Into the Fire
Alwen’s sanity was beginning to fray at the edges from stress and grief. They had gotten Gato to the med bay, and she had been capable of dealing with the trauma and had stopped the bleeding. But that said, he had still lost a lot of blood and was still unconscious. She didn’t have much time to fret over whether he would make it or not, because just as she stabilized him more injured sailors began to arrive by the tens. Some were just heavily concussed, others had been shot up with pulse fire and were severely burned, one poor Lycanoid female had been hit in the face and had died in Alwen’s hands as she tried to get a breathing tube down her throat. Throughout all of this Alwen wondered where the hell Bachir was, until four carried the heavy Ursiloid in on a stretcher, his entire left leg was completely ruined, and his jaw had been broken.
Apparently after the ship entered combat he had twisted his ankle and couldn’t move. No one had the ability to stop and carry him off to the med bay, and the stubborn bear had insisted on handling his own injury. One of the Kruhur breaches had been near where he had holed up, and he had decided to handle the enemy in his injured condition, reports from the men who brought him in said that he had shredded three of them before falling.
Alwen had checked his leg, but it was far beyond saving. The intense heat from the pulse fire had ruined it completely, and she had to amputate it to save the rest of body. She hadn’t even had the time or mental capability to mourn for her mentors pain and loss because the wounded began to pile up and Alwen had been forced to draft several marines with some training in combat medicine to assist her, but even with the extra help she had lost many patients. Some had died in her arms as she did chest compressions, some died waiting for her to attend to their injuries, and a few who she had deemed well enough to wait had died of unnoticed and unattended wounds. Alwen kept count of every patient she could have saved if she had the time and manpower, and she was up to thirty-four.
She had to constantly remind herself of the forty-seven she had saved while those patients waited for treatment, but telling herself that she saved thirteen more than she lost didn’t assuage her conscious one bit.
It had gotten a little better when Brevot was able to strip off his armor and scrub up, apparently he and the captain had invaded the enemy ship and had strapped a bomb to their reactor. Once the marines had forced back the Kruhur and Egh’ahd invaders they had sealed off the breached sections and had somehow detached the enemy ship and blew it up once it was safely away.
Even though the battle was over, the crisis was still in full swing, and crews of deck apes and snipes ran from one end of the ship to another trying to fully restore power, two hours after the ship had lost power a gentle hum signaled the return of small maneuvering thrusters. And the work in the med bay just never ended. Twenty hours after the ship had been boarded Brevot had called the captain down to order Alwen to get some rest, they even threatened her with chloroform. She got four fitful hours of sleep before a patient went critical and she had been paged back to the med bay, she saved the patient just in time for the next patient to go into cardiac arrest. That had been thirty hours ago, and she only now had a chance to sit in a chair next to Gato’s bed and catch a few minutes of sleep.
After all of this was over Alwen was going to have a serious talk with the captain about bringing on more doctors, or at least clear her to train some up herself. she couldn’t do this alone, and even if Bachir hadn’t been wounded they would still be at their wits end with all the patients.
She had just drifted off when she heard a soft groan off to her side, she woke with a jolt and saw that Gato was awake and in a lot of pain. “It’s alright, the fighting’s over.” She muttered half heartedly as she got up to start checking on Gato.
“Where, what?” he tried to rise from his bed, but for once the pain was so intense that he laid back down without any prompting on her part.
“Your in the med bay, and I need you to stay still for once. I have far to many patients to deal with and I wont have you tearing your stitches.” She walked around his bed and turned the drip on the IV up. He was so densely packed that she could never get his morphine drip right. “How’s that?” she asked.
“Donno, can’t feel much.” He said as another wave of pain hit him; his ears shot back had his toothy maw opened in a silent roar of pain.
“Give it time, I can’t turn it up too high since we’re going to need to conserve as much painkillers as possible.”
“That bad?” he asked, concern painted across his face.
“Bachir is in the bed next to you, and he has less of a chance at surviving this than you.”
He turned and saw the bandages around where Bachir’s leg had been. “Fuck.” He muttered.
“Yeah, its just me a Brevot, and he’s not a full doctor.” She yawned.
