Chapter 3: In the Line of Duty

Moralez opened his eyes, they were blurry, unfocused. He saw a white blob above him, shifting and warping as he blinked, trying to clear his vision. Was he dead? Was this what being dead was like? No, it was a light fixture on a ceiling, also white. As his eyes came into focus, he tried to raise his head to look around him, but his neck was sore and stiff. Now that he was more aware, his whole body was sore and aching, his extremities were numb. What had happened? Where was he?

He heard garbled voices, and a shadow moved over him. He squinted, trying to make out the figure.

“Lieutenant Moralez? Can you hear me? You’re confused, please keep still. You’re in a hospital.”

A hospital? So he was alive, then. He had survived his ordeal on Kruger III.

“W-what ... happ...”

“Don’t try to speak yet, just rest, there’s no hurry. Everything has been taken care of, you’re safe here.”

He lay back on the soft pillow. The soothing voice, female he thought, had told him not to move but he very nearly couldn’t. Every muscle in his body felt like it was cramping and his arms and legs were immobilized, was he tied down? The fingers on his right hand itched, but he couldn’t move the left to scratch them. He heard movement, then felt the overpowering fatigue of a sedative wash over him.

When he next awoke, he couldn’t tell if hours or days had passed. In fact, he had no idea how long he had been in the hospital bed. He still felt numb, and one of his feet was cold, it was probably protruding from below the blanket. Everything still hurt, but less than it had before. He wanted to check himself over, examine the new scars and punctures that were no doubt hidden beneath the sheets, but he couldn’t move. Perhaps that was why they had tied him down? Surely they could tell from the innumerable scars that already littered his skin that he wasn’t squeamish, he just wanted to know the extent of the damage. If he could just reach between his legs and make sure that the twins were still at home, he’d be able to relax.

His eyes were clearer now, and he looked around the room. He was in a military hospital, not a field hospital, a real one. He must be planetside, or on an orbital station somewhere, there were no windows so that he could be sure which. He was in a private room with only one bed, and various unidentifiable machines were hooked up to his body. There was no drip in his arm, that was odd. Instead, various wires snaked under the sheets to his torso. He watched a monitor with a green line that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, displaying numbers and values that he didn’t know how to interpret. The room was basically a bare, white cube save for his bed, the machines and a chair beside them.

He no longer felt tired, he just wanted answers.

“Hey! Is anyone out there? Hey!” He shouted at the door, his throat dry and sore. Damn, he could use a glass of water. He waited for a minute, then as he prepared to shout again, the door opened. His brow furrowed as a tall, furry creature entered the room.

It was a Borealan, but different from the ones that he had seen previously. This one looked more like a real cat. Where Azi had smooth skin and toned muscle, this one had off-white fur dotted with black spots like a leopard, and it was pudgy, thicker than the others that he had encountered. It was holding a tablet computer in its large hand and wearing a white lab coat, or some kind of scrubs that clung to its figure. It was another female, egregiously female, and his eyes were drawn to its impressive hips and bust. No, not this again, no more Borealans.

“Lieutenant? How are you feeling?” She spoke good English, but her accent was unusual. She watched him curiously as he shook his head, shooting her an angry look.

“No, I want a human nurse.”

She looked taken aback.

“Well, I’m sorry Lieutenant, we don’t have the time nor the personnel to accommodate such requests.” She walked over to his bed and checked on the machines, recording the data onto her tablet computer with a stylus. Her massive, puffy tail trailed behind her, waving gently as she wrote. She was large, taller than any Borealan he’d ever seen, probably skirting nine feet. She didn’t have that wound-up, spring-loaded look that the naked variety had, it was hard to articulate.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“Fort Hamilton.”

Moralez wracked his brain, he had heard that name before, but where?

“Pinwheel? What am I doing here? This is light years from Kruger.”

“Yes, the station also goes by that name. Tell me, Lieutenant, have you any idea how long you’ve been here?”

“No, how did I get here? What happened to me?”

She lay her tablet down on his bedside table and sat awkwardly on the chair, which was too small for her.

“You were badly injured during your extraction from Kruger III. You were stabilized, put on the first available jump capable ship and brought here. Our medical and rehabilitation facilities are the best, besides perhaps Earth or Mars.”

Rehabilitation? What was she talking about?

