"Battle Stations!" Dylan's voice broke through the fog of sleep, the klaxon following on its heels. At first, Trance thought she must be dreaming again, so many nightmares featured the klaxon as a soundtrack, but it was too crisp, too loud. It lacked the muffled fuzzy quality she now associated with her dreams. Her breath caught, heart racing so fast that her head spun and her limbs felt insubstantial, as if made of water. Thoughts floated away, just out of grasp, but her brain was reaching for something, something important.
Beka!
Her eyes snapped open, quarters coming into focus, battle lights flashing, creating dancing shadows through the foliage of her plants. The klaxon cut off, stations now manned, just as the ship rocked. Missile, starboard, lower decks, low yield—not meant to do much damage—if she had to guess. A warning shot or a statement.
"Andromeda, what is going on?" she asked as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The blanket fell to the floor, tangling her feet. The lights in her room brightened automatically. She kicked at the blanket, trying to release her legs. Everything seemed sluggish. Her thoughts, her movements, all pushing through liquid instead of air. Why was her body responding so slowly? Is this what usually happened when a person woke suddenly from a deep sleep?
Free of the wretched cloth now, she pushed off the bed, bare feet connecting with the rough carpeted deck, and forced herself to move to the nearest monitor on unsteady feet, the occasional missile hit making the task that much more difficult. A panel sparked behind her with a buzz and a flash.
"The Eureka Maru has exited slip stream pursued by six Dragon slipfighters. They have opened fire on both the Maru and myself. Their missiles are more of a nuisance than anything else. Even so, the best place for you right now is in your quarters," Andromeda replied, appearing on the monitor, her professional expressed marred by a hint of annoyance at being attacked.
Beka. She had sensed this would not go well, but the what and how had eluded her. She did not see. Before, she would have considered it a premonition, but now her gut feelings were only guesses based on experience, and guesses helped no one. She'd been blinded and now Beka was out there under attack and she saw no way to help her.
"On screen," she ordered.
"Trance, Dylan and the others are on Command and have everything under control. I do not believe the Dragons mean to harm us. There is nothing to worry about." Another missile. Upper decks this time, closer to crew quarters. This porcelain doll treatment grated. Even Andromeda was confining her to a safe, comfortable bubble where she was no help to anyone.
"Please Rommie, it will cause me more stress to not see what is happening. Beka is my friend." And whether the Dragons meant to hurt them or not, danger lurked anytime missiles flew.
Andromeda acquiesced with a sharp nod and a sympathetic smile. For all the cold logic of the AI iteration of Andromeda's personality, she still understood friendship. Rommie's face was replaced by a view of the Maru surrounded by four fighters split with the sensor readout of where all players on the field were, offering context. Trance silently thanked Andromeda for thinking of it. Four fighters had taken formation around the Maru as shown in the view screen, while two more were behind Andromeda. Several dots, more missiles, appeared on the diagram, some tracking towards Andromeda and the others towards the Maru. Trance watched the Maru's point defense lasers detonate two explosives before they connected with the Maru's hull, while another hit, flashing orange. Her room shook as the one missile that made it through Andromeda's defenses made contact aft.
"Oh come on, they aren't even trying!" Harper's voice rang through her quarters, full of bravado.
"I have micro-fractures on deck 32. Deploying nanobots. It shouldn't be an issue as long as we don't take another direct hit in the same location," Rommie reported.
"Mr. Harper, do you want them to try?" asked Dylan.
"Um, guys, Andromeda might not be taking much damage, but that hit compromised my AP tanks. This party is getting a little wilder than I prefer," Beka said. Her worried face appeared in a box at the corner of Trance's screen. Thank goodness. Safe for now.
"The Nietzschean fighters are firing again," Doyle said. Sixteen more dots appeared on the diagram, tracking towards both ships.
"Rommie, take those out and let's show our guests out there exactly how serious we take parties around here," Dylan ordered, "Arm offensive missiles, all tubes. My guess is that they won't want to stick around once we really get the party started."
