Incursion Vector

033

[▲] INS Robert A. Heinlein, Caminha Waypoint

Lyall looked over the bridge of her nose at the ship surgeon. Even though she towered over the man, Commander Xerxes Yates still refused to be intimidated by the captain of the Agamemnon. She suspected it was because his records showed he had spent twenty years as a corpsman and was only on the Heinlein because of Michael's personal request. Anyone will the balls to drag screaming wounded soldiers off a ship of pissed off pirates shooting at everything moving-and anyone who had fully intended to do the same damn thing until he retired-wasn't going to be put off by someone who just happened to be several centimeters taller.

"Re-innervation of her arm is going at speed," said Yates, flipping through Nim's chart on his computer. "She lost a significant amount of blood and had her skull knocked around, but otherwise she'll be fine."

"Why do you have her sedated?"

Yates' thick black eyebrows arched in surprise. "Reinnervation requires the limb to be completely immobile for the duration. This is the only reliable way to keep the Lieutenant in one spot. Your sister here finds ways through security systems faster than Rommel and Guderian blitzed Europe so I put her back under after Commander Ibrahim's visit. Keeps her from getting ideas on how she can stage a breakout."

Lyall suppressed a slight grin at the man's comment. Terran World War jokes were a specialty of her father and hearing someone else make one made her feel homesick for the first time in a decade. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't seen either of her parents in person in almost three years. She had been playing vid message tag with them since First Contact but hadn't had any time to sit down and send them a proper update beyond a thirty-second alternate wording of 'both daughters are alive and well and not currently being shot at.' While she knew their mother would be taking things in her usual patient stride, relying on her 'motherly instinct' to tell whether or not her children were in danger, their information-starved father was probably going out of his mind worrying about Nim—the brat always had been daddy's little girl.

"The Commander came by?"

"Her and her son. Bright kid. Could make it into the UFS easy if his people would allow it."

Raising a questioning eyebrow she asked, "Brighter than his brother?"

"Honestly I'd say they're on par. Whole different area of smarts, though. He'd be a wash as a Marine-didn't strike me as much for shooting on command-but I'd take him as a corpsman any day of the week."

"I don't think the migrant fleet has anything equivalent to the Hospital Corps."

"So I gathered while they were here. Too bad, really."

"What did the Commander want, anyway?"

Shrugging the man answered, "Just to pass on her thanks, from what I overheard, and asked about tactics for the alien fighters. Not sure the Commander picked up all of it though-respect for her piloting skills aside, your sister's absolute shit at explaining how she decides things."

Hiking her thumb towards her sister's bed Lyall scanned the gray steel sickbay for a mobile chair to sit in. She found one a few beds over and walked over to drag in into position bedside. "Wake her up. I'll make sure she stays put."

With a skeptical frown he said, "Don't you have somewhere to be, Captain?"

"Yes." The captain fixed the man in a cold stare. "Right here having a conversation with my next of kin."

Yates shrugged and walked over to the bed where the entirety of Nim's left arm was encased in a thick red-gray medical gel wired to a dozen different overhead machines. Mostly the gel was there to keep her arm stationary, with the actual work being done by injections of synthetic stem cells and the computer which directed their re-growth into the exact pattern mapped during her most recent CNS scan. The process itself was fairly new, as up until a few decades ago nerves in regenerated or cloned limbs were left to re-associate with the nervous system using traditional physical and electrical therapy. Integrating the equipment into the Heinlein's sickbay was just one of the reasons she had left the shipyard a few years after her sister ship Asimov.