"Captain," a voice called down the passageway. The men stepped aside and saluted. Fox snapped to attention and then looked down at the stump of his right arm.
"Don't fret it, Fox," Lannister said. He returned the salute to the other men. "Good day men, at ease," he said.
There was a chorus of good days in return. He caught several awkward stares. He smiled and touched the black rubbery material on left side of his face. "Radiation burns," he said, answering the questions that protocol demand they not ask. "Took off most of the skin on that side. They had me in one of those tanks for an hour or so, and then they coated the area with some pink gel and slapped this patch over it. They say the skin will grow back in time. Meanwhile I have to repeat the process every day." He grimaced.
"Sir, your eye?" someone ventured.
"Get a load of this, they claim they're going to grow me a new one," he answered. "Will be almost six weeks, which is how long we are stuck here for anyway, so I guess that's okay. They offered something called a spider. I had no idea what that is, so I politely declined," he joked. "Anyway, I have somewhere I have to be."
"Yes, sir," they sang out in unison.
"See you," he said and kept walking. His stomach rolled. Was it the first beginnings of the radiation sickness? Or just adjusting to a new diet? Breakfast had been some sort of stir fry, vegetables, beans and something that could have been tempeh or beef jerky. They called in Mycobactim and the word didn't translate into any English word. The dish wasn't what he would consider breakfast food but it had tasted good.
He paused and checked the slate he'd been given. It showed the door he wanted ahead on the left. He steeled himself. He wasn't sure what he would find, but he owed it to Officer Walker. He went to the door and entered.
The room was around fifteen feet square. Almost spacious by his standards. Then again he'd spent nearly twenty years on one naval vessel or another. His inspection of his crew's new quarters had shown him that the space ship they were on now was only slightly more spacious, the average crew quarters were bigger than the Cambridge's by a mere few feet.
A large glass tank took up the far right corner of the room. It was surrounded by displays and instruments. The tank itself was filled with a pink goo. He recognized it as the same as the medical bath he had been put into yesterday and again this morning.
Two people looked up as he entered. A young man with short blond hair sat on a stool next to the tank. A tall woman with dark hair stood at one of the displays. "Can I help you?" the woman asked.
"I am Captain Sherman Lannister of..." he faltered. He wasn't the Captain of the Cambridge anymore. The Commander in chief hadn't been joking. The ship had been decommissioned. A Consortium mining ship would hoisted it out into orbit, where its now radioactive hull wouldn't be as harmful. "Of the Earthside crew. I came to visit Officer Walker..."
He broke off again as he realized what was in the tank. Her legs ended at the knees, the stumps still raw and beefy. Her hand, when it moved, was a stump as well, devoid of fingers. Even through the pink he could tell that much of the skin on her chest and shoulders was gone as well. A mask was over the ruin of her face but he thought he could make out empty orbs where her eyes should be. He bent, clutching his gut.
"Janda," the woman barked. The young man sprang to his feet and was at Lannister's side, pulling him towards a small sink. They had barely reached the sink when the captain lost the contents of his stomach.
"Is it that bad, sir?" a voice joked.
The captain's head jerked up, startled. "You're... you're conscious?" he asked.
Walker's voice came again, fed through an intercom. "Yes, I think so, sir. It's, its so disorienting sometimes, I wonder if this isn't all just a dream, if I am not still lying on that deck. You know?"
"You're not," he replied. "This is real."
"Still, I can't see. I can feel, but it's weird..."
"But you can talk," Lannister said. "How?"
"Don't ask me," she said with a lisp. "The explanation is beyond me."
"Nerve spider," Lana said, pointing at a thin wire coming from Walker's throat. "It captures the signals going to the vocal cords. Her vocals didn't take much damage, she'll be able to speak as soon as she's able to bring her head up out of the tank. Her voice might be a little off, from the damage to her tongue. But even that will heal fairly quickly."
"It feels unreal," Cheyenne said.
"The tanks," Janda explained, "are kept at human temperature. The medical gel is the right condition for floating. If you are in a long time, sensory deprivation kicks in. It can be disorienting."
"And this girl will have to be in a long time I am afraid. Don't think on how you look," Lana said to Cheyenne. "I have said before, healing is a messy business. In time, it will be better." Turning her attention to the captain she added. "We don't normally like non-medical people around a case this severe. But my apprentice is right, sensory deprivation will be a constant problem. It is good for people to visit, to talk to her. It will keep her oriented to reality."
Janda gestured at the stool he had vacated and Lannister sat. Janda pulled out a can of some beverage and handed it over. "I think its the radiation anyway," he lied. "Breakfast tasted good but it didn't sit well."
"I'm sorry, sir," she said.
"And no formality, captain's orders."
"Yes, sir. I mean, yes."
#####
"So, Miss Cheyenne," Lana asked after the captain had left.
"Yes, Lana?"
"Why does the captain call you walker? Is this some title? Do you want Janda and me to use it to?"
"No," Cheyenne replied, "it's my last name."
"Last name?"
"Umm, yeah, like family name. Do you have those? I guess I don't know. Are you just Lana or is there more?"
"Oh, family designation. Yes, we have those, too."
"Really? What's yours, if I may ask that is."
"Of course you may, it's Finnakool. Lana Finnakool of planet Kigel, Laneeri province, Cithrop township."
