Music hung in the air of the dimly lit chamber, which was also filled with fragrances from a dozen worlds, somehow jarring yet oddly complimentary, from native herbs grown on Zastron 5, and floral arrangements grown on-board the vast star fortress, whose lineage could be traced all the way back to the emperors' gardens of the First City of the Draconian Empire, to softly-wafting fragrant perfumes from Gideon and Marquan 7. The room was dominated by a private swimming pool trimmed with gold and platinum, and illuminated from within by lights which continually shifted randomly through the color spectrum. Around the pool and stretching across the remainder of the floor were tables and smaller chambers and an area which very much resembled a bar, though decorated more in keeping with a royal thrown room than a place where common people would gather to drink. Around the room glid a host of servitors — male and female — dressed in formal attire whose coloring, largely black with white accents, stood out against the organic oranges and browns and burgundy leather and gold, the value of which would have handily paid for a city skyscraper.

The pool was fairly deep in places, gradually becoming shallower towards one end and terminating there as though it were an artificial shoreline. Fairly large and organically shaped, the deepest part of the pool lay towards the rear of the chamber. It was from this semicircular end that most of the underwater light originated. The pool extended across the chamber, terminating relatively close to the chamber's entrance. The water stirred gently as though someone was passing through it, rippling as it did so. Someone was in the pool, of course, though the darkened chamber made it difficult to distinguish any particular features.

There came a sound that was every bit as complex and ornate to the ear as the chamber was to the eye. It sounded all at once natural — as though it was the product of some traditional type of musical instrument — and synthetic, designed not to be jarring but yet informed the listener that someone desired admission. It sounded several times, the person in the pool seeming not to hear, not to care, or perhaps a bit of both. However, its repetition signaled a degree of urgency, and so at long last the lone occupant of the pool took notice and looked up, eyes just barely visible, reflecting the pool lights which surrounded them.

"Enter," a distinctly feminine voice called out at last, and two pairs of double doors, inner and outer, parted in sequence to admit the view of and the light from the corridor beyond, along with the silhouette of a slender but well-built man dressed in a long coat. The silhouette entered and ceased to be a mere shadow as it transformed into a fully-fledged man who was holding a tablet-like device in his left hand.

"Your Highness," Kane said, bowing slightly as he reached the pool's bank nearest the door, as they slid closed again after his entrance. It was a goodly minute or two before she deigned even to give voice to her question, one more of annoyance than genuine curiosity.

"And what of your new toy that is so urgent it requires my attention?" Ardala asked somewhat playfully, yet with an edge of irritation to it.

"We have secured the craft in Hangar 18. Balur's crew is working on it now. By all appearances, the ship is antiquated, and the hull looks like something nature used for target practice. Markings suggest it may be indigenous to this system. But, that's not the most intriguing part about the craft."

This elicited a raised eyebrow from the woman, who by now had drifted close enough to the shallow end of the expensive pool that she no longer needed to tread water to keep her head and neck above it.

"It is evidently not a mere derelict. Its pilot is still aboard."

"Pilot?" The woman seemed more revolted than intrigued. "I really don't want to hear all the glorious details about a corpse."

"He's not dead."

"What?"

"That's the oddest part of all. The vessel is antiquated, but the man is still alive."

Now this did have her attention. Wading through the pool towards where Kane stood, every meter she traveled resulted in slowly exposing more of her head and shoulders. Her auburn tresses could now be clearly seen, with some draped behind her back and the rest over her shoulders, soaked with water, clinging in the way that long, wet hair naturally does as more and more of her came up out of it. Kane was just beginning to explain about the man's frozen condition when the princess interrupted.

"Hmm..." she said, her voice trailing off. "You said his ship was ancient."

"Antiquated, your Highness," he corrected but without the slightest hint of reproach. High-ranking captain of a war vessel or no, — even the Draconia — it would not go well to irritate a person of her rank. A man could quickly find his head meeting the floor, and without the benefit of the rest of his body to interpose itself.

The woman waded through the pool towards where Kane stood, every meter she traveled resulting in her slowly exposing more of her head and shoulders. Her auburn tresses could be seen more clearly around the perimeter of her head, with some draped behind her back and the rest over her shoulders, soaked with water, clinging the way long, wet hair naturally does as more and more of her came up out of the water.

"Ancient is a qualifier for age; antiquated suggests obsolescence. I know the difference," she said as she continued to float through the water, pleasantly enough but there was no mistaking she would not tolerate being patronized, even unintentionally.

"Forgive me, your Highness. What I meant was that it seems unlikely this vessel was ever designed to be in flight long enough for its pilot to require cryogenic..." He stopped, even though he hadn't really meant to, but there was good reason for his sudden loss of focus and words.

