Kaarin woke with a start, met with darkness. He sat up on his bed – not the stateroom cot, too soft, too large. His eyes adjusted to the darkness a bit, revealing light coming from an open door in from of the bed. Confused, he fumbled out of the covers. The air was chill and deathly still.
He stepped into something soft and fuzzy – a child's toy. No, not just any toy, as Kaarin realized when he picked it up. It was Mr. Cat, his old stuffed toy, when he was but a boy. He looked at himself, in the pale light filtering through the doorway, and froze with horror – he was a child, scarcely more than ten. Was this a dream? Was his up-until-now spacegoing career a dream? Did he dream the assassins in the night? Were they real? Did he really die on that alien world? A million thoughts rushed through his mind in an instant, even as his movements were sluggish, as if he were swimming in water, rather than immersed in air.
"Mom? Dad?" Kaarin's voice echoed eerily in the room.
There was a crash from downstairs. Driven by natural curiosity, the scout-boy ventured through the door. Time seemed to extend into eternity as he went. Finally, he was standing out the door, but a sudden chill ran down his spine. He turned around.
A pair of glowing eyes gazed at him from the darkness.
Kaarin started backing away – but the eyes followed. He bumped into the far wall, as a shadow emerged from the doorframe of his room, its shape vaguely reminiscent of a bulky humanoid, with hints of claws and teeth that could rend and tear. Kaarin tried to steel himself, but found nothing where his usual reserves of calm and courage resided – he spun to the staircase and ran down it, tripping, tumbling, into the waiting arms of another monster, waiting for him at the foot of the stairs.
The monster grabbed him by the neck, revealing another hand, holding a gleaming dagger.
Kaarin screamed and was stabbed.
ooo
"What have we got here?" asked the medical tech at the Sundae City Hospital. "The fuck is that?" he pointed at the contraption Yosef and Sai were bringing into the building on a lifting cart.
"Ms. Marte, explain," said Yosef, wiping the sweat off his brow.
"This is one capsule from a shipboard emergency cryoberth, plus a temporary power source to keep it functioning until we can get it to the hospital, which we did," she answered. Owing to the privilege of her sex, she was not required to provide most of the traction in the arrangement.
"Jak!" another man came to the scene. "Let them in, they have an appointment. The doctor is already waiting for you. Uh... although I thought that thing will be smaller. You'll have to go the long way around, because that thing won't fit into the staircase, or the elevator, not with that cart and the portable generator still attached."
"Lord, give me strength," sighed Yosef and proceeded with the haul.
ooo
Kaarin almost fell from the narrow wall he had climbed, by a hair recovering his balance and failing to fall onto the dark, unknown cavities below. He was cold. His fingers were cold. Where was he now? He remembered – this was the Tyrian downport, but not the one he visited just... how long ago was it? Which parts were real and which parts were dream? It was so hard to tell. Breathing carefully and slowly, he tried to calm himself, which came surprisingly easily – but also seemed less like the focused kind of calm he wanted, and instead the unfocused, lazy, sleepy kind of calm.
His fingers were icy. He shook his head, trying to focus. This was the downport, forty years ago. The day he decided to sneak into the facility, knowing a ship had landed there. There were a few every week, but this one came around only about once a year, doing a long round across the main, and into the great Imperium of the galactic east.
He opted to continue on his way, but the spectre of sluggishness has seized him. A century passed, then a millennium. Finally, he reached the end of the wall, where he could climb down on the stairs that led into the enclosed area.
The starship Captain was waiting by the ship. Kaarin walked over to him.
"Captain? Captain?" he called out.
The man muttered something, his face obscured from the angle that Kaarin observed him.
"What? I didn't catch that..."
Kaarin stepped closer, noting that he barely felt his legs. Looking down, he found them to be encased in ice, leaving traces of frost wherever he went. His hands too, their fingers frozen and blue, shedding snowflakes as he regarded them.
