Lana let her feet move on their own accord, following the directions from the holo-projection. She scanned the information the surveillance bots were feeding her about the life signs. She cussed to herself. A lot of regular citizens thought the surveillance net provided up to date medical information on everyone, but that was a half truth at best. It certainly didn't provide the details that her eyes did. The data the bots were giving her was faint and inconclusive. It was possible that her and her apprentice were taking a second stroll through radiation only to find their patient already gone. But she had to at least try. Especially when she heard the earth man say this was the one who had taken the shot, who had destroyed the missile before it could kill millions.
She looked up at the blue sky. Nothing showed that they were standing in the direct path of nuclear fall out, but then again life was like that sometimes, sometimes it looked safe when it was not. Lana paused when she reached the indicated spot.
"By the mother," she swore, looking down at the ruined wreck of a body beneath her feet and up at the sky.
"What?" Janda asked at her back.
Lana blinked, switching her vision to the bio-enhancement display. She began scanning the body. Lana's eyes were top of the line medical enhancements, the best in the Consortium. This was the kind of detailed medical information she needed. She knelt. "It's just, look up," Lana said, though she did not look up again. "It's open. Can you even imagine, just standing here and watching a nuclear blast?"
Janda shuddered. "I'd rather not, thank you. I still can't believe they had them."
Lana fished in the pack at her belt for a throat spider. "Nuclear weapons?" she asked. She shrugged. "They've never been off planet, so how would they know?" How would they know how many planets had been discovered with concentric bands of radiation surrounding ruins, and little else. How would they know that maybe one intelligent race in ten survived it's rocky adolescent period, when technological advancement outstrip social and political ones?
She flicked her wrist, engaging the quicksilver sterile barrier. There was a metallic flash as the barrier covered her hands like a glove. She put her right hand to what was left of the face, searching for a mouth that wasn't readily visible, so extensive were the burns.
"Yeah," Janda agreed as he knelt at the other side. His hands, too, were covered in silver. He looked the body over dispassionately. "It's hard to believe she's even alive." He lifted an arm. A finger fell off. He shuddered but set to work, applying burn paste over it. They would worry about debriding the bad tissue when they had her in a meditank.
Lana got the mouth pried open. Something came off as she opened it and she tried not to think about what it was, a burned piece of lip or a tooth. She dropped the spider into the open mouth. It went to work opening the airway and supporting ventilation.
"There's brain activity," Janda said. "I think she might be conscious, at least sort of."
Cheyenne floated in a haze of pain. On one side of the haze, the pain was sharp and blazing. On the other side everything went black. She wasn't sure which side scared her more. Everything was dark, not a-dark-room dark or even pitch black, but complete-absence-of-anything sort of dark.
She was uncomfortable where she was but she feared that any motion would cause the pain to sharpen and then she would lose to the darkness that wanted to claim her. She tried to catalog the pains, take stock of herself. Her legs burned and wouldn't move. Her arms and hands felt numb, like paddles. Her face ached. She turned her attention elsewhere, not wanting to concentrate too much on any of the pain, or to wonder what the darkness meant for her sight.
Something was changing. A movement forced itself down her throat and suddenly her breathing was easier. Her arm moved. She wasn't sure if she was the agent of the change or if something else was.
"Miss Cheyenne Walker?" A voice purred in her ear. The voice was low but feminine.
She moved, trying to answer.
"Don't move. Don't try to answer. It's not important now. This is Lana. I am here. We will be with you now. Soon we will have to move you. There will be pain, I am sorry. Then you will be in a tank and it will be better. I promise."
Cheyenne started to nod then remembered that the voice told her not to try to answer. Who or what was Lana? Was she dying? Was Lana an angel to take her to the other side?
#####
Dan lurked just off the platform. The captain had dismissed him and he should have joined the rest of the crew at the back of the bay. They had been triaged medically and sent to the first stage of radioactive decontamination.
He couldn't leave just yet. They had found life signs on the upper deck, where Cheyenne was last known to be. He couldn't leave until he knew.
The hanuman had come over to the holographic display. He was, Daniel had gathered from snatches of conversation, named Kavinda and was the highest rank healer on the ship. They had a display up for Cheyenne.
