COMMANDER

It was dark when I woke up. I was confused for a moment and looked around to get my bearings. Something of my vision was off. I was in an AV, there was a med bot . . . aw, fuck me . . . not again! My left eye was obscured by bandaging. I tried to move but could not even sit up. They had me in a restriction field. I had been injured in battle . . . that’s right . . . the Shaquaree . . . Ronin!

I didn’t need to tell the SOG troopers to try to capture wounded officers or to put down wounded enemy soldiers. They already knew. They also knew to look for advanced tech which might still be operational, either as a danger to us or possible advantage. And Ronin was out there running around like some maniac Amazon, risking her life to try to capture fleeing officers. Wait a minute! Fleeing? That meant . . .

I was just about to yell out when Arrow and Ronin walked into the AV, followed by Mike Flynn. The trauma bot must have alerted them I was awake.

“Carla! I mean, Ronin!” I stopped and took a breath to calm myself and try to start again, maybe a little more professionally. “Lt. Donner, report.”

“Calm down, Commander, or I’ll put you out again. That’s an order, sir,” said Arrow.

The look on her face was serious. She probably would, too, the hard-nosed bitch. I took another breath and focused.

“Okay . . . better,” Arrow said with a nod, “heart rate and BP both dropping.”

“We caught the officers, Commander,” Ronin told me. “We managed to capture four of them alive. They are being held here under guard until we can get them back to the Rontar. The captain managed to capture the Shaquaree ship and we have the surviving crew held in a hanger bay, locked inside a disabled shuttle transport. We got the entire bridge crew! And, we think the jamming by the AIs stopped any transmissions they may have tried to get out. There is bad news, though.”

“Right, Commander,” Flynn broke in. “Harris is gone outside, and both wedges are down to about half strength. The . . .”

“Hold it!” Arrow ordered. “His vitals are shooting up again. All right, both of you out. Now!”

When they were gone, Arrow leaned forward to speak in a low voice.

“You can chop me for this when you’re back on your—when you’re up and about again, Commander, but . . . when are you and Ronin gonna put away whatever games you’re playing at and get together? Oh, don’t give me the surprised look, sir. Hell, everybody knows! The way each of you looks at the other all the time? You can’t hide that, sir. I know you love her, and she worships you. Now, then . . . you need to get some more rest.”

I couldn’t speak. The drugs Arrow started began to work as she turned the lights down and walked out of the AV, leaving me there in the dark. Alone with my thoughts and the tears rolling down my cheeks.

I woke up to dim lights and looked around, still only with my right eye. I was in the ship hospital. The med unit above my head began to chirp quietly. Within a moment or two, Doc Annsbury came to stand beside the medcouch.

“You just keep showing up in here, Commander,” she said.

Her voice was soft and her tone not unkind, but neither was there any welcome in it.

“This time is the worst yet. You’ve lost your right leg from eighteen centimeters below the hip down. You have massive, deep contusions over seventy-eight percent of your body, five broken fingers and a badly sprained wrist, a missing left eye, three broken and two fractured ribs, and no less than sixteen penetrating traumas to various places on your torso. Frankly, the only reason you are alive is the trauma treatment you received from your medic trooper and the AI in your suit. You have them to thank for your life. I’ll notify the captain and your lieutenants.”

“The leg couldn’t be saved? Reattached?”

“No.” Her look and tone were almost smug now, almost smacking of something like satisfaction. “The femur and knee were completely shattered . . . bones, tissue, everything . . . and nearly completely separated from the upper thigh. There were only a few strands of muscle and ligament holding the two together at all. You would have bled out through the femoral artery but for the nanos and the suit AI pumping up the gel-skin pressure to pinch off the blood flow after cauterizing. By the time they got you out of the suit the nanos in the lower leg had lost contact with the system for too long and self-destructed. The tissue of the leg was simply too destroyed and too long without blood flow to be a viable candidate for reattachment.”

“What are the options, Doctor?”

“I’m still working on options. We’ll talk about them and the other wounds later.”

With that, she abruptly walked away.

It was odd . . . no, “odd” is not a strong enough word . . . really weird, to look down at the blanket covering me and see it fall away where the leg was missing. It felt like it was still there. Somehow, it didn’t seem to bother me. It was just weird, disorienting. The doctor must have me on some kind of medication to distance me from the reality. I actually felt pretty good. I sighed. Without those drugs I would probably be a basket case of pain.

I had taken a pretty good pounding out there. Hell, the whole SOG team had. I could only imagine how Flynn’s and Harris’ . . . Crap. The clan must have taken some significant losses. It was then the captain and Lt. Jenkins came in.

“Welcome back, JD!” the captain greeted me. “You are a most resilient man!”

“Sir!” greeted Jenkins.

“Captain . . . thank you . . . kind words. I’m glad to be here at all. Lt. Jenkins,” I acknowledged their greetings. “How is the clan, Lieutenant?”

“We are preparing a full report, JD, and I will have a copy to you as soon as the doctor will allow.”

He called me JD in front of the captain? A copy? When the doctor will allow? Anger flooded through me, bright and flaming anger. I was jerking the blanket back as I spoke.

