Second Interlude: Gandahar Gals
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Cautiously lifting the pumping communicating vein, the gold-finished microprobe wormed its way through the thin muscular tissue. The transverse cervical nerves found themselves in the path. Its junction has been severed, which would cause a future lack of sensitivity around the thyroid cartilage area at best, paralysis at worst. The targeted foreign body appeared a little deeper, in the hollow of the superior belly omohyoid and sternohyoid, the two most important muscles of the throat superimposed on the thyroid gland—exactly where the emergency CT had detected its signature.
Unfolding from the tip of the microprobe, a pair of swirling cutting pliers made a meticulous incision around what the medical module’s computer identified as a non-crystalline and transparent amorphous solid of green color. About the size of a pinhead, the bottle shard threatened the aorta with future infection.
“I got it…” Fate breathed, following on the sizzling CRT screen the clamps’ seizure of the piece of glass. Pressing a small red LED button on the side of her joystick, she activated the slow retraction of the probe.
Retreating from the gaping wound in the neck of her patient lying still on the medical module, the aluminum snake coiled itself in a transparent plastic bag hung below Fate’s chair. There, a liquid with an acerbic chemical smell welcomed it to disinfect the probe. Within the blood-smoking beak, the shard glowed.
“Marvelous!” exclaimed Loretta, who had been monitoring the progress of the operation over Fate’s shoulder. As soon as Fate released the surgical module’s controls, the slim-waisted android medic wearing a M*A*S*H crop top grasped a suture gun and a refill of staples between his slender metal fingers.
On the mattress, the patient—a young androgynous dancer with a long green iroquois and numerous glittering facial tattoos—opened his eyes. The following coughing fit caused a thick trickle of blood to flow from his wound.
“Hold still, Prunes!” the Gandahar doctor scolded him, cocking the clinical device. “We’re almost done, hon.”
“T’was mega-quick. I didn’t feel nothing…” the man gulped.
Fate pulled on a pair of turquoise latex gloves. “That is because in addition to the astronomical amount of heroin currently circulating in your bloodstream, we administered you a mega-dose of coagulative painkillers.” She then turned to the android leaning over Prunes’ throat. “May I?”
“Be my guest, girl!” Loretta answered.
Gun in hand, Fate applied several self-tightening stitches around the wound. Then, armed with an iodopovidone spray and a piece of cotton wool, she scrupulously blotted away the last drops of accelerated clotting blood. The operation would only leave a thin scar that an epidermal remodeling could correct; for the young dancer of the night of the Gandahar would afford one once on Jupiter.
“It really looks like you’ve been doing this all your life!” the android congratulated her as she swept the used gun into the chute specifically designed for chemical waste.
The runaway smiled as she removed her surgical gloves, which clattered in the air. With a brisk motion, she tossed them into the same garbage can before the lid shut. A discharge tunnel connected to the ship’s turbines immediately swallowed the trash. “Humans. Spacecrafts. Everything could be opened, repaired and closed at will…”
“And yet, I don’t fathom how either of them functions…” the android sighed.
Fate swiveled on her chair to face her operating partner. The latter was awkwardly preparing a bandage that folded over itself several times due to gravitational fluctuations. “Are you not a doctor?”
“In astrophysics. And celestial mechanics. I used to be a navigator in the merchant navy back in the days when the G.T.C. didn’t enjoy a total monopoly.”
“What are you doing as a ship physician in a squalid erotic club flying across the Space Highway?”
Loretta sighed as she applied the bandage crookedly. “Witnessing the heinous self-regulation of Homo sapiens.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
The injured youngster let out a cry of pain just as Airelle, the owner of the fly-in appeared in the frame of the passageway. The former communist special forces agent from the asteroid belt wore a long evening gown studded with sequins that perfectly matched her slightly bluish skin.
“How’s Prunes?” she asked. A hint of an East-Euro accent still betrayed her origins.