"That's central core, isn't it?" Janda remarked.
"You, too, Janda," Cheyenne said to him.
"Janda Markus of Rym station," he replied. "Deep spacer, all the way."
"Deep space? You lived on a space station?"
"Born and raised on it, too. My parents, they've never been anywhere else. Mom's a true deep spacer, terrified that if she gets too close to a solar system she'll fall down a gravity well and die." Janda laughed at his own joke.
"I can't even imagine growing up in outer space. And Lana? Finnakool? What sort of name is that?" Cheyenne hoped the humor showed in her voice.
"You are one to talk, Walker," Lana shot back.
"Hey!" Cheyenne protested as she caught the implication. She struggled to get her body to move. It was hard to even feel her limbs in the tank but she must have made her arms flail enough because she was treated to the sounds of splashing, Janda's laugh and Lana's mock protest.
"Anyway, seriously," Cheyenne said as Janda's laughter died back, "it's military tradition or something to use last names. I mean on duty you are referred to by rank and family name, in informal meetings we just use last names. I guess I'm not even sure why."
"And your rank?" Janda asked.
"Chief Petty Officer," Cheyenne replied.
There was a long pause and then Lana said, "something in that just did not translate."
"Not at all," Janda put in.
"What?"
"You are a primarily small minded officer?" Lana asked.
Cheyenne thought and then laughed. "I guess I never thought how those words literally translate. In this case petty just means smaller, an officer that is lower in rank then a captain or whatever. Chief means like the head. I was in charge of the missile command center. I had two petty officers under me and a dozen seamen and ensigns."
"Wow, that's cool," Janda said.
#####
After the debriefing, Dan returned to the healer's bay. A hanuman female greeted him. He noticed Kavi working on another sailor on the far side of the bay. She smiled when she saw him. He nodded back at her but went with the other healer. He was relieved that she was busy. He didn't want to avoid her but he didn't want to encourage her, either.
He spent nearly a half an hour in a tank soaking while they did god knew what to his DNA, correcting the damage. Then he was ushered to a different hallway. The blue room was tiny, big enough to contain the machine and a small walkway to one side. The machine looked like an oversized tanning bed. On the near wall, opposite the machine was a shelf of cubbyholes with towels and scrub clothes. A small toilet and shower facility were towards the back of the room.
The machine was an easy seven feet long and almost that wide. He was told that it had to be to accommodate races that were larger than the average human, though the entire crew of the Corelean was simian.
There was a holo-display in the machine. He flipped through the half dozen or so channels of television, or what passed for television in the Consortium. He could barely follow any of the shows. Even with the words translated, most seemed predicated on cultural concepts that didn't translate well and trying to follow them made his head hurt. Finally, he found a channel that played smooth instrumental music and left it on that. He drifted in and out of sleep until the healer came and pulled him out.
He left feeling good but tired. He came across Kleppie and Madsen in the hall and they made their way to the lounge for a light early lunch.
The servers were watching some show on low volume, having angled the holo-display so they could see it from their station. Halfway through lunch the show was interrupted by Holi, the base ship's main news correspondent. There was a sudden hush around the lounge as every sailor and every consortium crew member watched.
"A major announcement from Princess Sarasvat," he was saying as the server turned up the volume. "Fifteen minutes ago, at midnight Bejing time, a Kurgara strike force, acting under direct orders from Sarasvat herself, hit one of the main government facilities there. Using a combination of stun tech and the Kurgara's own special tech, they have disabled the guards and extracted one Liu Xian, a major figure in the Chinese Communist Party. According to data just released by the information bureau, it was Liu who ordered the nuclear attack on the city of Taipan. The attack that resulted in the destruction of American Naval vessel Cambridge."
The men listened in stunned silence while the newscaster went on to describe their situation on the Corelean and the fall out of the attack. Destroying the missile before it reached it's apex had spared Taiwan the worst case scenario, but there was still fallout all across the eastern seaboard. The Consortium had sent four medical ships, similar to the Corelean in construction and crew, to the region. They were treating those affected.
The newscast also spoke about the ongoing conflict with China. Chinese troop carriers were still foundering in the sea between the mainland and the island state of Taiwan. The Consortium was enforcing a no fly zone over most of China by sabotaging any airborne vehicle that attempted to start its engines. They were allowing tug boats from China to retrieve the troop carriers but monitoring their progress closely so they didn't try to tow them into Taiwanese waters. American and Taiwanese ships were swarming those seas, forming another layer of protection, but it seemed unlikely they would get past the superior technology of the Consortium spaceships.
The newscaster even showed footage of a Chinese vessel firing on a Consortium Marine Orbital Hopper. The space ship bounced back slightly as the surface to air missiles struck it, but came back undamaged.
"So what should Liu Xian expect now that he is in Consortium custody?" Holi was asking some legal expert onboard the base ship.
The man laughed. "A long time in a penal colony," he joked. "He is being charged with the death of every casualty from the Cambridge, that's thirteen counts of murder. Serious harm or injury for each additional crew member. Reckless endangerment of the Corelean Crew. Not to mention over eight million counts of attempted murder, one for each citizen living in the city of Taipei or any region close enough to have been affected if the attack had succeeded."
"That's a lot of counts," Holi quipped.
"No shit," Kleppie said at Dan's side.