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Alliance Standard Date 135.0442

The emergency Medical Bay on Deck 5 was a disaster. Dim overhead lights sputtered and flickered at pitiful power. Terminals and scanners whined against their lowest power modes, and between them on the sub, mid, and superscale levels, nurses and doctors cried out for aid, supplies, and to make way as they rushed their patients on antigrav beds with backup wheels folded out like old-style gurneys, or at the fastest clip their limping forms could manage to any suitably-sized bedspace left on their level. The emergency stocks were designed not for actual care, but to keep officers alive and functional in a crisis where sleep or rest was a potential liability to the ship; tranquilizers, what little there had been, were well past depleted, any synthesis efforts by threadbare nursing staff devoted to ensuring anaesthetics didn’t suffer the same fate. Lifts were dead, backup ramps clogged with waiting wounded, and with comms out the Infinity might well have been seconds from destruction.

Even amid the chaos, Doctor Illiara could still make out a bright side: the dampening field that had seized the Infinity had mercifully disabled the Red Alert sirens that would have otherwise drilled their way from her ears to her brain. Small mercies were still mercies. She’d have preferred their allotment of microsurgical tools returned to functionality in a heartbeat, of course, but she’d take what she could get.

The Ceratian physician loomed over her patients, gritting her beak momentarily to try and lose the tension in her jaws, weathered eyes staring down her snout and the horn in the center, another longer pair hanging long and carefully rounded at their tips from her wide, red streaked headfrill above. The subscale ward she towered over had already been packed full thanks to a plasma conduit eruption in one of the sublight engine bays, leaving her with scores of grey-uniformed little patients beneath her towering bulk, chest-height and rotated around and down as far as they’d go from their wall mount so she might reach them. Among their smallers, a few midscale giants sat panting, moaning, trembling over a crewmate’s tiny bedside, still thigh-high to her enormous, heavyset reptilian frame.

“This might feel uncomfortable, painkillers or no, but it’s the only way we’re gonna get that shoulder right till I can get you a working myoblast stimulator.”

She never minded working with the mid or subscale patients, even now, with the safety kinetic fields in their deck and their belt units alike utterly useless. They were near-universally frightened, at first, being treated by a fat, lumbering titan of a saurian, someone who nudged drawers closed with hips that might’ve checked someone her size into the wall and someone theirs into next week. Not to mention the vast, softened belly spilling against the middle of her uniform; she’d had more than one patient in her travels voice the mistaken impression she might consume them. A few minutes of gentle reassurance, comfort, and explanation, and a few more of treatment, and she melted that dread into relief, friendliness, hope. It was a skill she prided herself on as much as her steady hand or the knowledge of dozens of sapient species’ biology. If the safety fields had been on, she wouldn’t have even minded nudging her bulk against her patients’ perch, or fumbling for instruments; the years had taught her that a little measured clumsiness could convince a patient she wasn’t some sterile, uncaring arbiter more than most words.

“We’re gonna do a field relocation, honey. Have you ever done one?...Well, Academy medics don’t have hands like I do, I promise. Lay as flat as you can, I’ll hold you still…”

They’d received the majority of the neediest patients, the main medical bay too far up the disabled vessel to haul the dozens of wounded, an all too dangerous journey with internal sensors and main comms down. She’d already evaluated their wounds and distributed what medgel she could spare for radiation burns and broken bones, booming as gently as she could, carefully instructing them to tend their crewmates while subscale nurses tended other, more needy platforms. Her white uniform bore spatters and streaks of blood and fluids from those she’d scooped up and deposited there and elsewhere to save precious moments. The first few had been bad enough she had all but sealed them in medgel, a few beds bearing a translucent turquoise pouch filled with the oozing, sickly-scented miracle solution, their bodies slipped in as it sealed tight around their chests, heads, faces. The rest she tried to treat more sparingly with what supplies were left, eschewing modernity where she could and settling for old-fashioned techniques that some surgeons might have balked at in a modern medical center.

But they weren’t in a modern medical center. At least not one that was working worth a damn. They had only patients, dwindling supplies, and themselves. And as long as she still had her hands, Illiara wasn’t about to let that stop her.

“All right, hun, on three…one…two…three.”

Illiara tugged on the feline Cono’s arm, soft tawny fur gently flattened by her gloved fingertips. She pulled his arm back, slowly, steadily, firmly, thumb and forefinger carefully handling delicate flesh and bone in a light twist as she tried to guide the doll-like limb home. The cougar, a grey-suited specialist, snarled and slammed his head back, ears pressed back into his skull as the triceratops tugged his dislocated left arm out, back, and down into its socket with a crunch even she could hear. The grip she had upon the cat, firm upon a body she could have crushed taking a particularly careless seat, did not flinch as his claws tore through the decon polymer of her gloves to sink into hide and flesh. She smiled through it, knowing the stabbing pain was only a fraction of what the knee-high midscale man must have already gone through.

