In Command (#1 Post-Order 66 Series)

In Command - Part 27

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Their voices sounded distant as her eyelids fluttered. It was as if she was listening to a conversation from underwater, able to recognize their individual timbres, but not what they were saying. There was a dull ache in her left hand. Why does that hurt? Perhaps I smashed it in something. I always am smashing my fingers in panels. A light shone brightly through her eyelids, and she scrunched them shut further. The voices were becoming clearer, and they sounded panicked. She tried to flex her fingers. Why aren't they moving? She tried to make a fist, but instead of feeling her fingers touching, a white hot pain shot up into her shoulder. She awoke gasping.

"HUNTER! Hand me a tourniquette! We have to get the bleeding stopped."

"She's awake! Can you knock her out again?"

"No, with the amount of blood she's lost, I'm hesitant to sedate her unless absolutely necessary. The best I can do is try to dull the pain." Tech's goggled face loomed over her. "Senna, can you understand me?"

She opened her mouth to reply but all that came out was a frantic yelp as the ache turned into a hot knife blade slicing into her nervous system. Tech's gloved hand brushed against her neck, pushing her hair out of the way. "I know, I know. I'm sorry. It should be getting better momentarily." She felt the prick of an injection in her neck and the cool solution rushing through her system. Suddenly, the pain dulled, and her body relaxed. Her left arm still throbbed, but the shooting pain that felt like her body was on fire had dissipated. She tilted her head back in the bunk and met Rex's amber eyes from where he was kneeling at her head. There was fear and anger and anguish in his eyes that she didn't understand. She tried to speak, but her throat was raw and her lips were dry. She coughed and tried to sit up, but Tech and Rex pushed her back down.

"You've got to relax right now. Your body may start to go into shock shortly."

She licked her lips, trying to moisten them, but they felt like sandpaper. "Where...what happened?" she rasped.

"We are on our way back to Alderaan. We should reach it in a few hours. Until then, I'm doing what I can for your pain management, but the medical staff there should be able to help you more. We can work on getting you a prosthetic once the wound has healed," Tech stated.

A prosthetic? The memories and realization hit her like a meteor crashing into a moon. My hand. Turning her head to look down her body, she saw her left arm had been amputated just below the elbow. Hunter had handed Tech a tourniquet, and he was urgently looping it around her upper arm and tightening it. Echo and Wrecker hung back against the walls, concern painted across their faces as they awaited instruction. Wrecker had a large smear of blood across his chest plate and his hands were trembling at his sides. Hunter was digging bandages out of Tech's medkit and handing them to him like a surgeon's assistant as Tech worked to stop the bleeding. She could see the floor was covered in smeared blood and bootprints and everything started to feel numb. That's my blood.

"Rex, distract her please," Tech said quietly, noting the look spreading across her features as she took in the scene before her.

She felt gloved hands against her cheeks as Rex pulled her face to look at him. "Hey, hey you're ok. It's going to be ok." His voice was cracking and did little to reassure her. "Tech's going to get you fixed up and once we get to Alderaan, we'll look at next options for your hand. Maybe we'll get you something with a scomp-link like Echo has." He laughed dryly, but the tears in his eyes were threatening to stream down his cheeks. "It's going to be alright. We'll talk through those plans we had to go find my brothers, and we'll go on all sorts of adventures across the galaxy. And everything will be ok, alright?" She nodded numbly as he leaned down and kissed her forehead, his breath stuttering against her skin.