Phoenix Feathers, Part I Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Joss is boss. All this stuff is his, or else it's because of him. My birthday's pretty far away, but I know what I'm gonna wish for...

***

Douglas Clarke used to be a happy man. He used to ship out on fancy space liners to visit exotic moons and had been wined and dined by the wealthy. In those days, he had boasted that he was the best game hunter in the ‘verse, and it had probably been true. Those rich enough to afford his services were awed by his skill, and attested that Clarke’s hunting was an art in and of itself. For a time, it had seemed as if there was nothing more that he could ask for. Then the Unification War broke out and Clarke’s world turned upside-down.

During his numerous expeditions to the outer worlds, Clarke had grown fond of the daring frontiersmen who, like his own family, lived by choice beyond comfort and civilization. Clarke saw the war as an act of unwarranted aggression by the Alliance, and didn’t have the sense to keep his sentiments to himself. High society had branded him as an unenlightened mongrel. Clarke was blacklisted and exiled to the Outer Planets, where he had been forgotten. Turning to drink, he became just another member of the countless people displaced by the fighting.

Penniless, he had been in a jail on Beylix for drunk and disorderly conduct when he met the Captain. Monty always had a keen eye for talented individuals, even if he sometimes failed to take into account other, less attractive qualities that they possessed. He had offered Clarke a job. Monty might not have been thinking properly, being more than a little drunk himself at the time, but after he had sobered up he kept his word. Clarke owed Monty a lot, but he couldn’t see how that debt could ever be repaid.

He took a long pull from his hip flask, and then stumbled down the Stallion’s main ramp. Clarke looked sullenly at the devastation that the Stallion’s crash landing had caused, then turned and walked unsteadily into the undergrowth.

***

“We are so humped.”

Monty’s grim assessment wasn’t far off. Under half power, the bulk Stallion couldn’t lift itself from its resting place, leaving the crew stranded in the wilderness of Osiris. Until repairs were affected, Monty could not make the rendezvous with the buyer, and he couldn’t send for a decently-equipped mechanic because of the illegal nature of their cargo. The Stallion wasn’t going anywhere until either their buyer or the feds tracked them down- probably the latter.

Still, Monty had cause to be thankful. Cody’s makeshift fix to the ship’s faulty stabilizer had been timely and ingenious, and Cody hadn’t hesitated when the second crisis occurred. Monty had been on the bridge with Nebula, had seen her fighting for control of a ship that could as easily have landed upside-down as right-side up. He was immensely proud of them both- so much so that he was willing to overlook Cody’s earlier prank.

On the bridge of the Stallion, Priscilla, Nebula, and Cody all silently agreed with their Captain’s unhopeful statement.

Priscilla flicked several switches. “If we shut the engine down it should keep us off the fed’s radar, buy us some time to hide the goods.”

“We just leave them here?” asked Cody.

“We can bury them, come back for ‘em later if we have to dodge the feds. But if they search the ship, they’d better not find anything more incriminating than Koyi’s scalpel collection or we’ll lose the ship. How about it, sir?”

Priscilla knew that Monty wasn’t stupid- he might be a bit thick on occasion, but he was a shrewd businessman. Monty winced, but reached for the cortex screen. He typed in a flurry of characters, then reached up to smooth out the tufts of hair that ringed his balding head. The screen sprang to life with the image of an elderly gentleman who, in way of greeting, sneered.

“Captain Montgomery, where in Buddha’s blender is my cargo? You missed the agreed-upon meeting, and one of my men was nearly picked up by the feds as a result!”

Monty, taken aback by the man’s ferocity, raised his hands calmingly and struggled to explain the situation.

“We had to set down elsewhere on account of falling from the sky, and we can’t get ‘er up again. We’d be grateful if you could send a crew to patch us up- give you a discount on the goods for the trouble. How about it?”

The man hesitated, then nodded. “We can deal. We’re downloading your coordinates from this wave channel. It should take- Kao! Captain, you’ve landed yourself in the middle of a Blackout Zone. It’s completely interdicted- no traffic in or out. I’d help you, but there’s really no point in us both getting pinched. Out.”

The Cortex screen winked out. Monty kicked at a bulkhead, then calmed slightly and gazed out of the window at the surrounding forest.

Nebula shifted uneasily. “Blackout Zone? Why isn’t anybody allowed to be here?”

Cody shrugged, but the light of adventure gleamed in his eyes.

