16 Erbe 1117: Gashuumi System
I woke up to someone shaking me. “Captain Kodai? Can you hear me?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m awake. I…” I opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar man leaning over me, wearing a Tlianke monocular. I started, and he held out a hand.
“Don’t worry, Captain. I’m Doctor Havis, from the Horizon Aura. This is Technician Kaln.” He gestured, and I looked to see a woman, wearing a ship’s jumpsuit with standard Tlianke markings and talking to Doctor Korvusar. “We’re here to get you down to Gashuumi as soon as we can. I’ve been talking to your doctor about what happened, and… you’ve been through a lot.”
I groaned and swung around to stand up, but he pushed me gently back down. “Relax, Captain. We’ll get you. Just relax.”
“What about…” I looked over at the next bunk and saw it was empty. “What happened to… where’s Shelly?”
“We sent her over first,” said Doctor Korvusar, walking over. “They have a trauma team on the Aura, and she had the most urgent need for medical intervetion. And we’ve sent Ms. Dradon over as well. We waited last for you because I didn’t want to argue with you.”
I tried to sit up again. “Then get them to the planet. I’ll go in with the ship.”
She shook her head. “Your crew can take care of the ship. You need to think about yourself!”
“I’m fine!” I stood up, wobbled, then doubled over with a coughing fit. Doctor Havis stabilized me until I was able to stand up again.
“I need to make sure we all get down safe.”
“They will!” She said, her voice tight. She paused. “Captain. Derek. Have you ever wondered what would happen to your ship, and your crew, if something happened to you?”
“I’m fine!” I said again. I’m not, I told myself.
“You aren’t, and you know you aren’t,” she said. I was slipping if she had read me that easily. “Please, Derek. Everything is under control. You need help.”
I hesitated, but I knew she was right. From how long it took me to make that decision if nothing else.
“Ok, fine.” I couldn’t admit it, but… she was right. I turned to Doctor Havis. “Ok, let’s go…”
He gestured to Kaln, who pulled an emergency sled over to me. I looked from it to him. “Seriously?”
He shrugged. “If you think you can climb down that ladder,” he tilted his head toward the iris, “make your way through a transit tunnel in zero-g, and then climb another ladder to get to the area we’ve set up for treatment, then lead on. Otherwise…” he gestured towards the e-sled.
I made a show of sighing, then moved to lie on it. Almost immediately, the localized grav field kicked in, holding me to it.
Dr. Havis nodded, and Kaln guided the sled to the door.
The passenger lounge was empty except for someone I didn’t recognize in a Tlianke jumpsuit who was standing with Jami near the iris to the aft airlock. Jami turned, then ran over to us. “Derek? I mean, Captain! Are you… are you ok?”
I nodded against the grav field. “Yeah, I’m fine, but everyone else seems convinced that I’m dying or something.” I laughed, but no one else joined in. “What’s our status?”
“Gabson, Technician Gabson,” She gestured towards the other person, who waved. “Gabson and I are getting ready to check the seals on the air-raft dock. No one has been in there since we jettisoned everything, and we need to make sure the seals are still secure before we enter atmosphere. Otherwise, we’ll need to seal it more before we try to land.”
“Plus, we need to see if there is any forensic evidence left in there,” said Gabson, still standing near the iris. She shook her head. “We probably lost everything when you jettisoned, which was absolutely the right thing to do, but it will make our investigation more difficult.”
“Just… do whatever you have to do.” I looked back at Jami. “Take care of the ship, ok?”
She smiled and patted my arm. “I will. Don’t worry, Captain. We’ve got this!”
“Good!” I looked over to see Dr. Havis looking at me, and I gestured towards the ladder.
We passed through, which was a bit disorienting, given that I felt as if I was lying on my back the entire time while descending vertically to the crew deck. Saahna was there as we arrived, and ran over.
“Derek!” She leaned forward and slammed her face into mine as she entered the grav field of the sled, but recovered faster than I did. She kissed me passionately before I quite realized what had happened.
“Hey,” I said, not quite sure what was going on. “Are we ok?”
She grimaced at that but stood up. “Yeah, we’re fine. And we’re trying to take care of you. Everyone else who was hurt is already on the Horizon Aura. I… we’ll take care of everything here.”
“Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I wish I was in shape to go in with you. Just… take care of everyone for me, ok? And the ship?”
“I love you,” she said abruptly.
I nodded. “Yeah… me too. But…”
She leaned close. “Then, never forget that!” She kissed me again, then gestured to Dr. Havis. “You’ll take care of him?”
“We will!” He nodded to her, then turned to his assistant. “Let’s go.”
—-
With air on both sides of the airlock, all we had to do was to close one set of doors then open the other. Safety interlocks kept us from opening both at once.
