THE SPACE NAVY AU (18+)

"Good god, you deserve better than this," you say sincerely, and pull the leg off as requested. Firm and fast, speed the only mercy you can offer.

 

"GnnhhHHELL FUCKING THRICE-DAMNED EMPRESS-FUCKING WASPS UP A MUSCLBEAST'S BLISTERED SHITHOLE," you say, not very calmly, and shiveringly subside from your arch-backed rictus. "God," you conclude, dropping the word into the buzzing storm that's caught you up, and swallow hard a few times. Pull your claws out of the arm of the chair. The grubloaf from a few hours ago is starting to protest, severely, its current state of digestion. You're also very nearly blind from the sensory static, and you cast vainly around to try and sort out what Pancho's up to. Fins have crapped out, too. Hell.

"How is it?" you ask, nervous, and probably a little too loudly.

 

You give him your very best professional grimace. "It looks like a planet that pissed off the Empress, bro." Getting out your handy dandy super special medic phone (it has some extra sensors built into the camera lens and some cool diagnostic apps to go with), you take fifteen seconds of video of his poor fucked-up stump from various angles, and let the data crunch.

While you wait for the computer to work, you say tentatively, "I know a guy."

 

"Congratulations," you say, and scrub your face with your palms. Murfey makes some sympathetic little noise and pats at you, and you lean into him gratefully. You realize after a blurry few moments that you might have missed something.

"What?" you ask.

 

"I know a guy," you repeat. "He's kind of... religious. But he's incredibly good with neural tech. And you need someone good. This is accelerating. It's considerably worse than yesterday. And... Erskin, it's not just in your leg." You hand him the phone, let him look at the screen. The little blips, matching the color of the wiggly bits, which trail off up his thigh but still show up, sparsely, in his abdomen and even a couple in his chest. "This can't be solved with a knife. You need a specialist."

 

"Oh, fuck," you say, when you finally understand what you're looking at. "Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh, fuck." You can't quite seem to stop shivering. It's one thing to know disaster's sneaking up on you. It's quite another thing after it's pounced and you've got to look it right in the teeth. "Oh, fuck."

You're not particularly sure what else to say. Considerations about further sabotages— about going under someone's knife and simply... not waking up— are absurd, at this point. You are going to be torn apart from the inside whether you like it or not.

"Sure," you choke out. "Yes. Right. Bring him in. Anything you'd like to try. Why not. See if he can get to Rat King Station in, in three days, that's when. That's when we'll be there. Just about. Fuck." You try to pull yourself together, to think about this like a Captain should. "We need to get Lainey and Bel to sort out command between them. I'm still not clear on who's got precedence when I'm incapacitated, this last time Bel and I were both out, and he's getting back on his feet, isn't he? Bump him up to acting Captain, maybe, pending whatever Admiral's approval Lainey can muster. God, she's already overworked. Eli's the most senior department head but he's only good at talking to things that photosynthesize, if Bel needs more, more active Lieutenants, have him muster up Heinsz— I think she's got her face stapled back together, right?— and maybe Sparky— Junior Lieutenant Aguila— in Engineering. They know most of what's likely to blow up or fall off, around here. Fuck, and it's nearly— it's nearly time to reap the South-Starboard field, that was scheduled for, for this week, if we don't get that in half the herbivore lusii are back to those, those cardboard vitamin pellets, or overgrazing the public spaces down to the base plating, fuck. Oh, fuck."

You bury your face in your hands and shake for awhile. It is very hard not to cry. You are humiliatingly scared.

 

Murfey wraps his big arms, one metal and one bandaged, around Erskin, and his huge lusus picks up on the idea and coils around them both. Itsy perches on Baozhu's scaly hide so she can nuzzle Erskin's hair. You reach into the bundle and give his shoulder an encouraging squeeze. "You're not in this alone, and none of us mind taking a few risks for a good boss. Or a lot of risks for a good friend."

"What she said, Cap," Murfey puts in.

"I'm thinking I'll need Whitey to be the one to get Sigs out of his posting, and not just because if your enemies know he's coming here they might stop him so you can't be healed. I'm remembering what you said about if they get the idea you're brewing sedition out here, and Sigs isn't allowed to work on the helmsmen anymore, no matter how good at it he was. He was too nice to them. He kept treating them like people. Apparently he even sneaked them anaesthesia for some of the more agonizing procedures." You scratch your nape thoughtfully. "I can't ask if he wants to come here. The message would be on record. We'll just have to have Whitey's people kidnap him, and apologize later."

 

You give a watery little laugh. "A splendidly appropriate start to my criminal empire," you say. "Alright, I. Alright. Right. What do I. What should. Where... do I. Fuck. What now? What do I do? How can I help?"

 

You consider that. "Okay, we're leaving the prosthesis off. I need to extract as much of the bioware as I can find for now, and then I want to focus on reducing swelling and infection. You should still be able to work during that time. I don't know what kind of downtime Sigs's procedure will involve, so I suggest making a list of stuff like you were just telling us, that has to be taken care of in your absence if you're down for a while."

 

"Right. Yes," you say, fumbling out your phone, then realizing you've got it backwards and that Pancho's going to work on your leg first. "Er. I should. I should probably be lying down somewhere for this? Is there a table? I don't want to scratch up your lusus, Murfey."

 

"I don't have a table yet," Murfey frowns.

"I can disinfect a patch of floor," you offer.

