Time had ceased to have any significant meaning to Alex. He had been staring at the deck plate through the little hole in the surgical table for well over an hour. Probably. It could have been even longer than that, but he was sure it wasn’t shorter. With his augments all shut off the only thing he really had to mark the passage of time was Sergeant Zenshen occasionally warning him that one of the Physical Interface Needles was about to be pulled while regaling him with a retelling of what had happened on her second home, Zshela. She had pulled a chair into the sterile field and he could hear her gesticulating as she spoke with the energy and cadence of someone who didn’t get to talk about this very often, or as candidly.
It was a harrowing tale from the standpoint of a teenage girl, displaced by the disaster on her homeworld and dumped into another life or death situation a few weeks after arriving at what she thought would become her new home. The Sergeant had excellent delivery, too, and wielded much sharper sarcasm than other Tsla’o he’d met so far. “We get that done and Williams just kinda absconds with me, but I had been attached to her to assist so it was on the up and up. So I’m on the ship, right? The Ingraham. First thing they do is hose the armor off, right there on the flight deck. I was just caked in gore up to my elbows, so completely understandable, but after ten weeks of having to mind every drop it was distressing.”
“Hang on, they had drains on the flight deck?” He was pretty sure he’d never seen a drain in space that wasn’t in a shower or sink.
“They had a little room for decontamination so armors don’t track shit all over the place. Since mine didn’t have a helmet they had to hose it off instead of just drenching me.”
“Oh, that makes sense.” It did. Who knows what armor would be bringing back after deployment. How much metal was vaporized each time they shot one of those railguns? Couldn’t be good for the lungs.
“So that was my introduction to the Ingraham. The wild excess of a faucet without a timer on it. Williams takes me down to the armor maintenance bay, where she could secure my suit with theirs so nobody would fuck with it. Now, big difference I found out between Human and Tsla’o armor is that the liner is part of the suit for us, but worn by the individual for Humans. She just hops out fully dressed and I’m like: I need a towel please.” Stana chuckled quietly, voice soft for a moment. “The armor bays have dedicated locker rooms with showers, so she posted herself at the door and called down to stores and got me the smallest Human clothes they had. Williams just kinda understood how uncomfortable I was, and that wasn’t what I expected at all.”
“Sounds like you two really got along well.” It was a little heartwarming to hear that part of the story, and also just a huge damn relief to know he wasn’t the only Human who had gained their trust.
“Still do, actually. You might say she took me on as a mentor. Anyway, I finally dry myself off and get dressed in these clothes that fit unexpectedly well. They didn’t have boots, so I ended up wearing these ugly tan socks everywhere - I’m sure you know why by now. I was very big on propriety at the time. She crams my translator into my pocket, and drags me down to the mess. We’re getting something to eat - first time I ever had fried chicken - and just kinda shooting the shit, and this guy sticks his head through the door and I hear, ‘Hey Williams, Mendez said you got a canine unit, can I pet- oh.’ and then he left as suddenly as he arrived.”
“Really? That’s fucked up.” Alex said to the floor. It kinda made him bristle a little at the thought. Stana had been a nice person as much as he knew her, and even if she hadn’t been, that was still a dick move.
“I mean it was a little insulting, yeah. I’ll never forget the way his face dropped. He had been so excited about the prospect of petting a dog, but then it was just an alien. The raw disappointment. Dorthea ripped Mendez a new asshole later, which was an interesting thing to experience first hand. I had never seen somebody get dressed down like that, and aside from videos of Drill Instructors, I haven’t seen it again. I did not entirely believe his apology, but I learned what fear looked like in a Human’s eyes.” She laughed, another sharp cackle. “Fuck that guy, though. He deserved it. They’re pulling number three.”
Alex grunted as the PIN slid out of the near-field wireless. It didn’t hurt nearly as bad as the improperly driven one from earlier, but it did tug at the vertebra a little. He’d be feeling that tomorrow. The nurse spritzed a cold, numbing liquid onto the back of his neck, an antibacterial coating from one of the Human medical kits. “He wasn’t a problem after that?”
