In the Blink of an Eye...Part 2

Posted on 29 Mar 2024 @ 10:16pm by Chief Petty Officer Katja Becker
Edited on 30 Mar 2024 @ 10:02am

2,555 words; about a 13 minute read

Previously on In the Blink of an Eye...


“We lost our healer. You are it now.”

Katja suddenly felt a vibration begin to thrum through her. It was their engines…they felt different.

Wait. Oh. Mein. Gott. The ship was moving. She had just been kidnapped aboard a Romulan vessel and it was leaving. Her breath started to hitch as she warred with rising panic. They…they brought her to heal their injuries. Talk about forcible conscription!

“Woah, wait…I’m not...” Katja bit her tongue.

“Save him first.” Her captor said matter-of-factly as he pointed to the man laying on a biobed, looking rather bad off.

“Save him or you die.”

and now the continuation...

--

IRW Aethra -

Katja turned to face her patient. The words, “I’m not a doctor!” died on her tongue. That probably wasn’t going to be an intelligent thing to say at the moment.

Having no other choice, she moved over to the biobed and looked down…the side of the man’s face was burned, but that wasn't going to be the wound that would end his life. The piece of shrapnel jutting out of his chest might, however.

This required surgery. She was not a surgeon! Katastrophe!

Well, there was nothing to be done about it now. Having observed and participated in enough emergency field surgeries during the war, Katja at least knew what a successful one looked like. Get the foreign body out. Keep the body from bleeding out while you do it. She’d need a cautery tool, clamps to stop any larger vessel bleeding, and an auto suture device to re-connect those larger vessels…

Her hands shook as she looked around her at the equipment. Katja picked things up and activated them to see what they did. It didn’t take long before she got the gist of the tools and found suitable substitutes.

Well, hier goes nothing.

“I’m going to need help. I can’t do this alone.” Katja said over her shoulder to her captor. “We have to give him medication to ensure he doesn’t wake up through this. I can’t do that and cut at the same time.”

Turning her attention back to her ‘patient,’ Katja began removing the rather complicated harness and jacket. He was an officer…and the rank…Scheiße. A Riov…commander if she remembered correctly. Her eyes whipped up to her captor as recognition dawned.

“You understand now. Good.” The Romulan said to her in broken Federation Standard.

“Ich verstehe.” Katja responded numbly, having fallen back to her native tongue as a feeling of dread settled over her..

Oh, she understood. Her life was now linked to the bloody captain of this vessel. If he died, she died. It was that simple. And it was not how Katja was going to go down.

After her hands were disinfected and a cap and mask in place for some semblance of sterility Katja reached out and began pulling the long metal strip out of his upper chest. She ordered her captor around occasionally to keep the captain comfortable as she encountered some tricky parts with the removal of the foreign object.

Thank Gott I know something of Vulcanoid anatomy… She thought silently to herself.

–-

Somehow–perhaps through a miracle–the man survived the ‘operation.’ The bleeding had been adequately controlled during removal and he had shown no signs of hemodynamic instability in the minutes after Katja had sutured up his skin. Thank goodness he wasn’t human or that metal piece would have hit something far more valuable in the short-term than his left upper lobe of his lung…like the heart.

“O2 sats are within normal limits. Equal chest rise, lung sounds heard on the left-side. HR and BP nominal.” Katja said aloud to herself as she studied the rise and fall of the man’s chest for a moment before looking over to her captor.

“Name?” She inquired, pointing to him. The man’s expression shifted to something Katja couldn’t decipher - it didn’t seem to equate to any human gestures that would make sense in this interaction.

“...Maec.” The man said slowly, unsure if he wanted to give this prisoner even his family name…but he remembered humans were ‘funny’ like that - they liked to have designations for people. “Arrain…” He hesitated and tilted his head to the side in thought. Katja’s eyes widened. She remembered Lieutenant Sera - the former Chief Engineer of Galileo - would make a similar gesture when she was thinking.

“You call me Centurion I think, yes.” The man committed to the translation and nodded forcefully.

“Alright.” The Centurion tilted his head again, not understanding.

