Starpiercer: Sunlight's Edge

CHAPTER XX: TOMAS IX

XX
TOMAS IX

Tomas awoke and discovered he wasn't dead, which was nice. He was also high as a kite, which was even better. He'd done his share of recreationals in university. Now he kind of wished he'd done more. This was great.

"Morning, hero,"

He blinked upwards. "Huh."

Captain Colemon and Roolu were standing over him. Which was weird, because there wasn't any gravity on the Caroline. But there it was. He even felt it pulling at him. A wave of nausea swept over Tomas as he reasserted himself into two cardinal dimensions. It was like vertigo after so long in zero-G. But as soon as it came, it passed. Probably the drugs. He cast dulled eyes around. White walls, IV bags hanging from armatures, monitors, state-of-the-art scanning systems...this wasn't the old Caroline. Where the hell was he? He remembered something...he'd done something. He tried to remember what had happened after Carcosa pulled a gun on the Tralfarians, but there was just a haze of pain and fear. He'd probably just had a panic attack and passed out. He raised up a hand and poked himself in the thigh. It felt good.

"Huh," he slurred around an overlarge tongue. "Why not...hurty?"

"Yeah, well," said Colemon, scratching his belly. "You're doped up more'n a kink-whore in a thrash bar at the moment. In half a gravity right now. We're on the Nineveh. There's a pretty good medical module here, and they've got a graviton ring. Centrifuge spin doesn't hurt as much as a full G when you've been in space for a year and a half."

"Huh."

"Are You Going To Keep Intoning Simian Noises?" demanded Roolu peevishly. "Or will you speak? We Wished to Thank You."

"Thank me?...What?"

He was so high. He realized he was grinning stupidly, and laughed a little. "Haha." He giggled, and his grin widened.

"Yeah," said Colemon. "You been out for a good two weeks. Medical coma. Lost a lot of blood there. They only brought you out now that you've healed up a bit. The half-grav is good for that." The man sat down next to him. The lights were nice and soft. Soft bed too. There was an IV in his arm. A few other beds with some injured people in them too. He wondered if he knew any of them.

"We might have lost someone else if you hadn't fired the engines. And that kid who was leading those troops, he tried to stand up to take a shot at you in a full three Gs when he'd already lost a lot of blood and internals too. Rest of it went right to his legs or out the holes. He passed the fuck out."

Tomas nodded, eyes fluttering. He was passing the fuck out too.

He woke up later, feeling groggy, but not as high. Once he'd blinked away the sleep, and some CEDF nurse -A huge, soft-toned Parlon with a voice like running water- had given him some food -real human food too, none of that paste and reclaim he'd been eating for months- he read the injury report as he ate.

Two wounds. A maser slug had blown part of his thigh off, and another had mulched a good section of intestine. The state had covered the costs of the bill though, as always, but he was still shocked. He'd lost two pounds of flesh. Maser slugs, it turned out, did a lot of damage. The little tungsten spheres had capsules of ionized gas in them, apparently. They said the bleeding was because he'd cut an artery when he fell onto a bit of metal. The shots had mostly cauterized. Other stuff on his file nerve regrowth therapy, stem cell treatment, he only vaguely understood. There was a little subnote about irregular patterning in his brain neurographs potentially inducing anxiety attacks, and he flicked through that with interest. They had deemed it was 'no cause for alarm' however. It wasn't covered by medical anyways. Besides, for some reason, he felt like it was good. It made him him.