jeriendhal | Returned to Life, Part Sixteen

“What the hell happened to you, Sergeant?” Lance asked, leaning down on one knee, and looking shocked. “How long have have you been captive?”

“Hu?” Nightwind chuckled wearily and flopped onto his back with a clank. “I’ve only been here... two, three days maybe. Can’t tell. The shut down my internal chrono along with everything else. This... this is all from a little accident a while back, involving me, some pirates, and a collapsing corridor. The docs keep saying that they’ll figure out why the skin grafts aren’t taking, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.” He started to laugh again, but couldn’t catch enough air and began to hyper-ventilate, until he closed his good eye and and forced himself to slow his breathing down. “Hate this fragging sh*t”

“What did they do to you?” Rachael asked. Her initial fear had faded once she realized how helpless the Sergeant appeared.

“Pulled the plug on my internal power,” he said. “I got just one good lung, and only partial function in my liver. The rest of my meat organs work fine without help.” He tapped his metal chest. “This is here to support my new legs and arm, and because my old spine, hips and ribcage got crushed.”

Leeza stepped forward. “Do you know if they pulled out your power unit, or just cut the connections?”

“Just cut the connections,” he said. “They pulled a lot of my internal weaponry though.”

“Maybe I can help you. I’m a ship’s engineer.” She kneeled down in front of him and started to pull off her belt.

“Lady, even if I weren’t married, that ain’t the kinda help I need right now,” he said.

Leeza blushed. “Shut up. I’ve got a mini-tool unit hidden in the belt buckle. Where’s your power unit located?”

“Abdomen access panel,” he said. “What’s your rank, by the way?”

“I’m a civilian, Leeza Blake. Lance is my cousin. Rachael over there is... um, she’s our friend.” Rachael could only nod in gratitude to Leeza for skipping over her whole complicated story right now.

Nightwind blinked his good eye. “Any relation to Admiral Blake?”

“My father.”

The sergeant hmmphed. “Sorry about that,” he said..

Leeza smiled grimly. “Let me guess, you’ve met him.” After fiddling with her tool a moment, the access panel on Nightwind’s stomach popped open with a hiss. Rachael could see what appeared to be a small toroid nestled in the center of the cyber-Vulpine’s abdomen, like an extremely compact Tokamak reactor.

“Bad blood?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.”

Nightwind growled softly. “Oh, I can believe it. That chickensh*t desk jockey is the one that assigned me to this whole FUBAR’ed op. Pulled me out of my regular unit and hooked me up with the worst bunch of gung-ho glory dogs you ever saw. Said it was for ‘...a mission vital to the security of Earth and the GSA.’ Said if I didn’t take it he’d gladly accept my resignation. I should have just blown him off and yelped to Admiral Stovensky, but I didn’t want to risk my sergeant stripes. The whole fraggin’ thing smelled from the start!”

Leeza glanced back to Rachael and Lance. “This didn’t involve hitting what looked like a civilian freighter, did it?”

The cyber-Vulpine frowned. “I can’t discuss that.”

“It did, didn’t it?” Rachael cried out. “You were the ones that killed those poor little Ferin!”

TBC