Lukas

Date July 12, 2116 Time 15:53 Human Circadian Standard Location Merili Nebula

Backup power was bullshit.

Yeah yeah, Lukas got it: the brighter the lights, the more energy it took to light them, and the less time their life support systems could last. And bioluminescent algal colonies embedded in the ceiling that didn’t need external power sources were a simple way to assure the ship had at least a hint of a ghost light even in a full outage, which was definitely better than nothing...but not by much.

And wouldn’t it make sense to at least shove a couple real emergency lights in the infirmary? So the medical staff could actually see well enough to treat the people who’d inevitably crack their heads open tripping over their own feet in the dark?

No?

Well, maybe that was just him.

“Is everybody okay?” Lukas called out to his staff as his eyes adjusted to the dim blue light eeking across the room. “Anybody hurt?”

A chorus of comforting responses from the darkness eased some of the doctor’s tension.

Lukas fished the little screen out of his pocket...and winced when he realized the thing wasn’t going to light up any time soon.

“Shit,” Lukas muttered; then called out again. “Anybody’s pocket com working?”

There was a pause, followed by the sound of shuffling fabric, and a flurry of annoyed, concerned negatives.

“Must’ve been some kind of electromagnetic pulse,” Lukas muttered.

At least, that was his best guess. Not exactly his field. He tried to think of it as a good sign. Hopefully it meant they weren’t about to blow up. Barring explosions or decompressions, the Nightingale had a backup power system that could keep the air filtered and circulating for days, and the Corps. Hub at Spacedock 59 knew where they’d gone. If the outage wasn’t something Imani and her team could fix on their own, rescue wouldn’t be long.

At least, if their rescue didn’t encounter whatever they’d encountered…

Not the time for those thoughts.

“Alright, sit tight everyone,” the doctor ordered in as calm a voice as he could manage. “I’ll check in.”

Guided by a series of glow-in-the-dark panels embedded into the infirmary’s floor, Lukas managed to cross to the intercom panel by the door without tripping over anyone or anything; pressed the button for the bridge.

“Hey Sam, it’s Lukas. Power’s out in the infirmary. Do you have power up there?”

...Nothing.

The doctor frowned; pressed the button again.

“Sam, what’s happening up there? Did we hit something?”

...Not even static.

Lukas tried to suppress a pulse of fear.

The intercoms were all supposed to be connected to backup power. Even if the bridge’s main power was out, Sam should’ve been able to respond. Was she alright? Was the bridge still pressurized? Was…

Two deep breaths.

Focus.

It was just a glitch. It had to be. He couldn’t panic his team.

“Can’t get through,” the doctor carefully crossed to a cabinet to the left of the door; hauled out a couple boxes of battery-powered flashlights and floodlights; set them atop the countertop that ran the length of that wall.

“Let’s put the floods over the beds first, then go for the supply cabinets, med room, and entryways. Cel and Elishia, you take three apiece and get O.R. 1 lit up. Anything could walk through our doors right now.”

It took a few minutes, but soon most of the lights were in place, either affixed to the walls via their magnetic backings, or hanging like lanterns from poles that came out of the heads of the infirmary beds closer to the center of the room. It wasn’t ideal, but at least they could still treat whatever might come through the door.

“Arbor, I need you to run up to the bridge,” Lukas handed her a flashlight, and bent down to grab a heavy box of spare pocket-coms from the storage cabinet. They should’ve all been turned off when the outage happened, so some of them might still work. “We need to know what to expect. Triple-check for pressure before you open any doors––”

“Hey...guys?”

A familiar, nervous voice from the direction of the infirmary’s outer doors cut Lukas off.

It belonged to Jeffrey, a tech who usually worked the night shift.

The doctor felt a wave of relief. So the blackout was probably localized to the infirmary, and Sam had sent someone to get them back up and running. Far more reassuring than the nightmare playing out in his head.

“Good timing,” Lukas didn’t turn to them as he dragged the box up onto the counter. “What’s it look like out there, Jeff? Is anybody hurt?”

“Um...so far no? But I’d really appreciate it if you turned around...”

Lukas frowned.

...Why did he sound so scared?

The doctor did as Jeff asked, then immediately froze.

In the low light, it was hard to tell much about the person standing behind Jeffrey. Assuming the figure was Human––which they seemed to be––they were on the tall side: roughly Lukas’ height, and back home he was used to ducking to get under the beam at the bottom of his Michigan basement’s stairway.

Light-colored hair ending unevenly a little above their ears.

Bulky clothes, with a glint of what looked to be some sort or armor, or maybe an environmental suit, under their long coat.

And a fighter’s posture, if he’d ever seen one.