Seeing this, Priscilla glowered at him. “I don’t know, but our contact signed off real quick-like when he saw our location.”

Monty squinted into the light of the setting sun, searching for something, anything.

“Who’s out there?”

Nobody answered him.

***

It was almost midnight when Clarke stopped his wanderings. He found a tree bole and sat down, the night cloaking his unmoving form in darkness. For a while he brooded there, thinking about who he used to be. Clarke’s drunken mind was hounded by whispers which mocked him for choosing a lost cause over a successful career.

He drew his sidearm, feeling its familiar weight in his hand, and examined it in the moonlight. It was a beautiful weapon, tailored to his specifications, and he knew it intimately from its well-worn grip to its finely-crafted gun sight. Training the gun, he saw the barrel wavering in his grip, and knew beyond all doubt that there was no hope of regaining his lost position, his lost talent. Clarke’s dream of catching the big game would never come to pass.

Leaves stirred behind him, breaking the night’s silence, and Clarke knew that the sound had not been caused by the wind. He spun and instinctively fired into the darkness with the agility of a much younger and more sober man. He heard a muffled grunt and the thud of a medium-sized animal hitting the forest floor. Clarke ran, if a bit unsteadily, to the place of the disturbance. Peeling back the foliage, he gazed down at his quarry to see- a boy.

The boy was young and unconscious, but Clarke could not make out much else in the starlight except that he was bleeding massively from somewhere in his chest.

Clarke was seized by panic, desperation, and horrible guilt in turn. His sluggish brain was overridden by a rush of adrenaline which brought him a sudden clarity of mind and certainty of purpose. He holstered his gun and bodily hoisted the boy onto his shoulders. He turned and ran back the way he had come, heedless of unseen obstacles or of his own tired lungs.

***

Priscilla was ready to lock up the ship for the night, with or without Clarke on board. It was late, and it was the longest time he’d been away since he’d joined the crew. She used the word “joined” very loosely- the man was a loner, rarely went on jobs, and rarely stayed on them until their conclusion. Even though his presence, or lack thereof, irked Priscilla more than a little at times like this, she wasn’t one to question the Captain’s judgment. Although she did. Often. A small part of her hoped that this would be the time that Clarke left for good, but her professional side kept her rooted to her post, awaiting his return.

A desperate banging on the hull brought Priscilla to the cargo bay door faster than was expected at such an hour. She hauled it open to see Clarke, doubled over at the side of the Stallion’s extended ramp, retching. The night air stank of booze. She stepped toward him, repulsed though she was, and nearly stumbled over the body of a boy that lay next to the door. Priscilla gasped in horror but quickly marshaled her wits.

“Clarke!” Her commanding tone cut through his misery like a bullet. He straightened up. Priscilla motioned for him to grab the unmoving boy’s legs. She bent down to take the kid’s arms only to find that his tunic was soaked. It wasn’t until they got into the brightly lit cargo bay that she saw that it was blood.

They made their way across the cargo bay, ungainly-like but speedily enough. Clarke nearly tripped on the lip of the hatch at the rear of the bay, cruelly jarring the boy’s body, but then they were through, straining their eyes in the dimly lit passageway. Two corridors led off right and left towards the Stallion’s shuttles, as well as to her engine room, kitchen, and hold. Priscilla continued on, entering the main corridor which stretched forwards towards the bridge, beyond the crew quarters and the infirmary. Only the nearest room’s light was on, and Clarke shifted a hand to beat against it as they went past.

Bedsheets rustled within, and then the soft pattering of footsteps could be heard. A second later, the door opened and Nebula looked out.

“Hey, you guys. What’s-” She saw the boy, soaked in blood and struggling to breathe, and gaped.

Priscilla addressed her calmly. “Nebula, I need you to go wake up Koyi and get her to the infirmary, Ma shong.”

Nebula just looked at her.

“Move, girl!”

Clarke’s harsh tone got Nebula’s attention. She ran down the corridor ahead of them, but didn’t stop at Koyi’s darkened quarters. Instead, she practically flew up the steps into the bridge and hit the intercom.

“This is an emergency! All crew, listen up. We’ve taken on someone, looks to be hurt real bad. Koyi, you’ll want to get to the med lab, now! Everybody else, make yourselves useful. He don’t look too well.”

As Nebula’s voice was broadcast into every room of the ship, the crew quarters lit up, one by one. Koyi, bleary-eyed and disheveled, pushed open her door and ran to unlock the infirmary.