The lady of the house slowly walked over to the robot doctor and put a hand on her aluminum-coated shoulder, her doleful eyes fixed on the dancer. Under the effect of a new dose of tranquilizers Fate administered him, the latter had just fallen back asleep.
“Nothing worrisome, ma’am. The aorta wasn’t hit. A shard—however, seeped deep into the swelling tissues,” the flight medic explained. “Fate was able to extract it before it could puncture something. Or caused sepsis.”
“A resourceful lady.”
“A talented surgeon with a Quaid microprobe, for sure!” the precarious physician added.
“I hope to pay back the trip,” Fate said. She stood up, leaving the creaking chair to Airelle.
The woman with the ozone skin politely refused: “My debt to Miles Villanueva isn’t for you to pay. You’re our guest, Fate.” After checking the dancer’s vitals, she addressed her again while siding her hand down the android’s back: “Miss Howser? Can you give us a few minutes?”
Loretta nodded. “I’ll take Prunes to his cabin.” She took and rolled a magazine then pressed several buttons at the head of the medical bed with it. Tightened by an electrical impulse, the sheets enveloped the convalescent. The surgical module and its chair automatically moved aside, making room for the bed lifted off the floor by four retractable magnetic wheels.
“Great idea.” Airelle let the two members of her crew withdraw. “Warn the others that everything has been arranged by our dear visitant.”
“What happened to the client who did this to him?” asked Fate as the door closed.
The madam heaved a sigh. “In space, the customer’s king.”
“You let him go.”
“Yes,” she resumed, examining the operative utensils lined up in a drawer left open by the airheaded robotic flight surgeon. “On foot.”
“Does that happen often?”
“Men and women winging across the sidereal void and frequenting establishments like ours aren’t always gallant beings.” Scanning the drawer with her eyes, Airelle sat down in the chair that had partially embedded itself in the nearest wall full of embedded buzzing machines. “I have some bad news, Fate.”
“About what?”
“I come back from the deck. According to my steersman, a Mars-registered Citroën Concordia-class just pinged us. Thought we wouldn’t notice. But we did…”
“The turbaned man?”
“I don’t know—but this ship seems desperately looking for you.”
“The odds are still low it is him, aren’t they?” Fate asked, hoping nothing serious happened to Miles.
“Not many civilian ships roam around lately. This one is strangely tagged as a WarTech corpo ship.”
“Chikusho...”
“That’s not all. A routed Separatist fleet recently departed from Leda, in Jupiter’s orbit. It will be upon us within a week. They wish to commandeer the Gandahar…” Airelle continued. She had grabbed a bone saw from the drawer. After examining it, she put it back. “Won’t happen. But at the risk of it going wrong, I’d want you not to be on board…”
“I understand…” Fate responded, hiding her hands in her Yoyodyne overalls’ pockets.
Airelle stood up, and folded the chair within the wall alongside the rest of the module. Just as she did with the drawer afterwards, she locked the safety latches. Without them, the equipment would fly around during important accelerations or the too violent changes of pace from the Baltimore reactors. Just before that, however, she had picked an electric wire cutter.
“I’m so sorry,” the madam went on, tossing the cutter to Fate. She then rummaged through her cleavage to pull out a metal implant the size of one of those Turkish delights she sometimes nibbled. “Tibo had time to finish your FID, though.” Airelle passed her the ceramic phalanx. “Plus, we’ve cleaned the ship that our dear cutthroat deigned to leave us as a reparation—it’s yours too. May you dodge both your turbaned lover and the rebel squadron in full rout. Probably followed by the Techno-fleet, by the way.”
Fate caught her new ID. “Thank you.”
“You’re ready to do anything to survive,” Airelle said before turning back.
“Wouldn’t you?” the Japanese woman concluded.
The madame reached for the control panel to open the door. “Been there. Done that.”
Fate took a deep breath as she activated the self-cauterization, which turned the cutter’s blades white hot.