At the very least, they clearly knew how to use that gun pointed at Jeffrey’s head.

“I’m sorry,” Jeffrey was close to tears. “She-she popped out of thin air in my room, and––”

“I believe everyone understands what’s happened here,” the stranger cut in. Her untranslated English accent seemed to be vaguely American, for all that told him about the situation. “Now, before any of you have foolish ideas...”

Suddenly the gun wasn’t pointed at Jeffrey, but in Lukas’s general direction.

Instinctively, he put up his hands in surrender, and hoped she wouldn’t actually––

A concussive crack.

The center of the emergency light above Lukas imploded in a spray of sparks.

Lukas flinched.

Instinctively, he patted himself down in reassurance that he hadn’t been hit, then looked in shock at the remnants of the light.

Nothing was melted. The light had a splintered, semi-circular hole in its center.

...Shit.

That wasn’t a laser gun.

That was a full-on bullet-spitter.

Who even made those anymore?

And who the hell was this person, reckless enough to bring one aboard a spaceship? Had she not heard that spaceships were filled with sensitive equipment––and oh yeah––bullets bounce off metal? What if she’d missed? If it ricocheted? It could’ve hit any one of them!

But it hadn’t, thankfully. A quick glance around the room reassured Lukas that his staff was rattled, but unharmed.

“Alright, let’s move this along.” The intruder twitched her head to her left. “Everyone in that corner. Quickly.”

Compliance seemed like the best way to not get shot, so Lukas slowly made his way across the room; joined his colleagues in a nervous huddle.

Once they were all together, the gunwoman shoved Jeffrey towards the group. The engineer rushed to his friend Doctor Tehs, who wrapped him protectively in her wings, and scowled at the intruder.

Without Jeffrey standing in front of her, Lukas could see a bag of some sort slung across the gunwoman’s left shoulder, and some device he didn’t recognize next to the holster on her right hip. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to find out what that did.

“Now then,” the stranger kept her weapon leveled in their general direction as she spoke. “Which one of you is in charge of the infirmary?”

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Welp, he’d always had a feeling his promotion was going to bite him in the ass sooner or later...he’d just hoped it would be later. A lot later.

“That would be me,” Lukas slowly raised his hand; tried to smile. “I’m Doctor Lukas Vond: Head Surgeon, and Medical Director. Anything I can help you with?”

She smirked.

A small one, but it was there.

Good.

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That was good.

Just keep her happy; keep her distracted.

Hopefully there was a security team on the way. Someone had to come check on them, right?

“A number of things actually,” the intruder sounded way too pleased with herself. “Comply, and this interaction can remain...pleasant.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” His eyes flicked to the small dot in the back corner of the infirmary ceiling. The security system was hooked up to emergency power. Hopefully it wasn’t affected. Hopefully it wouldn’t take much longer for them to––

“It’s jammed,” she smirked. “All the cameras are.”

...Shit.

Tech-savvy. Made sense. How else would she’ve gotten this far?

Lukas sighed. “So where do we start?”

A twitch of the gun. “Come forward.”

Heart beating fast, he complied. Every step felt like he was jogging towards a hungry wolf, but he complied.

“Stop.”

He stopped, just out of arm’s reach.

“Remove your coat, and place it on the ground.” she ordered.

Lukas blinked. “Why?”

She leveled the gun at his chest.

He slipped his coat to the floor.

“Now turn out your pockets. Slowly.”

Oh.

Now it made sense.

“I’m unarmed,” Lukas told her as he dumped the keycard, scanner and snack he always kept in his scrub’s pockets onto his discarded coat. “We don’t make a habit of carrying weapons around our patients.”

Though this incident was making him seriously consider changes to that policy...maybe.

The intruder glared. “That had better be true, or you’ll watch me kill your entire staff.”

He froze.

Who the hell made threats like that?

...People who carried projectile-based weapons on spaceships, apparently.

“No need to get trigger-happy,” Lukas urged. “I’m not looking to be a hero. I swear, I’m unarmed.”

Another smirk; a small huff of laughter.

She closed the distance between them.

The doctor didn’t resist as the gunwoman spun him around, and clamped her free hand onto his left shoulder. Her grip was uncomfortably tight.

“A smart choice, doctor. Now, take me to your med room.”

Wait...was this seriously a robbery?

“If you need medicine, you could’ve just asked,” he told her. “We’re a First Responders’ ship: we don’t charge for treatment. Whoever you’re trying to help, there’s far better ways to go about it than––”

The gun dug painfully into the base of his skull.

“Med room,” she repeated with a growl. “Don’t make me say it again.”

