The Abyss of Time

Chapter Seventeen

     "He can't be moved," said Doctor Sebastian De Maros Arruda as he entered the infirmary and saw Tensy looking at a patient's medical notes. "His condition's far too serious."

     "His condition will get far worse if he's still aboard when we fly the ship into the sun, "Tensy replied. "We need to find a way to get him to the Bynoe." The Bynoe was the Beagle class lander that was being converted to a mobile hospital.

     "The ship can remain in orbit for a few more days until his condition improves." Arruda bent over the patient; one of the security men who'd been burned when the cyborgs blew up the original Operations room. "He'll be in much better condition to be moved in a week or so. We have enough bottled oxygen for a few patients and a skeleton staff of nurses."

     "And what if the cyborgs come aboard when the rest of us have left? You want to see him converted? You want to see your nurses converted?"

     "I'd be willing to have a suicide chip implanted."

     "What about the nurses? Would they be willing to have a device implanted in their brains that'd kill them if the cyborgs try to convert them? Would you ask them to do something like that?"

     "Several of us have served in war zones before," Arruda told her. "It's a risk you sign up for when you put on the white coat."

     "Well the Skipper isn't willing to risk your lives. He's ordered that everyone goes down to the planet at the same time, including him."

     "I cannot, in all conscience, agree to that," Arruda told her. "You can tell your father-in-law that if he wants to move this man he'll have to send a squad of his goons to push us out of the way."

     "You think he won't do that?" said Lucy, coming forward to stand beside her brother's wife. "He'll do exactly that if you make him, and then he'll be roughly handled by guards to the lander instead of taken gently by you. My father doesn't mess around."

     "Neither do I, young lady. The good of the patient comes first. We swore an oath."

     "The good of the patient means protecting him from the cyborgs," said Tensy, staring him in the eye. "You can coddle him all you want once he's aboard the lander."

     "I will be taking this up with the Executive officer himself," Arruda promised them. He gave hard looks to both women, then turned and stalked out of the room.

     They stared after him. Then Lucy sagged against Tensy, who put a supportive arm around her shoulder. Lucy let herself be held for a moment, then gently pulled away. "He's got a point, you know," she said, looking down at the patient. "Look at him. He's barely holding on. What if he dies while we're trundling him along the corridor?"

     "Then it'll be the cyborgs who killed him," Tensy told her. "Not us."

     Lucy nodded unhappily. She looked at the patient's medical notes, glowing on the wall screen, then looked down at the man himself. "David Gibson," she said. "Married with a twelve year old son. Twelve years is too old to become a full cyborg. The kid would have become a zombie. A twelve year old zombie. That's what he was willing to die to prevent." She wiped a tear from her eye.

     "Are you okay?" asked Tensy, suddenly concerned.

     "Fine. As fine as you, anyway. I've seen you when you thought no-one was watching."

     "It's different. I'm thirty. You're only eighteen. You're too young for this."

     "You told dad you needed help."