“How long have you been up?” he asked.
Alwen tried to think about it, but she was far to tired to do math. “a while. A day and a half, maybe two”
“You should sleep.”
“Then who would keep your ass out of Reyfa’s halls, or hell as you keep insisting.” She grumbled as she walked back over and sat down.
Gato looked down at his chest “You shouldn’t wear yourself ragged over me.”
Her eyebrows shot up and within all the exhaustion she forgot to control her temper “First off its not just you, I’ve got a whole tenth of the ship in here for one reason or another. And second I told you to stop thinking like that, as long as your health and safety are my primary concerns you aren’t allowed to throw your life away. I’ve already lost thirty-four people, people who were desperately trying to survive their injuries. Your little pin prick is nothing compared to what I’ve seen so far, so don’t you dare give up!”
His ears flattened against his head. “I already told you that its pointless caring for me.”
“And I told you that’s not gonna happen, no matter what the hell happens I’m going to care whether you live or die!” she snapped. She took in deep breath and let it out slowly and tried to calm herself down for the sake of the other patients “I don’t know what I would do with myself if you threw your life away because you thought no one cared about you.” She said softly, a little tear slid down her cheek.
He turned to her and made a rumbly sound in his throat, “please don’t say that, you shouldn’t care about me like that.”
“Well it’s too late for that,” she huffed “I like you; I like you a lot, I’d go so far to call it love. And nothing’s going to change that, least of all you.” She confessed for a second time.
“Please, don’t” he begged.
“Its not like I can choose to stop.”
They both went silent for a long time, just to soft beeps of the med bay to accompany them. “I do too.” He said softly into the quiet room. “I love you so much that when you told me that the Kruhur would kill you I flew into a panic, my mind wouldn’t stop taunting me with images of you lying dead on the ground. And then when I heard you scream I stopped thinking all together, I became an animal and acted only on instinct.” He sounded ashamed of the last part.
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“There’s nothing wrong with instinct, its action unhindered by guile” she said, unintentionally quoting Astarte’s words.
“I don’t like listening to the animal, it only wants violence.” He growled.
The ‘animal’ as he put it was apparently what had provoked him into action, meaning that it was Gato the animal that had saved her when Gato the man was too petrified.
She pressed her hands to her knees and stood up, she leaned against the handrail of his hospital bed and loomed over him, “Oh really, and what does the animal want right now?” she asked coyly. She saw his breathing had quickened and his eyes glazed over a little and knew exactly what the animal wanted. She leaned down closer and he lurched up despite his injury and kissed her, not on the cheek like her aunts used too, but full on the lips.
At first it felt strange, like her lips and body didn’t know what to do, even though she had been wanting to kiss him since that night back on the capital. And then as he leaned up and pressed her closer to him, some switch in Alwen’s brain clicked on and she suddenly knew exactly what to do. She returned his kiss with equal force and desire, and felt him growl in approval. She put one hand against the silky black fir of his granite like chest and slid it up towards his head. Her heart began to thunder in her ear and she chest tightened as her breathing hitched. She had to bring her other hand off the bed rail and onto his chest just to support her trembling knees, but as she lost herself tothe passion she placed her hand against his bandages and felt him flinch in pain. She had obviously hurt him just now, but he pushed on, and it took great effort for her to put a hand on his chest and push him back down.
She straightened up and tried to catch her breath and Gato turned to side in shame and embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking, I thought that’s what you wanted” he apologized.
“No, I mean Yes I do , but not like this.” She said as she cleared her throat.
Gato scowled “I’m confused.”
Alwen bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling and gathered her thoughts before she looked back down at Gato “I like you, and this is exactly what I want, but right now you’re my patient, and you’ve been stabbed for Ashendra’s sake. And more than that I want more than a kiss in a hospital bed on a ship that’s currently in the middle of a life-or-death situation. What I want is a proper date, one where I don’t need to drug my friends to trick you into taking me somewhere. I want you to dress up and take me somewhere nice, some place where we can dance until midnight. I want you show me just what Gato ‘the man’ is capable of, and then we can let the Gato ‘the animal’ out to play. Okay.” She said firmly, quickly making up her mind on the matter.
