Page 52 of Hunted By the Wraiths
“Medbay. Solren’s got him.”
I was already moving, pushing through the corridors of the Raptor. The ship felt solid, lived-in. Home.
The medbay door was open. Thoryn was on the primary biobed, Solren working over him. There was a lot of blood. Too much blood.
“How bad?” I said.
“He’ll live.” Solren didn’t look up from his work. “The blade wound reopened completely. Significant blood loss. Infection in the plasma burn. Three cracked ribs. Electrical burns from the shock weapons. And whatever the hell they injected him with is reacting badly with his Tamzari physiology.”
“But he’ll live?”
“I just said that.” Now he looked up, fixing me with those unsettling Rokavai eyes. “He’ll need at least a week of recovery. Real recovery, not the ‘I’m fine let me fight’ nonsense you both seem to favor.”
“A week,” I repeated.
“Minimum.”
I looked at Thoryn. Unconscious, pale under his scales, but breathing. The biobed’s readouts showed stable vitals. Improving, actually.
He’d live.
The adrenaline drained out of me all at once. I sat down hard on the visitor’s chair before my legs gave out.
“You’re injured too,” Solren noted.
I looked down. Blood on my shirt. Not Thoryn’s. Mine. A graze across my ribs I hadn’t even noticed. Another on my shoulder. Various bruises making themselves known now that the fight was over.
“It can wait,” I said.
“No, it can’t.” He pressed a dermal regenerator into my hand. “Fix yourself while I fix him. That’s an order.”
“You’re not my doctor.”
“I am now. Unless you’d prefer to find another medic who’ll patch you up after suicidal rescue missions.”
Fair point.
I ran the regenerator over the worst wounds while Solren worked. The medbay was quiet except for the hum of machinery and the occasional beep from the monitors. Peaceful, almost.
Serak appeared in the doorway. “Vashil?”
“Dead.”
He nodded. No judgment, no questions. Just acceptance.
“The data caches?” he asked.
“Still have them.” I pulled the three chips from my pocket. Somehow, through everything, I’d kept them. “Your data guy will want these.”
“He will. But it can wait.” He studied me for a moment. “You did well.”
“I got us captured.”
“You survived. Both of you. That’s what matters.”
He left before I could argue.
Jessa showed up next, carrying tea. Because of course she did. The woman who looked like a friendly aunt had just helped storm a station, and her first priority was tea.
