Jill

Date July 8, 2116, Earth Standard Time 16:43, Human Circadian Standard Location Nondla Asteroid Belt

There were honest mistakes, and then there were fuck-ups.

Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference. Sometimes, a string of poor decisions crossed the web-thin barriers between an oopsie, a foreseeable accident, and an...oh no.

Other times, it was as if somebody had decided to do a cartwheel across those lines, through a bed of hot coals, all while somehow managing to chug tequila.

Staring out through the dual-layers of her neon-green spacesuit’s helmet, and the front window of her ambu-shuttle, Jill Hodge, Chief Recovery Expert of the First Responders Corps’ Vessel Nightingale, knew exactly how to categorize the wreckage she was slowly approaching.

An unambiguous, unadulterated Fuck-Up.

Capital F. Capital U.

There had to be drugs involved. What else could have possibly made the skipper’s pilot decide to treat a known vessel-wrecking asteroid belt like their personal obstacle course? Had they really thought they could just blast a hole through the center of an asteroid, and glide through without a scratch?

Or were they trying to follow the path made by another ship? One with better weaponry and a narrower stern, that had made a hole and slipped through with ease?

Either way, the result was the same.

From a distance, the wreckage looked a bit crude. A massive, stone fist with a single, metal finger jutting straight out, sheared of everything but the very core of the life-saving passenger capsule.

At least, that was the cleanest interpretation of what she saw.

“Can you see an airlock?” The disembodied voice of her captain, Samantha Healy, asked in Jill’s ear.

“Not a useable one,” Jill responded. “I’m petty sure the main docking port’s about twenty feet deep in that rock...and it looks like whoever designed this skipper cheaped out, and didn’t add an emergency access to the bow. We’ll have to go through the hull.”

“Gotcha. I’ll log the breach. Your team’s good to go whenever you’re ready.”

“Ready now. Heading in.”

Their mission was simple: breach the hull without depressurizing the damaged ship, extract anyone they found once inside, and bring them back to the Nightingale for treatment and debriefing.

But all that relied on Jill’s careful navigation.

And for the damn skip to stop moving.

For some ungodly reason, it appeared the captain of the rapidly-spinning obscenity in front of her kept trying to rev the engines. As if, at this point, that could had even a remote chance of dislodging the finger from the fist.

“Sam, can you tell the captain of this wreck to hold still?”

“Already have. Hamid’s repeating it on a loop. We’re not sure if they can’t hear us, or if we’re being ignored. Either way, use extreme caution.”

Jill suppressed a groan.

The Coalition needed to up the regulations on private skipper licenses. Every rich jackass in friendly space thought they could fly the things, and very few actually knew what they were doing. Jill hadn’t joined the First Responders Corps to scrape trust funds off viewscreens.

But she didn’t get to choose her patients.

Or their condition.

Finally, after some expert maneuvering that there should’ve been some kind of trophy for, Jill made a solid contact. She then extended the ambu-shuttle’s emergency breach shielding to seal the location she’d chosen for her team’s entry point, and quickly pressurized the area.

She hoped the Nightingale got a good shot of the procedure. It was rare for an ambu-shuttle to need to land directly on the passenger capsule; especially one that wouldn’t stop moving. Odds were, it would make for a good training video.

Given the shape of the wreck, it would definitely keep any trainee’s attention.

Jill glanced back at the other members of her rescue team: Arden, Moe, Tiffany, and Xivis. “You all ready?”

Nods from Arden, Moe and Tif. An affirmative gesticulation of tentacles from Xivis.

She knew they would be. They were a good team.

“Alright,” Jill nodded as she triple-checked the seal and switched off a safety lock. “Seal confirmed. Pressurizing complete. Breach airlock retracting in three…two…one…”

She pressed a button, and the wide airlock in the floor near the back of the ship retracted.

Tiffany hopped down into the void with a plasma-saw, and quickly went to work cutting through the vessel’s thick inner hull.

Out of experience and caution, Jill took a moment to triple-check that her environmental suit’s seals were still intact. Recovery experts were required to put their suits on before boarding the ambu-shuttle, but mistakes happened.

Best not to let them become fuck-ups.

“We lucked out,” There was a little echo as Tiffany’s voice repeated itself a half-second later through the speakers. “Our breach went through a wall. It’ll just be a scuttle to the left before their artificial gravity kicks in, if it’s still working.”

“Thanks Tiff,” Jill smirked. Coming in through the wall or ceiling always reduced the chance of accidentally cutting through a main system in the process. Most ships tried to pack those systems into the floor...as long as they followed regulations.