“Yes? Ah…Ie?” Katja ventured in what Rihannsu she knew…which wasn’t much.

Centurion Maec jerked his head in approval. “Now work others.”

Katja inwardly sighed. She was waiting for this. If she wanted to survive, then it looked like there was more work to do. That she was going to be treating the enemy bothered her tremendously, but she had seen enough death to feel that any loss was unacceptable. She was a healer, first and foremost….and now? Apparently she was a doctor.

She was so screwed.

The rest of the wounds were more up Katja’s alley. Once she had figured out the purpose of the Romulan medical equipment, she went to work sealing wounds, setting fractures, and treating burns. A couple of patients were too far gone to be saved, but Maec didn’t seem to care too much about the losses of those crew members.

While she rounded in the overcrowded space, she would return every so often to assess the Riov. He hadn’t awoken yet, but Maec had been a little heavy handed on the sedative during the impromptu surgery. Perhaps that was for the best as it couldn’t have felt all that spectacular to have a hunk of metal hanging out of one’s chest. She rubbed at junction on her thigh where bio-synthetic met what was left of her leg in subconscious commiseration.

It had taken countless hours, but the Romulan medical bay was back within some semblance of order, and everyone had been evaluated and treated. Most were able to leave - either to return to duty or to recover elsewhere. Katja monitored the ones that remained, and thus far all of her patients were stable and healing in an appropriate manner.

Leaning against the wall next to the riov’s bio-bed, Katja slid down until she was sitting on the ground–her artificial limb extended straight out on the ground–and she wrapped her arms around the knee of her ‘good’ one. The chaos had ebbed and now she was left with the enormity of what had just occurred.

She had been taken by the Romulans…hell, she had willingly ‘helped’ them. What did that mean? Did it make her a traitor? What…what would happen now?

A shadow was cast over her and Katja looked up to see Maec standing there looking down at her. In his hands he had a small container, which she hoped was water, and some type of nutrient bar. She reached up and took them both and nodded her thanks. Opening the container, Katja took a long pull of the lukewarm water that tasted faintly of metal, and then bit off a hunk of the bar. Chewing thoughtfully, Katja had to admit that she had ingested far worse tasting things in her life.

“You name?” Maec asked.

“Becker.” Katja responded in-between bites. “Chief. Rank, Chief.”

Maec’s eyes widened. “Chief…maenek? Ah…Dohk-tor?”

Well…it was good while it lasted. Katja ruefully thought.

“No. Chief…rank.” She pointed to herself.

“Not officer?”

“No.”

Maec’s brows rose as much as his brow ridges would allow. Doctors were officers; if she was not an officer…

He thought back to their boarding of the Starfleet vessel. The male who had fired first. Maec’s own disruptor ended him with a pull of his finger. Then there was another one that the energy weapons passed through with no sign of damage…a hologram. Finally her…a most unusual looking female. Pale hair the color of ‘moon-light,’ and eyes of the highest quality kali-fal. He had never seen anything like it. Maec made a decision then.

The Centurion crouched down so that he could look the woman in her eyes. “You Dohk-tor now. You no tell.” He pointed to her. “Maenek. (Romulan for Doctor) I call you this now.”

Katja’s eyes slowly widened at his statement. What was he trying to do…protect her? She unconsciously reached up to her collar, where her chief insignia was visible. Maec’s hand shot out and he slapped her hand out of the way and deftly ripped her rank off her collar and shoved it into an invisible pocket on the side of his jacket near his belt.

“Hey!” She exclaimed, starting forward in an attempt to get her rank back, but his hand shot out and gripped her chin and pushed her back to the wall with no more effort than it took to close a drawer.

“No.” He said simply, but once he had her there, his eyes roamed over her body in a way that was more than observational. “Your…art. More?”

“My art?” Katja numbly responded, not liking where this was going.

“Your neck…” He said softly in Rihannsu, and as her UT supplied the translation of the words he spoke almost instantaneously, Maec released her chin so he could run his fingers down the part of her anatomy in question. It took everything within her power to maintain her outward calm.