“There we are…let it rest for a bit, crewman, it’ll be stiff, but it’ll work.”

She turned from him after receiving a gentle nod and a raspy, “Th-thanks Doc.”, eyes shifting from each of the midscale crew remaining, taking a final count. Eight, no misses or stragglers or new arrivals, and none with anything critical.

Their punier comrades, ranging from shin-high to the size of just one of her thick fingers’ joints, lay spread in a grid. Their beds’ tiny systems, along with her remote-scale microsurgical units and all but the largest superscale hand scanners, remained totally smothered by the dampening field, only a few sparking displays among them. In order to even assess them, she’d snatched one of the largest nurse’s scanners, a gigantic model she now balanced against her matronly chest like an old paper tome. She held its barely-responsive detachable probe, four times the size of the one that she usually carried, in a firm fist, letting the pulsating blue trace of its emitter flash rhythmically over each little furred or scaled or smooth-skinned body. Readings flickered erratically as she moved from patient to patient, trusting her eye and their condition to prioritize who to scan first, running it as gracefully as she could over each form. Oaken eyes swept between them, the scanner probe, and the ensuing burst of static and agonizingly-slow analysis of their bioform emerging on the scanner screen. She drew from a practiced warmth, her smile weathered by urgency and age yet genuine, gaze kind as she could muster, her hearty voice toned down to a gentle boom amid a cacophony of distant moans, shouts, chirps, tones, groans.

“There we are…concussion, but you’re going to be just fine.” She glanced over to a nearby midscale crewman, one she’d only found a few bruises upon. “Ensign, if you could, give her forty subunits of acetokolone from the sprayvial stock, that should stave off the worst of the pain. It’s imperative she lie still to prevent any lasting neurological damage.” She kept that the palm-sized Lutran was a good tumble away from a brain hemmorage to herself; the acetokolone would help shore up the damaged tissue, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do for the little otter lieutenant if that happened, anyhow. Across the medbay, someone boomed, their titanic voice dampened by her wristcomm, as those petite ones were thusly magnified.

“Doctor! Doctor Illiara, i-is there any med-?”

“Over here, Hasseen! Got one more in my pocket.”

She swept the probe forward, bathing a seallike Halich half her height in cerulean pulses. He flinched instinctively and whimpered, shuddering from the motion, the newly-formed burns that ran from his left shoulder down to a round belly beginning to split and pustulate.

“Please keep still, Lieutenant, I’m just scanning.” She flashed a moment’s glare down at the scanner when it sputtered up a “Lost Connection” error, correcting her expression back to something more calming and pressing a few controls to restart the scan. Wouldn’t do a lick of good to show fear to her patients, all the moreso when her visage filled the world above them. The probe belatedly chirped a reply, coughing up the Halich’s ovoid form onto its screen. The thudding footfalls that had begun across the medbay closed in on her.

“The burns are mostly superficial, and you’ve already got the radronilin dosage for your level of exposure. You should be just fine after a few days’ rest and dermal regeneration.” She plunged a hand into her pocket for the medgel pouch she’d been using so sparingly, like a baker with their last tube of icing and a row of cakes yet to complete. It felt light in her grasp, its stores of the oozing, gelatinous mix of enzymes and hyper-catalysts reduced to a few squishy pockets within its packaging. Hasseen would need all of it if she found herself with one more superscale wound to juggle.

A shadow fell over her as she positioned the narrow little nozzle of the pouch over the panting Halich, splashing a dose of the turquoise goo over his form, turning from the sigh of relief from her puny patient as it seeped into his flesh. “How much?” She turned up to the Tigiren, a cream-maned lion of a nurse, towering and strong, her uniform bearing heavy splashes of red around her gloves, sleeves and middle that reeked to both their snouts.

“Got a Capreo, big fella, Doctor Calder’s inside his chest cavity digging out shrapnel from one of his lungs. How much’ve you got?” The ceratopsian doctor blinked, clicking her beak. More than she ought to give, that much was certain, but there wasn’t much choice between her what-ifs and Hasseen’s urgency.

She reached up and grasped one of Hasseen’s red-stained hands, tugging it down and slapping the medgel pouch into her grasp, “Take it. You’re doing wonderfully, Hasseen, just keep them going.” The lioness nodded firmly once, turning on her heel and practically jogging back to the infirmary beds around the curve of the bay.

She quaked with a shaky exhale and turned back to her tray of tiny patients, bulk rippling over their heads, belly bowing low, groaning audibly enough to make her wince. Served her for eating a light lunch during a mission, she supposed. Her mottled-pink face loomed as she leaned over the chest-high rows of beds and beings, running the scanner over a horn-headed Vylano in red, helm support, she guessed. Their w-shaped horns bore a series of pockmarks and scorches, and the deep black of their headfur had been burned down to a charred streak that crossed between his brown, quivering gaze and down his snout.