...Not the time to argue.

“It’s right this way.”

He pointed to a hallway at the back of the main infirmary; took the robber’s subsequent shove of his shoulder as an order to start walking.

They moved at an awkward angle that continuously kept Lukas between his captor and his staff. The looks on his colleagues’ faces as he passed by ranged from fear to fury, but none of them tried to intervene.

A fact which Lukas was grateful for. Modern medicine was great, but even it couldn’t cure a blown-apart brainstem.

He suppressed a shudder; tried to focus on walking.

They’d had training on what to do in a situation like this. Panic wasn’t going to help anything. Panic never helped.

He led her to the med room door; typed his override code into the lock. Thankfully, someone had had enough time to slap up an emergency light in the far back of the infirmary before everything went sideways, so he could at least see what he was typing. He didn’t think the thief would be too patient with him squinting to read the labels.

As the door hissed open, he let himself be turned around; pulled backwards into the glorified closet.

The pressure of the gun left his neck; he heard the intruder take a step back. He assumed she was checking to make sure nobody was hiding somewhere in the place, ready to spring out at her the moment she lowered her guard––

“Close the door and lock it.”

Lukas couldn’t help but flinch.

Nope. She was still right behind him. Who knew where that gun was pointed...

He needed to keep a brave face. His staff was watching.

The doctor gave his colleagues as much of a smile as he could muster.

“It’s gonna be okay everyone,” Lukas assured them. “See you soon.”

He typed in his security code again; sealed off the med room to everything except his or the captain’s override. Worried faces were replaced by a slab of metal.

With his staff out of immediate danger, Lukas took a deep breath. “So are you looking for anything in particular, or––”

“Hands flat on the door,” his captor interrupted. “Feet apart.”

...Seriously?

They were doing that?

He slumped. “Is this really ne––”

A hand grabbed his hair, and shoved him face-first against the door.

Missed his nose.

Not by much.

“Okay okay!” Lukas shifted into position.

The hand left his hair, then roamed searchingly across nearly every area of his body covered by cloth. He gritted his teeth, but kept still.

Apparently his captor had trust issues.

And very few boundaries.

Fantastic.

Behind him, the intruder’s hand finally pulled away; she huffed.

“You really are unarmed.”

“I told you.”

“Turn around.”

He did.

The bright light at the back of the room haloed his captor, and reflected off the gun pointed in his direction at interesting angles, adding another layer of surrealism to a dangerous situation.

She gestured to the rows of shelves stuffed with meds. “You know what all of these do, correct?”

Lukas nodded. “Yeah, as medical director it’s my job to––”

“Then work quickly,” the woman slipped the duffel bag from her shoulder; shoved it into his hands. “Fill this with everything you can, focusing on anything I could need to treat a stab wound, gunshot, broken bone, burn or concussion. Then everything that’s most difficult to reproduce. I don’t care what they’re for. Understood?”

How could he not? “Alright, what species?”

His captor blinked. “What?”

“What species are your patients?” Lukas asked again. “A lot of these meds are poison to anybody but their intended species. So if you’re actually planning to use this stuff on somebody, I need to know what species your patients are.”

A twitch of the lip. Not quite a sneer. “Human. Only Human.”

The doctor nodded. “Alright then. We can skip the right side of the room.”

Lukas turned to a shelf on his left, unzipped one of the mesh liners used to keep objects on the shelves from flying all over the room in an emergency, and searched for pain medications, antibiotics, anesthetics, and pretty much anything else he could think of for Human patients.

It would be okay. They had a cabinet in the main infirmary that was well-stocked with essentials. Better to work off that for a week or so if need be than to get shot.

He really hoped these were precautionary supplies: if this person knew someone with all those injuries, then they needed a real doctor, not some gunslinger with stolen meds.

But given the circumstances, it probably wasn’t a good idea to pry.

Lukas paused when he reached their supply of omildirin. The robber had asked for meds that were hard to reproduce, and that was one of the few they couldn’t synthesize in their own labs...but that didn’t mean he could just give it to her. Not all of it, at least.

Yes, Imani had a personal supply in her quarters, but she was due to come in for her refill in a few days. It would take longer than that for the Nightingale to reach a supply hub, especially if whatever this person had done to their ship took a long time to fix.

And what if they had to get towed...

He left a two-month supply of those bottles; moved on to the muscle relaxants.

The gun pressed into his back again; he tensed.

“Why did you leave those?”

...Okay, they were doing this.

“Because you don’t need them all.”

“Oh?” A snort. “Tell me, doctor, what exactly is this medicine you think I do not need?”

Lukas gritted his teeth. “It’s omildirin.”

