FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #7

Eyuran used the blanket to drag his father all the way to the recreation room, carefully placed him near the chairs and kneeled next to him.

"How is he?" I whispered, observing a deep wound covering almost half of Uncle Orewen's chest as Eyuran unwrapped the tarpaulin that was around his body.

"Still alive. Just unconscious." He was connected to Uncle's Node, monitoring his condition. "He has a concussion and has lost too much blood. Six ribs and three of his limbs are broken in several places. Luckily, his aorta is not damaged and his arteries are already healing. Soma is keeping him alive for now, but he needs blood or he won't make it. Tissue regeneration is too slow to cope with all the damage he has sustained."

Eyuran must have made a prompt raid to the store room—besides the tarpaulin he had returned with a bag of medical supplies and numerous blood packs. The label on the latter read 'Orewen Fargann', along with his blood data.

"I bet he didn't think he would be getting his stuff back so fast," said Eyuran with a sigh. I was doing what I could to help by imitating an IV drip stand. He looked at me and smiled. "We can hang it on a chair somehow."

"Who could have done such a thing to him?!" All I could think of was the pain my uncle was going through. The knowledge that there was little we could do to relieve it was even worse. Painkillers and other chemicals don't work on us, and even genome-specific nano-reconstruction becomes increasingly impossible for most Danna the stronger their soma is. It repels all. Only siSystem is accepted, since it is integrated with the help of individual neural stem cells during our first two years of life.

"He was cut and then hit several times by a massive blunt object; the wounds are a ripped mess. The force was so strong that if it wasn't for soma, he would be an unrecognizable pile of flesh right now. Considering the noises I heard and the fact that the surrounding metagrid is torn and bent, it looks like someone has hijacked a hull repairer."

My mind was racing. A hull repairer running rampant inside the ship? Why would someone use that monstrous machine on a living being? What did they want? This was so daring and crazy. Clearly, the enemy was desperate and this meant we should expect anything from now on. I also felt terribly guilty. If we hadn't rescued anyone, this wouldn't have happened to Uncle Orewen. I was worried about my parents and Eyuran's mother, Aunt Rifa, too. Where were they now? Were they alive? What about the rest of our kennar? And what exactly had happened on the ship?