As if in answer, the captain shouted.
“Hold!”
“But, sir...!”
“It isn’t the moment yet. Wait!”
The instant the pull of the collapsing core and the repulsion blasting outward in every direction sloshed against each other and the balance broke, the captain’s golden eyes flashed.
“Now! Ignite every remaining engine!”
“Engines twelve and thirteen, the last ones, igniting!”
Spewing violet engine fire, the ship began to work itself free of the gravity clinging to its tail. He hadn’t missed the moment the balance of forces broke.
Fwoooosh!
The ship pushed on without hesitation along the plotted trajectory. Before long the flash of the explosion fell behind and the force gripping the hull faded. As the low rumble died away, the warning lights that had stained the interior crimson returned to white. The ship slipped out into the pitch-black reaches of space.
“Haa...”
“Hoo...”
The crew slumped into their chairs, all the strength gone out of them. The captain, though, had no time to feel relief at having survived the danger.
“Where’s Obel?”
The woman standing at his side answered the urgent question.
“Standing by in the medical bay.”
“Does he know the situation?”
“Yes, I briefed him right away.”
“Thank you. That’s less time I’ll have to spend explaining.”
Unconscious, Luca was going cold as a corpse in the man’s arms. The man had looked composed right up until Luca shut his eyes, but in truth he was gripped by a maddening dread.
Afraid that Luca really would die like this. No, as things stood, the odds were high that he would.
Without pausing for breath, the man adjusted his hold on the small body. Missing both legs and an arm, it was unbelievably light. An unfamiliar weight, like carrying a doll.
His pace quickened. Crossing the corridors of the Nautilus, he stretched out those long legs and nearly ran. The signs of life in the boy against his chest grew fainter.
“Obel!”
The medical bay doors finally opened. The cool smell peculiar to a sterilized space drifted out. A man called Obel, standing with a medical assistant robot, spoke calmly but fast.
“Put the patient on the operating table.”
The moment he set Luca down, blood spattered onto the floor. Obel took one look at the small body, grimaced as though it was ghastly, then moved quickly.
“You two, sterilize and come back in.”
Obel sank dozens of transparent nano tubes into the wreckage of Luca’s body on the table. Meanwhile, the captain headed for the disinfectant spray room and spoke to the woman.
“There’ll still be Aegis ships in the area. They may come after us. You have command of the ship until we’re clear. I’ll be the only one sitting in on Luca’s surgery.”
The woman nodded, her face composed.
“Understood.”
“And if Aegis gets too close, respond with an attack.”
“I don’t have that authority. It has to be you, Captain.”
“I’ll take command once Luca’s alive. Until then, it’s on you.”
A small crack ran through her composure. A moment later came a reluctant, unwilling answer.
“...Understood.”
The captain stripped off his bloodied coat and flung his boots and gloves down beside it. He disinfected himself down to the face and hair running with cold sweat, then went back into the operating room.
Obel was in the thick of it, working with the robot’s assistance.
“Coagulant nanobots for hemorrhage control injected. Hold the cell regeneration laser at forty percent output.”
The assistant machines moved at his command. At the same time Obel’s hands pressed into empty air, darting nimbly across a holographic interface.
“Beginning removal of necrotic tissue.”
Instead of a scalpel he used a photon cauterizer to excise the dead tissue with precision. Where it passed, a blue afterglow was left in place of blood, and the bleeding stopped at once.
“Moving on to nervous system repair. Activating the bio-synapse link.”
Obel injected a liquid artificial neural network into the severed faces of Luca’s shoulder and thighs. The clear fluid ran along his nerves and spread as though finding its own way.
Luca’s body convulsed and shrank from the vicious stimulus. Obel went on with his diagnosis, expressionless.
“The patient’s condition is too poor. He lost far too much blood. We barely stopped it with artificial blood, but if we don’t connect prosthetics right away, the nerves could degenerate.”
At that, the captain gave a cool order.
