Jenks’ voice followed them. “Have fun stealing our stuff, assholes! Rosemary, you want to translate that?”
She let that one go.
Ashby lay on the bed in the med bay, trying to move as little as possible. Both his hands were occupied. His right hand was outstretched beneath the medical scanner, where a thick beam of light showed him where to position his wrist patch. Dr. Chef sat on the other side of the scanner, hrrming as he input directions for Ashby’s imubots. Somewhere beneath Ashby’s skin, two platoons of bots had separated off from their daily patrols and were now repairing the fracture in his jaw and the bruise on his brain. Dr. Chef had said a lot about “granulation tissue” and “osteoblasts,” but those things wouldn’t have meant much to Ashby even if he hadn’t been drifting along on a slow tide of painkillers. The part about lying still and not moving his jaw, though, that much he had understood. He could manage that.
His other hand was gripped tightly within Sissix’s claws. She sat beside him, giving a play-by-play of everything that had happened after he’d blacked out. Every so often, she let go of his hand to let him type a question on her scrib. Dr. Chef had banned talking for the time being.
No one else was hurt. The ambi, the food, none of that mattered. They were things, and things could be replaced. His crew couldn’t be. The relief he’d felt upon learning he was the only one who’d wound up in the med bay topped anything that the painkillers could give.
Where’s everyone now? he wrote.
“Kizzy and Jenks are fixing the damage to the bay doors. They say it’s mostly superficial. They already replaced the navigation hub, so that’s working fine. Corbin started prepping a replacement algae batch the minute the Akaraks flew off. I think Rosemary’s tallying our losses.” She smirked. “And guess where Ohan is?”
Quarters?
Sissix shook her head. “He’s sitting down in the cargo bay with the techs.”
Ashby stared at her. He blinked.
“I know. They’re not talking or anything, just sitting there in a corner, in their own little headspace, like always. But they haven’t been back to their quarters at all, and they followed Kizzy down the hall when she went to grab some tools. Never thought I’d say this, but Ohan doesn’t want to be alone right now.”
Ashby blinked again. Huh, he wrote.
An hour passed. Dr. Chef gave a pleased nod and turned the monitor around for Ashby to see. The screen displayed a camera view from one of his imubots, which was doing… something to a big, white spongey wall (his jawbone, he supposed). Other bots scurried around the peripheries of the frame, like swimming spiders.
“You’re coming along fine,” Dr. Chef said. Ashby took his word for it. He had no idea what was going on in there, and he always found the experience of seeing inside his own body to be unsettling. “You can talk now, but small movements, please. The fracture hasn’t fully healed yet. And your brain still needs some work.”
“I could’ve told you that,” Sissix said.
“Thanks,” Ashby said, moving his mouth gingerly. “Your sympathy is appreciated.” He licked his lips. The inside of his mouth felt stale. “Can I have some water?”
Sissix filled a cup from the sink. She held it to his mouth, helping him drink. “Need anything else?”
“No,” he said. “Or, wait. Can you bring Rosemary in here?”
Sissix cocked her head toward the vox. “Lovey, did you catch that?”
“I’ll get her for you,” Lovey said. “It’s good to hear your voice again, Ashby.”
“Thanks, Lovey,” Ashby said.
A few minutes later, a curly-haired head peeked around the doorway. “You wanted to see me?”
“Hey, Rosemary,” Ashby said. “Have a seat.” The pain meds made his speech sound sloppy, as if he’d had a few too many drinks. He sincerely hoped he wasn’t drooling.
Rosemary pulled up a stool beside Sissix. “Are you okay?” she asked Ashby.
“I’m fine. Bastard busted my jaw, but it beats getting shot.” He leaned his head back into the pillow, trying to think through the concussion and the medicated haze. “I don’t know why that guy hit me.” He rubbed his eyes, trying to fight the wooziness away.
“Just to scare us, probably,” Sissix said. “Show us who’s boss. I know I was scared.” She lay her head on Ashby’s arm.
Rosemary studied Ashby’s face. Something had her attention. “What?” he asked.
“Did you touch your face at all while you were talking to the Akarak captain? Like you’re doing now?”
“Um, yeah, maybe.” Ashby pushed through the fog, trying to remember. “I don’t know, it all happened so fast.”
“Something like this, maybe?” Rosemary rubbed her eyes with her palm, as if she had a headache.
“Possibly. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.”
Rosemary grimaced. “That explains it. See, this—” She tucked her thumb back and held her fingers straight and flat, making her hand into a rough imitation of a Harmagian dactylus. She flexed her hand over her eyes, twice. “—is a really offensive thing to Harmagians. And those Akaraks’ gestures and dialect were very Harmagian-influenced.”
“What’s it mean?”
Rosemary cleared her throat. “It means you’d rather rub shit in your eyes than keep talking to them.”
Ashby blinked. He and Sissix both burst into laughter. “Oh,” he said, grabbing his jaw. “Oh, ow.” His jaw wasn’t quite ready for laughter yet.
“Careful,” said Dr. Chef. “If it doesn’t heal properly, we’ll have to do this all over again.”
Sissix was still chuckling at Ashby. “I’d have hit you for that, too.”
“Yeah,” said Ashby. He held his lips tight, trying to keep his jaw from moving too much. “Likewise.”
“At least you told them off, right?”
“Right,” he said, with a restrained smile. “I’m sure the psychological damage of my accidental insult cut them real deep.”
“Speaking of damage,” Rosemary said. She held up her scrib. “I’ve tallied our losses, I filed an incident report, and I’m currently drafting a list for the Transport Board so they can cover—”
Ashby waved his palm at her. “We can talk about all that later. That’s not why I asked you here.”
“Oh.”
“I wanted to thank you. Without you, I’m not sure we would’ve gotten out of this one as well as we did.”
Rosemary looked embarrassed. “I don’t know. I just got lucky. There are a lot of cultures I know nothing about.”
“Maybe, but it was good luck nonetheless, and luck we wouldn’t have had otherwise. More importantly, you had a cool head and kept everyone safe. Today would’ve been much, much worse if you hadn’t been here.” He reached out to take her hand. “I’m glad you’re on my crew.”
Rosemary started to say something, but whatever it was shifted into: “Oh, no.” Her hand darted up to catch a tear running down her cheek. “Oh, stars, I’m sorry,” she said. Another tear fell, and another. Rosemary put her face in her hands. The dam broke.
“Aw, hey now,” Sissix said with a kind laugh, putting her arm around Rosemary’s trembling shoulders. “Have you not had a chance to freak out yet?”
Rosemary shook her head, pressing her hand against her nose. Her whole face was leaking. Poor kid, Ashby thought. He wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to take a safe planetside job after this. Hell, even he found the idea appealing.