"Preparing party favors, aye," Rommie said. Trance smiled. She wished she were on Command to join in the camaraderie. She missed working beside her friends, even under life and death circumstances.
The missile dots blinked out as both Andromeda and the Maru focused on them, but Trance watched as one slipped past both ships' defense weapons and hit the Maru's hull just outside the engine room. A lucky shot.
"Dammit!" Beka shouted, eyes on something on the screen beside the pilot's chair.
"Critical engine failure," announced the Maru in its deep gravelly voice. Beka removed her seatbelt and jumped from her seat, disappearing off screen.
"There is a leak in the Maru's antiproton tanks and it is going critical." Andromeda said.
"Beka, what is going on down there?" Dylan demanded.
"I'm trying to contain the leak right now." Beka's voice was almost drowned out by the hissing of steam, the Maru's announcements of impending doom, and the cacophony of various alarms fighting for dominance.
Then, everything happened at once, a parade of events coming together to create a spectacle of horror. A slipstream portal appeared and the Nietzschean fighters peeled off as predicted.
Harper cursed and shouted, "Beka, get out of the Engine Room!"
An explosion rocked the Maru from the inside.
"Beka!" Trance shouted, though no one heard her in her isolation. Her mind went blank, focusing on a checklist, drowning out all distractions. Triage mode. Boots. She needed her boots. Emergency medical kit. There, on the shelf next to the desk. On the desk, her hand comm and forcelance. Leave the lance, attach hand comm to waistband. She was only wearing short shorts and a tank top. No time for modesty.
"Andromeda, deploy bucky cables and prep Med Deck. Harper, get down to the hangar and stabilize the Maru. Doyle, I need you to get down there and stabilize Beka enough to get her to Med Deck. Rommie, try to figure out where our party crashers got to and why they were chasing Beka in the first place." Dylan shouted. A chorus of yeses and ayes answered him.
"I have her. Pulling her in," Andromeda announced. Trance barely noticed. She had already reached her door. The lift was at the end of the hall, a walk, but not too far. The Maru's hangar was only a few meters away from the lift. She was closer than anyone on Command and would be there first if Doyle kept pace with Harper.
She exited her room into the hallway. Halfway to the lift, Andromeda noticed her, hologram appearing about a meter in front of her.
"Trance, what are you doing?" she demanded, hands on her hips.
"I am helping Beka," she replied, continuing her forward motion, right past the hologram who appeared further down, eyes all business, frown terse.
"I have alerted the medics and they are prepping Med Deck as we speak. You are under orders to remain off duty until you are deemed fit. Captain Hunt has not given me clearance to allow you to return."
Too bad for Captain Hunt.
"We do not need a medic, I am perfectly capable of caring for Beka. I know her and her history. I know what medication to use and which ones not to. Besides, I have looked at their files. They are young and not a single one is trained as a surgeon."
"We don't know Beka will need a surgeon and Doyle or my avatar can stand in if the need arises. Return to your quarters." Andromeda ordered.
Trance stopped right in front of the hologram, who stood in the middle of the hallway as if to block her. She looked the hologram up and down.
"No, I don't think I will." she snapped. "You will have to physically restrain me." She stepped right through Andromeda. It was a combative move, but she didn't care. She could do this.
"You still need to use the lift and I can stop it from leaving this deck." Andromeda said eyebrow raised, appearing in front of the doors. Trance squared her shoulders.
"Then I will have to take my chances on the ladders." It was a bluff. They both knew without more arm and leg strength, the ladders were dangerous for her, but Andromeda had no control over them the way she did the lifts. The hologram gave her a thoughtful look and then stepped aside.
"Dylan will receive a full report on your insubordination," she said, though there was no menace in her voice. A mere statement of fact.
Good, report to him. She had quite a bit to say on the matter.
"Beka?" she called as she stepped onto the Maru. She had been correct and was the first one there. Alarms sounded all over the ship and ozone burned her nostrils. She coughed as her lungs filled with acrid smoke. Fire. Where?