“Kai, you heard him. Prep a prosthetic body.”
The answer from Kai, the ship’s chief engineer, came through the comms port.
“Ugh, no can do.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“We don’t have a prosthetic on this ship that’ll fit a body that size. Everything on the Nautilus is adult spec.”
The captain’s head snapped toward the comms port, his expression turning anxious.
“You’ve got the medical-grade ones.”
“Medical-grade is adult spec too.”
“Then reassemble one to size, right now.”
“That’s not easy. Medical units are built for treatment at that exact spec in the first place, you can’t just go rebuilding them.”
“Then use a combat prosthetic!”
“I’d have to shave the existing chrome frame down at the nano level and reconstruct it, and that’s even harder with combat models! Even rushing, the reshaping alone would take a solid month.”
Still, they couldn’t just strap on whatever didn’t fit. Luca’s small body looked far too fragile to accept a lump of machinery. Force it on and his body wouldn’t hold out; it would reject the thing outright.
Urgency was no excuse for bulling ahead. The captain’s face twisted at once.
“So for the time being he has to live like that?”
Obel pointed out, “Right now it’s an open question whether he survives at all.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. Save him, no matter what.”
“Hm... fine. I’ll do everything I can for now.”
While the captain racked his mind for another way, Luca’s tightly closed lashes twitched. His mind, sunk deep beneath consciousness, seemed to flicker like an old incandescent bulb. Each time it did, the two men’s conversation hummed around his ears as though heard underwater.
I’m... not dead...?
Bustling movement showed in his blurry field of vision. He couldn’t make out who was doing what, exactly. But instinctively he could tell this much: these people were working tirelessly to keep him alive.
Why? Just leave me alone...
Through the haze, Luca instinctively knew his limbs wouldn’t move. In his head he wriggled his fingertips, but the nerves ended at his shoulder and his thighs. Having no body that answered was a horrifying thing.
You should be letting me die. What are you doing...?
Luca worked his mouth. But no sound came from between teeth tangled with blood and dust.
Obel caught sight of it and, mistaking it for a will to live, was glad.
“The patient’s conscious again.”
The captain set his deliberating aside and planted himself at the side of the table. He wrapped Luca’s one remaining left hand in his own and called to him carefully.
“Luca, can you hear my voice?”
Luca’s lashes trembled. There was no focus in his vacant eyes. Whether he couldn’t distinguish objects or had lost his mind to the pain, there was no way to tell.
What was clear was that those eyes held neither the will to live nor any desire for it. That look made the captain restless.
There were plenty who couldn’t bear the aftereffects of war and were tormented by trauma. It was hardly rare for them to despair of their circumstances and give up their own lives. How much less could this small boy withstand the shock of having the very ground of his life annihilated?
He would have to manage it delicately so that didn’t happen. Ease the pain. Hold on to him so he didn’t flounder in loneliness and despair. That was what the captain had to do for Luca.
“Hold on a little longer. A very clever engineer is going to make you pretty arms and legs that fit you perfectly. In a month you’ll be able to walk again.”
The man’s voice was tender to a degree that felt abnormal. Tender enough to create the illusion that severed blood vessels might knit back together on that alone. Luca wanted to shake the hand off, but he hadn’t the strength to move a single finger.
“You have to hold on. I’ll stay beside you. You’re not alone.”
The man whispered it while pressing a light kiss to the back of Luca’s hand. Luca thought that warmth was a deception. No one had any right to be that hypocritical in the face of the pain he was in.
Kill me.
He moved lips that produced no voice. The captain recognized the shape of the words, and looked away from them anyway. Luca gaped like a fish hauled above the water, unable to breathe.
Please, kill me...
“Obel! Push more painkillers!”
“Got it.”
Unknown fluids flowed in through the nano tubes connected all over his body. At the same time the world in front of Luca’s eyes swirled and scattered dizzily. He sank back into the deep, dark mire of unconsciousness. It was the moment his hellish extension of life was decided.
