I'd equipped Candice with an acid gun. Short range, but that would do. I knew that the moment Candice materialized the woman’s compulsion field of the singing would hit her, but that was only an issue if I didn't prepare for it. I had Candice squeeze the trigger of her gun, a spray of acid beginning to stream from the nozzle, before I teleported her.
A mouth opened wide for singing made a convenient receptacle for the gun’s nozzle. The singing woman looked startled for just a moment as Candice appeared in front of her, then the stream of acid went down her throat. The song was instantly silenced, her hands clawing at a throat already starting to dissolve from the inside out.
I wasn't ashamed to reuse a trick that worked once. Diana squeezed her trigger before materializing behind the guard that teleported with the singer. Acid caught her in the back of the head and she began to flail.
I teleported both guard and singer to holding cells in research. I wasn't sure if the medical routines could save them or not, but I did prefer a living test subject to a dead one, when convenient.
Cutout was busy killing Wolves. The man stayed nowhere more than an instant before he moved on with his sword, piercing a new target. He didn't even take time to stab them—just as he had with Anna he materialized with the blade already inside of them.
One of the guards grabbed Mechos and teleported away. Cutout had found one of Hot Stuff's new lieutenants. The young man gurgled blood as the blade pierced him, but then his midsection erupted in an explosion of fire that sent Cutout stumbling backwards with his clothes in flames.
That moment of distraction was enough. I teleported him into a holding cell. Almost at once he was bouncing from wall to wall in flickers of shadowy energy, trying to cut the shielding. I wasn’t concerned, I'd yet to encounter any power my test shielding couldn't hold.
Elsewhere the ship was quiet. The plan must have been to kill Anna and the security personnel—the Wolves—neutralize Mechos as another upgrade core, subvert me, then seize the ship.
That it had happened so quickly proved how well-executed the plan had been. A significant portion of the Wolves were dead, Mechos was gone, and Anna was dying.
28
I had to get Anna stabilized. If the Medbay itself wasn't doing it and her own accelerated healing wasn't helping, that only left me one remaining option. I teleported Ophelia to her bedside.
"Could you give me some warning first? Oh shit," Ophelia said, wobbling unsteadily and then catching sight of Anna who was wracked with tremors on the medical bed. Her armor was hiding the injury.
Ophelia's close proximity was healing Anna somewhat. It kicked up Anna's healing ability just a bit further, but she was still headed in the wrong direction. Ophelia wore the fragment of Void Crystal that Tala provided which was keeping her personality from going all strange again.
"Bad day. Did you get the fucker?" Anna asked, clutching at her stomach.
"He's in a containment cell. They tried to take over the ship. Your lifetime of wrong health choices isn't working in your favor. Your vitals aren't improving," I said.
"Shouldn't they be?" Ophelia asked.
They should, but powers worked in unusual ways when they came up against each other. Ophelia herself was virtually immortal from her ability, but Anna's version gained from research was closer to something like one of Ophelia's second generation of lieutenants would have—far weaker than the original.
"It appears you are even more useless than first assumed, Ophelia," I said.
"Not her fault," Anna said, and cried out in pain once more. "Fucking bastard. The infirmary won't stabilize me?"
"Normally it would be, but there is a power involved. That sword is doing something to poison your blood. Normally the Medbay can cope with even your host of health issues," I said.
Anna nodded, she was taking the news of her impending death calmly for all she was obviously in pain. "Options?"
"We get you a power of your own. We try to transfuse blood from Ophelia, or we test Hot Stuff's lack of principles by having her crawl into bed with you. You'd get a full lieutenant’s version of Ophelia's healing or gain some of Hot Stuff's ability to burn away blood-borne pathogens. We also have what I believe is a Command core," I said.
"No direct power transfer," Anna said, sitting up. "It causes madness. I can't have that."
Anna had said as much before. I don't know where she got such ideas from, I had consumed multiple Power cores and I wasn't in the slightest bit mad.
"You're already an egomaniac with delusions of Queendom and general competency," I said.
"No. Find another way," Anna said.
I was quickly running out of options. The poisoning in her blood was impacting multiple major organs.
"Lose the armor," I said.
The armor flickered away leaving Anna rather overexposed. Now the injury was all too evident, a gaping wound in her stomach. Tendrils of black were spreading out from it to her surrounding flesh.
"Gross," Ophelia said.
"In the event of anyone ever seeing Anna naked, that is exactly the response I’d forecast," I said. Then I got to work. I was more confident in a power being able to assist, but if Anna wouldn't allow it I was left with my secondary option. Cutting out the infection.
I gave commands to the autodoc, which went to work with blades and saw.
Anna screamed, Ophelia too. I needed Ophelia in the room though, without her I didn't think Anna was likely to survive this procedure. The infection had spread so fast and thoroughly that I wasn't so much removing small bits of flesh as hollowing Anna out like someone scooping the guts out of a pumpkin and hoping that the insides would grow back.
It took hours. The pile of blackened and diseased organ I teleported down to a quarantine cell for research. Ophelia vomited a half-dozen times. That, I simply teleported to the Biomatter storage. It wasn't really worthy of further inspection.
Anna's vitals were nearly impossible to detect for awhile. You can't register a heartbeat or breathing without any heart or lungs. Still, in time those did start to regrow. It wasn't without consequence. I saw she had lost two points of Endurance from this ordeal. That was something I could fix, but without me and even with Ophelia's power, this would have left her permanently frail and weakened.
"Well, that sucked," Anna said, when she finally regained consciousness. "I'll live."
"You're weakened and implausibly even more hideous. Still, yes—you should live," I said.
"I hate this fucking ship and you people are beyond messed up," Ophelia said.
"She whines a lot," Anna said.
"I'm covered in you," Ophelia said.
It was true, the surgery had gotten rather messy. Blood and pieces of Anna really had gone everywhere.
"And she had to see you naked. She tore out her eyes—truly, they just grew back," I said.
"That didn't happen," Ophelia said, looking around. "If you're quite done performing major surgery in front of me, can I go get a bath?"
"Stay together for now. Just because Anna is able to be obnoxious doesn't mean she's back to full health," I said.
"I could use a bath myself," Anna said. "Ship status?"
"Six Wolves remain out of the fifteen that we still had active. Mechos has been abducted. We've gotten hit by some major scans while you were under, but no one has tried anything."
"Find Mechos. Ask the Mechanites, if you have to. He must have some kind of transponder and they'll know where he’s gone. I want answers out of Cutout and to know if this was his plan or if he is just an agent," Anna said.
"You think Lady Sylax put him up to this?"