Chapter 7: And Tooth for Tooth

Kaisha had not been too late to work, and Moralez had been overjoyed to hear that his operation had been scheduled for later that day. There had been complications with another patient, and his slot had been bumped up. He wasted the rest of his morning wandering the station. He couldn’t eat in preparation for the surgery, vomiting while under anesthetic could kill him, and so he eyed the sandwich shop longingly as he passed it on the way to the recreation center. He spent a couple of hours there, smoking what he felt was a well-earned cigar and losing to a Krell at pool. Who the hell had taught the giant reptile to play, he couldn’t fathom, but it was hard to feel sore when your opponent was perpetually grinning and inhumanly friendly. He didn’t meet Raz there, she must have been working, and he was glad of it. With her keen nose she would surely have picked up Kaisha’s sexual musk on him despite how well they had washed, and with her big mouth, she would broadcast it to the whole station within a day.

The time finally drew near, and he practically skipped back towards the hospital. By the end of the afternoon, he would be one step closer to being whole again, or at least as whole as he could ever hope to be now. Since his romp with Kaisha, his arm had stopped trembling, and he no longer had to think about it. Perhaps she had restored his confidence, maybe helped him get over his lingering fear of the aliens, or maybe it was simply because he was happy. It was hard to dwell on your problems only a few hours after making violent, steamy love in the shower.

He had agreed a little quickly to Kaisha’s request for him to become her mate, but he still felt the same way about her, if it meant he could spend the rest of his career on this station, hanging out with her, sleeping in her arms every night, he should be thanking the fates for taking his limbs. Had he not winded up on Pinwheel exactly when he did, had he been assigned a different doctor, none of this would have happened.

He entered the hospital through the main door and proceeded to his room. He had a good mental map of the whole facility now, one of the side effects of being a career soldier. He knew every escape route and vantage point of any building he entered. He would be able to check out soon and move in with Kaisha once his surgery was over and his new arm was attached. If he had any further problems, she’d know what to do about it. He should put in his transfer request soon, he was confident that it would be accepted by the Admiralty. They owed him two arms and a leg in back pay, after all.

He changed out of his clothes and into a surgical gown, then waited patiently for Kaisha to arrive. He didn’t have to wait long. After a few minutes, she appeared at the doorway, greeting him with a knowing smile.

“This way please, Mister Moralez,” she joked as she beckoned to him with her clawed fingers. She walked him down to the surgical wing of the facility and again donned her transparent, plastic body glove. It seemed that she would be performing the operation herself again. Familiar with the procedure by now, he made his way to the bed in the center of the operating theater, the human surgeons that crowded the room preparing to put him under.

He awoke in his hospital room, looking up at Kaisha through bleary eyes as the effects of the drugs that they had pumped into his veins muddled his senses.

“Is ... it done?”

“Don’t try to talk yet,” she said, leaning in to stroke his hair. “It’s done, we removed the damaged bone in your arm. When it has healed, we can go see Kurtz and get you a new one.”

“Good, good...”

He trailed off, his eyelids closing of their own accord as another wave of fatigue overcame him, and he fell back to sleep.

He spent two days in the hospital bed as his surgical scars healed, and on the third they released him, stating that he had recovered enough to resume his activities. He ached for Kaisha, their encounter was so fresh and crisp in his mind. He paced outside the building as he waited for her shift to end. His arm grew sorer as the painkillers wore off, but it was nothing that he hadn’t experienced before, the dull groan of severed nerves and stitching flesh now familiar to him. He feared the searing agony of the initial attachment of the prosthetic, a pain that was still unmatched by anything that he had experienced in combat, however brief it was. He just had to keep reminding himself that it was a necessary pain. No pain no gain, as his drill instructors had told him as he crawled through mud or ran until he passed out back in boot camp.

He noticed a tall figure exit through the automatic doors of the hospital, and he beamed as Kaisha waved to him. She was wearing her white uniform again. It clung to her buxom figure, she was practically spilling out of it. She walked over and gave him a hug, laughing apologetically when he winced as she put pressure on his new stump. The arm was completely gone now, the bone deemed not strong enough to support a prosthetic, ending at the shoulder as did his right.

“You ready to go see Kurtz?” Kaisha asked.

“Yes, let’s get this done.”

She smiled and took his hand in hers, leading him downspin of the torus, towards the printing facility. Along the way, they chatted idly. Kaisha seemed chipper, energized. He felt it too, the hopeful excitement of a fresh relationship. She was glowing, her white fur shining under the station’s lamps. Her blue eyes were bright, and there was a spring to her step. He was eager to test out his new hand when this was all finished, and they got back to her apartment. He snuck a glance at her bust as it bobbed beside him at head-height, straining to break free of her taut uniform.

Eventually, they arrived at the entrance to the printing facility, their conversation about what vintage movie Moralez might want to watch later that evening interrupted by the whoosh of the automatic doors.