“Yes. There is more.” She responded simply, hoping to encourage the Centurion to continue in Standard…who knew if she would ever hear her tongue spoken again outside of this moment?

He nodded once and made what she interpreted as a satisfied sound before standing and walking away from her. What the hell was that about?

There wasn’t any time to consider as the Riov on the biobed next to her suddenly groaned. She scrabbled to standing and looked down at her patient and watched as he fought to open his eyes. Her interest morphed into fear as they suddenly flashed open and fixed on hers at first in confusion…and then they sharpened to something else. Something dangerous.

”Riov. Thank the Elements, you have awoken! You’re in the medical bay. Doctor Hiren died during the attack. We had to get a little creative to save your life.”

Riov Adrev Vrenak attempted to sit up and managed to get to an elbow before another groan of pain escaped his throat. He gave in and relaxed back onto the biobed.

Explain.

Maec smiled at his CO, and his oldest friend. He would follow this man, this unblooded brother, into death. Even the man’s gruff nature was pleasing in the moment. It meant that he was still firmly rooted in this world.

”I obtained a replacement…from the Starfleet vessel. A human woman, and thus far she has proven herself intelligent and reveals little in her words and actions…ideal qualities. I am tempted to keep her. She DID save your life.” Maec explained in rapid-fire Rihannsu.

Katja looked down to the ground, and focused on remaining outwardly impassive as the UT translated everything Centurion Maec said to the Riov. The man’s pained groan caused her eyes to dart up and she saw him collapse back to the bed.

Normally she would have gone over to the patient to inspect them and make sure they hadn’t popped a suture after such a foolish attempt, however nothing was normal here. Katja stayed where she was.

Riov Vrenak looked over to where the human captive was standing and He studied her unreadable expression and noted that her gaze was pointedly fixed on the ground a few feet in front of her. Vrenak’s first impression of the human female was in alignment with Maec’s. He could see that she was observing everything while being as unobtrusive as possible.

“Human. Come here.” Vrenak commanded. He studied her face intently as she stopped next to the biobed. So Maec stole this one off the Starfleet vessel they had engaged. It was quite an unusual thing for his Chief of Security to do. She probably didn’t even realize just how significantly the axis of her life had shifted. The Elements could be cruel like that.

”You have my thanks. I owe you.”

“Don’t thank me. I did it to keep myself alive.”

It was a strange thing to see Starfleet’s universal translator in use. The human woman’s mouth moved as she spoke her Federation language, and yet the correct Rihannsu words were ‘spoken.’ Rihannsu translation technology was not nearly so organic.

“Ahh. I understand.” Vrenak responded in accented Federation Standard. “Self-preservation is quite the fundamental force. That does not, however, negate my thanks.”

Katja made a helpless gesture. “So…what exactly does keeping you alive get me? Please don’t tell me I should have pushed the shrapnel instead of pulled.”

Vrenak could not believe what she had the fire to just say to him. He began to laugh at her audacity…which in retrospect might have not been the smartest thing to do as the movements caused the wound at his chest to pull and he stopped suddenly and hissed in pain.

“A good question, human. To be fair…a life for a life. That is what you will get. What that life will entail…well that will depend on your actions and the will of the Elements, I suppose.”

Katja waited for the captain to say more, but no more words were spoken. She hazarded a glance at him she saw that his eyes were closed and his breathing even and unlabored. The captain appeared to be asleep.

The Centurion stepped closer to her, just barely skirting within what Katja would have considered her personal space. It wasn’t quite threatening, but it made her excruciatingly aware of the large man standing slightly too close for comfort.

“I take you. You save his life. He is brother to me. I take care for you now.” Maec said with a brisk nod and then turned and strode out of the sick bay leaving her standing next to the slumbering captain.

Katja watched the Centurion leave with open confusion written upon her features. What did he mean? Did she want to know?

With nothing else to do, she sat back down on the ground next to the captain's biobed and curled onto her side and closed her eyes as well. Perhaps, when she awoke, all of this would be nothing but a really screwed up dream that she could laugh about over drinks with her comrades one night.

To be continued...

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