“That was nearly two weeks ago,” she continued. “You were kept in an artificially induced coma while we removed shrapnel from your body. The damage was extensive. Much of your digestive tract has been replaced, along with one of your lungs and both of your kidneys. Your heart was badly damaged and had to be repaired, and-”

“I’m alive though,” he interrupted, “I survived.”

“You are indeed alive,” she replied, her round ears twitching as she peered down at him. “I don’t know how to put this lightly, but you’re a seasoned soldier, I think you can handle it straight.” The color drained from his face, what was wrong? Brain damage of some kind? “You have lost both of your arms and one leg. Your leg was severed below the knee by cannon fire, however, it had to be amputated at the thigh to prevent a bone infection. Your arms were destroyed by a grenade, it very nearly killed you, but your armor protected your face and torso reasonably well. They were gone when you arrived, unrecoverable, likely vaporized.”

The memories came flooding back to him. The monstrous insectoid towering over him, scrambling in the mud trying to recover his primed grenade, that idiot flyboy strafing him. He reeled, he felt dizzy. This couldn’t be true, she was fucking with him. He didn’t trust these aliens as far as he could throw them.

“No way, you’re fucking with me. I know what you Mad Cats are like.”

She looked more sad than angry, but she stood, hooking the blanket that covered him in her claws and pulled it away. His cry caught in his throat, turning into a sob.

“Oh fuck ... no...”

He looked down at his body in disbelief, his head swimming. His torso was wrapped in gauze, what skin showed between the bandages was purple and bruised. Tears welled in his eyes, and they became bleary as he looked at the space where his leg should have been. He wanted to wipe his eyes, embarrassed by his outburst, but his arms were gone. The right was missing from the shoulder down, the left just above the elbow, ending in bandaged stumps. The Borealan crossed her arms, watching his reaction. He looked to her for support, comfort, anything. Her gaze was cold, emotionless. Someone who worked in a military hospital would be accustomed to seeing these kinds of injuries and delivering bad news. She gave him a moment, then covered him with the blanket again. He tried to squeeze the hot, stinging tears from his eyes, tried to regain his composure. But it was impossible. This must be some kind of nightmare, he must still be on Kruger III or in the dropship, knocked unconscious. This couldn’t be real.

“I’m sorry to have to put you through that, Lieutenant, but I find that the direct approach is the most effective in cases such as yours. Do not despair, this is something that we can fix.”

“Fix?” He wanted to make sure that he had heard her correctly. “You can fix this?”

“Yes, your extensive military service entitles you to advanced prosthetics. When your wounds are fully healed, I will supervise your rehabilitation.”

He was sheepish now, ashamed by his earlier insult.

“Who are you?”

“I am a resident doctor in the physiatry wing, which is where we are right now. My specialties are physical medicine and rehabilitation. I have been assigned to handle your case, you may call me Kaisha.”

He’d never heard of a Borealan doctor before, they were exclusively soldiers as far as he knew, and the information didn’t make him any more trusting or any less wary of her. He didn’t know what to do, he felt sick. His eyes stung, and he was suddenly aware that there was a metallic flavor to the air when he exhaled. Could he taste his artificial lung?

“Your blood pressure is spiking, please try to relax. I can sedate you again if you wish.”

He didn’t want to deal with this right now, couldn’t deal with it. He nodded, and she inserted a needle into his drip. His eyelids became heavy, and he relaxed, allowing the tranquilizer to do its work.

The next few days were a blur. It was too early to start his rehab, too early to measure him for prosthetics, so Kaisha said. He couldn’t do much other than sit in bed. He tried to pass the time by eating or watching the station’s entertainment channel. He resented the presence of the alien, but she had made it clear that choosing one’s own doctor was not a freedom extended to military personnel. Besides, she was busy with other patients much of the time, and it was the human nurses who fed and bathed him.

The experience was humiliating. He could no longer function on his own, and at times he wished that they had left his mangled body on Kruger III to die a dignified death. Nurses had to feed him as if he were a baby and give him sponge baths. They had even equipped him with a colostomy bag that had to be periodically emptied, although he had been assured that both his waste and sexual organs were functioning correctly. This was just more convenient, it prevented mess.