Kurtz walked over from his workbench to greet them, shaking hands with Moralez.

“Remarkable, as dexterous as ever, Lieutenant. Hello Kaisha, you’re looking radiant today! Now, I have your new arm ready. If you’ll please follow me this way, I can attach it.”

Moralez followed him over to his workstation, the engineer brushing off his overalls with a gloved hand before lifting a freshly assembled prosthetic from the bench, scattering tools and stray cables. It was identical to the limb that Moralez already had attached, though inverted, as it would be replacing the missing left arm.

“This is the same design as your other arm, Lieutenant, now if you’ll just...” Moralez turned, raising his shirt with his prosthetic hand to expose the left side of his body. “Danke, danke. You’re familiar with this process by now, I assume?”

Moralez nodded as the engineer slotted the arm into place, locking it to the metal implant that protruded from beneath his flesh with a heavy click that reverberated through his bones. He released it to let it hang limply, unpowered, turning to retrieve his tablet computer. He tapped in some values on the touch screen, then pulled loose the data cable, plugging it into a port in the shoulder and connecting to the prosthetic’s internal computer.

“Brace yourself, Lieutenant.”

Kaisha grasped his hand, her fur soft between his fingers, and he gritted his teeth as he felt the worm-like wires burrow into his fresh scar tissue. Pain flared through him, searing like a hundred tiny needles as they bonded with his severed nerves. It only lasted for a few seconds, but from his perspective, it dragged on far too long. Just when he was reaching the limit of his endurance, his fingers squeezing Kaisha’s hand, the agony subsided and a fresh wave of sensation washed over him. It was like opening a new eye, discovering some new sense. He raised his left arm, flexing the fingers experimentally. He could feel the cool air on his simulated skin, and he pushed his two hands together, feeling their texture. It was a bizarre sensation. Individually, each hand felt as if it were made of skin and meat, so it was jarring to press them together and to feel rubber and polymer instead of the skin his brain insisted should be there.

“No training wheels for you, eh Lieutenant?” Kurtz chuckled as he watched him play with the hand. “So that’s it then, all of your limbs have been replaced. A fine job if I say so myself.”

“I’ll certainly corroborate that,” Moralez replied, placing both hands on the engineer’s shoulders. “I’m a whole man again, and it’s all thanks to you and Kaisha. If you ever need anything, anything at all, you come talk to me.”

“It’s all part of my job. The real reward for me is seeing a previously crippled man walking around again.” Kurtz scratched his stubbly chin pensively for a moment. “And my hefty paycheck, of course.”

The three of them said their goodbyes. Moralez probably wouldn’t have a reason to see Kurtz again for a while, although Kaisha would be visiting him fairly regularly in order to have prosthetics built and fitted for her patients. Moralez left the building, swinging his arms happily. Arms, plural. He was a symmetrical human once again. Well, mostly.

“How does it feel?” Kaisha asked, watching him with a grin. He extended his hands to her, and she took them in her fluffy palms, squeezing them gently. He ran his fingers through her velvet coat, smiling widely as his new limb relayed the signals to his brain. He could feel it, he could feel everything. The relief was immense, as if a weight had been removed from his shoulders, as if the map of his body that his brain had created was once again complete and correct.

“Let’s go home,” he said.

Over the next few days, Moralez became accustomed to his new prosthetic, his experience with the right meant that he adapted to it very quickly. He was back at one hundred percent, able to live a normal life again, and he intended to make the most of it. He checked out of the hospital, moving in with Kaisha. They spent what free time her job afforded her exploring her collection of human media and making love. Most of it was newer to him than it was to her. Almost all of her music, movies, and books pre-dated his birth, often by centuries. He enjoyed sitting on her furry lap, her arms wrapped around him as they watched her vintage movies together.

Raz visited them one night, more to sate her curiosity than anything else, eager to confirm her suspicions that what had tied her friend up for the last week was indeed her new human mate. She seemed pleased with herself, and Moralez suspected that there had been much collusion between the two Borealans where his relationship with Kaisha was concerned.

He put through his transfer request and the next day it was approved, the station staff apparently quite eager to have a combat veteran serving in the security forces. He was placed in a prominent position as head of security for one of the four quadrants, a position that fortunately, did not require him to patrol the torus or really do much of anything besides handle the occasional screwup.

He was eating in the mess hall one day, taking advantage of his lunch break before returning to his post and wolfing down some passable beef stroganoff from his metal tray, when he noticed someone across the room. There were always a few Borealans hanging around the mess hall, although Krell and humans usually outnumbered them. Today a new pack was passing through. The Pinwheel was as much a hub for travel and shipping as it was a starbase for troops, so it was common to see new faces who might be staying on the base temporarily while their ship was refueled or refitted, or if they were being transferred from one fleet to another. This Borealan pack was being transferred from Kruger, he knew as much because that was his job now. He had to keep track of who arrived on the station, and from where. The reports coming in from Kruger were positive, the UNN had cleaned Kruger III of Bugs and had driven them out of the system, he could only hope that the information he had obtained at such great expense had averted a few massacres. Maybe, on some subconscious level, he had wanted to be here when the returning troops arrived. If only to make sure...