For their own people they could call up a three dimensional holograph of the individual. They hadn't taken "bio-idents," as they said, on Cheyenne, so her last official picture was floating in it's place. Next to it was a long indecipherable list of symbols in flashing red script. Towards the bottom was some black script that neither flashed nor changed.
"Something turned yellow," Dan said, pointing at a piece of flashing yellow script. "Is that okay?"
"Yellow means something is urgently wrong," Kavinda commented. He must have caught Dan's look of concern. He turned and patted Dan's head. "Do not fear, Lana is my best healer, a true master of her craft. If anyone can save your friend, it's her. Besides," he added as he turned back to the display, "yellow is better than red. Blue, everything okay. Yellow, urgent, must have care soon. Red, critical, will die soon without treatment. Black, it's too late."
"But she has black," Dan said alarmed.
"Her legs," Kavinda replied, "eyes, a few other non vital systems."
"I don't care about her systems," the ship captain barked as she came over. "I am worried about the timer." She pointed to a large red display on one wall. It had been translated so that it appeared both in Consortium numbers and English as well. It represented the longest possible exposure to radiation before it became lethal. Once the timer hit zero they had to have everyone onboard the ship and leave the hot zone. The timer had less than five minutes left.
"We are aware of the timer, Ma'am," Lana's voice snapped from somewhere. "We are coming. We almost have the patient stabilized."
"Well, make it quick. I can't jeopardize everyone for one patient."
"We know," another voice snapped, Lana's friend presumably.
Dan looked back at the display. More sections had turned yellow. His relief turned back to anxiety as everything turned red suddenly, the symbols changing rapidly.
"They are moving her, nothing more," Kavinda commented.
Dan looked around the bay. His skin was definitely itching now. He would have to go decontamination soon. One of the healers had suggested it a couple of times already, but hadn't pressed him. He was glad of that. He felt like he had to witness something first.
It was funny how the bay had already come to make a sort of sense to him. The berths on the opposite side were for the treatment of the more critically injured. He watched workers pushing containers into and out of a bay door that led off that side to a supply area deeper within the ship. Most of his crew had already been led down another passageway towards the back of the bay. He would find out more about that for himself, soon enough.
Even the people were starting to make more sense. The red shirts with the gold trim designated military personnel and so far he'd only seen two in the bay. Blue designated engineering, the uniforms, one piece jumpers or shirt and pant combinations, seemed to depend on the exact job or maybe personal preference. White were healers, either in robes or close fitting shirts and pants.
"We're here," Lana shouted as her and Janda climbed the ramp into the bay. They had a stretcher between them. "And we've brought the biggest bad ass on this entire planet with us. This girl right here looked a nuclear missile in the face and pulled the trigger."
All around the bay people started cheering. Dan joined in, too many emotions clawing at him. Behind him he heard the president declaring, through the holo-projection system, that Cheyenne was a "true American hero" and he had to agree. The Consortium leader, the princess Sarasvat was mimicking the president, saying all the right things about Cheyenne's sacrifice. Yet it was Lana's bald declaration that reverberated the best, the biggest bad ass on the entire planet.
At the same time, the full cost she had faced for her bravery was clear. The figure on the stretcher was too short, her legs ended just below the knees. Her face and upper chest were covered in white paste with nothing but a thin metal tube extending out for her to breath through. She twitched and Dan's eyes were drawn to the white covered stumps of what had been her hands. He shuddered, hoping there were fingers hidden somewhere in that mess but afraid there were not.
Could anyone be that burned and survived? With earth technology the answer was clearly no. But what answer the Consortium would give, Dan couldn't guess.
A hand came down on his shoulder. It was Captain Lannister. "That's our cue, sailor. Our entire crew is onboard now, those they could save anyway." He turned and looked at the large display. They had placed English alongside their own language for convenience. "Not bad, considering, not bad," the captain muttered.
Dan looked at the crew roster. Thirteen names in black, dead. Twenty or more in flashing red, critically injured but alive. The rest in yellow, sick but they would survive. For three hundred and twenty three men that had stood within ten miles of nuclear blast, just outside the immediate blast zone, that was more than not bad. It was nothing short of a miracle.
"Well, let's get to decontamination," the captain said.
"Not you," Kavinda scolded him, "you get to a tank now. We've got to get that paste off your face and start treatment." He ushered Captain Lannister away, leaving Dan alone.
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