Where I Can
8888
They were sick and injured. They were men, women, and children. All were smudged with mud and soot and filth and blood. All were lost. All were caught in the flames of a war they couldn't begin to understand let alone be a party to.
They were shuffling as fast as they could, the able helping the disabled, the strong carrying the weak. Over the next rise was a ship it was going to take them away. Flames erupted randomly everywhere. The man who'd saved them from the raid was running ahead of the line of refugees up the hill and looked over the ridge. He carried a small tablet seemingly bonded to a coral-like rock. He stuffed it back into a satchel he had hung diagonally across his chest. He turned back to the line of people.
"Quickly, the ship will leave soon!" he shouted over the chaos and moans.
Corre knew the transport vessel wouldn't stay long, they never did. It was too dangerous in these parts and a window to escape could slam shut at any moment. He winced and decided to scope the situation himself, running up to the man. Corre winced as he felt his skin pull against his thin frame. Corre's long thin hair kept falling into his one good eye. Corre clambered up the incline stepping over rocks. He had to stop and leaned forward hands on knees gasping for breath; he could feel the pain of skin tearing and his lungs burned from the acrid smoke. He heaved himself up to the ridge line and looked down as the hissing vessel sitting in the valley beyond. He bent over and wheezed slightly dizzy.
"We need more time." Corre coughed, finally, his chest rattled as he gasped for breath.
"Scorens won't stay much longer; things are getting too hot for comfort." Said the man; his eyes were intent on the vessel below. "The ship's already in the first stage of lift off." The man looked back at Corre. "Corre, are you ok?"
"I'm fine…" Corre said, waving the question off with his right hand and leaning hard on his left knee with his other hand, "…better than if you hadn't showed up. The Ogrons would've massacred us."
"All I did was a light show." The first man said kneeling down and looking in the man's eyes. "You need to rest."
"No time, you said…" Corre said.
"We'll make time." The man said, taking out a handkerchief and dobbing it on Corre's dark sweaty forehead. He looked down and Corre saw the expanding red stain his dingy shirt. The man looked back up at him. "You've broken your stitches again…You were told not to lift anything."
"I had to help her over that last rise. She was pregnant." Corre said, wincing as the man pressed the area.
"Lay down." The man said forcibly pushing Corre onto the ground. "I might be able to stop the bleeding."
"So, you're a doctor now?" Corre laughed and winced as he did.
"I have some experience with the profession." The man said as he rummaged through his satchel.
"I saw you, in the camp, what you did… It was amazing; I've never seen the Ogrons run away like that, ever, you had them terrified." Corre said watching the man. The man was determined, his blue eyes searching feverishly in the dark. His bluish leather jacket glinted in the lights of the flames. The man growled in frustration as he wasn't finding what he was looking for. The man had curly thin auburn hair that played down on his Byron-esque face. "I mean, considering who the Ogrons work for, I didn't think anything in the universe scared them."
"It's an ancestral response; even the Ogrons' employers couldn't breed out the fear of their own ancestral gods." The man said his hands nearly elbow deep in the satchel. He suddenly smiled. "There it is!" He pulled out a small device metal with a little sharp end. He looked at Corre. "I'm going to cauterize the wound, this is going to hurt. I need you to hold very still!"
"What, what is that?" Corre said as he looked skeptically at the device.
"A laser lance." the man said as he pressed Corre to the ground. "Hold still."
"Are you nuts!" Corre shouted as he struggled. The man had surprising strength and pressed harder on Corre's shoulder pinning him.
"On the appropriate setting, the lance will not slice but will simply seal the wound." The man growled as he pulled Corre's shirt up with his free hand, holding the lance between his teeth. "We don't have time to do this proper, so, I'm sorry."
Corre heard the buzz and then felt the searing pain as a faint red glow burned from his abdomen. Corre's body tried to seize and fight and get away but the man's pin was complete. Seconds later the buzz was over. The pain remained but the man lifted his pin and Corre screamed and held the hot flesh that was still smoking, but there was no more blood.
"You son of a…!" Corre screamed.
"I know." The man leaned down and helped Corre up to his feet. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a small paper sack and held it as an offering to Corre. He smiled encouragingly. "Have a jelly-baby, in fact have as many as you want."
Corre reached in pulled out a yellow one. He put it in his mouth; it was sour, at first then sweet. He chewed and he smiled, it was the first luxury he'd had in many years. He didn't even care where this man had found sweets in a universe falling apart at the seams. He reached in a grabbed another one, red, and ate it feeling the sugary confection melt into pure bliss. It was erasing the pain one moment of pure bliss and then he opened his eyes.