“I-is it bad, Doctor?” They choked out, tears streaking down their chiseled face, ears flat against the sides of their head, “I-it was so l-loud-”

Illiara kept a warm smile as the scan began to come in, drawing it up from the hooved feet within the water buffalo’s boots toward his head, “You’re looking okay, Ensign, I’m just getting a closer look. I-... oh damn it.”

Her throat rippled with a heavy, deep growl. She shook the sputtering scanner heaved against her chest as it failed to register the upper half of the Vylano’s body, and when it failed to correct itself, she leaned forth, chest lightly rattling the patients’ platform as she stood on the tips of her wide, broad feet to reach over their horned head, spilling over the protective barrier as she grunted, struggling to position the blue, blinking cylinder in her fist over his head, readings crawling onto her screen agonizingly slow.

“D-doctor! Doctor Illiara, STOP!”

Something jabbed up from below, into the heavy fat of her left breast through the fabric of the uniform, weak but valiantly struggling against the fleshy avalanche. A tiny claw snagged the fabric with a kick as that tiny alto voice reached her ears. She yelped, a honking cry that drew dozens of smaller eyes as she flinched, lurched up and back, probe clattering to the floor. She hissed a curse, and again when she fell to her knees at both the ache shooting up through her hefty thighs and down her meaty tail, her weight causing the movable platform to tremble visibly above. She fumbled for the device, thudding back up to her feet, apologetic stammer leaping into her voice.

“O-oh! Oh excuse me, honey, I am so sorry-”

The delicate being at the edge where she’d spilled over gawked, fanged little jaws dropped wide open, frightened exhales flaring her nostrils as she recoiled in her bed. Her skinny, svelte little form was swathed in the rich green of the science division, but that paled in comparison to the aquamarine streak that parted her emerald coat, running from her forehead and down the sweeping length of her head and long neck, all the way down to the tip of a slender tail nearly as long as she was tall. Only a few small blackened burns streaked her uniform, save her legs: the right lay charred and cracked in the lower thigh, clinging to its half-disintegrated fleshy connections to its host at an odd angle, hook-clawed toe on that foot lifeless compared to its counterpart’s feverish twitching. She lay short, even for a Ciraptan, the length of one of Illiara’s thick fingers, her lieutenant’s bands upon her pauldron glinting in the low light, deep blue eyes fully dilated and filled with nervous trepidation as she faltered, “S-sorry! I-It’s just, y-you were leaning over, a-and, a-a-and-”

“And I must’ve looked like a fat falling moon from that angle, you don’t have to explain yourself at all, honey.” She regained her composure with a snort that ruffled the tiny velociraptor woman’s uniform below, chiding herself and shaking her horned head as she reached over to nip the last bit of scan data from the Vylano, “I could’ve crushed half a dozen bones if I’d leaned forward any further. Stupid of me, and stupid these damn things don’t drop down low enough to accomodate someone my size. Too damn big to fit in the midscale levels, too damn small for the supers…you’re all right, Ensign, roots are still mostly there, and I’ve got a procedure for regeneration stimulation.” She added quickly, the Vylano whimpering with exhaustion as he slumped back into his bed.

The triceratops woman shook her head, glancing back down at the tiny carnivore behind the rim of the railing, fattened arm jiggling gently as she moved to lean over her next patient, probe in hand, “Hell, let me give you a scan, see if I’ve done anything to that poor leg of yours. Is anything else hurting?”

The lieutenant’s cheeks blazed red as the probe’s pulsing light loomed overhead, sputtering up to the vast, matronly saurian, “N-no! I-I mean you didn’t actually, l-like, crush me under…u-under you.” She stammered around the word in time with her gaze dropping to the Ceratian’s gargantuan bosom, before darting uncomfortably away. “I-I’ve had standard anesthetic, I’m fine, it’s nothing! I-I don’t want you cutting my leg off-” She stopped, gritting her fangs, cursing herself inwardly, “I-isn’t there something or–uh, someone more urgent to treat?”

Illiara paused, left eyeridge launching upward. “Hun, I don’t amputate unless it’s absolutely necessary, but that leg says anything but ‘fine’.” She slowed herself, smiling gently and trying again, “I assure you Lieutenant, you are the next logical candidate here for my attention. Now, just lay back, and-”

“N-no!” The reply came with a barking, snapping undercurrent of frightened hostility. More than she’d have expected, even from a shipwide catastrophe. She stared down at the raptor woman squirming beneath her towering gaze, trying to retreat into her puny bed, only for the sensation of her numbed, snapped leg dragging in her wake to send her whimpering back down. The tiny woman insisted, even as those conscious enough to pay attention began to stare, “R-really, I’m fine, I-I can wait!”