Murfey pats his lusus regretfully. "You gotta go outside, hoss. You're just too big."

The creature gongs sympathetically, licks Erskin's forehead, and slithers out. You get out a mop tray, a mop, and some disinfectant, and clean an area of floor. Murfey is too dinged-up to help Erskin lie down, so you stop him trying and do it yourself, but you can't keep him from plopping down crosslegged next to him to offer a pillow and a metal hand to hold. "If you gotta squeeze down, you go right ahead."

Hands sanitized, you set out your instruments.

 

"No, I'll squash it," you protest, patting the back of his metal hand. "It's alright, but, thank you."

Pancho leans over you, and you have enough time to take a sharp breath and dig your claws into the floor before she does something-or-other to the wires in your leg and all your senses are blown out in a painful, overwhelming sandstorm of random impressions. You grit your teeth as best you can and really, really hope you don't foul yourself in front of Murfey, or your old lusus.

 

"Murf, hold his leg down," you say absently, de-captchaloguing your magnifying lens right onto your face. "Stop him wiggling." Murfey's red-enamel hand stills Erskin's twitching, and you resume work.

It's messy and slow. You go through a lot of purified water and towels. You don't try to get every single wiggly bit -- that would be futile, as your scan already showed some fragments have migrated into his body -- but just remove the ones that are obstructive and pressing on inflamed areas. Some of them have cysted, so that's gross. At least the infection hasn't gone septic.

Despite your experience and resolve, it's hard to keep going when he starts crying and begging. The way this stuff attaches to the nervous system, it's got to be invasive in a way you can't even imagine. But stopping would be the worst thing you could do, so you don't. You do, however, privately resolve to find out what asshole put helmsgrade bioware in a prosthetic limb, and teach them what it fucking feels like.

Finally, you wrap the stump in a clean towel and dampen it with purified water. "I want to leave that there for a while," you explain as you clean up the floor. "Cool it down, try to get the inflammation to ease up a little. Ice would be painful, but this should hopefully be soothing."

Murfey pets his friend's sweaty hair and rumbles encouragingly. "It's over, bro. You're okay. You got through it."

 

You identify something as a body, another troll— warm, moving, firmer than the pillow but softer than the floor, and hitch yourself in clumsy, trembling stages up against it. You really hope this is Lainey. The smell's all wrong, but so is everything else. Maybe you've just cuddled up to a chair.

This amount of sensory disruption shouldn't still be going on. You strain to make out anything through it, but besides touch there's just— nothing to make any sense at all out of. It's all a frothing, roiling buzz, and you can't make yourself stop sniffling. What if this is it, for you, already? You dig your claws into the possibly-chair, whining in frustration and fear.

 

"You're okay, man," Murfey keeps saying helplessly.

"Let's get him on the couch." This accomplished, you help Murfey onto the couch as well, arrange them so Erskin's head is in his lap, and pull up a mismatched chair to take Erskin's pulse. "Who's his moirail? If he told me I forgot."

"He was asking for Lainey."

You shake your head. "Someone's gotta run this ship while Erskin and Bel are out sick."

"I dunno if Arguus is Erskin's or Lainey's, but Erskin wears his sweaters."

"Good enough." You attempt to call Arguus.

 

Arguus won't answer a phone call, but after a minute Pancho gets a text from Lainey:

DD: How did you get Arguus's number and what do you want with him?

 

SL: from murfey. this is pancho, btw.
SL: erskin could do with some comforting and i didn't want to bother you because like, who would run the ship if you were down here in residential?
SL: sorry if i'm stepping on toes, and also if omitting titles when talking personal business is out of bounds. kinda new to the local culture.

 

DD: Shit, what's gone wrong with him now?
DD: Also don't worry about titles it's not important.
DD: Can you get Erskin to my hive? Arguus doesn't travel well.

 

SL: it's his leg, i cleared excess bioware and am trying to get the swelling down, but the neural overload has thrown him for a loop.
SL: he'd recover on his own, but he shouldn't have to, you know?
SL: anyway, yeah, there in 10.

One of the great things about being a medic and a sergeant is that you can just commandeer random personnel for whatever you've got going, and no one kicks; the team players assume you're on a mission of mercy, and the rest assume you'll bite their heads off. In this case, both true. It doesn't take much stomping around pointing at people to get your plans sorted.

Eight minutes later, you pull up in front of Lainey's hive in a personnel cart with four sturdy crewmen to unload Erskin's stretcher and Murfey's chair. The delicate way they carry Erskin, like he's a tray of wine glasses they dare not spill, seems distinctly affectionate to you.

 

Lainey shows up anyway, opening the door of her hive and waiving them in and down a twisting hallway to a hot, small room with a red heatlamp and a big, coiled pile of snakemom. Erskin clings to her like a wiggler, nearly climbing her. He's blind and clearly freaking out about it and she looks about ready to flip her own amount of shit. Arguus eases into the room once the other crewmen have been shooed off and blanches when he sees Erskin's distress.

"Is this permanent?" Lainey asks. "Holy shit, this is really bad, he's never on the fritz this bad. Is he tracking us with anything besides touch?" She pats the back of his hand a few times, and doesn't look very relieved when Erskin pats her back the same number. Arguus, sparking and jitteringly swinging his horns around, bundles Erskin into Psybil's coils and starts up a tapping-counting game, which seems to settle both of them down: Erskin manages to swallow back his helpless, grublike whimpering, and his shallow panting evens out into actual breathing.