The mediboard was truly one of those things that defined the promise of technology. Fast healing from even the most grave injuries, with almost no lingering effects afterwards. Physical effects, at least. Alex was now living proof of this, as of two a.m. ship time, the nanite gel that had enveloped his lower body for nearly a month began to slowly retract, as the board considered him fully healed.

There were supposed to be protocols about how this happened. A bit of bedside manners for the machine. Someone was supposed to look into the well being of the patient before release. Ensure there was appropriate ongoing pain management available, and that all wounds actually had been fully accounted for. The mediboard that Alex was, for the moment, still attached to had nearly all of that excised when the main dedicated AI unit had been removed in pursuit of increased utility.

He was done, and he was promptly released from the mediboard with no fanfare.

The mediboard had been providing Alex with significant amounts of pain management through nerve disruption. And just like that, it wasn’t. The recently regrown nerves felt raw and they lit up like a christmas tree all at once. It was the most thorough wake up call he had ever experienced as he sat up at the waist like Frankenstein's monster, yelling in pain in the dark.

Everything hurt. New nerves were sensitive to even the lightest touch and his legs bouncing around in the privacy shroud was just short of agonizing. He shoved the shutter back down and righted himself, floating there over the mediboard half naked and holding on to the rail to keep from flying into a wall.

“You’d think there’d be a warning.” Alex mumbled to himself, shook his head and sighed, pushing off towards the soft glow of the door controls. His hand slid over the glassy panel, door to the passageway sliding open silently. Poking his head out into the dim red light, he looked back towards the engine room. Carbon’s cabin was back that direction, as was what passed for a mess and the aft airlock. He checked the other way, his own cabin door just a few meters up towards the bridge and across the passageway.

They both knew he should be done today, there was no need to wake Carbon up to tell her it had happened. Getting a message from what was left of the ship’s comm system was a jarring experience even when awake, and Alex could count on one hand the number of people he thought might want him to show up at their door wearing just a t-shirt. She’s smart, she’ll figure it out. He’d just get some rest and finally be able to get some work done around the ship.

He paused to consider actually getting into bed in zero gravity. The beds on board were a little more complex than a sleeping bag glued to a folding table, but that was always what it reminded Alex of. The thought of cramming his legs down into that snug tube of cloth was entirely unappealing. He pushed himself back into the infirmary towards the medicine pack. The screen lit up and he approached and he dialed in an analgesic with sleep aid. A few moments later a tube with two pills inside clicked into the tray.

Crushed between his teeth, the liquid in the pills was warm and flavorless. They dialed the doses in low on the ship, he’d get six hours of sleep at most. It would do well enough to keep him on ship time.

The empty tube found its way into the recycler slot and Alex shoved his way down the passageway to his cabin, swiped the door open and pulled himself in. The lights came on, still on automatic and it was exactly as he remembered. Just a big light gray box with an allegedly mood-enhacing blue stripe running around the wall. It wasn’t even that big. A three meter square, with all the things you’d need in a room built into the walls. Bed on one side, several pieces of exercise equipment slotted into the floor, a desk and drawers on the other side and panels of emergency equipment filling out the far wall. The ceiling was devoted to lighting and life support. Allegedly, each room had enough for three months of sustainment built in, although that included a lot of urine recycling and near starvation rations. He didn’t want to test that.

He flipped the bed down and latched it into place. Just as disheveled as he had left it, he fluffed the pillow as much as possible and gave the top of the sleeping bag a shake to get the wrinkles out and let the insulation breathe a little. Alex tossed his shirt into the laundry canister, turned the light off, slipped into bed and zipped it up. It was as uncomfortable as he had imagined, but the drugs were starting to take the edge off already.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Alex couldn’t have been asleep for more than a few seconds when he heard someone say his name. They sounded really far away. Maybe they were underwater. Maybe he was underwater? No, that was crazy, he was in space. They were underwater. That’s really unfortunate. They kept saying his name, so they couldn’t be too bad off. He would do something about that when he got up.

The voice got louder, and resolved into Carbon’s voice. Whatever she was on about, it sounded urgent. Despite his better judgment, he started to focus on what she was saying. He caught his name again and she said something quietly in the sibilant tones of her own language. He recognized the sounds, even many of the individual syllables, but not what they meant. He should probably see what’s going on.

Alex clawed his way out of the stupor of sleep. His eyes creaked open and there she was, shaking him, eyes wide and the cabin lit from the morning glow of the passageway. It was day out there already? His brain slowly kicked up a gear before he managed to form something like a word. “Yeh?”

Carbon’s face softened, eyes relaxed back down to their normal size. “You did not tell me the mediboard had released you.”

“Yeh, jus now.” He thought to look at the clock. Just after seven AM ship time. The sleep aid was working better than he had expected and he struggled against it. “While ago. Took stuff to sleep.”

“I was wor- surprised when I did not find you in the medical bay.” She let go of his shoulder and drifted away with a ragged sigh.

“Sorry. Was the middle of the night.”

“It is not something that should come up again. I will be in the engine room, when you rise I could use your assistance.” She patted his shoulder and pushed off the deck towards the door, closing it behind her. Darkness filled the room again.

Alex lay there for a few minutes, working through the fog of the drugs. Something about what she had said bothered him. Not the words, he still couldn't understand Tsla, but the tone. Carbon's voice had the unmistakable tension of panic in it, and Alex was having a hard time wrapping his head around that coming out of her. He unzipped his bed, leaned across the small cabin and plucked his tablet out of its charger. Even through the haze, his fingers were light across the slick surface, digging up the Lexicon and setting it up for a translation.

He scrolled through hundreds of phrases, in their natural written form listed next to their phonetic pronunciation. The translations themselves did not appear because people had a tendency to pick what they wanted or expected to hear. A finger stabbed at the screen and flicked one of the base phrases up to the translation pane.

Syntax came next. Then modifiers, for who was speaking, who they were speaking to and how polite they were being. locations and modifiers for locations. All tossed over to the translation pane.

He poked them around into the appropriate order and hit the translate button. The icon spun as it worked out the best choice, Alex hunched expectantly over the glowing screen in the dark of his cabin.

Alex didn’t do anything for a few moments after it popped up, just sat and stared at the translation. He backed the translation pane up a step, rechecked his work and translated it again. Same as before.

(pleading, mercy) Please, please do not leave me alone out here.

He closed the program, returned the tablet to its charger and sat in the darkness, lips pressed together tightly as he fought a tightness in his throat. He dressed in the standard issue jumpsuit and departed his cabin, pushing down the passageway towards the engineering section.

Main engineering was huge, a cathedral compared to the rest of the ship, most of the space taken up by the twin monoliths of the waverider drives. It was a mess, too. The slug that hit had passed almost directly between them. The two massive access plates that faced each other were charred by heat and warped. Everything seemed to be covered in beads of material that had been sprayed into the room when it was struck. Carbon must have been in one of the store rooms or the machine shop, there’s no way she would have survived in here.

The hole in the ceiling had been filled with quickweld and many larger pieces of debris had been attached to any out of the way spot with that as well. The hole in the floor was still open, the rail slug stopped by the second layer of armor protecting the reactor, less than a meter from ending both of them.

Carbon was back around the outside of the starboard engine, the one that was being used for parts, hammering on something. She had braced herself between the wall and the upper drive mount and was beating the hell out of a long pry bar jammed into the guts of the drive. Alex stopped himself and pushed up off the deck towards her.

“You are up sooner than I expe-” She stopped mid-word as Alex slipped his arms around her and squeezed gently.

“I won’t.”