Illiara glanced down to check her wristcomm, its low-power systems crawling, but still functional. She took a few seconds to localize the lieutenant’s signal, and shifted its settings to a preset specifically designed for confidentiality. She glanced up, and those who had eavesdropped looked away as the words failed to reach their ears, “I wasn’t sure this’d work, given the conditions, but we can talk freely now. I need to know why you’re not letting me treat you, Lieutenant, especially if you want that leg to regenerate properly. There’s no telling exactly how bad that burn or break is until I scan, but it looks like you took a round from a pulse pistol my size.”

She froze, eyes darting from Illiara’s gaze, only to flinch back beneath her deep brown irises when the lights overhead and the towering nurses and wailing behemoths down the titanic, curved hall gave no respite. “I was in Engineering, a-and I caught the edge of the conduit blowing. E-ensign Mulkane brought me here. I-I…just want to wait for a doctor my size. Really, that’s it.”

A single beat of something past flashed across her face, from the tip of her narrow snout, tugging back at her eyes. Illiara nodded back down firmly, her smile faltering with a twinge of painful understanding. In the Fleet, where beings of all species and sizes lived, worked, loved, and fought shoulder to shoulder, you didn’t develop such preferences without sound, if lamentable, reasoning. “I’m sorry, honey. I know it’s not easy-”

“N-no you don’t know, I-I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t-” The raptor’s stammer and sudden, choking silence did nothing to hide the barbed growl trailing in the wake of harsh, snapped consonants, and for that instant a glare flashed across her eyes before they fell away. Illiara could practically smell the terror spilling from her, born of something beyond this particular crisis and this particular wound. She leaned in closer, carefully bringing her broad, horned head over her petite patient.

“You’re right. What’s your name, Lieutenant?”

She saw a gulp distend the raptor’s slender neck, interrupting a soft, trembling inhale. She answered, “Rixa…Rixa Klaruun.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you in my Medbays before, Lieutenant, emergency or otherwise.”

“You wouldn’t.” The ceratopsian watched her wince at her own venom, trying to explain. “I only ever visit for biannual screens. The ones from my last ship are still current. I-I’m a transfer, just came on board last month. I…had to get off the Cloudrunner, and our Science Officer knew yours, so I-I left when a position opened.” She faltered, muttering, “For all the gods damned good that did.”

Illiara frowned, “Honey, it’s not your fault we’re stuck in a nebula. We’re on a rescue mission, right? Same thing that got us probably got who we were saving.”

“You don’t understand.” Her arms curled round her slim torso, squeezing firmly, “I-I’m an emissions specialist, I-I was supposed to make sure we wouldn’t draw a plasma filament, but I couldn’t bring the baffles to the resonance frequency f-fast enough. I-I tried, but the differential j-just shot up towards the end, like we’d just plowed straight into one! I didn’t even see it on the forward sensors, I-I transferred over from one hell of a ship and made this one another, I-I-”

“Easy, easy, Rixa…ah, Lieutenant Klaruun.” Illiara raised the hand with the scanner probe as the Ciraptan’s voice tumbled into a rapid-fire panic, “I know it wasn’t your fault. The Morai Nebula’s got exotic matter, protofusion globules, plasma filaments. Ships are thrashed by these things all the time. Gods help the transport we’re after, if this is what they had to deal with.”

The green-clad younger woman huffed and tried to swallow down some of the apprehension seizing her throat. “Th-that’s what they were saying before we hit.” She glanced up, “Y-you know your astrophysical phenomena, f-for a medical doctor.”

“I took a semester, oh, about thirty, thirty-five years ago, and I read the briefings. Mama always said I had a mind like a tractor beam. Once it’s locked on it just pulls stuff in, whatever I’ve got in front of me. Keeps it, too.”

She thought she spotted a hint of a smile twitch at the edges of Kelruun’s lips. “Hah. My mom always said I should’ve been a sprinter, or a gymnast. Always used to remember me running around, leaping branch to branch. I could longjump meters past anyone else in my class.” She glanced down to her shattered limb. “M-maybe if I’d seen this I would’ve listened-”

“None of that, hun. You’re not done yet.” Illiara chided, “Rixa-...Lieutenant-”

“R-Rixa. I-I don’t mind, Doctor.” She slackened gently, nodding her approval, and she forced a small smirk.

Illiara’s smile returned, pulling back past her beak, “Rixa, I’ve got some nurses in this ward, but none your size, and the truth is we’ve got three subscale doctors down here. Gods know where they are, probably waist deep in triage. My midscale partner is still deep in emergency surgery, and will be for at least the next half hour. I need to scan you, right now, to see if you’re going to need work before then. Your leg’s gonna depend on it.” She held the scanner probe gently forward, keeping it off the fragile form beneath. “I need you to trust that I’m gonna do my damnedest to make sure nothing happens to you.”

Rixa looked, for an instant, like she would cry out again. Then, she stared up into Illiara’s soft, brown eyes, and nodded once. “...o-okay. J-just…please. Please be careful.”