The doors slid open as if they were attuned to her touch, and she swept inside, turning on the lights with an experienced flick of her wrist. Priscilla and Clarke followed behind, carefully laying the boy on the operating chair. Koyi flipped scissors to Priscilla, who deftly caught them and started to cut away the boy’s shirt.

Koyi attached the various feeds that displayed the boy’s vital signs, swore at length at what the monitor showed her, then turned to find that she had an audience. Nebula, Cody, and the Captain all stood uncomfortably outside the med lab, watching the proceedings.

“Ah, boys! Thanks for volunteering, now get in here! Nebula, mei mei, we won’t be needing you just yet, so how about you go sit down somewhere? Boy’s gonna be OK, dong ma?”

Nebula nodded weakly and headed back up into the bridge, worry etched into her features. Monty shut the door behind himself as he and Cody entered the infirmary. Koyi looked back to the medical readouts and her expression turned grim.

“Boy’s gonna die, more like. All right. Monty, this here’s a retractor.” She tossed him a tool, which he examined dubiously. “You’re gonna pull up a rib so we can get at the bullet. Priscilla, you’re drugging this kid with ciliomethazine, kyteronine, and whatever else you happen to pull out of that cabinet there. Here’s your new toy.”

Koyi pressed a injection-gun into Priscilla’s hands. It had a mount to allow drug modules to be attached for quick administration to a patient. Priscilla moved to the indicated cabinet and began rooting around in it for the correct dosages, trying her best to avoid colliding with Koyi in the process. The doctor was a whirlwind of activity, seemingly everywhere at once, doing the work of an entire emergency response team herself.

Looking on from a corner of the room, Cody felt useless. “What do I do?” he asked.

Koyi tossed him a probe and an extractor, a tool with miniature appendages at one of its ends.

“Go fish.”

Cody looked at the patient, a kid no older than himself, and at the hole in his chest, which bled profusely. Then he studied the unfamiliar tool in his hands.

“Aw, C’mon! Me? Why can’t you-”

“Busy!”

“But-”

“Look, Cody. Do you know how to place an IV? Just find the bullet and I’ll pull it out.” Koyi again consulted the monitor. “He’s lost a lot of blood and we’re running low on plasma. Gonna have to find a willing donor of matching blood type. Let’s see…”

Priscilla finished giving the boy the drugs and watched Monty and Cody in their grisly efforts to locate and remove the projectile. Things were not going well for Cody. He had been wiggling and jabbing the probe into the wound, but there didn’t seem to be much headway being made. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing. Cody silently concluded that the only thing harder than fixing stubborn machines was this business. Finally, the vidscreen linked to the tip of the probe showed him what he was after.

“Got it! Koyi, you want to-” She was already taking the extractor from him.

“Good work. Priscilla, we need some RH negative blood. Would you get Nebula for me?”

“There’s nobody else?”

“Well, Clarke could, if you want this kid to have rocket fuel for blood. Doesn’t he look a mite inebriated to you? Go fetch Nebula, please.”

Monty looked up. “No, now. That don’t sit right with me. I’ll do it.”

“Sorry, Captain. I wish you could, but your RH factor’s the wrong kind. The kid’s body will accept any blood type, as long as it’s negative. We’re lucky we have someone on board in the first place who can do it.”

“It’s all right, Captain,” Nebula said from the doorway. “I’m willin’.”

“Good girl.” Koyi set up the transfuser that would supply the boy with Nebula’s blood, then moved to the wound, wielding her extractor. “I’d appreciate it if those of you who aren’t doctoring, giving blood, or on the brink of death would clear out. I need some space to work.”

Cody and Priscilla filed out of the infirmary, past Clarke, and down the hallway to their respective bunks. Clarke still looked on from a distance, struggling with the self-loathing that the sight gave him and with the role that he had played in the night’s excitement.

With a grunt from Koyi and a fresh tide of blood, probably mostly Nebula’s, the bullet came free. Koyi set about dressing the wound, then stood back and stretched, yawning.

“I’m getting some coffee. He should be stable, but holler if you hear lots of beeping computer noises, OK? I’ll be back.”

Nebula and Monty stared after Koyi as she stomped out of the infirmary, then they regarded the boy and wondered how their predicament could possibly get any worse.

“Ai ya,” Nebula said drowsily. “What a day.”

***