Rachel woke to the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor. She had seen many different hospital rooms during her time as the Arbiter. However she was usually interviewing a person grievously injured by a deathworlder, trying to match the details to a list of perps. She had never been in here to receive care for her own injuries.

The first thing that she noticed was that her left arm was set in a cast and elevated. The second thing was how much her whole body hurt. She felt bruised from head to toe, like she had been put in a rock tumbler.

She looked around the room and marked the non-descript furnishings and sterile looking medical equipment. Her bed was a few sizes too large for her as it was designed to accommodate for the on average larger Union species.

There was a gentle knock at the door and she tried to say something, but it came out as a croak. The skittish looking Zxx’thi nurse stepped in and flinched under Rachels gaze, taking a step back out of the room. Rachel immediately realized her mistake and turned her head away to glance at the tall Zxx’thi from a sidelong angle. The nurse fully stepped into the room an took several lumbering steps towards her. “How are you feeling Officer Heart?” they asked in a professionally nurturing tone.

“Bruised” Rachel managed to say.

The nurse looked confused “Just bruised, you should be feeling a lot more than just that.”

“Must be the pain killers.” Rachel mumbled, her mind feeling cloudy.

“I’m sorry officer, but this hospital doesn’t carry any deathworlder grade pain killers. And what we have wouldn’t work with your system.” The nurse said, voice tinged with worry.

“I have a good pain tolerance nurse.” She said quickly, not wanting to go into any more of her deathworlder weirdness.

“And a talent for understatement” a stern voice said from the door. Judge stood there in his formal uniform as the station’s chief of security. The nurse suddenly looked much more worried now that an uninjured Deathworlder was in the room. “May I have a moment alone with my subordinate?” he asked in a tone that said he wasn’t asking.

The nurse rose and left, taking a wide arc around Judge. He watched them leave before fixing his hawkish eyes back on Rachel. She wasn’t sure why, but Rachel suddenly got the impression that she had seen those exact same eyes somewhere else recently. But she couldn’t figure out where.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, his tone softer.

“Bruised and numb.” Rachel frowned “That nurse was right, I should be feeling worse.”

Judge looked away from her. “Do you remember the back alley Terran clinic you shut down a few months ago?”

“Yes, they were buying illegal narcotics from smugglers to use on their patients.”

He nodded “Most of those narcotics were simple painkillers that work on human systems, I administered a dose during my last visit.”

“You drugged me?” Rachel asked in shock.

“Just morphine, and well below the recommended dose.” He snapped.

“But won’t that cause problems, what if the doctors here give me something without knowing?”

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Judge fixed her with his raptors gaze once more “the doctors here do not have anything to give you, none of their drugs would work on us. I’ve invited a human specialist from one of the private human manors in the core to help your recovery, but it will be sometime before he gets here. The dose will wear off by then. I need you cognizant right now so you can tell me what happened.”

Rachel was stunned by the harsh bite of his tone, and found herself unable to protest anymore. “Right,” she said, “what do you know?”

“I know that sometime last night as you were returning home you were attacked. They cut your arm, broke your other arm, and attempted to choke you to death. Somehow you got away and jumped out from the fourth story and gave the patrolling officers a scare.”

Rachel digested everything he said before recalling everything that happened “they were waiting for me in my home, I only just noticed something was wrong before the attack began. The assassin was human and heavily augmented with cybernetics. They had curved blades coming out of their arms, impervious to pulse fire, and when I tried to punch them my arm broke.”

Judge thought for a moment “Humans have a much higher tolerance for augmented prosthetics. Once the immune system can be convinced that they’re being invaded humans can support a stunning amount of inorganic alterations. We’ve seen illegal body modification before, but not to that level. What parts were inorganic?”

“Definitely the hands” Rachel said as she unconsciously lifted her right arm to her neck. Still deeply bruised. “Arms as well. I think the torso might also be augmented but I couldn’t tell you to what degree, all I know was that it could withstand direct sniper fire from a kinetic slug.”

