“She has fractures of the pelvis and ribs, and a dislocated shoulder. She may also have some brain damage. There was quite a lot of intracranial pressure that had to be relieved in a hurry. And we’re still draining blood from her peritoneum, so there’s still some unresolved bleeding that we didn’t catch the first time around.”
“Why not?” Nathan asked, realizing too late that it might have sounded accusatory.
“She was just too unstable. It was better to close her up and let her stabilize a bit. We can keep giving her blood-there’s no shortage of donors on board-and we can keep draining the blood out of her abdomen. But eventually, we have to go back in and find the bleeders.”
“But you can find them, right?”
“Probably. But you have to remember, Captain; I came on board this ship to start my residency. I am not a trauma surgeon, not by any stretch of the imagination.”
“You’re all we’ve got, Doc.”
“Maybe not. Have you considered seeking medical assistance from- What was it called? Corinair? I mean, didn’t we just save their world? Surely that’s got to be worth something. And if they’re as advanced as I suspect, they could probably take considerably better care of her down there, in a real hospital, than I can up here.”
“It’s complicated,” Nathan said softly, as he stared at Cameron.
“Well you need to find a way to un-complicate it, Captain, before she dies.”
Nathan stood at her bedside for several minutes, thinking about what the doctor had said.
“How is she?” Jessica asked as she entered the room.
“Not good,” Nathan said. “Get everything squared away?”
“Yup. Got all the noblemen locked up on our brig. The rest of their crew is locked up in one of their cargo holds for now.”
“How many?”
“Only a couple hundred.”
“For a ship that size?”
“Seems a lot of it is automated.”
“What about the fighters that were still out?” Nathan asked.
“Most of them tried to bail out over Corinair. Most were captured from what I could tell. But a few may have gotten away. If they did, I suspect they’ll try to just blend in and disappear-ride it all out, so to speak.”
“Yeah.”
Jessica paused to look at Cameron. As tough as she was, she couldn’t help but feel something at seeing her friend and commanding officer in such condition.
“Listen, Nathan, there’s another problem. Enrique caught me on my way over here. He showed me some news footage he collected over the last day or so. It’s pretty crazy.” She handed him her data pad, activating it and showing him the video footage she had spoken off.
Nathan watched for several minutes before speaking. “This is not good,” he admitted, a chill washing over him.
“Yeah. I had a feeling something like this was going to happen after that little incident in the interrogation room the other day.”
Nathan sat in the cargo area of the shuttle. Captain de Winter sat next to Nathan, and the twelve members of his command staff sat along each side of the cargo bay, chained together in rows of six.
Jessica, Enrique, and two marines, all of them armed, had accompanied them on the way down to Corinair, as had Tug and Jalea. All were dressed in the best attire they could muster, which wasn’t much considering the circumstances.
“You know, Captain, the Ta’Akar will never stand for this,” Captain de Winter said to Nathan.
“What? The imprisonment of a few arrogant noblemen?” Nathan asked. “I doubt there is a shortage.”
“No, of course not,” the captain admitted. “I speak of the civil war you have sparked.”
“If anyone sparked a civil war, Captain, it was you. Did you really think you could bomb an entire planet, and the people on it would just lie down and die?”
“While that may be true, Captain, it is you the Ta’Akar will hunt down, not I.”
“No. I suspect you’ll meet your fate far sooner,” Nathan told him as he rose to move to another seat.
Nathan walked carefully across the bouncing shuttle as it made its way to the spaceport of Corinair’s capital city, taking a seat at the far end next to Marcus.
“Captain,” Marcus greeted. “Kinda ironic, ain’t it?”
“How so?”
“Just a few hours ago, we was shootin’ our way outta this place, and now they’re welcoming us back with open arms.”
Nathan nodded silent agreement.
“Five minutes!” Tug called out from the cockpit. He and Jalea had chosen to fly the shuttle on this trip as well, leaving Josh and Loki aboard the Aurora as her flight crew. Although Vladimir had wanted to come along, Nathan had to leave someone in charge that he could trust.
Nathan had wrestled with his decision to come down to Corinair for several hours. In the end, the Corinair forces had come to his aid and assisted in the defeat of the Ta’Akar warship that had devastated their world. But other than some communications through official channels, he had not had any direct conversations with any of them. And based on the video and audio recordings gathered by his makeshift Sig-Int staff, he feared what his visit to this world might lead to.
His decision had finally come down to one issue. Cameron was unlikely to survive without better medical care than Doctor Chen could provide, and these people, with all their advanced technologies, were her best hope. When put into the simplest of terms, his decision had been easy.
The shuttle came in smooth and easy, the spaceport’s auto-flight systems remotely piloting the ship to a perfect landing in the middle of the tarmac just outside the main terminal building. The ship rolled up to the terminal and made a quick one hundred and eighty degree turn so as to point its rear loading ramp towards the terminal itself.
“We have arrived,” Tug announced from the cockpit as he began shutting down the shuttle’s systems in order to secure the ship. He had no idea how long they would be on the surface of Corinair this time around, but he was quite sure it would be for at least a few hours.
Nathan stood, as did everyone else on board the shuttle. The two marines began checking each prisoner’s bindings to ensure that all were secure.
After checking his bindings, Enrique brought Captain de Winter to the rear of the shuttle and prepared to lead him out behind Nathan and Jessica.
“Enjoy your moment in the sun, Captain Scott,” Captain de Winter told him. “It may be your last.”
Nathan took a deep breath and nodded at Marcus standing at the side of the main rear cargo hatch. Marcus hit the button and the rear hatch began to open, the top swinging slowly away from the ship on its way downward. The smell of smoke, death, and destruction wafted into the shuttle from outside. As the hatch began to come down, Nathan could see the destruction and the crumpled skyline of the city beyond the main terminal building. As the hatch descended below their eye line, it revealed a huge crowd of people massed in front of the main terminal building. There were literally thousands of them, all jammed in together. They were holding some kind of artifacts or religious symbols in their hands. And there were signs, lots of them in fact. He couldn’t read their language, but many of them seemed to say the same thing. Then he noticed that a few of the signs were written in Angla. The lettering was somewhat different than the English he was accustomed to, but he was pretty sure he could make out the words ‘savior’, ‘legend’, and ‘origin’. Nathan felt a shiver go down his spine.
The crowd was bordered on both sides by at least fifty armed soldiers. In front of the crowd were several official looking gentlemen in suits. They were standing on a raised platform that was polished to perfection despite the mangled condition of the rest of the city. Flanking them on either side were at least a dozen more armed men. Nathan was sure these men were some sort of leaders or local dignitaries. Suddenly, a row of twelve military drummers to his left began tapping their drums in a unified pattern and tempo. The row of drum wielding men had been so far back as to be almost even with the back edge of the shuttle. Had they not started playing, Nathan might not have even noticed them.