Illiara flicked the probe back on, and blue light pulsed down upon her. “With you, honey, always. I’m responsible for this entire crew…and I always like making a good impression on transfers.” She winked gently even as the scan came in, disguising her reaction with a practiced ease, adding, “And for the record, if I’m allowed to call you Rixa, I think it’s only fair you call me Neela. Friends call me that. Besides, Doctor always makes me feel like the tyrants I suffered in residency.”

Rixa actually laughed, a soft snicker that rose and fell in a parabolic melody. “R-right, Neela…h-hah, I can’t imagine anyone bossing you around.”

“Believe me honey, sometimes doctors with thrice my experience the size of my thumb were the worst at the actual practice of medicine. Stick around, you might even see some of the bridge officers try it.”

The raptor bit her lip. “I, ah, I-I don’t know I’m staying. People have been n-nice on the Infinity, but the truth is, I was going to put in my resignation, after the Cloudrunner-...a-after this mission.”

It was Neela’s turn to freeze for an instant. “...Oh. I’m sorry to hear it, hun.”

“I-It’s fine, really.” Before she could finish, Neela shook her head.

“No it isn’t, Rixa. It’d be fine if you wanted it, but something else’s made you feel that. You’re what, full Lieutenant at thirty?”

Rixa blushed, glancing over to her rank pauldron’s two completed, nested bands, “T-twenty-nine.”

“Twenty-nine, good Gods, you’re in your prime! Believe me, I’ve spent enough time around our resident rabbit to know you don’t rank up in the Science division past junior grade unless you’ve got the drive, and the intellect.” She narrowed her eyes, inhaling sharply and continuing to gently sweep the probe over her patient as the superscale scanner against her chest groaned through it.

“Look, maybe I shouldn’t be telling you how to live, it’s your career, hun. But if something, someone else is pushing you out, to hell with ‘em. I’ve had enough of that skak-shit to last me a lifetime, and I don’t like seeing it happen to somebody else.”

“...something happened to you?”

Neela twitched a little, nodding after a moment’s contemplation, her gaze suddenly farther away. “Yeah. Long time ago. Something like that, I’d reckon. Nothing I like talking about, most of the time. Took me years to work through it, deal with it.”

Rixa looked down at herself, at her remaining, intact leg, claw twitching awkwardly as she tried to bring her question to her lips. “What…what worked? Dealing with it, I mean.”

The Ceratian shrugged at first, “It was…a process, hun. I needed time, I lashed out, all the usual stuff. I still have moments.” She smiled, the bittersweet reminisce hitting its latter half. “But I found some folks here in the Fleet. A few I could really count on. I talked to them, worked through it with them, and they got me through. Keep me through.”

She stopped as the readout on the superscale scanner flickered, toned to completion, switching off the probe, inhaling to keep her expression steady. She glanced down to Rixa, already formulating a cushioned update when she caught the icy fear bursting back into her tiny stare. She instead levelled her gaze in return, and said calmly,

“Most of the nerves and tendons have thankfully been cauterized, but it’s imperfect. The wound’s weeping, the tissue that’s still connecting your lower half’s largely dead, and the longer we wait, the less likely I can restore full functionality with tissue regeneration, especially if deep scarring continues. I need to re-cauterize the wound and fully sever your leg.”

Rixa’s eyes went wide as full moons, a tremble quaking every inch of her, “Wh-wh-what? B-but you-”

“Rixa, listen to me.” Illiara cut through, gently, but firmly, staring her down with oaken, weathered eyes. “I can grow your leg back good as new, to the best of my ability, in a matter of weeks. Days, if we can get the hell out of here and make it to a starbase. Until then I need to make sure your condition doesn’t worsen.” She glanced at the readout again, “Your anaesthetic dosage should be enough to prevent any sensation-”

“B-but I’ll feel it! I-I’ll know you’re doing it!” She cried out, recoiling, jabbing a clawed finger down as her wounded leg bent and flopped uselessly from her movement, “I-I felt that! Y-you can’t just do that, I-I can’t do it again! I…” She swallowed back tears that were already beginning to spill down her cheeks, “I-I just can’t!”

Neela felt something in her chest collapse, her whole body rippling as she slumped. The need to comfort her, to keep the poor thing from descending into something that was clearly so much worse than catching the edge of a fireball of plasma, tugged at her heart. Well-meaning prods would just reopen old wounds, as surely as the plasma cauterization was cracking apart, platelet by platelet, ooze by cellular ooze, in the half-segmented, torn space that used to firmly hold her leg from the knee downward. There was no comfort to be gained from giving her any less than what had to be done.

“Rixa, listen to me.” She repeated, letting the superscale scanner thud against the floor, setting the probe down upon its screened surface. She reached over to her console’s decontamination drawer for the stylus-shaped laser scalpel, testing it with a pair of taps of its controls to narrow the sputtering crimson beam at its tip, gingerly etching the tiniest of scorched scratches into the frame that held it. Narrow enough, and thankfully one her size that still functioned, if only barely.