He stared at her in shock, and after awhile he smiled “Ok, I think I can do that, I saw an old fashioned dance hall in Noctis when I went for a jog. You’ll have to teach me some Torweni dances first though.” He glanced to his own bandages “and give me some time to heal.”
Alwen smiled “Well first we need to survive our next encounter with the enemy, we’re not out of the storm yet.”
“Have faith in the Captain, she always has a plan.
~~~*~~~
Power had been restored to most systems, and now Aster could look out the ‘windows’ of the bridge while the ship did absolutely nothing. Before they had been sitting completely blind to the outside world, save for the deck apes they had sent outside in EVA suits to watch for approaching enemies. Not that they could do much if the Kruhur did find them, most weapon systems were useless without any sensor data or targeting computers to aim them, the most they would have been able to muster was a point-blank blast. And since they still didn’t have shields there was no way the enemy would let them get that close.
She had been nervously shaking her leg for hours while the repair crews got basic thrusters back online so that they could move the ship away from the very noticeable debris field generated by the Venom. They were currently hiding in a crevice of a metallic asteroid; they had drilled some holes into the rock and were currently using the massive object to dissipate some of their ambient heat to lower their external heat signature. But they couldn’t hide here indefinitely, eventually a Kruhur vessel would get lucky and find them.
She didn’t know how long they had been in the system as the Astaroth was still completely blind to the outside world, but seven hours after the failed boarding one of the deck apes strapped to the Astaroth’s conning tower manually spotted a Kruhur cruiser with a pair of binoculars they had retrieved from the Marine’s tactical gear. It was kilometers away from the Astaroth and its position was only visible because it had just happened to cast a shadow on a distant asteroid. Astarte had no idea why it had taken them that long to arrive in system given the fact that they hadn’t traveled that far, but was thankful none the less. The extra few hours the Kruhur had given them might mean the difference between life and death.
They had spotted three more Kruhur ships over the next three days, two destroyer or frigate sized ships, and one that was unmistakably a heavy cruiser. None of them had spotted the Astaroth’s hidey hole, but it was only a matter of time. They seemed to be patrolling the local ring system around the orange gas giant, and they didn’t seem inclined to get bored and give up.
Thirteen hours ago they had retuned power to the warp emitters, and six hours after they gotten the Ion engines back online, but Aster had ordered the engineering crew to hold off on reigniting their one means of escape. Without any sensor data they could find themselves plowing right into the enemy and never know it. So right now they were waiting once again for another system to be brought back online, in the meantime Astarte had ordered her crew to begin off loading any excess weight. That meant removing the two completely fried landing shuttles, Incubus, and Succubus, cargo they had been planning to sell in Wrethren, and a lot of their food stores. Now that they were down a reactor and their propulsion systems were in a delicate state every extra newton of force could mean the difference between life and death, especially when it came time to bolt. Even the coffee had been sent into the cold vacuum of space.
Millions of credits worth of supplies and broken hardware unceremoniously stapled to the surface of an unnamed asteroid, the loss made her grit her teeth in annoyance. She planned to make the Kruhur pay for everything they had lost a hundredfold.
She had been glaring at the infinite blackness outside the ship when Karega brought her attention back to the here and now “Just heard from the Bosun, we can have basic wake sensors back online at your command.” He reported.
“What about targeting sensors and long-range radar?”
“Both will take longer to repair, they’ve got the 3D printers working to replace the melted parts, but the replacements won’t be as good as what we had.”
Basic sensors meant that they would only be capable of viewing short range wake disturbances of ships at warp and pick up the odd radio signal. Not much to work with, but enough to give them an idea of what was out there without being seen. “Bring it online. Time to see how many Kruhur ships survived the Cameo’s sacrifice.” She ordered.
Karega nodded and gestured to a bridge tech to enable passive receivers and to bring up a holographic display of their signals. A basic holographic sphere appeared in the center of the bridge, with a bunch of smaller spheres orbiting around it. Tt was just a basic recreation of the gas giant and the larger satellites and planetoids in its ring system that the Astaroth had recorded before they went dark. She watched for a few minutes as little red blips slowly appeared around the gas giant, and as more and more continued to appear she felt cold dread sluice through her veins.