She made her way towards the engine room, but a whimper coming from the berth sidetracked her. A child. The Maru was small enough she wouldn't lose too much time if she made a detour.
A boy of about eleven sat on her bunk, tears rolling down his face, terror in his eyes. He showed no signs of injury, only emotional distress.
"Hello, my name is Trance," she said, keeping her voice low and calm, "I need to go help Beka now, but I will call for someone to take care of you. You are safe here. Okay?" She flashed him as much of a smile as she could muster through her anxiety. His chin dipped in a tiny nod and she turned away
"Trance, what the hell are you doing?" Dylan asked, voice booming through the comm. There were footsteps near the airlock, Harper and Doyle. "Andromeda just informed me you disobeyed a direct order and are now on the Maru?"
"Dylan, there is a child onboard, in the berth, he is frightened and needs help." She ignored his words, giving him facts to chew on instead.
She was close to the engine room now. The smoke was thicker here. For the first time, she feared for herself and Beka, second guessing the rashness of her decision. Her body, unaccustomed to this much activity objected with an onslaught of dizziness and shakiness. The fire extinguisher was too heavy for her current strength level, and she definitely could not move Beka on her own. What if Beka were on the lower level, only accessible by ladder?
"Doyle is there to stabilize Beka. Go to your bunk on the Maru until this is over, we will talk when everything settles down. That is an order." He was angry. He had a right to be. She still didn't care. She was here now and would finish what she had started.
"We can talk all you want after I take care of Beka." She could almost hear him cursing on Command, though he had, thankfully, not kept the comm on.
"Trance?" Harper asked from behind. "Weren't you taking a nap?"
She coughed again, the smoke getting thicker the closer they got to the engine room. Harper coughed too. Her eyes remained forward. "It's a little hard to sleep through a battle."
"You shouldn't be down here. Your body isn't ready for this amount of stress," Doyle said.
They entered the engine room together, Trance in front, the other two behind. Harper slid past her, brandishing a fire extinguisher at the open flames spouting from a tank in the corner of the room. The intense heat of the flames dried out her skin, making it feel as if someone had stretched it tight across her cheekbones, like the skin of a drum. Beka lay close to porthole they entered through, unconscious, angry plasma burns on her side framed by singed cloth. She'd been lucky. The blast that hit her threw her far from the fire. Dried blood painted her cheek from a wound on her forehead.
Trance dropped to her knees next to her friend. She coughed again, harder this time. Her head ached, pain marching through her skull to the beat of her heart. She pushed it aside, gave it to her future self to deal with, and focused on what was in front of her. This process
"I can get Beka to Medical. You need to lie down," Doyle said, perceptive enough to read the shibboleths of pain in her body language. She ignored Doyle. She was right, and Trance needed to come up with something quickly, something that didn't involve leaving Beka in less experienced hands.
The woosh of fire retardant being released at high pressure told her that the fire was under control, or would be soon.
"Boss, looks like nothing else is going to explode. I have to put out some fires here, literally, and it's gonna take some work to get this bucket of bolts up and running, but the Maru isn't going to explode in the hangar bay anytime soon." Harper announced over the comm as Trance opened her med kit and scanned Beka, watching the readouts appear on the tiny screen of her hand comm.
"Thanks for the update Harper. Trance, let Doyle handle this, return to your bunk." Dylan repeated.
She thought she'd made herself clear earlier. Dylan needed to trust her.
"I already had this conversation with Rommie, but I will say it again so everyone can hear. I am helping Beka right now. She doesn't need a another medic. I am her physician and I am here right now. I have everything I need to care for her on the Maru. You will have to restrain me if you want me to stop now. So, the way I see it is you can waste time having someone try and force me to rest, which won't work out well for you, you can leave me alone, or you can help me, because the only way I will rest is by making sure Beka is okay," she said, tone mirroring the command in Dylan's voice.