“He kept his distance, so no. Which was good, the Ingraham loitered on site for like two weeks and I ended up spending a lot of time onboard. That was my first run at acting as an intermediary between Humans and Tsla’o. Real sink or swim moment when I’m escorting civilians up for medical checks.” She paused. “Inserting on number one.”
“I mean, most of the military folks I’ve had to deal with have been all right.” Aside from the one that had tried really hard to kill him, pretty much all of them had been good folks. Alex blanched as the needle slid into his skin, sinking into the socket beneath without issue. The only indication he had that it was seated at all was a tiny bump against the vertebra.
Though, on a second thought... Gladwell had been a real shit, and the Admiral in charge of ONI had probably lied to his face the entire time he’d known her. Plus there were several higher ranking officers involved with the Civilian Pilot Program, so while he didn’t know them, they likely knew all the shady crap that was going on in the orbit of the Khslav’o expedition - him being tapped as a Pilot candidate included. “Most of them anyway.”
“Right. It’s just a cross section of the population. Probably more so for us. Everybody I talked to on the Ingraham was great. Some of the older folks I had to watch were real pains in the ass though. Acted like we were telling them to climb shit mountain, not sit in an Osprey and make sure their injuries weren’t going to get bad.” She scoffed, the sound remarkably like what a Human would make compared to the more sibilant noise that Carbon produced when faced with similar levels of annoyance. “Like- Okay, like Aeya was an older lady, right? Easily old enough to be my great grandmother. Had rolled her ankle while being evacuated into the tunnels and didn’t do anything but hide it for three days. We drag her up there, crying and whimpering in pain the whole time, and it’s fractured. The bone is infected, right next to the joint. Doc dials up one of our doctors, consults with her. She says they gotta do something now or it’ll spread and Aeya will lose her foot. Surgical procedure, because the mediboards weren’t universalized at the time, and you can’t assume biofoam will get into fractures right. Aeya starts pitching a fit.”
Stana stopped as she noticed that she was getting a bit worked up, and sucked in a long breath before she continued. “Like, trying to hobble herself out of the sickbay while yelling about the Doc being a barbarian and a pervert, and she’s not listening to anybody. So I channel Williams a little. I stood in her way and told her that she was out of line for what she was calling the people who came to help us. That Lehnan had sustained worse injuries than her while fighting to keep us all alive and was specifically waiting for his civilian charges to be taken care of before he accepted further treatment. That the longer she made this take, the worse he’d get, so she needed to sit her ass down and let the people trying to save her foot actually save it.”
“Did she get fixed up?” The doctor must have had no idea why an old lady was calling him a pervert for checking her ankle.
She chuckled. “Oh yeah. Bit of a taboo speaking to an elder like that, and I assure you that everyone in the sickbay was watching by the time I had finished. Once I realized how loud that little speech had gotten, all I saw was a fuzzy little teen all but cussing out an elder. But she sat her ass down and let them get to work. Pretty much all the Humans in there seemed to generally approve of the exchange, which was weird to me. It was rude as hell. One of the nurses said I ‘put some bass in my voice’ when I did that and... It felt kinda good once that phrase was explained to me. Had a soft spot for nurses ever since.” Zenshen clicked her tongue twice in rapid succession.
He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure she made finger guns at his nurse. How much time had she spent around Human military personnel? “Uh... What else were you supposed to do, though? Let her foot rot off?”
“That seemed like her plan. Empire ships were still days out - the doctor that was being consulted was on the lead inbound ship, so it wasn’t like they had arrived at this decision for laughs. This was triage until people specializing in our biology arrived. Hang on.” She turned her attention to Amara, talking at them through the sterile field. “Says all of your near-fields are clean, just what they say on the tin. They’re moving on to the translator next, so expect deeper insertions.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
There was just a hint of her tone shifting up halfway through ‘insertions’ and combined with the way she abruptly ended that sentence, Alex knew she was trying not to laugh at the turn of phrase. Admittedly, if he was a few years younger - and wasn’t the one on the table - he would have found it funny too. “Alright, I will.”