“Since when do you address your commander on a first name basis in front of Navy officers, Lt. Jenkins?” I flashed loudly. “And since when does a doctor dictate when I get fucking reports . . .”

The room was suddenly spinning, and Jenkins was reaching towards me. Somehow the bed came out from underneath me.

“. . . my clan . . . repor . . . Jenkin . . . fucking doctor . . .” I honestly don’t know if I managed to get the last words out but, I think I did. I was sure as hell thinking them clearly enough.

When I opened my eye, Ronin was sitting on the edge of the medcouch. She smiled at me and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Without even thinking, I reached out for her with tears springing to my own eye. With a tiny cry, she buried her head in my neck and we hugged each other as we wept together.

We wept for our clan and our lost brothers and sisters gone outside, for our Navy brothers and sisters, for our Fleet and the loss of our known universe gone now these eight hundred years. We wept for each other, and for the sadness of love denied and the joy of love admitted and embraced. And we clung to each other fiercely, so long our arms ached. We spoke to each other in phrases to comfort.

“. . . fell in love with you from the first day . . . pukey shirt and all . . .”

“. . . loved you from the first day you led us and kicked my ass and challenged . . .”

“. . . couldn’t tell you, afraid to tell you, afraid you didn’t . . .”

“. . . so distant and . . . chain of command . . . had to maintain . . .”

Ronin, Carla, my beautiful Amazon warrior, her face wet with tears, fell asleep against my shoulder with her arms curled around my neck.

When I woke, she was gone. I knew it was real, though, because the blankets were wet under my neck and shoulder. One of the new trooper “doctors in training” appeared soon after the med unit began chirping, a handsome young Hanosian man.

“I have the unit set to notify me when you wake up. And, yes, if you get too worked up it will automatically trank you to oblivion, so let’s not get worked up, alright?”

“Why, Doc? Why do I need to stay calm?”

“Simple, Commander. You’re just too big and quick and strong, and you frighten me with both your anger levels and your violence. One day you will break and lose control, and may Hatavia help anyone near you when it happens.”

“What is it with this psycho-babble, trooper?” I demanded with an edge to my voice.

He smiled at me. “And I have a button I can push anytime I feel like it to trank you. I have also officially relieved you of command indefinitely, until such time as I judge you are ready to resume, both physically and emotionally.”

“That’s abuse of power! You don’t have the authority.”

His smile grew evilly.

“Is it?” he asked in a nasty tone. “I would call it justice. Now I have the ability to do something about you and the monster you have become, or perhaps were all along. I knew if I could get to be a doctor here in the ship hospital I would see you in here, sooner or later.”

“AI!” I yelled as loudly as I could. “Help!”

“Oh, Commander, do calm yourself. I have the AI turned off in here tonight and the sonic and visual curtains for this bay are active. I can see from the look of surprise on your face you can’t seem to raise anyone on your transceiver. Well, I build them now, and I can disable them.”

He laughed, guttural and feral as his fingers danced along the slate he was holding, and said, “Very soon, you will succumb to a paralyzing agent I am infusing into you even now. When it is done, you and I will have a little talk . . . about pacifism, about Hanos, and how you came to ruin it all. Did you know we were going to get all of the advanced technology we wanted from the Torbor when we turned you over to them? Did you also know my brother was in the group of security agents you brutally murdered in the ministry building when you escaped?”

Fear washed through me. I knew he intended to kill me. There is probably no worse thing a man of action can feel than to be fully conscious and yet fully paralyzed while facing an enemy who wanted to kill. By now, his drugs were fully working. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even control my eyes. I watched in my peripheral vision as the violet-eyed young man pressed more buttons on the console above my head. He was whistling a tune.

I heard a door whisper a hiss to open and close, and Doctor Annsbury walked into the medbay through the forcefield isolation curtains.

“Doctor,” she was saying, “have you seen the . . .? Oh! What’s going on here?”

“Just checking the medication levels and vitals, Doctor,” the trooper near me said, all innocence.

I could do nothing at all to gain her attention, not even roll my eyes. All was lost.

Her eyes narrowed in a frown. “Something is not right here,” she stated with finality and turned to look at the readouts. “I have never entered a room without JD’s eyes flashing over me like a lech, but . . . wait . . . he looks like he is paralyzed!”

Quickly, so quickly I was amazed, the Hanosian whipped a scalpel from his lab coat pocket and slashed at the doctor twice. Bright red blood spurted and she screamed and turned to run. I couldn’t see much but was able to see the man leap toward her and hear her scream again. He must have slashed her once more. I could just barely see them both falling down, and her arm shot out, reaching toward a large red button set into a bulkhead.

It was a medical emergency alarm. Immediately a klaxon went off loudly and the AI came online saying, “Please state the emergency.”

“Help!” shouted the doctor.

“Shut down in Ward A and get out of here!” screamed the Hanosian. “Get out! Get out!”

A bluish mist shot from the slatted ventilator above my head. At least, I think it was bluish . . .

A different Hanosian trooper and the captain were both standing near when I opened my eyes.