“And why exactly do you think I don’t need omildirin?”

“Do you have a patient with Parkinson’s?” the doctor asked. “Because that’s all omildirin is used for. If you want drugs with black market value, there’s plenty of other stuff I’ll grab for you. But somebody on this ship actually needs omildirin to keep her symptoms in check, so do you mind if I leave her enough to get by?”

There was a pause, and then the gun pulled away.

“Leave them.”

Lukas relaxed a little.

So this person could be reasoned with. Good to know.

“Thank you.”

“Work faster.”

He was glad she couldn’t see him roll his eyes, but he did what he was told.

It felt weird, grabbing fistfuls of meds and dumping them in a duffel bag. He ran an organized infirmary: every vial, pill, bandage and infuser pen had its place, and he and his staff worked hard to make sure everything ended up where it belonged.

This was definitely going to put a speed bump on things for awhile, but he couldn’t help restock if he was dead, so into an unsorted heap in the duffel everything went.

“Alright,” Lukas turned around; held the bulging bag out to the robber. “If I put any more in, you won’t be able to close the thing.”

“Very well,” she used her gun to gesture to contents of the duffel. “Which of these are sedatives?”

He blinked. “You don’t know?”

The gun leveled at his head again.

Lukas flinched. “There’s a few different types in there. But to start, there’s some eldimerin up near the top. It’s the vials of purple liquid with the textured sides. That’s good for general anesthetic in field-medicine situations, as long as you know how to use it.”

She raised an eyebrow “And you don’t believe I do?”

He raised one back. “Do you?”

Would be far from his first surprise of the day, but based on her questions, he was pretty sure this thief didn’t know a tissue scanner from an organic suture. If she planned to use any of this stuff, he really hoped she had someone with some actual expertise on standby.

The intruder glared...then her posture slumped slightly; she rolled her eyes.

“Show me.”

Teaching practicals at gunpoint.

That’s what his day had devolved into.

“They pop into the infuser pens,” he slowly set the duffel on the ground, took out a vial of eldimerin and an infuser pen, and demonstrated. “You’ll have to recalibrate if your patient’s not Human, but the standard dose for a Human around our height is two cc’s. That’s two of the little lines on the side. Once your dose is set, aim in the general vicinity of a surface vein or artery, press down lightly, and press the button on the back end until you feel a click. That means the set dose has been disbursed. Each dose lasts about an hour. For safety, don’t give it to them again more than ten minutes early, unless they’re waking up.”

“I see,” the intruder gestured for him to hand her the device. “And how quickly does it take effect?”

Lukas forked it over. “Almost instantaneous. You’ll want them lying down when it’s administered, or they might fall and hurt themselves.”

The woman studied the pen; an odd smirk flashed across her face. “We wouldn’t want that, would we doctor?”

Before he could respond, there was a quiet knock on the door.

Lukas tensed.

“This is Captain Samantha Healy,” Sam’s voice was muffled, but clear enough to understand. “Is everyone alright in there?”

Someone must’ve hoofed it for the bridge after they went into the med room. There was probably a whole security team out there.

As good as it was to hear Sam’s voice, this really didn’t seem like the best move. Now the thief was probably going to panic, and––

“I was wondering how long that would take,” the intruder muttered; gestured towards the door. “You may answer.”

...Or not?

Lukas slowly turned towards the door. “I’m alright Sam. Just donating some supplies to the nice woman with a gun.”

The thief snorted.

...She really didn’t seem upset at this development. What exactly was she planning? There was only one door out of the med room, so unless the thief thought she could squeeze through an air vent––

“That’s good to hear,” Sam didn’t sound nearly as worried as Lukas knew she had to be. “Is there anything we can do?”

“There is not, Captain,” the intruder sounded almost mocking. “I have everything I need. Do not attempt to force the door, and you will not be harmed.”

“Nobody here wants anyone to get hurt,” Sam assured. “You can have the supplies. Just let Lukas go, and we’ll give you a clear path to the docking bay.”

The thief chuckled. “Thank you for the offer, Captain, but I did not come from the docking bay. And as I said, I have everything I need.”

Lukas heard movement behind him; tensed in anticipation of the gun barrel. It was nice of Sam to try, but there was no way this woman was giving up her hostage that easily. It was going to be a tense––

Something pinched the side of his neck.

He heard a click.

Startled, Lukas turned towards his captor, and his vision swam. He stumbled forward; began to fall; was caught under the shoulders by the blurry figure in front of him.

He was suddenly too tired to be confused; too tired to be scared. Too tired to...

“That’s it, doctor,” she murmured. “Don’t fight it. Just...”

The world went blank.