There she was, sitting at a Borealan-sized table and eating a nondescript meat dish with her claws like some kind of wild beast. It was Azi.

His blood ran cold as he watched her over his fork. She was surrounded by her pack, engrossed in her meal. She wasn’t talking to the others much, which based on what he had learned from Raz and Kaisha, meant that she was likely the leader. The pack Alpha. So she had been promoted while he had been stuck here, languishing in a hospital bed. He seethed with anger, seeing red, and slid his hand down to check the iron on his hip. It was still there, his XMH was armed and ready to go. Did he want to use it? He wasn’t sure yet, he wasn’t thinking straight, his vision was a dark tunnel with Azi at the end of it.

She didn’t seem to have noticed him, she likely had no idea that he was stationed here. He watched her patiently until she had finished her meal, then she rose to her feet, her pack trailing behind her as she left the mess hall. Moralez waited a moment before getting out of his seat, doing his best to look nonchalant, following her outside. He walked a fair distance behind them as they marched through the Pinwheel’s torus. Perhaps they were exploring, perhaps they were just killing time between deployments, he couldn’t say. He was wearing pants with a boot covering his artificial foot and a long-sleeved shirt with dress gloves, doing his best to hide his signature prosthetics from view. The question now was how to separate Azi from her pack and get her alone.

Was he really doing this? Planning a murder on a military space station? He’d never get away with it, and he’d be thrown in the brig for the rest of his days if he was lucky enough to avoid execution. His mind roiled, he was angry, unfocused. If he did this, he’d never see Kaisha again. It would break her heart, but the injustice of what Azi had done to him burned in his veins like liquid fire. Only putting a slug through her skull would calm his rage, he felt compelled. When he had seen the data scroll past on his terminal, he hadn’t believed it. Borealans coming in from Kruger, what were the odds that it would be her? Had she even survived? It had eaten away at him, he had to check, had to be sure. Now here he was, stalking her with a loaded gun on his belt.

She turned a corner, passing between two of the buildings that lined the edge of the torus. What was she doing? There was nothing down there besides storage rooms. He hesitated at the corner, making sure nobody was around, and then peeked past the wall. He couldn’t see the pack, how could he have lost them? He hurried down the alley, cursing himself, his hand hovering over his holster. He reached the end wall, a cul de sac, where had they gone? He turned to the sound of a door opening behind him.

“Well well well, if it isn’t my old L.T. You’re looking pretty ambulatory these days.”

Azi and her cohorts stepped out from a side door, a storage room, how could he have been so stupid? He was so fixated on Azi that he hadn’t even noticed it. His hand flew to his holster, but as he popped the velcro strap that secured the gun, Azi’s pack bristled. He knew from experience that they could cover the ground faster than he could unholster his weapon and fire it. Besides, there were seven of them. Even if he killed one, the rest would eviscerate him in short order.

“That didn’t work out so well for you last time,” Azi chortled, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. She was so cocky, her new position must have gone to her head. “Why are you following me, monkey? You want another taste of me? That can be arranged...”

His face flushed red as memories of their last encounter flooded his mind, his hand beginning to tremble as it hovered over his XMH. He collected himself, willing the tremors to stop, and stood straight.

“What you did to me, it wasn’t right. I don’t care about your worthless culture. You knew I didn’t want it, but you did it anyway.”

“You seemed to enjoy it after a while,” she crooned, smirking at him as he balled his fists. He pulled his gloves off, discarding them on the floor, showing her his polymer knuckles.

“You took something from me, Azi. I lost a lot on Kruger, but you took something that I want back.”

Her smile faltered, and she looked to her pack. They were watching her expectantly. Clearly, he had just issued some kind of challenge, and they expected her to answer it. She walked away from the wall, taking up position a few meters in front of him. Did she intend to fight him? She dragged down the zipper on her UNN-blue uniform, shrugging it off so that the top half fell around her waist. The sleeves flopped behind her as her black sports bra and her tanned, muscled body were exposed. She cracked her neck, her orange hair falling about her shoulders. It had grown out since their last encounter.

“Do you know what you’re doing, L.T?” Azi asked as she flexed her hooked claws. She intended to fight him, could he win? He did the same, pulling off his shirt to reveal his two robotic arms, and beneath it a black ballistic vest. He doubted that it would stop her claws, but some protection was better than none. He raised his fists defensively. He knew boxing, but he didn’t fancy his odds against the alien. The last time they had fought he had barely been able to scratch her, but maybe with his new arms...