He slept much of the time. When he was unconscious he didn’t have to think about his situation, he didn’t have to confront the fact that as much as forty percent of his body was just gone, either replaced or soon to be replaced with cold metal and sterile silicone. Not even his heart was fully his own anymore, and he could feel the difference, even if Doctor Kaisha insisted that it was entirely psychosomatic. Although she had treated him when he had initially arrived on the station, she had not asked about the obvious injuries that were unrelated to combat. The bites and scratches that Azi had left behind, the thought of which still brought up a sense of powerlessness and vague, repressed arousal. He hadn’t asked about Azi. He didn’t hope that she was dead, he wasn’t quite so callous, yet the idea of her walking around intact and free while he languished in this bed angered him. For all he knew, it was her who had carried him broken and bleeding up the dropship ramp, but somehow he couldn’t picture it.

What muscles he still had left had atrophied in his almost month-long hospital stay, and he had lost a significant amount of weight. He ate eagerly when the nurses brought him meals. Despite his situation, he had hope, and hoping was pretty much all that he could do right now. He wanted to be strong and well prepared for his physical therapy when he finally got his new limbs, but he couldn’t fool himself. Things would never be the same now, what he had lost could never be wholly regained. He might never fight again, but if he could hold a spoon and wipe his own ass, that would be a triumph compared to his current state.

“Stretch your leg for me, as far as you can,” Kaisha said as she held his foot in her fluffy hand. He pushed against her palm with all of his strength, the muscles in his one remaining limb now sore and weak. It looked starved, gaunt. Most of his bandages had come off now, and his chest was covered in fresh, pink scars. The stitches that held the larger gashes shut were starting to dissolve as his flesh knitted together and repaired itself. It looked as if he had been hit by a giant shotgun blast, it was a miracle that his ceramic armor had stopped so much of it. The ends of his amputated limbs were still covered, and it would be a while yet before they healed enough to tolerate the irritation and friction of prosthetics.

“Good, it is becoming more flexible. You must exercise it daily to prevent blood clots, Lieutenant.” She lowered his foot to the bed and tapped on her tablet computer with her thick, padded fingers. Kaisha was still very much a mystery to him. She never spoke about herself, and he never asked, but he wondered how and why a Borealan would become a doctor who specialized in humans.

“So when can I get out of here, Doc? I’ve been cooped up in this room for a month now. Most of my bandages are off, I feel strong enough.”

“You won’t be out of the physiatry ward for a while longer, not until you’re fully rehabilitated,” she replied as she kept her eyes on her tablet. “But if you wish, I can take you outside. I am on break soon.”

“Outside? How is there an outside on a space station?”

She smiled at him, her expression oddly warm.

“You’ve never been to Pinwheel before, have you?”

The artificial breeze ruffled Moralez’ hair, and he craned his neck, watching the painted mural on the ceiling. The baby-blue sky and white, fluffy clouds passed over his head as Kaisha pushed his wheelchair along the street, the massive lamps that were spaced along the roof at intervals shining like a summer’s day. Trees and plants spotted the torus that constituted the main living space on the station, rotating around the central control hub. It was large enough that the curve of the floor was almost imperceptible, and the gentle rotation created a centrifugal force, simulating one standard Earth gravity. Buildings lined the walls, giving the impression that he was standing in a long city street, or an open-air mall that curved away into the distance. It was convincing, obviously false, yet close enough to the real thing that the brain was tricked and any claustrophobia or cabin fever usually associated with spending months or years in space was banished.

Throngs of people clogged the walkways, the taller aliens standing head and shoulders above the bustling crowds. There were human engineers carrying tablet computers, denoted by their yellow overalls, along with Marines in blue uniforms and civilians wearing casual clothing. Lumbering Krell marched along in their sluggish pace, the crowds parting before the giant reptiles to let them pass. There were even a few Borealan packs standing tall above the smaller humans, clustered together in tightly-knit groups. It was loud, a thousand fragments of conversation mingling into a roar, but Moralez found it comforting.

Fort Hamilton was a marvel, not only of technology and engineering, but of inter-species cooperation. Moralez had never seen so many aliens in one place before, at least not unless he was shooting at them.

“So do you live here?” he asked, turning his head back and up to look at Kaisha.

“I’m doing my physiatry residence here, but my home is in Russia.”