“I’ve been doing this job for thirty years. I’ve done this a thousand times, ten thousand times. But more than that, I’ve been in charge of this ship and this crew’s health and safety for five years. I’ve spent my entire life in medicine. Wherever I could treat others, I went, and where I couldn’t, I left to do better elsewhere. To do better here, for people like you. I am not, under any circumstances, going to hurt you, Rixa. I promise you; I will make sure you are healed, no matter what it takes.”

She lifted the laser scalpel, keeping it back so the terrified raptor might see it and let the shock of its presence fall into a certain reality. “I know how to get you through this, without field projectors or medgel, if you’re willing to let me try, and to do your best to work with me.” The smile that tugged at her lips was anything but practiced, worn and commiserate and layered in years of these moments and all their terrible and triumphant and lingering permutations.

“Do you trust me, Rixa?”

Rixa’s whimpering writhes in her shadow slowed, drawing her battered little frame no further away. Her breath hissed through gritted fangs, and for a few moments her throat flexed without sound, heaving and clutching at words that would not come, until she forced a single, jolting nod.

“I-I do. I-I trust you…I trust you Neela. J-just tell me what to do.” She let her jaw open, nauseous, quivering exhale rippling over her tongue as she clammily licked her lips. “B-before I change my mind.”

Neela kept her smile steady as she reached down, plucking up a single small set of forceps. “Okay. I’m gonna slide this real quick beneath your leg. I need something to keep the rest of you still as we can, and make sure I’m not cutting into your bed.” She narrated, very gently pinching the ends of the tool together, pushing down against the cushioning of her bed slowly, weathered fingers carefully proceeding between her trembling flinches as cool, shining metal met charred flesh and still-feeling thigh. She slipped them beneath the smashed limb before letting them open, pushing the bottom grip on through beneath her intact leg.

“Does that hurt at all so far?”

The raptor swallowed down a mouthful of saliva and tried to shake away the tears on her cheeks, nodding vigorously and looking away as the claws of the forceps lay, cool and hard and immalleable against her writhing, head arched toward the flickering ceiling, “N-no…g-guh, n-not really. A-a little cold up near my thighs.”

“It might be a little uncomfortable, but it won’t be there for long, I promise. The second part’s a little harder.” She reached over with her other hand, pressing her gloved left thumb into the shamrock green middle of her uniform, “I want you to hold onto me, hard as you can. Bite down if you need to. I’d use something else, but I know how sensitive Ciraptan fangs are to torsion, and I don’t wanna give you dental work, too.”

Rixa’s head whipped back up, “Wh-what? B-but that’s your-”

“Honey, I’ve had a lot worse scrapes than whatever you can bring to bear, believe me. Bite down if it’s scary, claw the hell out of me if you’re frightened, anything you need to do, do it.” She cut the petite saur off, nudging it against her middle, “Go on, it’s all right.”

Clawed little fingers raised, clenched into the fabric of the glove and the ridged, thickened hide of her thumbtip, followed by the press of her snout, faced downwards, her eyes shut tight, “O-okay, okay…l-like this?”

“Absolutely perfect, Rixa.” Neela stared down the set of forceps resting against her bed, eyes squinting as she clutched the laser scalpel in her fingers, dialing it back to its narrowest beam width, to an intensity just barely suitable enough for a quick, clean cut. Exactly a fifth up her thigh, two thirds of the way up the inch-long leg. No more, no less.

She leveled the scalpel, inhaled, and as her hand fell to perfect stillness, she flicked it on. A crimson beam buzzed down, crackling against shining metal, flickering and sputtering under the unseen force of the dampening field. It scorched its way steadily from left to right, across a width no larger than the rounded tip of the horn at the end of her nose.

Rixa’s shrill, faint shriek vibrated her horror through the ceratopsian’s thumb, muffling it as she bore down. A slight twitch in her left hand was all Neela allowed herself as rows of tiny, razor-sharp fangs bit down in utter terror, the claws upon her fingers digging deep into her flesh as she utterly shredded through the giant’s glove. Streams of blood began to spill free against the tiny officer’s uniform, and her free leg kicked instinctively up against the bar of the forceps’ clawed grasp. The Ceratian didn’t budge; she exhaled, slowly and steadily as the seconds turned over, one by one, as the scent of newly-scorched flesh and metal hissed up in wisps to her nostrils, as the red rays of the laser scalpel drew their way across the precision slice through a charred stump and tatter of flesh, bone, and fabric.

“That’s it…atta girl…you’re doing beautifully, Rixa, absolutely beautifully.”