"A coin for the journey," the man repeated. Strangely, the voice was Yosef's.
"Yosef, is that you?"
Kaarin walked up no him. The stranger's head turned to face him, but it was not the old priest's face there, replaced by a skull draped over with emanciated skin.
"A coin for your journey to the underworld?"
Spooked, Kaarin backed away, but the monster with his comrade's voice was quicker.
He reached out with a skeletal hand and froze Kaarin's heart with a touch.
ooo
"Do whatever you need to do, doctor," Yosef had to sit down. The journey – the actual physical journey to the upstairs of the operation wing – had tired the old man out.
"I'm just pointing out that it is expensive, and you will have to pick up the bill even if surgery is not successful. The only thing keeping that man alive right now are the cryonics. There's no guarantee he'll live long enough to be operated on," the middle-aged doctor in the white and green coat.
"The Kingdom of Tyr is paying, through their authorized spokesman, Court Chaplain Yosef of Tyr, and that's me," said Yosef, testily. "We have more than you've stated as your upper-bound estimate. Right now I think you're just hedging us because you're uncertain about the outcome of the procedure. Worry not, we are both acquainted with losing friends to our enemies, and vagaries of fate. Now please do your work as best you can."
"I suppose you're right. Bring him in!" he commanded the orderlies, to the great relief of the aged priest. They rolled the cart with the contraption down the hallway, followed by the doctor himself.
"Ms. Marte, I'm not much of medic, and I realize you are not one either, but do you know anything about the sort of augments the doctor spoke about?"
"Some people have them, sir. Only rich people, though, because they're expensive."
"Yes, but what about side-effects. Are there any that the honoured physician didn't deem necessary to mention?"
"Yes, sir, I think so. They can be rejected, and need to be maintained. I don't know how often, sir."
"Well, I hope he can get used to them."
ooo
Kaarin drifted in space. A blue and green orb hovered in the far distance, on the stark blackness of space, a starless night with no suns and no moons. It took him ages before he mustered enough mental energy to shake off the daze that kept him spellbound.
His suit radio crackled: "Scout Kaarin, this is mission control. Do you read me?"
He tried to respond, but he found that his throat felt icy. In fact, his entire body had, despite the suit being build to prevent that. He seemed to be falling towards the green-and-blue orb – a planet, he realized.
"Mission control to Scout Kaarin. Can you hear me?"
Kaarin coughed up a lump of ice, with flecks of blood. He was accelerating, even as he suffered from the deathly chill, his suit began to burn up in the atmosphere upon re-entry.
"This is mission control to Scout Kaarin. Can you hear me?"
"This is Scout Kaarin... to mission control... I'm cold..." he croaked out. He was aflame. "Mission control... can't feel my arms. Can't... feel my legs."
"Mission control to Scout Kaarin! What is your status? What do you see?"
"The planet is blue... and there's nothing I can do..."
Darkness claimed him again.
ooo
"You can go in and see him now," the nurse said. "We're administering anaesthetic counteragents now."
"So our good Captain lives?"
"Well, we won't really be sure until he's woken up, which we hope will happen soon. Sometimes, the patients never come out of the medically induced coma," she explained.
"The body lives, but the soul has departed," said Yosef, rising from the couch. He and Sai had taken advantage of the hospital's waiting rooms for he last four hours, not having anything urgent to do while Arthur met with his secret contacts on the planet, and the meeting with the United Nations of Dostoevsky being scheduled in two days – or, at least, this is how Yosef rationalized it. Most of his decision to just lay down and catch an extended nap right there and then was the result of resting his eyes for a few moments. Sai, occupied with something on her portable computer, appeared not to mind the wait. "Let's see him."
ooo
The cold receded. He wasn't drowning, burning, stabbed, clawed, frozen, swimming in molasses or anything of the sort – which made for a stark difference, compared to the timeless period that he'd just suffered. Darkness still remained, however, but he instinctively knew the answer to curing that.