"We will discuss this later, Trance. Doyle, do what she asks," Dylan said, each word measured and punctuated, each one an individual promise of an unpleasant conversation. Rarely was she the one to invoke that tone, and rarely had it gone well for her. It was a problem for the future and she would handle it then.
"If you do this, it is going to cause a lot of physical stress, I am worried you will hurt yourself," Doyle said.
"I have a plan to prevent that," she replied, bluffing again.
Okay Trance, time to come up with a plan.
She could not rely on visions to guide her, only ingenuity. If one could not do something because of a physical weakness, one made use of tools. Rommie often helped her on Med Deck, anticipating her needs and making sure her equipment was on hand. This time, she needed someone to lend her their strength.
"And what is your plan?" Doyle asked, head tilted and lips pressed together, skeptical.
"Delegation. I need a nurse, can you do that for me?" That was as good a plan as any.
Doyle bobbed her head, "I can do that. What do you need?"
Trance looked over her sensor readouts one more time just to make sure and looked over to Doyle. "She is safe to move. Can you carry her into the berthing chamber and lay her down on the bottom right bunk?" Beka would be more comfortable on the Maru, and after, Trance could rest on her own bunk, close at hand in case Beka needed anything. Nursing each other on the bottom right bunk was a Maru tradition dating back to the first medical emergency after Trance joined the crew. No reason to change things now.
"Yes." Doyle replied, calculating eyes on Beka. Trance turned to Harper. He'd abandoned the fire extinguisher by his feet and was bent over a control panel triaging his patient in much the same way she was hers. If the Maru wasn't about to explode, she needed him, just for a moment.
"Harper," she called. He jumped. He was lost in his thoughts. In the zone as he would say. She was in the zone too. Triage was second nature to her. For the first time in two weeks she felt in control.
"Yes my golden goddess," he replied, using his favorite nickname for her. It only stung a little.
Harper gave her no argument, no pronouncements that she should not be doing this. He answered her command the way he would answer any from her in an emergency. God did she love him in that moment for accepting her without question, the first of her friends not to be an obstacle wasting even more of her precious energy.
"Nothing is going to blow up?" She followed Doyle's progress out of the room with her gaze, packing up her medical equipment before standing up to follow.
"Not for now, at least." He flashed a smile.
"Good. I need you to collect the burn kit from in here and go to Beka's room and get the medical cart, then you can get back to work."
"Yes Ma'am," Harper replied and saluted, two fingers to his brow. She laughed. Despite everything, she laughed as he disappeared through the porthole to do as she asked.
Rommie had taken up residence in the galley by the time she passed through again, the child sitting stiff-backed beside her, wide blue eyes following the action the way a rodent scans a field for predators, conditioned to flee at the first sign of danger, but with nowhere to go. A human child, not Nietzschean. A slave. Rommie spoke to him in a low soothing voice, words impossible to make out. Her eyes followed Trance as she passed through, but she said nothing. Even before becoming organic she would not have placed bets on who Rommie was supporting in Dylan and her's impromptu game of tug-of-war.
Doyle stepped out of her way when she approached. Doyle had lain Beka on the bunk and removed her burned jacket and blouse, leaving her in just her bra. The burn stretched from her hip to the base of her ribcage, the skin blistered and peeling on her side, angry red inflammation reaching all the way to her navel. Harper wheeled the cart into the room, sparing a glance at Beka, worried. Trance made note to thank Andromeda for her due diligence in making sure the Maru was well stocked with medical equipment and supplies specific to the injuries Beka now had.
"Here Trance," Doyle said and slid a crate the perfect height to sit on behind her. She took a seat, muscles instantly relieved.
"Thanks Doyle."
"You got this?" Harper asked.
She nodded, "Yeah, I got this. She'll be up and yelling at you by tomorrow, easy."
Trance didn't even look at Harper. She pulled out a sanitizing wand and ran it over her hands and bare arms, then tossed it to Doyle who did the same.
"I am going back to the engine room. Holler if you need me," he said and then headed off, footsteps fading down the hall. Doyle passed the wand back over and she waved it over the burn, killing any bacteria that may have already taken residence on the wound.
