He awoke to the hiss of his suit’s life-support system delivering an injection of adrenaline, painkillers, and several stimulants directly into his nervous system. It was not the first time he’d crashed, he knew the procedures, and he put them to use immediately. He began by assessing himself, through the suit’s read-out and his own senses.
Immediately he noticed that one of his legs was unresponsive, and his suit had several breaches, likely from shrapnel. Fortunately, his body, with the exception of his right leg, remained responsive. So, he moved onto the next step, assessing his surroundings.
The ship’s bridge had suffered not-insignificant amounts of damage, but was by no means ruined. Part of the hull was dented, several panels had flown off, severed wires dangled freely, and some of the terminals had been ruined by the shrapnel and the impact. There was even a hull breach letting sunlight and air into the compartment. The good news; he could breathe the planet’s atmosphere.
The bad news: he promptly discovered that one of the hull’s panels had flown directly into his right leg. Considering the amount of blood pooling beneath him, the leg had likely been severed or gotten damn-near close to complete severance. At least his suit had begun to compress around the leg, serving as a tourniquet. He ran little risk of bleeding out, if he acted quickly.
He breathed deeply and hit the release on his seat’s restraints, expecting to feel pain as his body was jostled. The painkillers spared him the pain. He reached beneath his seat and pulled the emergency kit secured there loose, and onto his lap. The kit contained little, an injector containing the same cocktail of drugs his suit had injected him with previously, a canister of sealant gel, to seal any open wounds, disinfectant liquid, and the tools he’d need for any emergency medical treatment.
It also contained a handgun and a combat knife, for pilots stranded behind enemy lines. He hoped to have little need for the weapons in the immediate future. He was wounded and would take some time to recover, even with his ship’s top-of-the-line medical equipment. Of course, he’d not have to use any of those if he didn’t act fast to preserve his life. He steeled himself, gripped the panel that had crashed into his leg with both hands, and wrenched it free.
Beneath the panel, his leg hung to his thigh by a sliver of muscle, ready to snap. The leg had been mostly severed right above the kneecap, the bone had been snapped, the flesh had been shorn through, and blood still dripped from the wound. He pulled the knife from its place in the kit and cut the flesh that remained, watching as the remnants of his leg slumped to the ground.
Honestly, he was surprised that this was the first limb he’d lost so far. He’d been in more battles than he cared to remember and had more near-death encounters than he cared to tally, but this was the first limb he’d lost. He applied the sealant gel to the wound and waited the seconds it took for it to dry, leaving a clear film where it had previously been, before he started assessing his other wounds.
He tended to those wounds that he could, removing shrapnel and patching the wounds with sealant before attempting to stand. He hopped to the nearest control terminal and began a diagnostic program, to determine how much of the ship could be salvaged. It was his good fortune that the ship’s power core and med-bay remained intact, the loss of either would likely have damned him. The continued functionality of the ship’s foundry and probe bay was an appreciated bit of fortune that would spare him great pains in the coming days. Alas, the Wisp’s rear cargo bays had been ruined during the crash, and the entire aft had been ejected.
He didn’t expect his ship to ever get back in the air, but that wasn’t too much of a concern, not with his wounds. Having confirmed that his ship’s medical bay continued to function, he hopped from the bridge and towards it. The sterile room full of medical equipment had been designed with the express purpose of tending to his health, and, due to his ship’s lack of crew, could do so automatically. All he had to do was settle down on the operating table, which he did with gusto. He couldn’t wait to be fully functional once more.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
A holoprojector near the operating table ignited and a screen appeared, floating in midair. It showed his status, his vital signs, with more statistics appearing as the arms began to attach sensors to him and the scanner above him completed its task. He toggled the med bay's ‘drastic measures’ mode, which would grant it permission to bypass some of its normal limitations and quickly felt the telltale pinch of a needle on skin. He didn’t feel much more after that.
When he next woke, it was to a jolt of electricity between his shoulder blades and the familiar smell of cleaning agents. A cursory accounting of his physical state was enough for him to know that the machines had done their job. His wounds were sealed, the blood had been cleaned off him, and a shiny cybernetic leg had filled the void left by his now detached flesh-and-blood limb. He ignored the prompts from the medical bay’s virtual intelligence, which warned him that he ought to stay in bed to let his wounds heal, and stood.
Letting his wounds heal the old-fashioned way would take weeks, time that he did not have. Instead, garbed in a surgical coat that he didn’t remember putting on, he walked the ship’s halls towards his quarters and did his best to ignore the pain that flared up where his new leg connected to his flesh. Every step brought another pulse of pain, another reason to search for a way to further speed up his body’s natural regeneration, once he got back home. The standard genetic modifications had already significantly cut down on the time he’d take to heal, but it could certainly be faster.
The doors to his quarters opened with a hiss, and his hounds growled in response. The first to be seen, as he lay on the couch in plain sight of the door, was Ripley, the oldest of his three hounds, and one who had served alongside him in more than half of his battles. The next was Clotho, the youngest and largest of the beasts, who peered at him from her open cage. The last to be seen was Kettle, or Ket for short, a hound that had originally belonged to another, but been transferred to him upon her handler’s death in combat. Ket was also the smallest, and smartest, of the three, and the only one to attempt to ambush him.
He side-stepped her pounce, careful to avoid her sharp tail as she flew past. Her cybernetic eyes tracked him even then, and she immediately corrected her course upon landing. For reasons unknown to him, Kettle had received cybernetic enhancements and an entirely different brand of training from what the other hounds had been given.
Vellaxi Hunter beasts, or ‘Razorback hounds’ as they’d come to be known by human soldiers, were formidable creatures that the Beralox had seen fit to domesticate for the use their human soldiers. They resembled old Earth’s many species of predatory canids, though reptilian in nature and gifted with their namesake razor-like dorsal scale ridges. They also possessed a flexible blade-ended tail which they could make highly efficient use of and a bite force to match their fierce size. The tallest of the beasts, Clotho, stood at fifty-four inches tall at the shoulder when quadrupedal.
It just so happened that humanity’s tendency to bond with everything had made them the perfect handlers for the beasts. The fierce creatures had become a staple of modern peace-keeping operations. It also helped that they were capable of pack-bonding, highly protective, and could be quite docile and friendly around those who didn’t show hostility towards their handlers, or vice versa.
The three hounds quickly gathered before him as he lay himself down on the couch in a way he knew meant they knew that something was wrong and were awaiting orders, though he quickly dismissed them so he could get some sleep. He was faintly aware of the three settling down near him as he let himself fall into a deep sleep.
He awoke to renewed pain as his treated wounds screamed their agony and barely had the presence of mind to fumble around in his coat’s pockets for the injector that he knew to be there. The injector brought immediate relief for his pain, a relief that cleared his mind of the fog brought forth by the pain and drowsiness and he quickly remembered his tasks. He had to confirm the ship’s status and perform any necessary repairs, to ensure that it wouldn’t fail him before its auto-repair functions could begin.
He had no expectation of the machine being able to repair the destroyed segments of the ship, but he needed those that remained to be fully functional. And so, he stood, lumbered through his morning routine, and equipped himself with the equipment he’d need. He had a long few days ahead of him. It was a good thing he’d taken the ship repairs course during training.