“You see, Captain, with the AI in control the amounts and combinations of drugs administered can be very exactingly controlled as Commander Rawlings opened his eyes precisely as predicted by the AI.”

“I do see it, Doctor, thanks to your detailed examples.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, a rasp in my voice.

“A sad day on the Rontar,” the captain replied, “a very sad day. A couple of hours ago, Doctor Annsbury walked in on one of the doctors in training from your Marines standing over you. She recognized something amiss and attempted to intervene when the young man attacked her without warning, with a scalpel. She was rather badly injured but managed to hit the emergency alarm.

“The AI took a few moments to read the biologics of all those present and to analyze them and determined something was, indeed, very wrong. It then administered a sleeping compound to knock out everyone here and spent the necessary time to make a full diagnostic, then called me. A security team was sent to restrain the trooper until we could get a full explanation from the AI.”

He sighed deeply. “Doctor Annsbury has suffered massive injury. We did manage to save her life, although it is not certain what kind of recovery she may be able to make.”

The Hanosian with the captain spoke then. “Trooper Marin Woepel, sir, med student for the clan. The lacerations inflicted upon the doctor were deep and extensive. The doctor lost critical amounts of blood and her brain was deprived of oxygen for some time. The AI and the rest of us believe she may yet make a full recovery but it could take quite some time. We have infused her with the best neural nanites we can produce.”

“What about Lieutenant Carla Donner?” I asked. “Please check on her immediately. She was here visiting me when I fell asleep, and gone when I awoke just now. I don’t know if she left on her own initiative or if the doctor may have . . .”

“Lt. Donner is in her quarters, sir. I spoke with her only moments ago.”

“Thank you, Trooper Woepel.”

He grinned at me with his perfect teeth. “You’re welcome, Commander.”

I turned back to the captain. “Dr. Annsbury saved my life, Captain. The other Hanosian meant to kill me. It was revenge . . .”

“Yes, we know. The man has been screaming his intended vengeance as loudly as he can since he was arrested.”

“He also said something about relieving me of command. Is this true, Captain?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it is. The orders were recorded three days ago extending the battlefield relief of command. Doctor Annsbury was, unfortunately quite busy with other patients.”

“Three days!”

“You were reported to be very weak, very close to death.”

“Verbally, I’ll bet!”

“We had no reason to disbelieve it at that time, JD.”

“Well, what is the protocol for something like this, Captain? Is there a protocol?”

Lewellyn smiled at me. “As someone I know said to me recently, ‘If we are the new Fleet, then we make our own rules as we see appropriate.’ I believe this is one of those situations. Doctor Woepel, you are witness. AI! What is the current medical condition of Commander Rawlings? Summary, please.”

“Commander Rawlings is in excellent physical condition, sir,” the AI responded, “other than missing a limb and eye, and having multiple and extensive contusions, cauterization burns, numerous broken bones, and multiple penetrating trauma wounds to his torso. All of which are healing nicely. His transceiver is no longer functional and his nanos appear to have been neutralized. Recent surgeries to his left hand and abdomen were successful and are healing well.”

“How about the commander’s mental or emotional state? Can you give us any statement on those?” the captain queried further.

“Yes, Captain Lewellyn. The commander is calm and rational. His first thoughts upon awakening were to ascertain his surroundings and circumstances, and to query about the state of persons held dear by him. Since he awoke his questions and statements are quite consistent with someone well in control of themselves. There have been no untoward emotional outbursts nor acting out or transference. Lacking further data, I would judge him to be fairly well adjusted. This is consistent with his baseline, recorded only six weeks ago by Doctor Annsbury.”

“AI, do you concur Commander Rawlings is fit to be in command of his clan?”

“I concur, sir. The commander is at this moment mentally and emotionally fit to return to active duty and to command the clan, other than the missing leg and full healing of his rather extensive list of other injuries, of course.”

“And you, Dr. Woepel, do you concur?”

“I do, sir.”

“Right! AI, record and transmit to Ship AI and Combat AI immediate. As of this moment Commander JD Rawlings is returned to active duty and to command of the PapaBravo Clan, as so directed by Captain Andreas Lewellyn, agreed to by the Medical AI, witnessed and agreed by Doctor Woepel, and over-riding the wrongful order of Doctor Dullin to relieve the commander in the first place.”

“Recorded and transmitted, Captain. Congratulations, Commander. Will you require crutches, sir?”

“I don’t know yet, AI. I will have to let you know.”

The captain looked around with a small frown. “What is that infernal noise?”

Woepel replied, “Um, that would be cheering . . . from the Marine section, sir.”

“What is to be done about Doctor Annsbury, Captain?” I asked.

“We have done all we can do for her at the moment, Commander. If the treatment prescribed is going to have any chance at success, she must have constant care for several months while she is kept in a medical coma, I am told.”

“Yes,” added Trooper Woepel. “We’ll need to watch her carefully for a few days before we dare make any sort of official prognosis at all.”

“Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I have a few items on my desktop I probably should be addressing. This doctor is in charge of the hospital for the moment,” announced the captain.

I couldn’t help noticing as he left, his shoulders seemed a little more stooped than before the battle with the Shaquaree. I turned to Woepel.