As Kane had been talking, the woman had reached the shallow edge of the pool and begun to walk up to the mouth of it, one hand on a guide rail. Her hair was now completely above the surface, closely resting against her skin and dripping down her bare body. As she exited the pool, the statuesque woman now stood nearly as tall as Kane, just a bit under two meters in height. Ardala's skin, wet with the expensively filtered and curated spring water of the pool, was some of the finest the captain could ever remember seeing. None of it, save her head, had even the slightest wisp of hair growth about it. Water quickly began to puddle around her, draining in rivulets over and down her bare breasts and down her finely muscular yet unmistakably feminine torso, down over her hips and buttocks, or otherwise dripping directly onto the floor around her feet. The princess could see the reaction in his eyes — the lust, the desire, however muted by diligent and not inconsiderable effort on Kane's part — and the tensing of certain muscles in his face and neck. It was a reaction Ardala counted on, having so precisely calculated every move she had made, including the exact point of exit from the pool she had chosen. Perhaps on some level it had felt good, as a woman, to generate such strong feelings of desire in another, but for her, for Ardala, princess and daughter of Emperor Draco, it was just as much about provoking that very response, about the control of it over another's wishes, perhaps moreso. It worked as she had intended, and she was glad of that.

"Are you asking me to read the reports myself?" she asked, glancing down towards his hands which were now both holding onto the flat, rectangular device, snapping his mind back to the present and off of her deliberately cultivated luscious frame, "or were you planning on reading them to me?"

"No," Kane responded, shaking his head slightly, glancing at the data again to abruptly focus on something, anything, which was not a part of the princess's anatomy.

A long moment passed, after which her expression softened a bit. Slowly, her lips formed something of a smile.

"Is something wrong, Kane?" Ardala asked, noting the distracted, distant look on his face, assuming — correctly — it had little to do with her casual state of nudity. "We've known each other too long for me not to know when something is disturbing you."

"We have," he replied, looking up from the digital scroll of information he had been reviewing. "And with respect, your highness, your continuing attempts at..."

"Distraction?" she offered, coyly.

"Yes, well," he stumbled, clearing his throat.

"I also know you well enough to be able to tell when there is more than you're saying." She turned on her heel, suddenly, striding off towards a clutch of servitors, one of whom was holding a pastel green robe.

"Honestly, I'm not certain. The exterior is as I said: it is pretty scarred and pitted. The interior, I'm told, looks like a well-preserved museum piece."

"And the pilot?"

"He appears to have been in his 30s," Kane commented, looking down at the tablet in his hand momentarily to jog his memory about the pilot's condition. Ardala's eyes widened momentarily, then narrowed appreciably.

"Doctor H'Sarai described his condition as being very nearly like cryogenic suspension."

"Nearly like?"

"Well, yes, he was definitely cryogenically suspended, but…" he paused for dramatic effect. "There's no suspension chambers on board, and he was found frozen in his cockpit, so it must have been some kind of accident."

"A fortuitous one for him," she said with a bit of a grin on her face.

"Indeed," Kane agreed. "He's in Medical Bay 7 right now. They're trying to revive him."

"Huh," she said, the grin turning into a far more wistful expression which played across her face for a moment. Then abruptly turning on her heel, she approached two of her staff and proceeded towards a nearby table which stood about a meter tall and was covered over in ornately decorated cushions. Overhead hung a grid of energy emitters which, superficially at least, looked similar to the tractor beam and anti-gravity emitters which had held and manipulated the stranger's craft earlier. She climbed up onto the table and laid face-down on top, the grid above coming alive and actively massaging her back and leg muscles.

"Keep me informed of H'Sari's progress with the newcomer."

"As you wish," Kane responded, and turned to leave the chamber.

.


.

"Begin thermal revivification process," said a disembodied voice.

"Commencing," said another.

The man, who's skin was now far closer to a that of a normal human being, lay on a cot inside of a chamber which had racks of equipment mounted around the perimeter and large, heavily-built portal-like windows placed across the sides. An automaton could be seen inside, busily whirring away, chrome-colored arms which projected out from a torso of sorts adjusting control panels mounted to the cot the man was laying on, and periodically adjusting various equipment which had been connected to him by a combination of cables and tubes. His head was completely obscured by tubes running into his mouth and nose, as well as other headgear which covered over the sides of his face. Along with tubes and wires which seemed to come and go from everywhere on his head, his chest and arms were a maze of tubes and wires and coverings, all with various markings and symbols on them which signified their function or purpose.

"Chamber temperature now minus ten and increasing," the robot said as it adjusted a control near the makeshift bed. "Delta increase steady at zero-point-five per minute," it announced as the rest of the medical staff outside watched and monitored various controls of their own.

Indicator lights activated on the white-colored blanket-like pads which were covering most of the patient.

