Into the Void

Chapter 29

Nate’s eyes fluttered open, he was lying strapped to a soft bed, and being pushed down a long metal hallway. He wasn’t sure what Empire was supposed to come for him or how much time had passed but he hoped his friends were okay. Nate looked left and saw Izzy keeping pace with his bed, she looked worried. The bed turned a corner and came to a stop. A doctor leaned over him and shone a small light into his eyes.

“Nathan, can you hear me?” said the doctor.

“Yes, what year is it?” asked Nate.

“2351” said the doctor, placing the back of his hand to Nate’s forehead.

“Okay, must have been dreaming then. I dreamt that machines killed our planet and an Empire was coming to save us.”

“That sounds like a quite a dream Nathan. You get some rest, son, we’ll get you better.”

Nate nodded and closed his eyes as someone pricked his left arm with a needle. He awoke again some time later feeling like someone had filled his mouth with sawdust. The lights in the medical bay were dimmed and it looked like he was alone. He tried to call out but only succeeded in making a dry croaking sound. Someone had tucked a small plastic cylinder with a button on the top into his hand, he wasn’t sure whether pressing the button would call a nurse or give him a dose of morphine but he figured either option would be nice. He clicked the button and a few minutes later a nurse walked into the medical bay carrying a small cup of water. He greedily sucked down the contents of the cup and coughed.

“How are you feeling?” asked the nurse. She had a soft breathy voice, and long red hair.

“Not the best.” said Nate in a dry whisper. “What’s the damage?”

“Well, you’ve been shot. You got a pretty nasty infection that we’re having trouble fighting. You’ve been out for a couple days. Let me get the doctor and we can go over some treatment options he wanted to discuss with you.”

The nurse left and returned with another cup of water and the doctor. Nate drank the second cup and sat up, waiting for the doctor to speak.

“Nathan, glad to see you’re awake.” said the doctor. “The infection you’ve got is pretty bad but we’ve talked it over and come it with a few treatment options for you. With the wound being up on your shoulder, option one would be to take the arm off and replace it with another cybernetic piece. Of course there’s risk of further infection there as with any amputation, and right now we’re not sure how far the bacteria have spread. Option two is a gene-tonic from the Second Colonies. It’ll boost your natural immune response but we don’t have any guarantee that it will kill the infection.”

“I don’t want to lose the arm.” said Nate.

“Okay, gene-splicing it is.”

***

The next morning Izzy came in to visit him. “Hey, buddy, how are you?” she said.

“Well not too bad all things considered,” said Nate. “I was all loopy on our ride out how did we make it?”

“With the spare parts from the rover we were able to cobble the dropship back together and then Rowan and I flew it out. The Dauntless found us and pulled the ship into the hangar for more thorough repairs.”

“Right, what about the ships that ambushed the Dauntless?”

“I asked about that. It was another squadron of frigates, no idea where they keep coming from. They had no stealth systems and flew a series of simple maneuvers, the crew thinks they were drone ships. From what I hear the drones are pretty easy to take down but there’s been so many of them. The Dauntless has been pretty much fighting one long drawn out battle ever since we landed on the planet. When they get taken out the drone frigates drop these probes that fire out a bunch of the little drones we fought on the ground. Some of the pods came down through the atmosphere and some of them dumped their drones into the void where the PDC array took them out.”