"You can turn around now." Hawk had barely finished speaking before Scout ran through the doorway. The sergeant skidded to a halt a moment later – obviously uncertain if those words had been addressed to him or the rest of his teammates.
Hawk turned around and chuckled at the sight of the young man – who still looked every bit as anxious and exhausted as he had when they had landed in the hangar. "At ease, sergeant."
Scout assumed the stance, but his expression didn't relax one bit. "How is she?"
"Your orders – from both me and the Captain – were to get some protein and electrolytes into your system and follow that up with at least half an hour of rest – were they not?"
"Yes." Scout was looking past the major as he spoke – clearly looking for any hopeful signs on the monitors. Jon couldn't help feeling sympathy for the younger man. He knew he'd almost certainly be feeling and acting the same if their roles were reversed.
In some respects, Scout reminded him of his younger self – only with more of a tendency to use humor as a coping mechanism to get through each day. Scout still had that same fiery passion when it came to protecting the weak and the innocent – and to winning this damned war. But sometimes that intensity had driven both of them to push themselves to their breaking points – both physically and mentally. And sometimes he needed to rein Scout in just like Hawk had needed to rein him in in the early years of the war.
"You timed that rest to the exact second just now, didn't you?"
Scout looked a little sheepish as he nodded. Hawk and Tank offered sympathetic chuckles.
"And you didn't get any real rest at all because your mind was too full of concerns for our patient." Jon put a hand up to halt any protest from Scout at his statement. "None of us can blame you for that – for how responsible you feel for Jennifer because you're the one who found her. But worrying about her to the point of nervous exhaustion isn't going to do her or you any good. Is that clear?"
"Yes."
"Good. Because nobody here wants to see you end up in the next bed over."
"So please don't make us resort to extreme measures to keep you out of here," Hawk added, and Scout swallowed hard.
"It's just as well you're here now, though." Hawk's expression softened. "You need to know everything else I found while I was working her up, and to be included in the decisions we need to make about this girl's future."
Jon couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret at having had to send Scout away to at least try to get some rest. It would have been good for him to be in MedBay to listen in real time as Hawk had handled the most sensitive procedures in Jennifer's care. It had been an object lesson in how they should all care for a semi-conscious and traumatized adolescent girl when taking her to the Passages wasn't an option.
The major had delicately confirmed no lower body injuries or additional trauma, cleaned her up, and got her into the hospital gown – all the while talking to Jennifer in that gentle, fatherly tone, as if she could hear him the entire time.
Could even be that she had heard Hawk – but was simply too weak to offer any kind of response. Although now it looked like she had fallen into a deep, restorative sleep – judging from the readings on the monitors.
"How about helping with a fresh application of cold packs while I fill you in on how damned lucky this young lady is?"
"Yeah – sure—" Scout couldn't have looked more relieved to finally be back at Jennifer's side. "Did she say anything – tell you anything more about who did this to her?"
Hawk shook his head. "She was barely semi-conscious from the time we got her on the Jumpship. I don't think we'll be having a meaningful conversation with her any time soon. But I have some encouraging updates for you. There's no serious organ damage, and it looks like you got to her before sun poisoning set in – though we'll still need to watch out for flu-like symptoms and any blistering of that sunburn over the next few days. It's too early to say she's completely out of the woods, but she's stable for now." Hawk paused for a moment. "I've been meaning to ask how you spotted her in the first place."
Scout had just placed a cold pack on Jennifer's throat and then froze in place – staring at his fingers as if they were stuck to the icy material. "I don't know… I just looked down for a moment… and there she was…" He frowned, pulling the bag downward as he looked closer. The look on his face told Jon what his sergeant hadn't seen outside.
"Jon and I almost missed those marks, too. It's hard to see them through the sunburn. For what it's worth, I don't think whoever made them was trying to kill her. They probably just wanted to stifle her voice in the most painful way they could."
"Just…" Scout made a little noise of revulsion as he fitted the pack back over the bruises. "And we thought it was just the heatstroke that made it hard for her to talk." He shuddered, then turned his gaze back to Hawk. "Will she get her voice back – when she wakes up?"
"She might be a bit hoarse for a while, but it doesn't look like the larynx has any permanent damage. As for the rest of her injuries, it all looks like whoever attacked her wasn't trying to kill her outright. They just…" Hawk stopped himself, clearly re-thinking his choice of the word "just" to describe the motives of Jennifer's attackers. "It looks to me like they wanted to inflict as much pain and suffering as they could while leaving her body intact, and then let the desert finish her off."
"Intact…" Scout hesitated as he watched Hawk put the last of the lower body cold packs in place. "So, she wasn't…"
"No." Hawk gently assured him. "She was spared that, at least – which makes me think this probably wasn't the work of Marauders. The other happy news is the minor miracle of no broken bones, even though the rest of her looks like she was used as a punching bag."
Scout had turned his attention to wrapping the smallest cold packs around Jennifer's wrists, and he frowned as he got a good look at her hands. "Doesn't look like she got in any punches of her own."
"Agreed. Whoever her attackers were, she never had a chance against them."
Scout's expression hardened again as Hawk told him about the severe bruising of the ribs and how that had likely affected Jennifer's breathing.
"…but that's the full extent of her injuries. Like I said, she's damned lucky – all things considered."