She smiled amid the gnashing tear of needlelike fangs, red, throbbing stings shooting from and up a limb that had spent years resisting the instinctual urge to flinch with enough force to send her patient crashing across the subscale ward. She wasn’t about to reward the monumental gift of her faith, faith so clearly battered, with anything less than perfection in return. She swept the beam on an artfully clean exit vector, gently curling it around scraps of uniform, scales and bone, deactivating it just as it neared the forceps’ edge, incision ending in a split second wisp of smoke and steam.

“There we are. You made it, honey.”

The slender Ciraptan woman didn’t budge, only whimpering in quiet relief. After a moment, Neela tugged at the thumb she’d stabbed herself into, flesh throbbing around the acute jab of every claw and fang. “I’m gonna need that back, please.” She chided wryly, her grin unwavering.

Slowly, with a shuddering, long heave, the raptor unclenched her fingers, forced her jaws back open, flopping back into her bed, a tremble’s firm grasp upon her extremities, “G-gods…i-it’s over?”

“It’s over.”

Neela gingerly swept away the discarded limb into her palm, slipping it into an organic waste receptacle in her console along with the laser scalpel, sliding the giant-sized forceps down her slim remaining leg to its place in the decon drawer. She leaned down to heave the superscale scanner back up against her belly, its probe back in her fist, and she lingered over the raptor woman panting for breath, eyes fluttering as panicked terror finally began to buckle under the weight of her fatigue. She beamed proudly above, faltering only at the neatly-trimmed stump of her handiwork upon that tiny body as she swept the intermittent probe’s flashing aura over the wound, the freeze of momentary uncertainty replaced by a warm sigh of relief upon its readout.

“Whew…no further damage to nerves, bone, muscle tissue, collagen and intracellular fluid distribution normal, macrophage motility at standard, no epidermal breaches.” She grinned down, “Give me a couple weeks and we’ll have this leg back exactly the way it was. You’re gonna be just fine, Rixa.”

The little science officer slumped back into her bed, a wordless whimper cried into her headrest. She turned her head up, scales of greens and blues glinting in the light. Her head arched back, and she forced her eyes back open, sweeping them up and away from her severed limb, into the eyes of the tri-horned woman smiling down on her. She coughed on a little saliva, some of the ceratopsian’s blood lingering upon her lips,

“Doctor…Neela, I-I can’t thank you-”

“Ah ah, none of that, hun. I’m doing my duty, and besides, I oughta thank you.” The Ceratian insisted, giving a gentle nudge of her tiny form with a fingertip, her massive glove and the soft, worn hide beneath splaying against her shoulder. “You trusted me. I can’t ask anything more from my patients than that.” She pulled back up, finally moving on to the remainder of the subscale ward platform’s shaken but relatively intact crew and officers. “Get some rest, Lieutenant. You’ve earned it.”

Rixa didn’t need her to make it an order. The Ciraptan slumped back into her bed with a wordless nod. Neela chuckled softly, and let her be.

A fumble with her wristcomm settings later, and she had moved onto the remaining patients, all of which could hold out with a little rest. A half hour later, as she finished the last of their number, a lanky wolflike Owei, gasps, shouts, and cries of salvation rang out around them. The lights above surged back to full strength, followed closely by the crimson pulse of a Red Alert. Instruments and consoles groaned, hummed, and chirped their way back to full power modes in waves, and from every wristcomm boomed a deep, throaty announcement.

“This is the Captain. We’re exiting the Moirai Nebula, speed at 250 standard kph and rising. Stand by for auxiliary power across all decks. Hangar bay, stand ready to retrieve deployed craft as soon as particle density decreases to minimum safe levels. Department heads, check in with major casualty reports within two standard hours. Maintain Red Alert status.”

Doctor Illiara turned to Rixa’s bed below, but the raptor woman lay firmly in the grasp of a sleep deep enough to blot out the surrounding din, tail limp across her remaining leg, little chest gently rising and falling with soft, shallow breaths. She smiled, lingering for a moment, before a call from Hasseen turned her head, and sent her thudding toward another patient.

________________

“Neela!”

Doctor Illiara jumped, eyes widening as the call shook her from a pages-deep scroll on her medical datapad. She stumbled back on a thickened foot, the base of her tail thudding up against the overhang of one of the subscale levels, the heft of her titanic backside splaying against and over the protective barrier in waves of fabric-sheathed fat. A shriek from behind sent her jumping in the opposite direction with enough weight to rattle the area,, a flustered apology spilling from her beak as she whirled about with heavy footfalls, her meaty tail swinging round with a deep slap against the walls.

“Oh my goodness, I am so sorry, I didn’t even hear anyone come in-...oh!” She stopped, a grin blossoming upon her face, the red eye-patterned upon her frill brightening as she crouched over the little raptor below, “Rixa!”

The Ciraptan woman grinned up from a small, floating chair, one that zipped back up towards the barrier where her monstrous backside had just spilled over, “That’s twice in the same week you nearly smothered me, Neela.” She snickered, tail slapping at the seat cushion beneath excitedly as she beamed up to the massive physician. “Sorry about the surprise, Nurse Hasseen told me to come on up and see you myself.”