"Doyle, in the burn kit there is a spray bottle with a red nozzle. It's made for plasma burns. I need you to apply that gel directly on the third degree burns. The longer we wait, the more chance it will become infected or scar," she ordered as she attached a biosensor node to Beka's temple and tapped commands into the control panel on the portable med cart. Beka's vitals appeared on the cart's screen.
Beka groaned, coming to, her forehead wrinkled in pain. Trance searched through the medications. There. She picked up a vial of the expensive painkiller she specifically stocked for Beka because it was both effective and could not lead to chemical dependence. She pushed it into an injector, programmed the correct dose, and pressed the device to Beka's neck then discarded the vial, dropping it to the deck, replacing it with a vial of sedative. Even with painkillers, Doyle's work would be excruciating. It would be better for Beka to remain unconscious.
She scanned Beka again, looking for specifics on the damaged tissue. With some clever programming, she could prevent scars all together. She found what she needed and programmed the bots. She injected them and moved her attention on Beka's head wound, by far the easiest and most routine of the two injuries.
The room spun as she bent over too fast. A betrayal of strength and energy. Adrenaline had kept her going so far, but all good things came to an end. Just a little longer. This had become a trial, a test. She needed to prove to herself and the others she had it in her. She was still useful.
"Okay, Trance. What next?" Doyle asked. Trance breathed in and then out again once, and then twice. She imagined herself drawing from a well of energy deep within herself the way she had drawn energy from her sun in the past.
"Inside the burn kit are dressings. They are laced with nanotechnology to regenerate her skin and a salve to protect the area from infection. Affix them to all burned areas, no matter how mild. In twelve hours we will can remove them and use a standard skin cell regenerator to heal the rest," she explained, her voice remained strong, keeping her secrets. Doyle got to work.
Steady once more, Trance cleaned Beka's head wound with a disinfectant doused cloth and used the aforementioned cell regenerator to close it, leaving Beka's skin smooth again, though bruised. The nanos would take care of that in a matter of hours. She ran the scanner over Beka's head. No swelling, but some localized damage. A minor concussion.
"Finished," Doyle reported. Trance programmed another nano injector to repair the damage and protect Beka's brain from potential swelling. She injected them and then looked first to confirm that Doyle had missed nothing, and then to Doyle, smiling.
"Finished here as well," she said.
Dylan once explained to her that in a crisis, he could keep going despite injury and fatigue until the moment he relaxed. Then, the lurking exhaustion and pain would overtake him, forcing him to address it. As someone with an endless well of energy to draw from, she had only understood what he meant on an intellectual level. Now, she knew on a physical level as well.
First her headache returned to the forefront, tacking on interest for ignoring it so long. The contents of her stomach boiled and rolled and her heart danced to an uneven tempo in her chest rather than beating steadily the way it was supposed to. Her muscles twitched and ached, angered by her insistence on using them so intensely after she'd exercised them for an hour this morning.
She closed her eyes and tried to regulate her breathing. How long had her nap been? She hadn't thought to look at the chronometer. When was her last meal or drink of water? While time seemed to fly as she worked, an hour or more must have passed since she arrived on the Maru.
Perhaps heroics should have waited until the second day of work. But, despite feeling more like a rag wrung out and left on the floor than a person, a sense of pride filled her. A spark of happiness and a glimmer of confidence. She had saved the life of a friend. She had done her job, and she knew that no one could have done it as well as her.
One of Doyle's hands pressed into the small of her back, offering her solid strength to lean into, while the fingers of her free hand curled gently around Trance's wrist, taking her vitals the android way.
"Your heart rate and blood pressure are both far too high and your blood sugar is too low, has it been over three hours since you last ate?" Doyle asked. Trance could only shrug. Her naps often lasted up to three hours, making up for the sleep the missed out on at night. "Stay right here, I will get you water and food from the galley. I'm sure Harper has something carb heavy in there."