“They’re starting with the main unit.” She clarified before continuing. “Yeah, so. Long story short, she got her ankle cleaned up and fixed properly. Was still hobbling around and giving me stink-eye the last time I saw her, but she was doing so under her own power.”
“Good, I sup-” His words dried up as the first needle for the Internal Translator sank in. It didn’t hurt, not much, but it kept going. The near-field nodes were just under the skin, but this had to travel centimeters to reach its destination on the inside of his ribcage. How many centimeters? Alex didn’t know, and after several seconds of this, he didn’t want to. There were a lot of different textures inside him for it to pass through on this journey, it seemed, and each one provided him with a unique sensation that he was not excited about experiencing a half dozen more times.
“Whew, damn. That was a big needle.” Zenshen at least sounded impressed by it.
“It uh, yeah it really felt like it.” Alex felt an unusually intense compulsion to stay perfectly still. They hadn’t warned him about not moving, but he knew that needle, little more than a thread of metal, was run between his ribs, and he was suddenly very aware of how little he knew about the range of motion of everything back there.
“Easily the biggest one I’ve seen since I learned how to use a thoracic decompression needle. Not as thick, at le-” Zenshen made a startled ‘oop’ sound as she shot up out of her chair, the feet scraping on the deck plating as someone stepped into the sterile field. She slipped into Tsla, rattling off something that sounded very formal before switching back to English. “The Princess is here.”
That seemed awful fast to have gotten a PIN and driver set prepared. Wait. “The Princess-princess, or Neya?”
The sigh that came in response was lower than Carbon’s, the voice that continued speaking in Tsla as she walked up beside him a little more smoky, which fit the bill for Neya. She crouched next to his head, carefully fitting an earbud into his right ear. “It is I, Alex. Your dearest wife, who understands the difficulties you have with the finer points of how a contra works and does not hold it against you.” Whichever translator they were using now wasn’t that great, her voice somewhat digitized and rendered nearly free of inflection, and it didn’t have his custom dictionary for what got translated and what stayed in Tsla.
He could still hear her speaking through the other ear, too, and caught the incredible amount of affectionate sarcasm on that, which is what he would expect from Carbon. “Hello there, beloved and patient wife. Given that earbud fits, is this one of my one-time-use translators? It better be, because this thing sucks. Going back to hearing ‘contra’ in relation to Neya is going to be a challenge.” It had to be one of those cheap, mass manufactured devices usually reserved for tourists. Alternatively, they did have a very thorough scan of his body, it would be trivial to print out an earpiece that would work.
“It is.” Neya’s arrival had been held up by Eleya and some Intelligence personnel coming over to their cabin to collect all of Alex’s Human manufactured technology for a security check. She set the actual module onto the fold-out arm rest, the only spot there was enough room for it. “The simple design allowed them to verify that it is exactly what it has been described as quickly.”
“Well, it’ll do. How’s the rest of it going?” He had already done the mental calculus on whether or not there was anything embarrassing on his personal phone. Aside from a few time-waster games he never deleted, he was pretty sure everything was clear. There was the chance they’d hook it up to their solanet connection, but aside from years old emails from girlfriends that he hadn’t deleted, he was pretty sure everything was aggressively boring.
“They are making progress. The external translator was prioritized as you had it in your possession at the time of the incident, and last I heard they had hoped to have everything done by tonight.” Neya said, standing back up and lightly patting his shoulder in a generally reassuring fashion.
“Alright, that’s-” Alex stopped as he heard Amara talking outside the field. It was the usual volume, but apparently too quiet for the cheap hardware. “Translator didn’t pick that up, what’d he say?”
Stana was on it without missing a beat. “They’re driving into the number one translator cluster.”
“Ah fuck.” He muttered to himself, mentally bracing as Neya stepped back from the table. The arm hummed as it moved, the sound ominous now, and pressed another needle into his back.