I was feeling tired already, even though I had done nothing but lie down in the few minutes I had been awake. My mind was also wandering in odd directions. Like, why couldn’t we open both airlock doors at once, but I could open both cargo bay doors and the irises to the interior of the ship at the same time?
Probably some regulation that dated back to the Sylean Federation that everyone just kept following without thinking about it.
Or because passengers could get to the airlocks, but not the cargo bay.
I broke from my odd musings as we left the airlock and entered the docking tube. There was no gravity here, so Havis and Koln pulled themselves along, one ahead and one behind me, pushing and pulling the sled along.
I craned my neck back to look at the Grayswandir. It looked beautiful from out here. I almost tried to pull myself out of the sled, but even fighting the containment field enough to look back had exhausted me. I turned to look at the ship we were heading towards.
The Horizon Aura was several times the size of the Grayswandir, but even that understated its capabilities. System Defense Boats don’t have Jump Drives or the fuel for them and typically didn’t have much in the way of cargo bays either.
They replaced them with bigger maneuver drives. And guns. Lots of guns.
We cycled through the Aura‘s airlock and entered their atrium. It was smaller than the Grayswandir‘s lounge–if such a thing was possible–but their layout was probably different from ours. We almost immediately went up a vertical–basically a cross between a ladder and an escalator–and to an upper deck.
This one was a bit bigger and had crewmembers milling about. One of them hurried over as we came up.
“Is this the last one?” he asked.
Havis nodded. “Yes, the last of their crew. Cairborn and Gabson are still over there.”
He nodded. “They’ll be orbiting in with them in case they have more problems.” He looked upwards. “Horizon? We’re loaded. Retract the docking tunnel and tell Captain Yplinsk that we are ready for burnback.”
“Confirm,” came a calm, male voice. “Requesting detach from the Grayswandir.”
He turned to me. “You must be Captain Kodai! I must say you are fortunate. Most people exposed to a dose like that would be unconscious, at best.”
I tried to reply, coughed, then was able to speak. “Yeah, lucky.” My voice was strained. “How are the others?”
He frowned. “Your crewmember Tharis is in very bad shape. I want to talk to your Medic when we get down; I’m not sure I could have kept her alive with the facilities you have on your ship.”
I coughed again. “Yeah, we’re… glad we have her.”
He nodded. “I’m Doctor Banor, by the way. Now, we need to get you into a medoc as well. Your passenger Ms. Dradon is stable, she mostly got hit by whatever corrosive was being used, but your neurological damage is increasing. The faster that we can stabilize you, the better chance you will have for a full recovery.”
“Is it that bad?”
There was a brief silence. “Yes, it’s that bad. I’ve gotten a full read from Ms. Tharis and Ms. Dradon. Whatever they hit you with was advanced. Very advanced.” He laughed. “I wish we had tech that good. It isn’t just a toxin, it’s a tailored nanophage. One that is basically feeding on your nervous system.”
“What!”
“Don’t worry!” He patted my shoulder. “We can take care of this! You’ll be fine! But, this is why we need to get all of you in as fast as we can. The longer we let it go, the worse your condition will become. That is also why we need to get you into a medoc as fast as we can. It can prevent further neural damage.”
I groaned and stopped fighting against the containment field. “Fine. Do whatever you need to do.”
A woman’s voice came from overhead. “We’re clear of the Gray Swan and ready to engage the drive. Grab hold of something, we’re burning in hot.”
I presumed that we were accelerating, but between the containment field and the ship’s own gravitics, nothing seemed to change. Havis and Banor exchanged a few words, then Havis and Kaln guided the sled down a corridor and into a side compartment.
There were several hulking machines in the room. Medocs. One was sealed with holo displays dancing over it, one was open, lit, and waiting, and the other two were closed and dark. They maneuvered the sled to the open unit and cut the containment field.
“Think you can get in yourself?” asked Havis. “You’ll need to strip too.”
I nodded and swung off the sled, then had to steady myself on the side of the medoc. Fortunately, I was only wearing a robe and my sleep clothes, so it was easy to take them off.
I lay down inside the medoc. The interior was comfortably warm and molded itself to my body. As I adjusted myself to a comfortable position, Kalm lowered the breathing mask and placed it on my face then indicated for me to lie back.
“We’ve got it from here, Captain Kodai,” said Havis, already tapping at the controls. “You just relax.”
That was easier said than done as the top of the medoc closed down. The top was padded in the same way as the rest of the interior, and I was immediately immobilized as the surface formed itself entirely around my body. I fought a brief sense of claustrophobia, but then the air flowing through my mask took on a chemical taste, and I felt myself fading.
My last thought was of irritation that the Captain here hadn’t gotten the name of the Grayswandir right.