As usual, they left Arden in the shuttle to watch for signs that they were going to disconnect from the hull. It was unlikely, given that the shuttle’s retractable, auto-welding breach clamps…but it had happened before.

After one last check-in with Sam, Jill and the team carefully slid into the breach.

The medic’s boots touched down in a corridor illuminated only by the dim blue light of bioluminescent algae canisters embedded in the walls and ceiling. The medic couldn’t help but be relieved by the faint glow: the modified strain encapsulated in Coalition-designed spacefaring vessels was engineered to fluoresce bright pink in the presence of certain kinds of radiation. Although Jill had confidence in the accuracy of her suit’s geiger counter, the swirling blues were always reassuring.

Plus, it was a good supplement to her suit’s built-in lights.

The RapidScan in her visor detected two Human-sized signatures down the corridor to their left, which matched up with the location of the bridge on a standard skipper’s passenger capsule.

No other signs of life.

Jill hoped that wasn’t a tragedy.

She led her team down the long corridor, listening carefully for signs that the groans and shudders of the mangled vessel were beginning to morph into something far more dangerous.

Fortunately, they made it to the bridge without the ship imploding on them. That was never fun.

“Is the video feed still holding up, Sam?”

“Affirmative. Your headset’s clear as day. I’ll let you know if that changes.”

“Thanks.”

Soon, a bulkhead blocked the medics’ path. With a nod from Jill, Moe stepped forward, and placed a small disk against the metal. A light on it flashed red for a few moments; then flicked to solid green.

Atmospheric pressure confirmed, Jill waited for Moe to pry the disk away and step back; then pressed the “open” button to the right of the door.

It slid smoothly aside, revealing a room enveloped in darkness, moans and cursing.

Jill looked around at her team, waited for another nod from each Human, and a tentacle-shudder from Xivis, before heading inside.

To her immediate relief, there weren’t any people-smears. Given the exterior of the ship, that had been a real possibility.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There were, however, two people inside, just as the RapidScan had promised: one strapped firmly into a passenger seat; another seated in the pilot’s seat; swearing at the main control console.

The passenger looked up as they entered, and a pained, but relieved grin spread across their face.

The pilot didn’t seem to notice. But they were still pushing buttons.

Jill signaled Xivis to head towards the person in the chair, and for Tiffany to find an open terminal. They needed to access the passenger logs before they disengaged. She had no intention of leaving anyone in this wreck while they towed it to the nearest space station. Too big a risk.

She and Moe headed for the pilot; stopped well out arm’s reach, just in case they tried to throw a punch.

The figure didn’t look armed, which was far from a small blessing. First Responder’s environmental suits had a decent layer of body armor built in, but there was never a guarantee that it would be enough against some of the weirder weapons people liked to pack. Better when they could avoid tempting fate.

“Hello,” Jill called out.

The figure jolted, and spun around in the chair as if they’d just realized there were other people on the ship.

Pretty rich, given that Jill could see the “HULL BREACH” alert their entry had caused flashing in bright red letters on one of the screens to the person’s right.

But Jill only had a moment to register all of that, before she recognized the man at the controls.

Given the disembodied curse that popped into her ear, Jill was fairly certain her captain did as well.

There hadn’t been any visible identifying markers on the outside, and the automated distress signal hadn’t given out a callsign. Now Jill knew why.

“Senator Plyler,” Jill said loudly and clearly. “Are you alright?”

“Took you long enough!” The man had a cut on his forehead; when he turned back to the controls, Jill noticed that his right leg dragged limply along. “Save me the lecture about running off without my security team: a man’s got the right to some privacy. Now help me get this ship out of of this damn rock.”

...Did the man not really not recognize the large, bright-red rod and serpent emblazoned across the chest of her neon-green environmental suit? The Responders made it conspicuous for a reason.

“We’re not your private security, sir,” she kept her voice as respectful as she could. “We’re from the First Responders’ Corps. My name’s Jill. Were there only two people aboard––”

“How did you beat my security team here?”

“I don’t know,” though Jill had a feeling a lot of people were going to end up getting fired after this. Sucked to be them. “But I need you to power down the engines.”

The senator grunted a negative; turned back to the controls. “I can wiggle her out.”

...Seriously?

“Your ship’s totaled, sir,” Jill watched him sway. “And you’re not looking much better. Please step away from the controls, and let us help you.”

“’M fine,” he slurred, and swiveled his chair around again. “This isn’t my first crash, you know.”

