Title: In Love and War
Author: CosmicalMadison
Rating: T
Disclaimer/Summary: See Chapter One
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Chapter Seven - New Beginnings
Mel surprised herself by waking up. By all rights, a blaster shot to the head should have killed her on the spot. Abruptly, it all came back to her as clearly as if it had happened only heartbeats ago, though really it had been much longer than that.
After flipping the selector switch on the grip of the gun, Mark's finger began to move toward the trigger.
Mark had moved the selector lever on his blaster before firing on her; Mel hadn't noticed it at the time. And that meant if Joaquin had received a live shot, she had only been stunned. As the reality of what had happened came crashing back down on her, a heavy weight seemed to settle on her chest. Mel tried to push the thought away. There would be more than enough time for mourning in the near future.
What was more important was her current position. How long had it been since her encounter with Mark? She judged not very. Where was she, still in the hospital? She wasn't sure, but she lay perfectly still, even trying to minimize her breathing. What if Mark was still here, and he thought he had gotten her with a live bolt and she was dead? She would be gone for sure if she made even the slightest twitch.
Suddenly, something cool grabbed her wrist. Involuntarily, Mel's eyes flew open and she quickly took in her surroundings. Indeed, she was still lying on her back in the corner of the hospital where she had fallen. Mark didn't appear to be in sight, but as she looked toward her feet, what she saw mildly surprised her.
Beside her was a teenage girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen standard years old, gripping Mel's wrist. She was dressed in the native Kakashnan garb of sand-colored tunic and pants. Her hair was straight and black and fell to just beyond her shoulders. Her appearance was not out of the ordinary, but Mel immediately knew that there was something about this girl. But the nurse wouldn't have recognized it if she hadn't been what she was. Everything about this girl, from the look on intent concentration on her face to the gentleness of her touch said one thing. She was a medic.
The young medic knelt beside her gripping Mel's left wrist between her thumb and index finger well attentively watching her chrono and nodding her head slightly as the seconds ticked by. She was taking Mel's pulse. It was standard procedure, the older nurse knew, to check the vital signs on any unconscious person after such a disaster as she had just witnessed.
When the girl finished the counting a moment later, she glanced up at Mel's face. Smiling slightly, she said, "So, you're awake. That's good." She turned and picked up a clipboard that had been lying on the floor to her left. She scribbled something on the front paper, then flipped back a few farther into the stack. "So, you must be. . .Nurse Melalaiya Nova?"
"Yes, that's me," Mel replied.
But the medic was still looking at her expectantly. Mel wondered if the girl was hard of hearing, but that was when she realized that she really hadn't spoken. Trying again, much to her alarm, she found that she couldn't speak. She tried to sit up, also without any luck. Just as she was about to panic, she remembered. Of course, the stun bolt. She recognized the strange tingling numbness that coursed throughout her body and, with a sinking feeling, knew that it would be hours before it wore off.
The medic blinked, then blushed slightly. "Oh, right. You can't talk. Silly me." She paused for a moment. "Ah, well, even though you can't talk you probably have a lot of questions. I'll try to answer some for you. Well, first of all, my name is Julian Antilles, and I'm a medic-in-training form the nearby village of D'raether. A group of about eight of us has come to help evacuate the wounded from this base to a Republic starship that has landed nearby to take you all somewhere else. Um, let's see, what else would you want to know? Hmm, ah, we judge that it's been at least half an hour since the bomb went off. Um, if you haven't figured it out already, you took a stun blast to the head so you'll be out of commission for a couple of hours at least." The nurse stopped, seemingly trying to figure out what else Mel would want to know and coming up blank. "Well, I think that's about all. I'm about done checking you out, and then I have to see to a couple more people before we start transporting you to the ship. You won't be needed for anything until then, or even for a time afterward, not that you could help if you wanted to." She cracked a smile. "So, I've heard that many people can't stand being conscious and not able to move around when they've been stun-shot. If you like, I can give you some medication that will put you out until its effects wear off. Would you like that?"
Would she ever. Mel really did not like the idea of having to lay here or anywhere for hours without being able to move her body in any way beyond the ability to blink. Apparently, Medic-in-training Julian had once again forgotten that tiny detail.
Antilles blushed again. "Oops, that's right. You can't talk. Ah, how about this: look left for 'no', right for 'yes'."
Mel looked right.
"Okay, then. Just a moment." The girl turned to her left and unlatched a brown medcase. Inside it were vials of all colors of the spectrum. Julian selected a tiny glass container filled with a bluish liquid and loaded it into a syringe. She turned back to Mel with the medicine in hand. "Are you ready?"