"Lucky…" There was a new note of pain – and anger- in Scout's voice. "Somehow that doesn't feel like the right word for this…"
"Only compared to what could have been – especially if you hadn't found her when you did. We've all seen people do worse than this to each other. More times than we care to count, ever since this endless war started."
"Doesn't make it any easier to stomach this kind of cruelty."
"No, it doesn't." Hawk agreed. "All it does is leave us with more questions than answers."
"Starting with who the hell could do this to a defenseless young girl?" Scout had just finished putting the last of the cold packs in place. He reached out to help Hawk re-cover Jennifer with the cooling blanket.
"Well, we've got one clue in what she said earlier - about everyone out there hating her and her uniform and wanting her to die out there."
"So, it probably wasn't the Dread Youth drumming her out of the corps."
"Probably not. Which brings us back to the question of how she got separated from her unit, and who she could have run into who hates that uniform more than we do." Hawk paused. "And whether she's still a loyal Dread Youth Leader."
There it was. The proverbial elephant in the room.
"What little coherent speech she had on the Jumpship – almost all of it was the same thing she kept looping with you earlier. 'Can't go back.' We still don't know if that means the Dread Youth or Hardscrabble or something or someplace else entirely," Jon sighed. "I don't like to assume that she's still our enemy, but…"
"We'd be fools to assume otherwise," Hawk finished his thought.
"So, what do we do? Take her to the prison unit in the Passages and let the wardens and Psi-Techs sort her out?" Scout's tone made it clear how abhorrent he found that idea. "Or put her in restraints until she wakes up and tells us what she meant?" That option sounded equally distasteful to him – and to Jon, too.
He made a snap decision then and there. "No, and no."
Three pairs of eyes stared back at him, silently asking, What, then?
"She became our responsibility the moment you took charge of her, Scout. I don't feel right about handing her off to the wardens in the Passages either. Not until after she's able to speak for herself about her loyalties, anyway. And we're not having this girl waking up to find herself in restraints and thinking she's going to be tortured all over again by the people she's been taught to think of as her mortal enemies."
There was only one other action he could think of. "One of us will need to stay here with her around the clock until we can be sure she's out of danger and that she's no threat to us." He paused for a moment to think. "Six-hour shifts – starting now. Tank, if you go first, that will let you get a decent night's sleep before you tackle the Jumpship's engines bright and early tomorrow morning like you'd already planned."
Tank nodded, and Scout managed not to look even more upset.
"Scout, you can be second, but please at least try to get some actual sleep first, okay?"
"Okay." Resigned acceptance again.
"I'll take the graveyard shift. That should at least give you time for your morning coffee before you take over, Hawk."
"Fine by me. And I'll go ahead and set a motion-sensor alert now, in case she wakes up and tries to get out of bed at a time when her watcher could be… indisposed."
Jon nodded. "I doubt she's going to have the strength for that any time soon, but better safe than sorry." He exhaled. "That's all the bases covered, then."
"Not quite," Scout spoke up. "There's still the matter of where she was coming from – and who might still be looking for her."
"Her attackers looking to finish what they started?" Hawk asked.
"Or Dread's forces scouring the sector for a rising star who's gone missing." Scout's expression had hardened again. "We already agreed that this probably wasn't them kicking her out."
"We did, but I don't think we can completely rule out that scenario, either." Jon allowed himself a sigh. "There are still too many unknowns here, until she's able to tell us herself."
"Or we pick up some radio chatter about her or whatever attack she might have been involved in."
His sergeant had a point. Not having picked up anything along those lines yet didn't necessarily mean there were no proverbial breadcrumbs out there for them to find.
"Right. That'll be our next priority. Scanning both Resistance and Dread frequencies for word of any incursions in that sector over the last 24 hours and any mention of a missing Dread Youth Leader. It's a long shot, but we might be able to glean some intel that we missed last night."
"I'll get right on it." Scout started for the doorway.
Not so fast. Jon stepped in front of him. "No, Hawk and I will get right on it and you will get some sleep."
"But—"
"One of us will tell both you and Tank any useful bit of info we pick up when it's your turn to keep watch."
"Fine," Scout gave an aggravated sigh. "But odds are it all comes back to Hardscrabble."
The sergeant was probably right. It seemed almost impossible for the girl to have walked any farther from any direction without suffering more severe sunburn and complications from the heatstroke. And to say the residents of Hardscrabble weren't known for hospitality to outsiders was like calling the Dead Sea "a little salty."
All the same, "I'm inclined to agree with you. But we can't be sure of that until we get more evidence from the radio or from Jennifer when she wakes up."
"So we're supposed to wait until some other lost soul stumbles across them and gets beaten this badly or worse?" Scout snapped. "This is a kid we're talking about now, Captain! 'Live and let live' isn't going to cut it with them anymore. They need to pay for this one.'"
"Do I need to remind you how 'an eye for an eye' inevitably ends?" Jon snapped back.
Scout sighed and offered a grudging "No."
Jon knew he couldn't let that be the last word on the matter.
He took a deep breath and tried a softer tack. "I'm as angry about this as you are. This would be a new low even for them. But we're not going to go stir up a hornet's nest based on gut feelings and circumstantial evidence."
Scout gave a nod of miserable acceptance.
"If they're the ones who did this, they'll have their day of reckoning – and a long overdue lesson in basic humanity. I can promise you that." Jon assured him. "But for now, our focus is taking care of Jennifer, all right? We're going to help her heal – just like I promised her. And we're going to show her what real humanity is all about."