Neela glanced up to see Hasseen standing by the main entrance to the Medbay, sample vial in her fingers, mouthing a quick, wincing “Sorry!” before she slipped away. Rixa added, “Bet the primary Medbay feels a ton better than that cramped emergency ward.”

Neela snorted a short, honking laugh, glancing around at the rows of pristine diagnostic beds, the isolated laboratory spaces in transparent enclosures, the rows upon rows of fully functional state of the art equipment and surgical tools and scanners. “You kidding? This place is like an Arawan resort compared to what we were working with down there. I’ve got everything but the down-feather beds.” She groaned as she bent lower, and her knees cracked and ached in protest, “Ooh…sorry hun, still have a little trouble coming down.”

Rixa smiled a little wider, nervously flashing her fangs for a moment. She offered, “If you want, I, ah, wouldn’t mind being held. If that’d make it easier.”

Neela’s eyeridges raised in surprise, but she beamed, raising her hand and thudding a meaty palm against the barrier. “I’d love that, hun.”

The Ciraptan’s chair whirred softly into her outstretched palm, fields clinging to her flesh as she lifted the subscale woman up past her rounded belly, levelling her at chest height as her knees cracked back upright. “So, you getting off at Leoir Station? I hear their regen clinic’s got units I’d kill for here.”

Rixa nodded, then shook her head abruptly, “Y-yeah! I-I mean, no, I mean I’m getting off for the limb regeneration sessions while we’re docked – thank you so much for sending my information forward, by the way – but I was thinking, about, well, what we talked about…” The raptor woman glanced around the mostly-empty medbay, and before she could say another word, Neela had made a few jabs at her wristcomm, and what little din there was fell away. She grinned, a hopeful gleam in her eye. “I want to stay on the Infinity. I still love my work, peril and all, and if it’s helped you, maybe it’ll help me.”

Neela’s chest swelled with a sudden rise of joy, and the end of her tail thumped the ground once with barely-contained mirth. “I think that’s wonderful, hun. I know I could always use more patients like you. Especially ones that can forgive me for nearly crushing ‘em under underboob like that. Well, unintentionally, at least.”

Rixa openly giggled, a melodic little laugh that sent the old triceratops’ heart lightly fluttering as she answered, “Hah, well, I don’t know about anyone else, but, well, I can’t say I’d complain!” Little eyes of deep blue flicked to the the rippling chest of the titanic matron as she snickered, raised a thumb to carefully nudge that hoverchair.

“Pfff. Keep it up, little lady, you just saw I got more ways than one to steamroll smaller folks, and I know how to use ‘em. They didn’t make me small, that’s for damn sure.”

The raptor’s laughter gently trailed off, shaking her head, “More ways than I’d imagine, haha! I, ah, I did want to ask you about something else.” She faltered, but pushed forward, leaning up in her seat, “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and I wanna talk to someone. Not just about the Cloudrunner, but about just…things. And I don’t know if you need someone else like that, but we’re docking in a few minutes, a-and the clinic specialist was wondering if I could bring you by for a couple questions anyways, a-and if you had a free meal break-”

Neela chuckled, glancing up and tabbing her wristcomm back over to normal, booming out heartily across the bay, “Hasseen, you got Doctor Kissenen coming up in ten minutes, right? Mind holding down the bay while we grab something on the station?”

The lioness lurched up into view from her crouch behind one of the cabinets, and waved her off, “No worries, Doc, I’ve just got some stocking to do. Have fun!”

“Thanks hun, see ya in an hour or so.” She began to thud for the door, Ciraptan’s chair within carefully-curled fingers, “I’d love to, Rixa. What sorta lunch spots do they got over there, anyways?”

The Ciraptan winced at that, grinning sheepishly up, “Well, I’ve only ever really been here once, and we only ever hit up this great synthmeat spot, the Starlight Sizzle. They do a wild rare-cooked hybrid cut of Vhoxin boar and Faen slalotail, but I don’t know if they’ve got many meatless options.”

“Been a while since I’ve had a cut of Vhoxin boar, especially one that’s done half-rare.” Neela mused, her stomach below already giving a rising, thunderous burble of agreement.

Rixa gawked momentarily, “Y-you eat meat? I-I mean I’ve only ever had synth, but I thought Ceratians-”

Neela winked playfully as she strode past the superscale doors of the medbay, “Hun, you get to call me by my first name. You’re gonna learn a lot about me most folks don’t. Namely that I don’t tend to be like other Ceratians. Bedside manner and meals included.”

The little raptor giggled as the doors hissed shut behind Neela’s titanic frame. “You can handle any patient, surgery, cuisine…anything you can’t take, Doc?”

“Only working on an empty stomach.”