Mel rolled her eyes.
Julian echoed the gesture. "Right. Okay, here we go." She rolled up the left sleeve of Mel's med tunic and inserted the needle into her arm. Slowly squeezing the top of the syringe down, the medic-in-training said, "It should only take a minute or two to work." But as she removed the needle from her patient's arm, Mel's vision was already starting to blur. A moment later she was once again unconscious.
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This time Mel awoke in a hospital bed. She could tell that it was a hospital bed without even opening her eyes because it had that interesting feeling of not being quite comfortable but not terribly uncomfortable either. She could also tell from the almost undetectable vibration of the engines running through her that she was on a starship.
Slowly Mel attempted to squeeze her right hand into fist. It worked. Good, apparently her body was in good working order again, and the stun blast had worn off. After a few more minutes of experimenting, she found that this was wholly true.
Opening her eyes, Mel could see that she was indeed resting on a hospital bed inside a ship's med bay, she supposed the one that Julian had told her about. Melalaiya had heard that most ships housed their medical stations in the center of the ships to protect from battle hits and such. However, the med section of this particular ship was in a ring around the outer edge of the transport. To the left and right, Mel could see beds lined up against the wall and disappearing around the contours of the ship. Looking forward, she saw a giant viewport taking up most of the outside wall. The ship appeared to still be in orbit, and through the viewport she could see part of the planet Kakashna and a breathtaking field of stars.
Tearing herself away from the view, Mel could see that only a half dozen others populated the med center along with her, that she could see. Most of them were sleeping, but a few seemed to be enjoying the view. Far to her right, she could see an older nurse, one who looked familiar yet she couldn't remember his name.
"Excuse me," she called to him. "Nurse, could you come here for a moment?"
He turned from the view, a pleasant smile on his face, and as he came toward her she caught a glimpse of his nametag: Nurse Ykali Douche. When he stood beside her, he said, "So, Nurse Nova, you're awake. How are you feeling?"
"Quite well, thank you," she replied. "Um, could you please tell me where this transport is headed once we break orbit?"
He nodded. "Certainly. The surviving members of the Konami medical unit are being relocated to a new base on the planet Rosha, in the Gartoa system, to continue assisting Republic forces in the war." He smiled pleasantly, and asked, "Do you have any more questions?"
Mel thought for a moment. "No, not really. Thank you." Douche nodded, and started to turn away, when Mel, with a stab of mental anguish, remembered the fate that had befallen her best friend. "Wait."
The male nurse turned back. "Yes, Miss Nova?"
Mel took a deep breath. This would be hard for her, but she knew she had to ask. She met the man's eyes. "I wish to see Dr. Joaquin Briggand's body, to, ah, say my goodbyes to him." She looked down quickly as tears threatened.
"I'm afraid that that won't be necessary," the nurse replied.
Mel's mouth dropped open in shock as she felt another stabbing sensation in her heart. How dare this man! How dare he deny her request to see her friend one last time, privately, to say her farewells...
She looked up just in time to see his grin as the older nurse glanced toward an open door to Mel's right. For moment, hope flared in her heart. Could Joaquin still be... But just as quickly, she denied it. Of course not. Mark had shot him; he was dead.
Just as she was thinking this, through the door strode a very familiar face. To her surprise and delight, there was Joaquin Briggand, alive and for the most part healthy, though there was a large bacta pack over the place where he had taken the clone's blaster shot. There was a broad smile on his face and his eyes shown as he moved toward her.
Without a second thought, Mel swung her legs over the side of her bed, jumped to the floor, ran to Joaquin, and threw her arms around him. After a second of hesitation, the young man put his arms around her too and tightened them gently. "Oh, Joaquin," Mel cried through her tears of joy, "I'm so glad you're alive!"
After moment, Joaquin pulled her away and held her at arms length. "I'm glad to see you well too, Mel."
"But how can this be," Mel asked. "I was sure you were..." She trailed off as a tear slipped down her cheek.
"Dead? No." He smiled gently and wiped the tear from her cheek with his thumb. "The doctors on board say it was touch and go for while, but I managed to pull through." He fingered the bacta pack on his chest for a moment, then muttered, "I'll have a nasty scar to show for it though."
Mel giggled, but then her face went straight again. "But, Joaquin, do you know what happened with Mark after we were, you know, taken care of?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I asked the guy in the bed next to mine who was there. After Mark finished with you he went to the cafeteria." He glanced at the ground. "He took the lives of another half dozen people there: three nurses, a doctor, a janitor, and a cook. I also heard from one of the doctors that evidence was found of a ship taking off not long after that, so there's a high probability that Mark and his battalion escaped to another world."