"Activating heating arrays four through seven," said one of the people who were gathered around the chamber. This was a middle-aged woman with blonde wisps of hair which poked out from where it was tucked into a head cap.

"Acknowledged, doctor," the robot responded, visually scanning the patient as it continued to make other adjustments. "Chamber temperature now minus five. Thermal arrays set to five degrees, elevating body temperature to zero."

This process continued on for several minutes as the man lay there, his body slowly becoming able to adjust to laying down instead of the upright posture it had been frozen into. Living staff as well as the chamber robot continued to look over the patient's vitals, while various displays showed real-time cross-sections of his body, including his chest cavity and head. Another set of displays focused in on the various sections of his body — feet and lower legs, upper legs and pelvic region, torso, shoulders and neck, head — and gave what appeared to be something like status readings in areas which were further subdivided by the internal organs which were located there, major muscle groups, skeletal structure, and so forth. Some areas showed red, others a more cautionary yellow, and just a few were green.

"We're seeing a lot of microcellular damage," the doctor mentioned to the robot. It acknowledged this while continuing to make its own observations and adjustments to equipment. Presently, it began to connect what appeared to be electrodes to key areas of the man's chest and legs, along with an orange-colored gel which immediately started to change color.

"Confirmed. I'm applying Xylafeen topically to the primary damaged areas. According to my readings, there may also be some neurological damage."

"We're looking at that," a male voice called out, coming from a man reviewing another console.

The display was nearly the size of the workstation to which it was mounted, affording the operator and others the capacity to change viewing angles and zoom into any portion of any layer they so chose. At the moment, the display showed the top of the man's brain, and the medical technician was busily navigating through the layers, making notes from time to time as he examined different areas. Another tech joined him, and then a third, all of them reviewing the patient's brain and marking different places, linking them to a system for doing specific detailed probe scans. After another several minutes, a module which was stored towards the ceiling of the chamber became active, and the robotic doctor relocated or rerouted all the tubing and cabling by the man's head down and away. The module descended, pivoted ninety degrees, and then proceeded to fit over his head until all that could be seen was his chin and throat.

Half an hour or more had passed by the time Captain Kane entered the medical center. H'Sari happened to look up as the man entered the room, and she motioned for him to come over to where she was working, the patient now out of the chamber and covered over in a series of body blankets, all the tubing and wires removed from his body.

"How is he?" Kane asked.

"Lucky is what he is," H'Sari said, matter-of-factly. "He should be dead. He isn't, but he should be. He had extensive damage to his trachea and lungs, his extremities were a mess."

"You've been able to repair that, I assume."

"Yes, but there's the matter of his cranial area. His brain had some damage, largely to his left pre-frontal cortex and parts of the brain stem. There was actually an overall systemic toxic shock, probably from the uncontrolled dumping of cryos, particularly oxygen. We've been able to repair most of the damage, but I'm not certain about memory loss. We've scanned Krellig's Region and Bartar's Area, fore- and post, but we won't have any definitive understanding until he regains consciousness."

"How long?"

"Hard to tell exactly," she said as she re-checked his vitals, "but I'd say probably sometime tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Kane asked, more annoyed that this uninvited guest would have to impose on his ship's personnel's time.

"We've stabilized him, his core temperature is now almost back to normal, and we're pumping him full of regeneratives. His body is responding well, but this is going to take some time. We've also had to make adjustments because his system is reacting to several of the medications we administered."

"I see," Kane said and turned to leave. "Keep me appraised."

"Yes, sir," H'Sari responded, and went back to work at her desk.

.


.

The first thing he could remember was that he heard sounds. Muffled sounds. A gentle symphony of electronic sounds. Regular beeping and other bleeps and burbles which seemed to come from all around him. He couldn't see their sources, but he could hear them. A lot of them. Some of them. A few of them. They seemed to come and go, as with some kind of magical cadence that he couldn't quite work out. Was he dreaming? Were they real? It seemed impossible for him to tell.

He couldn't see where they were coming from. He knew they were there; he could hear them. But where they were remained a mystery. Why couldn't he see them? He should have been able to, he thought. Or rather, he felt. Or, perhaps, he thought that he felt. Why was everything so dark? Would he know the light of whatever it was he could hear if he saw them? Maybe, but why couldn't he see them? What was going on? He'd tried to turn his head back around, but then he started to realize, dully, that he hadn't actually turned his head in the first place. So that wasn't it. And what was that other thing he was starting to feel? PAIN! Oh, the incredible pain! It hurt and it throbbed, and seemed to get worse the more he focused on it, but something was causing it and he needed to find out what. It throbbed and pulsed and spiked and waned and came up again, but now it seemed like it was closer, not everywhere. The whole Earth was not on fire with pain. And so the pain grew smaller and smaller, but still there and still intense. And then it faded out again, as did everything else.

