a frown forming. "We could designate quiet hours. Confine non-essential personnel to quarters, maybe move some people to Beta pod."

Lorne shook his head. "It's not just the sounds of regular activity that are the problem. Lifts running, loud conversations, tool use, all that is bad, yes. But also ventilation fans, the hum of refrigerators, people watching holos, footsteps, it all adds up to a low-intensity but persistent background roar that obfuscates the actual problematic sound, and does so to the extent that we weren't even aware of its existence until we went looking."

"He'll need a total evacuation of the Argo and deactivation of every system not actively keeping it in orbit," Lisa said. Lorne looked like she'd slapped him. I felt like she'd slapped me.

"Total?" I said. I sat down. "For how long?"

"I can't say—"

"Give me a number, Lorne."

"We don't even know what the problem is! We'll have to locate the source of the vibration and repair it. Maybe a meteor got wedged in a bearing and can be knocked out with a hammer. Maybe the entire rotation ring for Alpha is damaged and will need months of machining to repair."

"Months?"

"It's highly unlikely," Lorne said quickly. "Something that bad would probably have been noticed sooner."

"But you don't have any way of knowing without evacuating the ship."

Lorne nodded. "Clear everyone off, shut everything down. Our gremlin should stick out like flashing neon at that point. If not, we methodically turn things back on until it does. Then I can give you a more exact estimate of repair time."

And cost, I thought. "Alright. Okay." I rubbed my hands together. Only the left one felt anything. It was reassuring and disconcerting all at once. "Go now, start prepping. Figure out who you're going to need to get this done as efficiently as possible. Plan for contingencies, I'm not going to send the Leopard back with one person because you need an extra pair of hands. Let me know if there's any changes or issues."

"Yes, sir." Lorne took a determined breath, spun on his heel, and left.

I looked at Lisa. "How expensive is this going to be?"

She spun her datapad around to show me a dense spreadsheet. "It's been a profitable week. Low-risk jobs mean low-risk pay, but we've done a lot of them, and repair costs have been minimal. Paychecks go out in eight days. That and other operating expenses will take about half of our cash on hand, leaving us with around three hundred thousand for fixing the ship. Minus the cost of shuttling everyone planetside, housing them once they're there, related miscellaneous expenses...ballpark, I would say two-twenty to two-fifty."

I grimaced. Anything more than the most minor repair would run north of a hundred grand after parts and overtime were factored in. In the likely event that it was something more serious, we'd probably be looking at half a million or more, double what we could afford.

"Let's assume this won't be a stuck rock Lorne can knock out with a hammer," I said. "What if we pay in advance to house everyone planetside for two weeks? Maybe it gets us a reduced rate for time we might have needed anyway. It gives engineering plenty of time to assess and plan. But we don't initiate repairs until next pay cycle."

Lisa poked at her datapad. "You want to put us in the red at the start of the month in hopes we can make up the difference before the bills come due." There was no judgement in her tone. "At our current income and expense rates, we'd be able to sustain about a million-point-one in repair costs if we did that." She sighed. "But our contracts here are almost complete. The locals say they can take over after our next deployment. MRBC doesn't have enough available contracts worth enough for us to maintain our current income."

"So go outside MRBC," I said.

Lisa's eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. "Pirates?"

"Not if you can avoid it. See if there's any spare work to be had. Local business interests wanting a mech for promo, VIPs needing protection, maybe a noble brat that'll shell out for a ride-along. Quantity over quality, if we can get a few thousand for letting the Panther stand in front of a shopping mall for an afternoon, take it. Turn over rocks, knock on doors, find people with money burning a hole in their pocket. You know, schmooze." I couldn't help smiling at the face she made.

"I do love to schmooze," she deadpanned.

I stood up and clapped my new hand on her shoulder. "Look at it this way: in five weeks we're cracking drinks in a repaired Argo to celebrate breaking even after the busiest month of our careers, or we're looking for new jobs. Either way, we've got a fun story to tell right?"

She turned for the door. "I'll contact the spaceport housing coordinator and see about that reduced rate."

"Thank you, Lieutenant. We'll get through this." She nodded as she left.

I went to my bathroom and threw up.