“Okay. Why are you here?”
“To help,” she answered instantly, and with a smile. “We call. You no answer. We come. You help us. Now we help you.”
Nathan was a little surprised by the offer. He had no idea how they might help them given the circumstances, but the fact that they were offering seemed a positive step. “How can you help us?”
“Your ship, broken. We help fix,” she explained, pointing at the other two men. Up until now, Nathan had thought of them as their personal security detail. But she seemed to be indicating that they were some kind of engineers or technicians.
“You can help us fix this ship? How?”
“These men, very smart, fix many things. Maybe they, fix you.”
Jessica did not like the idea, and feared that Nathan was thinking of accepting the offer. “Lieutenant, I don’t know about this. Maybe we should just say thanks but no thanks and try and fix it ourselves?”
“Soon, more will come,” Jalea added. “Very soon, maybe few, maybe many.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” Nathan admitted, more to himself than to Jalea.
“Nathan,” Jessica spoke up, pulling him aside and turning away from them. “Four strangers, only one of which barely speaks our language, cannot be of enough help to justify the risk,” she insisted.
“How do you know they’re only talking about these four? They’re only from one ship, and there were at least six of them out there before.”
Jessica began to offer more reasons, but Nathan turned away from her to speak with Jalea again.
“How many people do you have that can help?” he asked slowly.
Jalea turned to Marak, undoubtedly asking him the same question. “Many,” she answered.
That did sound like it might help, and Nathan’s expression turned from one of skepticism to one of curiosity.
Marak noticed the change in Nathan’s expression, and said something else to Jalea.
“We have many more to help, but not here.”
“Could turn into an ally?” Nathan explained to Jessica. She still didn’t look convinced. “I’ll let you keep your big gun pointed at them the whole time,” he promised, drawing a patronizing look from Jessica.
“You’re in command,” she said.
Nathan turned back to Jalea and Marak. “We accept your offer,” he explained slowly. “But this nice lady and her friends will have to watch you. I apologize, but we do not yet know you very well. Is that alright?”
Jalea explained the terms offered by Nathan as best she could to Marak. The two of them seemed to debate the issue for a bit longer than Nathan would’ve thought necessary. But then again, sometimes he and Cameron probably debated things for a bit longer than normal as well. In fact, the captain had scolded him for allowing it to happen too often.
Finally, Jalea turned to him. “Yes, is good.”
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “Now, these people will take you to where we need the most help.” Nathan turned to Jessica. “Escort them to engineering, please.”
“Yes Sir,” she reluctantly agreed.
Before she could get away, Nathan grabbed Jessica by the arm and stepped in close to her ear and whispered “I wasn’t kidding before, Jess. Keep an eye on them at all times.”
“I had planned on it,” she assured him.
Nathan smiled at them as they filed out of the room, one of the armed crewmen leading the way, with Jessica and the other crewmen following them out the door. After they had left, Nathan flopped back down in his chair, breathing out a sigh of relief. After a moment, he turned on the comm-set. “Engineering, Briefing room.”
“What is it now, Nathan?”
“Vladimir, I have a surprise for you.”
As Nathan made his way forward from the briefing room, he noticed several people helping the injured get to medical. He realized that it only made sense that anyone not helping with damage control would be helping with the injured, it just hadn’t occurred to him, like so many other things today.
“Help!”
Nathan spun around, the cry coming from somewhere behind him. He didn’t see anyone. “Hello!” he called out.
“Help me!” the voice cried out again. It was a woman’s voice, and it sounded like it was coming from around the corner farther down the corridor. Nathan broke into a jog in the direction the voice had come from, stopping at the corner to look down the corridor in search of the woman calling him.
About ten meters away was a young woman that Nathan recognized as one of scientists working on the jump drive. Bloodied and disheveled herself, she was fighting a losing battle to get a seriously injured crewman to medical for treatment. The injured man was considerably larger than her, and she would’ve had difficulty handling him even in an uninjured state.
Nathan quickly ran over to help her with the injured crewman. “Here, let me take him,” he offered.
“I can’t make it,” she pleaded. She looked like she was about to collapse herself, probably from the large gash on her forehead that was still actively bleeding. Nathan immediately stepped in between them, taking the injured man’s arm and draping it over his right shoulder. Once he had the man securely in his right arm, he grabbed the woman with his left arm to provide assistance to her as well.
“Here,” he told her. “Hold on to me.”
“I don’t think I can make it,” she pleaded. “I just need to rest.”
“Come on, it’s just a little farther, you’re almost there.”
She continued to plod forward, her head hanging down low from fatigue.
“Your leg, it’s bleeding,” she pointed out to him, noticing his blood soaked left pant leg.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Quite a lot actually,” he chuckled, wincing in pain with each step. He had thought his leg was broken when he first woke up back on the bridge. But the more he had gotten used to the discomfort, the more he was convinced that it was just a deep laceration at most. He had managed to ignore the pain up until now, with more important concerns to distract him. But now, with the additional burden of these two injured persons, each step was sending blinding pain shooting up his left leg into his hip. “But I’ll be alright.”
The trip to medical felt like it took forever, despite the fact that it only took a few minutes. As he approached, he called for help and two more crewman rushed to help.
Nathan followed them into medical, not realizing what he was walking into. There were at least twenty people with varying degrees of injury. Some had obvious broken bones and severe lacerations that would probably only require some bone knitting and suturing. But others had far more serious injuries, including traumatic amputations, wide open abdominal wounds, and crushed torsos. And nearly everyone had some sort of burns, which explained the strange smell that hit him as he entered. Oddly though, the less seriously injured seemed to be in the most pain, while the more critically wounded seemed to be too far out of it to feel anything.
He watched in horror as those that could helped care for those that couldn’t. Most of them had little more than basic emergency medical training, and it was doubtful that any of them had practical experience. But yet, there were all in here, doing the best that they could in unbelievably difficult circumstances. They were in a barely lit room full of the injured and dying, while drifting in a wrecked space ship that was waiting to be picked off by the next enemy that came along. How did we end up this way? he wondered. How did it get this bad?
He had almost made it across the main treatment bay, when he noticed an open door to an adjacent room. The room seemed oddly quiet, especially considering the limited space in the main treatment area. Nathan wondered what was in that room, and why it wasn’t being used to treat the wounded. The room was unlit, except for the scant light spilling into it from the main treatment area. Perhaps it was the darkness that peaked his curiosity and drew him closer to the door to peer inside. He wished that he hadn’t. Because in the darkened room were the bodies of the dead, piled unceremoniously just to get them out of the way. The gruesome sight caused a wave of guilt to wash over him. Did these people all die because of me? Because of the decisions I made?