Oh sure. Just keep digging.

“Okay,” Jill nodded. “But I still need you to come with me. Your ship’s environmental controls are failing, and––”

“They’re fine too. I just rerouted the power to the engines.”

The medic stared. “That’s not going to help. Your engines are––”

“Don’t tell me how to run my ship!” The man spun to face her; rose; took a few stumbling steps in her direction as he spoke. “I just finished a month-long refresher course on proper flight operations, so I know what I’m...”

His eyes rolled back, and he collapsed.

Jill rushed over to catch him, but the man wasn’t exactly light. She managed to guide his fall enough to keep his head from smacking anything, which was far better than nothing.

“Welp,” Jill shrugged. “Can I get a hand, Moe?”

The man pulled a collapsable stretcher out from his suit’s back compartment, and helped Jill maneuver their patient into place.

Once they had the stretcher’s anti-grav activated and lifted to waist-height, she and Moe divvied up their triage scans.

“Definitely a concussion,” Moe told her as his scanner hovered over the senator’s head. “But it’s a mild one. Also an astonishing amount of alcohol. And something the scanner doesn’t recognize. New stuff. Fun. From the extent of the concussion, I think the loss of consciousness is down to the drugs.”

“That, and blinding pain,” Jill noted as she read from her own scanner. “I’m seeing fractures in his right tibia and fibula, and his right radius and ulna are completely shattered. Also a good handful of ribs. I don’t care how high he is, there was no chance he was walking out of here.”

“I don’t feel comfortable giving him pain meds,” Moe noted.

Jill nodded in agreement. “That’ll have to wait until he’s up on the ship. Let the infirmary do bloodwork to make sure whatever drug he took won’t interact...For now, splint him up, strap him in. Don’t give him any wiggle room.”

As Moe got to work making sure the senator wouldn’t be able to hurt himself even more on the way back to the Nightingale, Jill turned to check in with Xivis on their other patient.

The Noviiiaun medic had already gotten his patient laid out on another stretcher.

“How are they?” Jill asked.

As she approached and got a better look at the patient’s face, a flash of a news conference flicked through the medic’s mind; the name of an activist Plyler had been working with on loosening terraforming regulations clicked into place. The woman on the stretcher had pain lines etched into her face, but thankfully, she was conscious, and seemed to be aware of her surroundings.

“Broken collar bone,” the bubbles and clicks of Xivis’ language were translated by Jill’s earpiece. “And a couple ribs too, one displaced. But she’s stable. Looks like the dampening seatbelt did its job.”

Which all but confirmed Jill’s suspicion that the senator had not been wearing his.

“Good,” Jill nodded. “Anything in her system?”

“Just what I gave her for the pain. There wasn’t anything before that.”

And if that didn’t paint a bigger picture.

“Good,” Jill repeated; then focused on the patient. “Ms. Hill, we’re going to get you out of here. But first we need to know: are there any other passengers?”

“It was just me and Ron,” she said stiffly. “He wanted to test drive his new toy, before showing off to his friends. He invited me along. I...I didn’t know he was going to...”

Jill edited out her first reaction. “Thank you, Ms. Hill. Xivis is going to bring you to our shuttle. From there, we’ll have you up to the Nightingale in just a few minutes. Please don’t try to get off the stretcher.”

That got her a fraction of a nod, so Jill made one more trip across the room; over to Tiffany.

“Tiff, can you power down the engines? Leave life-support on, and nothing else.”

“Already on it,” Tiffany crossed to the main control panel, and within moments, Jill heard and felt the groaning vessel begin to settle. “I’ve downloaded a copy of the ship’s blackbox, and triple-checked the last boarding scans. There were only two people aboard when the crash happened.”

A little tension drained out of Jill’s shoulders at that final confirmation. “Alright, then let’s get out of here.”

The trip back through the sleeping ship was blessedly event-free. Senator Plyler’s eyes fluttered a few times, but he didn’t come to. It wasn’t exactly a good thing, but his pulse was steady and his airway was clear, so they’d deal with the rest back on the Nightingale.

Once everyone was back in the ambu-shuttle, Tiffany collected a heavy, clinking bag from the shuttle’s mesh-lined storage shelves, and hopped down in the hole.

“Heading your way in five minutes, Sam.” Jill said into her mic as she heard sparks from Tiffany’s welding torch. “Finishing the uncoupling procedures now.”

“Thanks, Jill. Doctors Vond and Tehs are making final preparations as we speak. Based on the readings transmitted from your scanners, Vond will take point on the Senator.”