Kaarin opened his eyes, resulting in a shock from the amount of light. He closed them again and tried to raise his hand to his face, but found that impossible.
"Captain Sanders?" It was Yosef's voice!
He squinted, yielding a blurry sight of what was obviously a hospital room – a bed, an endtable, a couple of chairs, and plenty of medical apparatus. Medical apparatus hooked up to him. Beside the bed stood the priest-diplomat, his engineer, and a man dressed like an Imperial medical practitioner.
"I take it... you didn't come... for that coin?" he muttered.
"What? Is he lucid, doctor?"
"How should I know?" answered the stranger. "He might be. He might be hallucinating. He might be too brain damaged to ever recover."
"A barrel... of laughs... doctor." Kaarin wheezed. He found that he could move his neck, which helped him determine the reason why his arms were incapacitated – they were wrapped in cloth and hoisted up by strings. "How long... was I out?"
"Next to nine days," answered Yosef.
"My eye itches."
"That will pass with time. They always do while your body gets used to the new parts," said the physician.
"There is hardly a difference, really," the priest chimed in. "If I didn't know you had it replaced, I wouldn't have noticed."
"Where am I?"
Kaarin's consciousness was returning rapidly. He still felt a little wooly, but he could think, he could feel. Sitting up was probably out of the question. The bed was so constructed as to preclude substantial movements, and the middle was covered with some sort of gizmo which was tied to his torso.
"Sundae City Hospital, second planet, Dostoevsky system, sir," answered Sai Marte.
"Next question – what the hell happened?"
"To make a short story of it, you were gunned down during our flight from Caldos. You might say you owe your life to your late engineer, holy be his memory. We put you in the cryoberth and flew you over here. The fine folks here put you back together again," Yosef relayed. "You are beyond lucky, my friend. God clearly has you in His protection."
"Be sure to thank Him for me. I expected waking up after life-saving surgery to be a little more painful. I barely feel a thing."
"You're still under the effects of anaesthetics. I'm sure the pain will return in due time, when they wear off," the doctor injected.
"What exactly did you do to me? Besides cloning me a new eye, that is."
"We didn't actually clone you a new eye, Captain Sanders, we don't have the facilities for that here. It's an electronic prosthetic."
"Oh. Anything else?"
"One of your arms was broken, but that was an easy fix with some cell grown accelerators. Both of your shoulders were dislocated, but again, this was beyond simple."
"Quit hedging, doc," Kaarin said, and would have gestured, had he the ability to do so.
"Fine. We don't have nerve refusion technology here, likewise, our cloning capabilities are very limited with regards to direct medicinal applications. By the looks of your injuries prior to surgery, you were hit in the side of the torso, just under the lungs, with an anti-tank projectile. It exited on the other side, having shredded your diaphragm, most of the major organs in your bowel cavity, demolished five ribs and severed your spinal cord."
Kaarin swore.
"I'm not done yet."
Kaarin swore some more.
"Will you quit that? I was about to say that you will regain the ability to walk when we're through with you." Kaarin shut up for the moment, so the doctor continued. "The liver was salvageable, so we just patched it up – it'll recover to full capacity with time. I don't recommend going on any drinking binges for a few months at least. You have a set of prosthetic kidneys, and a hybrid digestive tract, reassembled in a bionic framework from the bits and pieces we've recovered. The new diaphragm is synthetic as well; the original might have been saved in better conditions, but the head surgeon decided against it, a decision I fully endorse. And, of course, prosthetic nerve bindings on your lower spinal cord. They're second generation – I'm told that they're better than the real thing, once you get used to the inevitable differences."
A sudden dread gripped Kaarin.
"What about... you know...?" he stammered.
The physician snorted. Yosef smirked. Sai looked instructable.
"You're in luck. That part of you was substantially undamaged. The prognosis is that you'll recover full use of your, ahem, lower extremities."
If Kaarin could wipe his brow in relief, he would have. In the meantime, a sigh of relief was good enough.
"So, what? Do I need batteries now? Need to be wound up every day?"
The doctor laughed. "No, no. Do you take anagathics, Captain?"
"No. Only nobles can afford that stuff. And it's habit-forming."
"In that case your prostheses have an expected usage life greater than your remaining lifespan. Regular check-ups are recommended, however. You're from Tyr, right? That's one of the better places to live, with regards to medical advancement. I'm sure they can do everything we can do here."
"When will you be finished with me? When can I leave?"
"That's a good attitude to have," said the medic. "We can get started on the rehabilitation immediately. If all goes well with the sims, you'll be walking in a day or two. Your attitude will help, I expect. It's not common enough to see someone accept major cybernetization without complaint... well, aside from a few curses. I could tell you stories of some the patients who never quite adapt to being partly synthetic, they just-"
"Rehabilitation. I want to get started on that," Kaarin cut in.
"Of course. I'll tell the nurse." The doctor left them.
"I'm glad you're alive," said Yosef.
"Me too, sir," said Sai.
"Yeah, yeah, me too. Thanks for getting me out of there. Can't say I remember very much after I met up with you in that lobby. They haven't messed with my brain, do you think?"
"As far as I can tell, they haven't. They have no reason to," opined Yosef. "The agent, Arthur, is going to be helping us on our assignment, although I'm not sure how long for and how far his help goes. I'm going to be speaking to the planetary leaders in a couple of days. Maybe you can be there, too, we'll see."
"That's your job, talking to the hobnobs. Me, I just ferry you around, shoot bad guys, and apparently get my guts obliterated."
Yosef smiled, and glanced outside. "That's the nurse coming with the VR helmet. Give us a call if you need anything before they discharge you."
"Yeah. I'll see you two later. Good luck with the meeting."
"Thanks. Get well soon."
ooo
Arthur's contact practically inhaled her third burger. There were few things which fazed him, but there were some he could never get used to, understand, or become jaded against. Such as codename Veronica's eating habits. He'd met her thrice before, and each of those times, she had their little information exchange meeting in a place she could order food – a bar, a diner, a restaurant. She was obviously overweight, but not so much that it impaired her mobility. Getting files on fellow agents was considered a huge no-no, so he had to wonder if Veronica was simply implanted with so many high power augments that her metabolism had to shift to permanent overdrive just to keep it all going, or if she simply swallowed a microscopic black hole that annihilated ninety percent of what she shoveled into her mouth.
"So you're saying that he's coming here?" she asked, between "bites".
"Yes, and we need your help to arrange a meeting with the commander of the picket. Maybe also the research administrator."
"Won't be easy, and I guarantee nothing. You'll have to convince them yourself, I can only get you within talking distance. You understand?" she bit the fourth hamburger in half.
"Naturally. Don't worry about the implementation details, we'll handle those."
"I'll give you a call when I'm done, then. Anything else, Art?"
"Oh, I wouldn't mind a salary increase, an extension on my license to kill, transfer to a capital world with hedonistic mores, and a luxurious new antigrav car," Arthur deadpanned.
Veronica blinked. She squinted.
Arthur smiled innocently. "What?"
"You're not half as funny as you think you are," she rolled her eyes, popping the other burger half in. "But you do need a transfer somewhere, when this is over. How about Caldos?"
"But that's where they already know my face!"
"Cosmetic surgery is not out of the question. Besides, not sending you to the Mycians again. Going to tell Mike to have you take over ops with the People's Dominion of Arden, or the Western Commonwealth."
Arthur grimaced. "The child-killers or the barbarians?"
"You'll see!"
"I guess I will. You're obviously busy, so I'll let you carry on with your duties," he told his senior in the service, if not quite his superior.
"Go directly to hell, Art."
Arthur smiled sweetly, clearly intending to communicate the feeling was mutual, and left without another word.