“Hold on,” he said, taken aback. “Russia? But you’re a Borealan.”

“I’m originally from Borealis, but for the past several months I have lived in Siberia. My people have a colony there, the Republic. I’m here as part of a program with the Russian military, the Kremlin seeks a larger role in exopolitics and the war effort.”

“I thought all Borealans were fighters?”

“Many are, but my people prefer a more ... diplomatic approach to conflict. As it happens, I discovered that I was quite suited to medical care.”

Moralez considered asking her about her people, why she looked so different from the other Borealans, but thought that it might have been rude or insensitive. She must represent a race or a subspecies. It was a fair assumption.

Out here in the fresh air, or at least what passed for fresh on a space station with oxygen recyclers, he could almost forget where he was and what had happened to him. If he closed his eyes, feeling the cool wind in his hair and the glare of the sunlamps on his skin, he could almost be in a town somewhere back on Earth.

“Hey, Kaisha!”

He opened his eyes, a woman’s voice? Before him a tall, red-headed Borealan of the hairless variety waved to them, a gaggle of Borealans wearing blue UNN jumpsuits were trailing behind her. They didn’t look like the battle-hardened Mad Cats he had served with, were they recruits perhaps?

“Hello, Raz. New pack?”

The woman nodded, the trainees behind her staring at the odd pair with wide, amber eyes. They seemed out of their element, lacking the confident body language that Moralez usually associated with their kind.

“Just shipped in from Borealis a couple of days ago. I’m taking them down to Stanley’s range, he’s gonna teach them to use an XMR.”

“How is he?” Kaisha asked. “I’ve not seen him for a while.”

The woman hooked a recruit who had begun to wander with her dexterous tail, tugging it back into formation by the arm without even turning to look at it.

“He’s been giving requisitions shit about the new model two frames, the sights we have don’t fit on the new rails. He needs to put in a new batch order, or we won’t be able to train with them. It’s incredible that they weren’t standardized.” She looked down at Moralez, as if noticing him for the first time. “Whoa, what happened to you?”

“This is my patient,” Kaisha replied, but Moralez introduced himself before she could do it for him.

“Lieutenant Moralez, Ma’am,” he said. The instinct was to extend his hand in greeting, but he resisted it, having no hands to extend.

“Had a bad turn, Lieutenant? Kaisha will get you fixed up, she’s the best sawbones on the station.” She raised her gaze back to Kaisha. “Can’t stop and chat, gotta get these recruits to the range. Maybe I’ll see you at the recreation center later?”

The two bid each other good day, then continued on their way.

“Who was she?” Moralez asked, turning his head to watch the group of aliens as they marched away in a column.

“That was Raz Elysiedde, she is the unofficial Matriarch of the station. She oversees the training of new recruits and specializes in inter-species relations. She was a great comfort to me when I first arrived here. All Borealans who live and work on the Pinwheel treat her as their Alpha.”

They walked a while longer. Well, Kaisha walked. Moralez was being pushed along in his chair as he took in the sights. There were no windows on the station, nothing to indicate that they were hanging in open space. Structural weaknesses perhaps? This was a military base first and foremost, after all, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at it. The engineers had gone to such extreme lengths to make sure the personnel felt at home, and more importantly, so that they were able to do their duties for extended periods of time with no shore leave.

“We must turn around soon, I will be back on duty shortly.”

“Hey, er...” Moralez hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. “Sorry about what I said to you ... when we first met. I let some bad experiences influence my opinion of Borealans. It was wrong of me. I really appreciate all the work you’re doing to help me. Wheeling me around isn’t part of your job description, after all.”

“I saw the scars, the bite wounds. I guessed that was the case,” she replied. Moralez felt his face burn. “You didn’t get those wounds from a grenade.”

“Please don’t tell anyone. If I ever get back in action, I don’t want to lose the respect of my men.”

“Why do you feel that you would lose their respect?”

He gazed up at the curved ceiling, wishing that the painted clouds would drift lazily as they did back home, maybe installing projectors on the ceiling would have sent them over budget.

“I’ve lost so much already. I’m ... diminished. I don’t need them to know that I lost my dignity on that mission along with my limbs.” He stared at the polished floor, watching the wheels of his chair rotate. “Maybe they wouldn’t care, but I don’t think I could stand them knowing.”