Trance didn't think she could stand if she wanted to. Someone had put a weighted blanket around her shoulders and filled her boots with sand. She wanted to tell Doyle not to bother with food out of fear of becoming sick, especially not any of Harper's prepackaged monstrosities, but figured she had lost her strong bargaining position from earlier when she could actually stand up to stand her ground. Doyle knew what she was doing. Better to conserve strength. At some point there would be an angry Dylan Hunt to manage.
Doyle returned with a mug of water and a shiny bag of starchy vegetable chips and handed them both to Trance. She took them, taking a drink and placing the chips unopened on her lap. As far as Harper food went, these weren't bad. They tasted okay and were made from vegetables, an improvement over much of what he ate when Andromeda, or someone else, didn't plan meals for him. Another time she might have eaten them without complaint, and even enjoyed them, but right now her stomach did an unpleasant flip at the thought of eating so much grease.
"Thanks Doyle," she said, and then pulled a smile through her exhaustion and placed a hand on Doyle's arm. "You're a great nurse. You have the heart for medicine." She spoke the truth, wanting to let Doyle know how impressed she had been with her since she woke, especially today, but her words didn't have the impact she expected.
A sad little laugh escaped Doyle's lips. "Trance, I don't have a heart."
Trance looked down at the food on her lap and the cup in her hand and then back up to her friend, trying to formulate her words the right way, to build them into a structure capable of supporting Doyle as she continued to discover who she was and where she belonged in this strange universe.
"Until several weeks ago, I did not have a heart either. Not like a human's. A physical heart is simply blood and muscle protein. It keeps an organic alive, but it does not give them the spark of life or love. That heart is something much harder to pinpoint, and is unrelated to biology."
Doyle said nothing, standing like a statue, a frown in her eyes and on her lips. It hit Trance right then how lost they all were, all of her friends, how unsure of themselves. Every one of them searching for their identity, their home, the place they belonged. And there was Doyle who helped her each day, acting as her de facto physical therapist with smiles that seemed to come easy, yet a stream of sadness, of uncertainty, flowed beneath those smile, hidden away, sometimes visible in the depths of her eyes. She had no past, no heritage, and no true home now that Seefra had become Tarn Vedra again. Her roots had instead attached to people like Harper and Dylan, so unpredictable, when they needed to grow deep into stable soil.
"Doyle, I know things are bleak right now. You are trying to figure out what and who you are, where you belong, and I understand, believe me. I tell myself that it is always darkest before the dawn, but the sun always rises. We have been through so much, and I don't think the universe makes much sense to any of us right now. It is hard to see that things will get better, but they will. I have to believe they will, and you must, too, or what is the point of all this?"
"Let's get you into bed. I will clean up and monitor Beka. You need to eat and rest." Doyle said, not acknowledging Trance's words. "I am going to tell the others to leave you alone until tomorrow."
In other words, she was going to tell Dylan not to confront her until she'd rested. She was grateful, but even so an anxious bubble formed around her heart, squeezing it, forcing it to beat harder as it pumped her blood, her bravado from earlier rushing off to hide somewhere, leaving her defenseless against her bully imagination who loved to lie to her and blow things, like Dylan's potential reaction, out of proportion.
Dylan loves you. He is angry, but he will be fair.
"Thank you, Doyle." Trance said. Doyle helped her stand and take a couple of shaky steps to her bunk. She would stay awake at least until Beka was up and then take everyone's advice and rest.
"Trance, I know you understand, probably better than most. I just wish I had your optimism." Doyle said as she helped her sit down. Trance forced her eyes to meet Doyle's and concentrated on sculpting her expression into one of warmth and confidence to comfort her friend. Another mask. She did not trust herself to speak.
Sometimes I wish I did too.
Then, with great effort, she pushed those thoughts away. Today, they were not allowed. Today she would focus on the good she had done, focus on Beka, and deal with the consequences when tomorrow rolled around. She often told everyone else that their intentions shaped their outcomes. Well, her intentions had been good, and she chose to believe that the outcome would be good as well.