The little gasp coming from Neya did not help. Nor did the fact she was cursing under her breath, too. Alex assumed it was, anyway, too low and rapid to make out or get picked up by the translator.
“Only five more to go.” He said, once the PIN was fully embedded. The Whisper and Amp both required the keyed needles, but they were also much closer to the surface. Easier, overall.
“Hells, were all of them like that?” The pretense of being a Zeshen seemed to be dropped for a moment, Neya’s actual opinion floating to the surface.
“No, the one...” Alex almost tried to point at the remaining needle in his first near-field node, but managed to stop himself before he brought his arm around and moved his entire torso to do so. “The one in my neck is just under the skin. The lower two are inside my ribcage.”
“Oh, that is-” Neya dry-heaved. “I am- I do not think I should-”
Someone passing out sounds different when you can’t see them, which was a weird thing for Alex to realize. Very nearly silent, as a matter of fact, but the visual aspect of seeing someone lose consciousness carried so much weight. All he heard was a quiet scuff of cloth, then a little surprised noise from the nurse. Thankfully, they had been standing on the same side that Neya was and managed to catch her before she hit the ground, laying her out on the floor, both him and Zenshen calling for help.
He fought the urge to act as everyone else kicked into high gear. There were three PINs in his back right now, each with the robotic arm still attached. The best he’d do is break all of them off, the worst would be panicking after he found out he was literally pinned to the table and hurt himself. “Ah, fuck.” Alex gritted his teeth and exhaled slowly. There was already a nurse right there. A doctor meters away. EMT’s in the hall. Lots of folks who were fully qualified to help someone having a medical emergency. All he would do right now is get in the way.
From his vantage point he could see one of Neya’s shoes, embossed with a mix of vines and stars but otherwise unadorned. The EMT’s were there in a matter of seconds, at least, crisp white uniforms trimmed with the dark purple that went with all their medical personnel. Voices urgent, but not rushed, the translator actually picking up some of what they were saying. “I will get vitals, you get the regular medkit.”
The one he could see hustled off and Neya groaned quietly. Even if they weren’t his, he still had eyes and ears at his disposal. “Zenshen? Fill me in.”
She stepped around to the foot of the surgical table before responding, and when she spoke the previously conversational tone was fully gone, replaced with formality that Eleya would have approved of. “It appears that she is waking up, my Lord.”
The next thing he heard through the translator was from Neya, but slightly dazed. “Oh no.”
“Princess, please remain laying down until we have a clear scan.” The medic said, her voice soft but emphatic. “You were unconscious and appear to have suffered syncope, we need to determine the cause.”
“You catch that?” Zenshen asked him, a little bit of the easygoing tone back already.
“Yeah, coming through clear.” He found it interesting that they maintained the theater of Neya being Carbon because of a broach she wore, even during a medical emergency. Maybe it was more intensely ingrained societally than he thought, though it did worry him a little. At some point their medical needs might diverge. Sure, a live scan would keep the EMT’s up to date with exactly what was going on in the body at that moment, so a lot of risks were mitigated during triage.
Unless the injuries were too severe to wait on a scan, something he now had first hand experience with. More questions filed away to talk to Carbon about. Maybe he’d remember to ask about why purple seemed to be a medical color this time.
“Pulse is good, blood pressure is low but stable. Neural activity is high.” The first EMT said, but her voice lowered as the other returned and the translator lost their conversation, the two of them continuing to quietly talk with Neya in soothing voices.
“Zenshen. Come here.” The urge to gesture was incredibly strong when it was a bad idea. Did he really use so much body language, or was it just because he shouldn’t?
She came around to the head of the table. “Yes, Lord?”
“Talk to Amara, see if we can’t take a break. Maybe after they’re done checking the implants they’ve already accessed.” The enthusiasm Alex had when he threw himself into this experimental medical suite had been waning for some time, and was now fully exhausted. “I think after the work they’ve already done and this bit of excitement, it’s very much warranted.”