And the sounds were there. And he could hear them. They were muffled sounds. There was a cacophonous orchestra of sounds. Or were those the sounds he thought he remembered from before, when... when... when what? When he thought he'd heard sounds for the first time. But which time was that? He couldn't see anything, so nothing was obviously threatening him. That was good. But then he realized he couldn't see anything. Not just whatever it was which produced the sounds he could hear; anything at all. He was going to have to figure that out. He went down to look at his hands which felt... weird... and suddenly

The first thing he could remember was that he heard sounds. Muffled sounds. A gentle symphony of electronic sounds. Regular beeping and other bleeps and burbles which seemed to come from all around him. He couldn't see their sources, but he could hear them. A lot of them. Some of them. A few of them. They seemed to come and go, as with some kind of magical cadence that he couldn't quite work out. Was he dreaming? Were they real? It seemed impossible for him to tell.

Then, distantly, it seemed, there came a... something. Some kind of... why was his mind struggling to identify it? He'd heard the other sounds and could tell they were just beeps and not the voice of someone he... The first thing he could remember was that he heard sounds. Muffled sounds. A gentle symphony of electronic sounds. Regular beeping and other bleeps and burbles which seemed to come from all around him. He couldn't see their sources, but he could hear them. A lot of them. Some of them. A few of them. They seemed to come and go, as with some kind of magical cadence that he couldn't quite work out. Was he dreaming? Were they real? It seemed impossible for him to tell. VOICE! That's what it was, a voice! Why didn't he recognize that before? He was still trying to puzzle that out when the wave of pain hit him again. And again there was something he was trying to discern over top of the pain; a voice. It seemed insistent now, determined.

"Can you hear me?" H'Sari had her arm on the man's bicep. "How are you feeling?"

But to the man, she might just as well have been speaking Swahili. It was like no language he could remember hearing. He groaned instead.

"Can you understand me?" the doctor asked again.

"Wh... how... what was that?" he finally managed to get out of his throat, but barely.

The lady doctor stood there, searching her memory. That sounds vaguely like Standard, she thought to herself. Maybe that's what this man speaks. She switched to speaking it.

"Can you understand me now?" she asked.

"What... uhhh... yeah, I think... so..." he said slowly, deliberately, painfully.

"How do you feel?"

"I'm not sure. Like I just got run over by a bus."

Not really understanding what a bus was, she decided to let it go for the moment. The man was alive, incredibly, so making sure he was coherent in the broader sense was more important.

"I'm having trouble seeing anything," he commented, somewhat at random.

"Your eyes are closed," she said, trying to be reassuring.

"Huh?" he reacted, confused, then suddenly realized he hadn't opened them. Focusing on that task, he squinted and struggled, yet couldn't quite manage it, almost like a child who is learning how to wink at someone for the first time, or learn how to work the pedals of a bicycle. That made him incredulous: how did he not know how to open his own eyelids?

"I'm trying," he said after a moment. "I think something's wrong."

Dr. H'Sari smiled briefly for a moment. Gently, she touched his eyelids, slightly massaging them. In an instant, the man's eyes shot open.

"There," she said.

"Yes, there," he agreed. "OW! NO!" he grunted, closing his eyes again.

"What is it?"

"It started to hurt when I did. The light! It was so intense, oh my God, it hurts."

"Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere! Wait. No, my head. Eyes. Someone got an aspirin?"

"'Aspirin'?" she asked, quizzically.

"Yeah! Something to dull that pain. Oh God, I think I'm going to throw up."

The man started to dry heave. He appeared to be convulsing, experiencing some kind of migraine-like symptoms.

Dr. H'Sari looked over at Kane, who was standing on the opposite side of the bed, and then at one of the nurses. "Quilliam, 60 triks," she ordered. The nurse reached over to a computer, touched a series of controls, and a small door slid aside to reveal a little module which resembled a vial of blue liquid. She withdrew the vial and, reaching over to the panel on the left side of the bed upon which the man laid, plugged it into a receptacle. There was a click and a hiss.

The man suddenly went limp.

"Strange," the nurse said.

"Was that Quilliam?" H'Sari shot across the table, angrily.

"Yes, doctor. QE 77859," she began, eyeballing the screen next to her. "Load five-four-five, batch 17."

"What just happened here?" Kane asked, concerned.

"I gave him a standard dose — sixty triks — of analgesic and he reacted like he'd been given fifty times that much."

"Is he allergic?" Kane asked.

"That wasn't an allergic reaction," H'Sari spoke up, "That was an overdose reaction. Thing I don't understand though is how come his vitals are steady? If we'd given him an overdose quantity, he ought to have a dropout across the board. You'd think he'd never been exposed to modern medicine, reacting like this."