Captain: Eye of the Empress I (A Space Opera)

Eyes of the Empress

Commander Thea Cassidy rose out of the sticky marshmallow of unconsciousness with the panicked sensation of having her arm ripped from her body. For just a moment, she was tempted to ask herself where she was, and what had happened to her.

Then her training kicked in, and she accepted with resignation that at least one of the questions would never be answered. She never did know what happened for the weeks or months just before she awoke from unconsciousness.

The first part of her question was simple enough to answer. The gentle white noise and soothing gray-blue color scheme indicated she was in a hospital, and the membranes holding her naked body in place suggested she was in a healing pod, organic materials and nanobots working together to heal her.

Thea tried to sit up, and was answered by a searing pain behind her eyes. Millennia of humans developing healing skills, and they still couldn't prevent a crippling headache after a mind wipe. Ridiculous. She breathed slowly and deeply, trying to regain control, then opened her eyes and tried again.

This time she managed to sit up and push the clinging healing membranes, if not completely off herself, down to her knees. She shuddered at the touch. They were mostly made of her own cells, cultured from her own cord blood, and should be familiar and soothing, yet somehow she had never managed to reconcile herself to them. It felt less like returning to the womb as like being wrapped in her own corpse. She detested the membranes. Still, frequent surgery was part of her job, and perhaps eventually familiarity would breed contempt.

Time to take inventory. She rubbed her hand over her face, recognizing the familiar mouth and nose and mouth. Her own face, not the mask of a stranger. Her body seemed intact. Her muscles were, if anything, even firmer and more tightly toned than she remembered, so she couldn't have been in a healing pod too long. Her right leg seemed ever so slightly more muscular than the left, which was interesting. She almost caught herself wondering what she'd been doing that favored one leg so much, or for how long, before reminding herself not to speculate.

There was a faint stinging sensation on her left shoulder. The drifted her fingers across it, letting the tickling touch soothe the discomfort, noting the newly grown, tender skin. So, the impression of a destroyed arm had not been a nightmare, it had been a fragment of memory. There weren't supposed to be any left, the relevant connections between neurones entirely removed, but she had heard rumors before that physical trauma sometimes left shadows on the mind after a wipe, while mental trauma did not. Odd, really. She would have thought it would be the other way around. In any case, the memory would fade soon on its own, unless she struggled to hold onto it.

She wouldn't take such an excessively imprudent course of action.

It was only human to wonder what had caused such a large wound, if it had been a blaster, a projectile weapon or a blade. What quick action of her own had prevented death? Or, more likely, what mistake had she made to endanger herself in the first place?

The thought made her panic and little, and look around the room. There, on the smooth plastic side table, lay her spectacles, beside a tiny pellet, hardly bigger than a grain of rice. She pushed herself over the side of the pod, placed her glasses on her eyes, picked up her computer and dropped it into the tiny hole behind her wrist bone. Her skin closed over the personal computer.

—Good morning and welcome back, Thea Cassidy.—

—Good morning, Eric. Access my financial records, will you?—

An image floated on the clear glass of her spectacles. A substantial number of credits had been added to her account. Enough to rent a quarter of a suite in the Palace for a year.