Jill smirked. “Sounds like a good plan.”

It was hard to remember the time when Jill didn’t trust Doctor Vond. A captain pulling an old college friend onto her ship’s crew was the kind of nepotistic tossup that usually landed on the ‘fuck up’ side of the coin. And rumors always flew when somebody with a history like Vond’s hopped back into spacefaring missions like nothing had ever happened.

But after seeing the guy in action for over three years, the medic had found the trauma surgeon to be kind, adaptable, and with an eye for detail that routinely saved patient’s lives. She’d even put in a glowing note for him when he went for his promotion. Given whatever weird junk was flowing through the Senator’s veins, Vond would’ve been Jill’s first pick too.

“Why aren’t we moving?” Ms. Hill asked quietly. Her voice was a bit stronger; Jill guessed the pain meds were helping with that.

“We need to re-seal the hull first,” Jill explained with a patient smile. “If we undock without sealing up the hole we made, the depressurization of your ship will send us careening through space like a popped wine cork. And resealing also makes it safer to tow.”

“Just leave it here,” the senator’s slurred voice startled the medic. When the hell did he wake up? “It’s a useless bucket of bolts. Why did I waste my money on something that can’t even do a proper barrel roll?”

Jill heard Sam snort in her earpiece.

“Sir, we can’t leave it.” Jill told him. “This area’s known for scavengers, and the Coalition Guard’s transit investigating division will want the ship intact for their investigation––”

“INVESTIGATION?!?” Senator Plyler jerked against his restraints, still seemingly not feeling the deep pain he should’ve been in. “Don’t you know who I am?”

Okay, he was going there.

Time for the ‘fuck-you’ smile. “Yes, Senator, I do.”

“Then you know there can’t be an investigation. Don’t you know what that will do to me? To my movement?”

“Not my problem, sir.”

Now that sent the senator ranting, but Jill was able to tune him out. Not her first antagonistic patient, and it wouldn’t be her last. At least they’d managed to strap this one down before he could hurt anybody else. She focused instead on making sure Tiffany got back inside the ship safely, and then navigating them away from Plyler’s obscene monument to his own ego, and back to the Nightingale. As long as his vitals remained steady for the trip, the senator could complain till he was blue in the face for all Jill cared.

Docking on the Nightingale was a cakewalk, and it was only a quick glide through the quarantine and decontamination room, then down the main corridor from the docking bay to the main infirmary.

As one would expect for a ships whose whole purpose was to act as a floating, portable hospital, the Nightingale had an infirmary larger than their docking bay.

It was not, however, the one they used on a day-to-day basis. Patients, strangely enough, didn’t like feeling like a tiny dot in a massive field hospital, so the Nightingale’s main infirmary for any emergency with only a handful of patients was a cozy clinic with three ORs, five patient rooms, a clinical lab, and a sizable med room stocked with enough medications and equipment to treat a small city. All opening out into a combo triage/waiting room with sections that could be coordinated off on an as-needed basis.

Even that was way, way more than they needed most days. But it definitely made the patients feel more comfortable.

Plyler stopped ranting before they reached their destination. Whether it was because he’d tired himself out, or he was hitting another wave of whatever drug was in his system, or if the pain from his broken bones was finally starting to register, Jill wasn’t sure. Her scans could only tell her so much.

When they reached the main infirmary, Tiffany split off to go deliver the data she’d copied to the Captain; Xivis rushed Ms. Hill to the examination room to the far left, and Jill and Moe guided the senator over to the open door of OR-3, where an already masked, gloved, and ready to go Doctor Lukas Vond, stood waiting.

The man couldn’t keep an emotion to himself to save his life. Only a few inches of a pale, sun-deprived face were visible under his bright green surgical mask, but Jill could still make out the nervous concern in the corners of his perpetually-tired-looking brown eyes. He’d do fantastic once the surgery started, but he wasn’t exactly the best in liminal spaces.

Probably a good idea to lighten the mood.

Jill smirked at him; trailed behind as Moe guided their pouting patient forward, and once she was sure she was out of the senator’s eyeline, signed to Lukas: “He’s your problem now.”

The corners of Lukas’ eyes creased in awkward, slightly-amused acknowledgement; then focused on his patient as Moe brought him over. “Senator Plyler, it’s nice to meet you. I’m Doctor Vond. How are you feeling?”

Jill gave the trauma surgeon an apologetic shrug, and left to go fill out paperwork as the senator started ranting again.

Was there anything worse than an ungrateful, entitled patient?