Earthbound by DM Arnold (read book .TXT) 📕

The shuttlecar zigged and zagged around other vehicles as Nyk used the inertial sink to change directions instantly. The squad car began to fall behind. He crossed a small bridge. Then he pressed a control to increase the Z- component of his thrust vector and create some lift. The shuttle rose off its wheels. Pulling the stick full to the left, he executed a tight U-turn and headed back in the direction he had come.

As he approached the bridge from the other side he saw the squad car, stopped and pulled across both lanes of the highway. The officer had jumped out, pulled his service pistol and was crouching by the guardrail.

Nyk pushed the unistick forward again for more speed. He aimed the shuttle directly at the stopped police car. The officer jumped behind the guardrail and braced himself for impact. Nyk increased the Z and flew over the top of the stopped cruiser. The shuttlecar touched down, tires screeching and smoking on contact with the pavement.

He sped down the highway, pulled onto the side road and stopped behind a deserted school. A touch on the control panel began pre-launch diagnostics. He was awaiting the orbital trajectory coordinates from the navigation computer when he saw flashing lights in the distance, coming his way from two directions. The door safety catches engaged with a snap.

The shuttlecar nosed up and shot skyward. Nyk manipulated the navigational computer as he ascended through the stratosphere. He fired the subwarp coil as soon as he was beyond the atmosphere. The craft's sensors detected the relay station's transponder and he headed toward it at maximum sublight velocity.

The spacedoor opened and he saw the flashing approach lights. He pulled back on the unistick and guided the car into the bay. The shuttle touched down on the deck and he initiated bay repressurization before he came to a halt in the parking stall.

Shuttlebay repressurization required only a couple of minutes but it seemed an eternity. He heard the door safety catches release and he jumped out, picked up Suki and headed into the station's workroom.

Nyk opened the hatch to the station's emergency stasis chamber. He switched off the portable stasis canister, removed it from her head and slid her in. The control panel indicated good stasis. He went through decontamination and placed a vidphone call to Veska, marked it urgent and paced back and forth before the vidisplay.

“Hello, my friend and son.” He saw Veska's image on the vidisplay. “What is so important?”

“I need the first available inbound vessel for a medical emergency. Also, a portable stasis chamber for patient transport. We have a grave injury here.”

“Who's injured?” Veska asked.

“Someone on the comm station. It's very serious. I have them in the stasis chamber now.”

Veska shook his head. “Those comm techs shouldn't be permitted to work alone. They should have a buddy with them. It's a good thing you happened by. Let me consult the packet schedule ... Nothing I can divert ... There's an inbound colonial courier. I can't order them to divert, but I'll transmit a request. Please stand by.”

The vidphone session suspended. Nyk paced back and forth. Veska reappeared. “Nyk, it's a courier from the Lexal colony. They have a stasis chamber on board, and they've agreed to divert to transport the patient. Expect their hail in 1.2 segments.” The display went blank.

Nyk resumed his pacing. He looked into the stasis chamber and at its control panel. The hail came over the vidisplay, then the courier docked with a gentle thud. A pair of attendants came through the docking port, dragging a field stasis chamber on a levitating pallet.

“Over here,” Nyk said and directed them toward the comm station's chamber. He switched it off, opened its hatch and withdrew Suki. The attendants helped him maneuver her into the portable chamber's transparent tube.

“Man or woman?” the attendant asked.

“A woman.”

“She's certainly bleeding badly,” an attendant said noticing the red splotch on the sheet.

“We have good stasis,” the second attendant said upon activating the portable unit. “We'll take her directly to the Floran City shuttleport. A skimmer's standing by to transport her to the Central Clinic.”

“I'll accompany her,” Nyk said. “Call ahead, ask for Dr Kurso Aahhn.” He followed them into the courier. The attendant pressed a control and the pallet settled onto the deck.

Nyk looked at the bulkhead separating the courier's cabins. The door to the forward cabin was closed. “The chancellor's in there,” the attendant said. “It's good we're ahead of schedule. He's needed on the homeworld for an important meeting -- and he hates being late.”

Nyk belted himself into a crewman's jump seat as the warp indicators signaled the impending jump. A subjump brought the courier into orbit around his indigo homeworld. The spacecraft maneuvered to head belly-first into Floran's upper atmosphere. Nyk could see the orange-red glow of their reentry through the viewports. Upon entering the stratosphere, the craft extended a pair of wings and flew toward Floran City.