“That’s a lot more than before.” She muttered in disbelief.
“Yeah, even if they stopped to repair the ships that were only damaged by the Cameo they wouldn’t have this many. God, there’s nearly three times as many.” Karega muttered.
Astarte turned to a bridge, Andrews “Can we get a better idea of their tonnage?”
Andrews shook his head “Not unless they went into high warp, right now they appear to be strafing the ring system at sub-light warp. All we can do is see if they’re there.”
Karega rubbed his chin “We can confirm at least one cruiser sized vessel was leading the first ambushing fleet, assuming they’ve been reinforced with similarly stratified fleets we should assume that there’s at least three cruisers.”
“Or they’re all scrambling here randomly, which means there could be ten cruisers out there if they were within the area.” Astarte countered.
“Either way we’re in trouble, we couldn’t handle the first fleet at full power. We need to be thinking of escape, not revenge” Karega counseled.
“Why not both?” Astarte said with a devilish grin.
Karega looked suspicious “what are you planning?”
“Nothing yet, but if I there’s an opportunity I would like to make these assholes regret fucking with us.” She said as she began to consider the projection ahead of them. “That said even escape is going to be tough, the way they’re spread out will make it almost impossible to sneak by. They seem confident that we’re still in the ring system and have the space around it locked down, they only need one ship to delay our retreat in order to buy time for the whole fleet to descend on us.”
Any attempt to warp out of the ring system would be noticed, and at such close proximity and down a reactor they would be caught instantly. Every possible angle of escape seemed to be under guard, and there was little chance that they could sneak through the gaps in their formation. Attempting to sneak through the ring system at sub-light was also risky considering who often they had ships patrolling the inner system. And besides, hopping from crevice to crevice would accomplish nothing because they would still be trapped within the ring system. Waiting it out wasn’t an option either, the rest of the Fleet was still in dry dock, and didn’t even know that the Astaroth was in danger. All they had left was a very small stash of entangled particles in the quantum com, only enough to alert the fleet of their untimely death and nothing else.
That left all logical possibilities of escape locked down, so that only left them with the insane and reckless options. “Kar, what’s the maximum pressure that the Astaroth can withstand?”
He cocked his head to the side “Um, I think we can dive 200 meters below sea level on most temperate worlds, it sort of varies. Why?” he asked with creeping suspicion.
“I want to know how deep within a gas giants atmosphere we can dive” she said with a grin.
His eyebrows shot up and the rest of the crew stared at her in shock “Star, no” Karega said firmly. “This is a spaceship; we weren’t built for that kind of environment. We can dive under water, but a gas giant’s atmospere is a whole different matter entirely.”
“Then get our engineers together and give me a number.” She interrupted “This is our best chance of getting out of here, we have no other alternatives. They only have enough ships to watch the ring system, they can’t watch the whole gas giant. If we can safely dive below unnoticed we can maneuver out of their screen and warp out before they know what’s going on. If there’s a safer way let me know.”
“But that’s suicide, just the outer atmosphere is comparable to a category five hurricane. And that’s not the only thing we’ll need to worry about, there will be acid, crushing pressures, supercharged lightning, and God knows what else. Even with Union technology we still barely understand what goes on within gas giants, we’ve only begun to build probes that can send back reliable data.”
“Then we’ll make sure to send our sensor data to the physics department at UOM, I’m sure they’d love our firsthand experience.”
“This is no time for jokes!”
“I wasn’t joking,” she said, her voice went deadly calm. She pointed at the holographic display of the gas giant “That is our only chance at survival, it just so happens to be a very slim chance. But compared to assured destruction it’s a far better alternative. Now if we want a better chance at surviving I need you to gather anyone with relevant knowledge and give me some hard numbers to work with.”
He saw the deadly conviction in her eyes and turned away in shame at his outburst. He let out a sigh and looked up at the holographic display “At least I’ll have one hell of a story when the Devil asks me how I died.” He said in defeat.
“And if we survive it will be a tactical victory for the ages, they’ll write whole essays on how brilliant we were.” She said, her devilish grin returning, masking the doubt and dread she was also feeling.