Shaking her head sorrowfully, Mel sighed. "This is awful; so much death and destruction. Somehow I feel like it's all my fault."
Joaquin squeezed her hand. "Don't say that, Melalaiya. It's not true. No matter how much you may think so, you couldn't have stopped it any more than you could had caused it." He paused for a moment, then looked at her shyly. "For what it's worth, I'm proud of what you did, saying that you would never join the Separatists. I know a lot of people that wouldn't even think of refusing. They might join just to save their own lives." He smiled at her. "That was really brave."
Mel blushed. "Yeah, thanks." She smiled back at him.
Suddenly, Joaquin put him arm around her turned to the viewport. "Isn't it beautiful?" he asked, waving his other hand at the view.
When Mel turned, she found herself almost immediately lost in the beauty of the stars. "Yeah," she breathed. Her friend tightened his grip on her, and after a moment Mel rested her head on his shoulder.
And suddenly Mel felt safe, the safest she'd felt in years. In this moment, the galaxy felt as much at peace as it would ever be in her lifetime. Here she was, alive and with her best friend, seemingly saved from death only by the miracle of the shipboard doctors, on her way to another planet with more people that she could help. But there was one thing that tarnished the moment: Mark had gotten away, taking the lives of six more people with him.
Mel raised her head to look at her friend. "Joaquin?"
He looked over at her. "Yes, Mel?"
She took a deep breath. "Joaquin, I want to find Mark. I'm sure that with enough perseverance he can be turned back to the light." She nodded, becoming more sure with each word. "I know I can do it."
The young doctor frowned. "I believe you, Mel, but it would be next to impossible to find him. We know a ship left the planet not far from Konami med base, but we're not even one hundred percent positive that Mark was aboard it. Though the probability is high, even if he was, no one saw the ship take off, so there isn't even the remotest chance of plotting where he could have gone."
For a moment discouragement claimed her, but just as quickly Mel bounced back. "But there has to be a way. We could find his troop's records somewhere, see where he went or where their next assignment is. Couldn't we?"
Joaquin frowned. "We could, but it would be very difficult. For instance, we'd need a trained hacker. Happen to know any right off hand?"
Mel sighed. "No, I don't, but I'm sure we could find one."
"And the money to pay him?"
She hesitated. "I'm sure we'd figure something out."
Joaquin gave her a look.
"The point is, Joaquin, this is something that I feel like I have to do. I feel...like it's my responsibility to turn him back." She stared into his face, eyes pleading. "Please, I need to do this."
The frown dissolved from his face. "All right, Mel. I can see that this is very important to you. And even though it will be dangerous - not to mention illegal - I'll help you. Once the base on Rosha is well established, we'll go together and try to find him. Okay?"
Her face lit up. "You promise?"
"I promise." He squeezed her hand. "It would be my honor to help you. After all, it's the least I can do to make up for my errors earlier today." He sighed heavily. "If it weren't for my bad judgment, he'd be dead already."
It was then that Mel thought to mention how Joaquin had used live fire to try to dissuade Mark instead of the stun bolts she would have wanted. But, after a moment, she figured that there would be plenty of time to discuss it in the future. Right now, she was just enjoying the moment.
"Don't worry about it," she replied. "You did all you could."
As they turned back to the viewport, Melalaiya once again lost herself in the glorious view. It was ironic, the way she thought of stars. She knew from science class that most of them were billions upon billions of years old, and yet to her they had always seemed to symbolize new beginnings. For almost every special moment in her life that she could remember, she recalled staring at the stars. She had always loved looking at them."
Her thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a middle-aged female voice calling over the loudspeaker, "This is Captain Kami Lepher speaking. The New Republic Starship Genesis is now ready to begin our hyperspace jump. All passengers and crew please find your seats within the next few minutes. Thank you."
Joaquin detached himself from Mel and, giving her a last smile, started toward the door from which he had entered. "So, I'll see you later, right?" he tossed over his shoulder.
"Right," Mel called back as he disappeared around the corner.
After one last long look at the view, Mel turned around to face a hyperspace jump and her new life.
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So, there you have it! For the first time since who knows when I have finished a story that I can be proud of. If you've read this far and it didn't bore you to death, thank you so much! I hope you enjoyed it.
I am entertaining the idea of writing a sequel in which Mel and Joaquin go after Mark. What do you think? Please drop me a line. You can either review this story or e-mail me at again, thanks! (-: