Aditu: Thank you for the reviews. Hm, you know you just made me realize what terrible un-biologist-like assumption I just made. I always imagined an arthropod-like (insect, crustacean, chelicerate and the like) life form would be most fit for a biological vessel, because of the solid exoskeleton (chitine) that could easily be modified for a ship's hull and internal walls. And here I go and write that they get "pregnant" just like a mammal. Tsk tsk tsk. Now I'll have to consider they are modified mammals. Although writing internal fecundation happening in space promises some fun, lol, and embarrassment for the pilot… but this goes much further into the story. You'll have to be patient if you want to read about that ;-). Btw, I do like the idea of Tom as a ship-whisperer, lol. Being myself a cowboy (well, switched to English dressage recently, but anyway), I am glad that I got the "horseback riding" feeling through this chapter :-) More to come, I promise.
Hm, so if anyone else wishes to make me re-visit my assumptions, it will be most welcome :-) Please, keep reviewing!
Chapter IX. First aid treatments
Merrrshika told the vessel that she would soon leave him with someone onboard to care for his wounds, while she would go to "meet" the other male. Pshi did not react.
Mirrresh organic vessels possessed their own intelligence and personality. Just like the Mirrresh piloting them, they were "team-telepaths", which allowed them to understand more than their limited proper intelligence might let them comprehend. Merrrshika and Pshi, however, were not yet a team; the telepathical link was not established, and communicating something else than the basic orders for flying the vessel and assuring environmental controls was not yet possible.
Merrrshika was not sure that Pshi had understood what she had said beyond that it implied healing for him and a visit for the other male, but she gave a friendly pat to the saddle, not waiting for an answer that would not come anyway. So, she made her way towards the sickbay, where the Doctor no doubt would be by now.
She had been on board such a war vessel on two occasions before, when she had been hired as a free consultant to evaluate and reinforce the hacking capacities of the mechanic console and its personnel. She could find her way around the ship without too much trouble. She went down two decks, then took the necessary turns and tried not to pay too much attention to the few members of the crew still lying in the corridors. She found the sickbay's doors at last. She pushed the control for the opening, wondering if the doctor had needed as much time to understand how to open the doors as she had needed to stop looking for a button on Voyager.
As the doors opened, Merrrshika's keen ears were assaulted by a thousand more alarms resounding all around sickbay. The Doctor was busying himself looking through a series of devices that were stocked in a lodging compartment near the center of the room. There was a pile of presumably useless things on one side of him, amidst the debris scattered across the floor, splashes of Pshi's eclipse blood, and cloths stained with the violent blood of Mirrresh crew.
Merrrshika's eyes scanned the room and soon found the corpses of the crew, lined on the floor in a middle of the sickbay, covered with a violet sheet, but there were so many corpses that many were sharing the same sheet, and she could guess by the position of the bodies that it was the doctor that had moved them from various positions.
"Hi Doctor," Merrrshika said darkly. "Do you know the cause of theirr deathsh?", she asked rather abruptly.
"Phaser burns, unknown metallic bullets, knifes, depressurisation, bites and falling beams and roofs of this vessel."
"No biovirrush?", Merrrshika insisted.
"Not according to my data," the Doctor answered.
"Show me a bullet," the Mirrresh demanded.
The Doctor gave her a small octagonal piece of metal, with a concave end and a doubled pointed front.
"These arre Warri bulletsh. Sheems like a light asshault weapon, frrom the shize. Mirrresh grreatesht ennemies. They always wanted ourr shipsh to fight togetherr with theirr flying computerrs."
"Your ships!", the Doctor exclaimed. "You mean, your mess of useless artefacts?"
"What uselessh arrtefactsh?", Merrshika asked, her voice even and lifeless.
"All those things looking like scanners, with a hollow screen," the Doctor answered with a constant displeasure. "I don't have a clue of what happened here and I have no idea how I can access the vital organs of the vessel!"
As he spoke, he continuously piled "useless artefacts" to his right in a growing mount at the feet of the corpses of people of her race. Merrrshika took a scanner, and fingered a few touches.
"It'sh worrking perrfectly," she noted. "It'sh in nearr-Xh-rray; I think B'Elanna adjusted your visual range for longer wavelengths of ultra-violet, so you can't shee it. Teleporrt back to Voyagerr and ashk B'Elanna to modify yourr visual rrange to match mine."
Then, the Doctor noticed how sad she seemed, and it dawned on him, with a little shame, that he had failed his duty as medical officer not to have noticed earlier. He was about to apologize or something, when she paused and said:
"Doctorr, did you notiche… a Mirrresh with an irron claw on the left hand? It'sh the captain."
"Yes," he answered softly.
"Wherre is he?"
"Why do you…", he began.
"Wherre!"
She no longer had her sunglasses, so her could see her eyes filled with tears. He walked forward, and stopped next to a body. He slowly pulled the sheet off the face of the captain, who was female.
"I don't know herr," Merrrshika said softly.
She covered the face once more, then she turned around and said, walking briskly out of sickbay, followed by the Doctor:
"I'll take you to the teleporrting hall. I will wait forr you to come back, then I will teleporrt to the otherr male."
The Doctor nodded, but as he trailed besides her, he asked:
"Is everything fine, Merrrshika? You look distressed, understandably…"
"I am not a military, Doctor. I never saw someone who died a violent death before, except maybe my uncle who fell off a cliff while climbing, but it is not the same. The fifty-seven crewmembers of this ship are dead. No. They are not dead, they are murdered. And… I am not a military. This kind of sight is not something I consider a… regrettable but inevitable part of my duty."
Her eyes were filling with tears as she spoke, and the Doctor put a reassuring arm around her shoulders.
"I understand," he said.
They walked on in silence.
ooooo
It took an hour to master Pshi, an hour to match the Doctor's range of visible wavelengths to hers, and another hour to take a relative control over the second male, whose name was Shrrrri. During that time, Harry and B'Elanna were designing another kind of filtering glasses, one that would block ultra-violet, and Tuvok was preparing protective suits for the officers that would have to journey onboard the organic vessels.
The five first pairs of "sunglasses" were given to Tom and other sickbay crewmen. Two were teleported on Pshi to give a hand to the Doctor, while Paris and two others went to Shrrri with Merrrshika.
She passed the four following hours sweating blood and tears in the bowels of Shrrri. Organic vessels hardly had any space to spare, so the equivalent of the Jeffrey's tubes was necessarily a small space. They stopped an undetermined number of haemorrhage, repaired an alarming number of fractures (among which two vertebrae, which were reinforced by long beams of metal gifted by Voyager), realigned torn nerves by the dozens, released the sealing of respiratory and aeration ways, reinforced aneurisms, freed oedemas.
After these four hours, she left Shrrri in the hands of Tom and his team, and teleported onboard Pshi. Her knowledge of the ship's anatomy, her litheness and Pshi's trust in her were also useful to the Doctor's team. She could reach a nerve buried in a mass of cartilage, when such a move would have dislocated a human's shoulder, and the Doctor did not dare to just move his arms through a part of Pshi's body, afraid he might perceive and be irritated that he was a mechanical being. So, he let Merrrshika do it. She could also, if necessary, pinch a sensible part of the vessel to limit his resistance to an unpleasant or painful treatment.
For the next twelve hours, the nurses' teams took shifts of four hours, changing ships to take care of the most urgent wound. After this time, it seemed both Pshi and Shrrri were ready to accept eagerly and gratefully any healing they would get, and had forgotten about the mechanical vessel orbiting nearby. Merrrshika then allowed herself to come back on Voyager. She slipped her sunglasses back on with a sigh.
Janeway called a meeting, and all the senior officers were made aware of the progress that was made with the ships' condition. There was a collective sigh of relief on the bridge, which Merrrshika could "feel" more than hear, and she felt sorry that she did not only have good news.
"They'rre shtarrving," she announced. "Herre, they have coverr but no food. They need gash and dusht beforre long, otherrwise they will die, out of enerrgy. Oh… Did I mention? They use shtellarr gash fusion as shourche of enerrgy."
"We are willing to help them," Janeway began carefully, "but what can we do?"
"They won't need much to shurrvive. Two shuttles equipped with trractorr beams would be enough to brring back enough food forr all of them."
At an affirmative nod of the captain, B'Elanna and Harry went off to equip two shuttles with a tractor beam. B'Elanna grumbled something about being paid double shifts in the Maquis, but was unheard by anyone but Chakotay and Kim.
"The males arre feeling a lot betterr now," Merrrshika went on. "They arre rreasshurred about ush and theirr calm shprreads overr the females and the babys. Theirr hyperr bassh frrequenchies arre twiche lowerr. You can get a little closerr and gain coverr by the giant planet therre. Be carreful, though, to always fache the females as if you were watching them, and follow the males moves. They will underrshtand that you arre offerring prrotection."
"Understood," Janeway said with a touch of acidity that did not go unnoticed by Merrrshika.
"If you allow me, Captain, I would like to go on one of the shuttles, to be surre it'sh the good type of gash and dusht. Usually, the Mirrresh camp within half an hourr at warrp one of a food shourche. It won't be long."
"Agreed. We will continue to heal the males and scan for mirrresh vessels. Dismissed," the Captain concluded.
"Thank you, Captain Janeway. "
Three hours later, she was back, with the two shuttles and two full loads of gas. They released the "food" in the middle of the herd, which scattered warily around the small mechanical shuttles, but soon the prospect of food won over fear and the shuttles hastily escaped as every organic ship rushed forward to capture its share of food. Merrrshika requested of Voyager to take a visual record of the feeding, so she could see which vessels were dominant or dominated. But now, she was too tired to keep her interest up. Surely, tomorrow, she would study it. But now, she let Kim monitor the recording, made her report to Janeway, and escaped to her quarters.
She did not even take the time or make the effort to remove her clothes. She just removed her belt and the kind of sleeve that covered her tail. After that, she lay down in bed, told herself the day had been less disastrous than could be expected, that thirty human hours could be long indeed, that she was exhausted and that many long human hours of slumber would be most delicious.
She knew nothing until the next "morning", when the first thing she was aware of was a terrible stiffness in all parts of her abused body.