“Sniper?”

“Yes, an unknown sniper was outside my window and fired upon the assassin. They’re the reason I’m currently alive, but I don’t know why they were there, or why they saved me?”

“A sniper in Silver Tower city, we recovered a few of the bullets and traced them to a nearby building. But I couldn’t believe it until you confirmed it for me.” He put a hand to his chin and pondered the implications. “Ballistics tell that they had to be on the fifth floor of that building, but no one ever came up on security cameras. So unless they were somehow hanging on a sheer ledge they must have hacked the camera feed, they might have left a trace. Is there anything else?”

Rachel thought for a moment, remembering the assassin choking her out had reminded her of the one thing the assassin said. “Yes, but I don’t understand it. The assassin said that they would be sending the pirate my way as they were choking me.”

“Are you sure they said the pirate?”

“Yes, they said Astarte, I don’t know how common of a name it is, but it’s a little too coincidental for it to not be the same one.”

Judge thought for a moment “besides your visit as the Arbiter the party was the first time you met her, correct?”

“Yes, never saw her before that.”

“Then we might have a lead to go on. Our assassin didn’t leave any evidence as always, but there could only be a few people at that party who knew you were together for a time. It might be an attempt from a third party to attack the pirate by targeting someone they seemed to know.”

“That doesn’t sound right, it was the first time I met the woman, and we didn’t talk much.”

“You two were sitting by a fish pond staring wistfully at the sky when I arrived. Someone could have gotten the impression that you two knew each other in a more intimate way.”

Rachel shook her head “Its not like that.” She protested.

“I know, but someone else wouldn’t know that. They could have assumed you meant something to the pirate and targeted you as a way of getting to her.” He tapped his fingers on her bed rail. “There’s something we’re not seeing. Theses pirates arrived only yesterday, we were the first to respond to their presence but that doesn’t mean we’re the only ones who might have been keeping an eye on them. They have enemies that were already here long before they arrived, and if we assume that this assassin is the same one who you’ve been chasing then it seems too coincidental that one of their very public massacres just happened to draw in these pirates.”

“What are you implying?”

“We might be standing on the sidelines of something bigger, a powerful unknown faction going out of its way to call out these pirates. The question is why?”

“I’m still not entirely convinced they’re pirates. But if they are then we need to recognize that Astarte is a highly intelligent and cunning person. There’s definitely more than meets the eye to them.”

“Indeed. I have requested that Kera’keck send over the evidence he has collected to try and gleam something new. It’ll be a few days before it can arrive.”

“Good, that will give me time to recover.”

“Recover?”

“Yes, now more than ever we need to see what else I can gleam from Astarte and Karega, I already have a connection to both. Plus our spy might be at the next event my mother drags me to.”

“You are in no condition for that” he snapped harshly.

“Doesn’t matter, I’m the only one who can get the job done. I don’t know why, but Astarte hates you. So we need this doctor of yours to get me back on my feet as soon as possible.”

“Its not that simple. We can’t just wave a hand and make you better.”

“That back-alley clinic had some experimental crap for accelerated healing, formulas for repairing bone damage and blood vessels?”

Judge’s face hardened into a stern scowl “No.”

“We can’t let this chance slip by, do you know how many people that assassin has slaughtered.”

“We’re not using untested drugs on you.”

“We need to figure out what’s going on before things get out of hand. You saw what kind of weapons that Astaroth is packing, it could do a lot of damage if we don’t intervene, and whoever they’re fighting has to at least be twice as armed.” She saw the unwillingness in his eyes and broke out her secret weapon. “Please, I can do this.” She pleaded softly.

He softened “Alright. I’ll talk with him a discuss what’s safe and what’s not.”

“Thank you, Judge.” She said while staring into her lap.

It was unfair of her to push him like that, but this was a job Rachel could do, and she would endure whatever nightmarish treatments she had to.