The sky exploded. Not the atmosphere, but the sky beyond, blinding light erupted. The ground shook. He felt the wind shift. The flames roared loudly. Corre, blinked rubbed his eyes until his vision blurred back into existence. He looked down the hillside. The refugees were on the ground they were crying and shouting.
"No! No, no, nononononono!" The man shouted to the sky. He looked down the hill to the ship. Klaxons were screaming from the vessel. The man turned to Corre. "Go to them, get them on their feet! Get them moving!
"What are you going to do?" Corre asked, he looked to the sky, the stars were different, were moving. He looked back to the man; who was holding the tablet again. "What's going on!?"
"It's the Time Lords." The man said, gritting his teeth as he looked at the tablet. "They detonated the whole Paswall's cluster with some kind of temporal embolism. The entire quadrant's history is changing as we speak, and not for the better." The man looked at Corre. "You need to get out of here; NOW!" The man turned to the transport ship. "I'll slow Scorens down…you get the people to the ship!"
Corre staggered backward and ran towards the crowds, the screaming and crying and chaos. The man disappeared over the ridge. Corre watched the sky as the changing stars started to disappear into the gulf of darkness. He ran, his stomach hurt but he ignored it and ran. He shouted to the men who were standing and gathered them to get the others on their feet. It took him several minutes to realize that the klaxons had fallen silent. Corre started ushering people up the rise and over the ridge. The ship was still there. The man was pointing something at the ship with both hands firmly clenched; it was a small thin rod. The ship's thrusters flickered, seemed to be struggling. The vessel was definitely trying to take off. As the refugees trickled down the hill towards the ship Corre ran towards the man.
"You've done it!" Corre shouted as he ran towards the man. He looked back. The refugees were rushing the ship. The people were shouting for the doors to open. "You did it!"
"Go!" The man said between gritted teeth. "Tell Scorens that I won't release the thrusters from the resonance until he gets the refugees on board."
"What about you?" Corre asked, looking at the man. The rod was silver with a red, round dish shape on top of it. It was whirring very loudly in a very high pitched manner.
"If I go, if I move, the resonance will break." The man said, he gave Corre a side-long glance. "Don't worry; I've got my own way out. Just go!"
"Who…who are you?" Corre looked. "The people will want to know who saved them."
"I'm a traveler, I help where I can; I'm nobody special. If anyone asks, I, officially, was never here." The man said, his arms straining against the rod he was holding. "Just go, trust me, nobody will be happy to know who I am."
"But…"
"Go! I can't keep this up forever, and we don't have time." The man said. "Or rather we don't have the right kind of time!"
Corre nodded slowly and turned and ran. He ran to the crowd. A crewman was standing on some scaffold on the ship; he was wearing the uniform of the transport vessel.
Corre cupped his hands over his mouth. "HEY! YOU AREN'T GOING ANYWHERE UNTIL YOU LET US IN!" The crewman looked down at Corre and then looked to the stern of the vessel. Corre took a painfully deep breath and bellowed. "HE'S GOT YOU TRAPPED IN A RESONANCE FIELD! WON'T LET YOU GO UNTIL YOU LET US ON!" The ground erupted under their feet again. Corre stared up at the crewman and shouted. "You don't let us on we all die together!"
The crewman lifted his shirt sleeve to his mouth. Something was said and then the cargo doors of the ship opened. The people flooded into the lights of the ship's interior. Corre turned his head as he got bounced by the crowds. He saw the man, their savior. The man staggered slightly back in exhaustion as he looked to the refugees, then his eyes caught Corre's. The man nodded weakly. Corre got caught in a stream of people who pulled him into the ship, he lost sight of the man as he entered into the cargo bay and the smell of sanitized air filled his nostrils. The cargo door hissed and slowly closed sealing the outside from the rest him.
Corre turned, he wanted to shout that there was one more person, but he felt the jolt of the ship's thrusters pouring on the power. He felt the vessel jostle against gravity and then the inertia of the acceleration and ascent.
"Corre…" A woman next to him held his shoulder. "We'd never have made it without you."
"Not me." Said Corre quietly. "It was that stranger. He saved me, and us. He stopped the ship, bought us time."
"Who was he?" Asked the woman, searching Corre.
"I don't know, some kind of battle medic, I guess, some kind of doctor." Corre responded.