The courier touched down onto the polymer concrete runway of the shuttleport and taxied to a stop near the diplomatic gate of the private terminal. The doorway popped open and a stairway unfolded and locked in place. A pair of skimmers approached the parked craft. Nyk watched as the forward hatch dropped and a compact-looking man was escorted into one of the skimmers. He glimpsed the back of a tall woman in a long gown as she was helped into the craft. She was wearing her oat-straw white hair up, in a twist. The skimmer lifted off and headed toward the center of the city.

“Who was that?” Nyk asked one of the attendants.

“Mykko Wygann, our chancellor. He's addressing the High Legislature on the topic of colonial security.”

“Don't tell me your chancellor has an ax'amfin consort.”

“Are you speaking of Mrs Wygann, our beloved princess?” the Lexalese attendant asked.

Nyk blushed. “Please accept my apologies,” he replied, wondering if he were the only Floran citizen who despised the finishing schools.

The attendant activated the pallet's antigrav field and pushed it out the door. Nyk helped guide it to the ground, and a pair of medical corpsmen loaded it into the other skimmer.

“We'll take her from here,” a corpsman said.

“I'm not leaving her side,” Nyk replied, and he climbed into the skimmer. The vehicle lifted off and sped toward the emergency department of the Central Clinic. The corpsmen offloaded the pallet and pushed it into emergency receiving.

A pair of orderlies slipped Suki from the stasis chamber and began unwrapping the sheet. An emergency medic folded the fabric back from her face. He looked at Suki's black hair, pallid, yellowish skin and the shape of her face. He turned to Nyk. “What is this? Who is this?”

“She's a patient who needs your help. She's an Earth woman. I brought her here for a special ExoAgency project. I have the appropriate Agency authorization.”

“I can't treat her.” the medic exclaimed.

“Why not?”

“It's highly irregular!”

“This is for an ExoAgency project.” Nyk replied. “Haven't you taken an oath to preserve life?”

“Of course.”

“Then, preserve her life!”

“But that oath applies to...”

“She's no less human than you or I.”

“I'll need to obtain authorization to begin treatment.”

“How long will that take?” Nyk asked. “How long out of stasis before the damage is irreparable? Once someone goes into stasis, they must remain there or be reanimated. Otherwise they die.”

“You've no need to explain my job to me,” the medic replied. Nyk returned the medic's glare. “I'll return her to stasis and page Aahhn.” The orderlies slid her back into the stasis tube.

Nyk paced around the emergency room. He heard the orderlies speaking to each other and saw them pointing in his direction. His friend Aahhn approached. “What's the commotion? What's this I hear of an Earth woman?” He looked into the stasis chamber, then at Nyk.

“It's ExoAgency business, Aahhn. I'll take full responsibility.”

“I'm certain you will. What's the nature of her injuries?”

“Self-inflicted cuts to the wrists. She lost a lot of blood.”

Aahhn turned to the emergency medic. “Check and bind her wounds. Get a synthetic blood infusion going. Keep her in stasis until her blood volume's been restored. Then prepare the reanimation chamber.”

The medic nodded acknowledgement and glared at Nyk.

“I'll check her out once we have her reanimated,” Aahhn said. “What was her condition when she entered stasis? Was she breathing, did she have a pulse?”

“None I could detect.”

“How long before stasis?”

“Maybe a quarter-segment. No more than that.”

Aahhn shook his head. “I don't know, Nyk. She's apt to have brain damage.”

“I put a portable stasis canister on her head while I transported her to the relay station. I don't know how good the stasis was, but it had to be better than nothing.”

“A stasis canister?” Aahhn said. “Interesting ... Right now, let's get her reanimated.”

Nyk sat in a waiting area. An attendant beckoned to him and he followed her into a treatment room. He saw Suki lying on a therapeutic pallet. She was unconscious, but breathing on her own. Her skin had a greyish cast and her lips were black. On her head was a helmet-like device and a light drape covered her from her armpits to her feet.

“How's she doing?” he asked.

“The reanimation was normal,” the attendant replied. “Her vitals look good. We gave her quite a bit of synthetic blood -- that's why her color is off.”

“What about her brain activity?”

“You'd best speak with the doctor about that.”

Nyk sat beside Suki and stroked her cheek. He pressed his hand against his eyes. “Oh, Suki,” he whispered. “I'm so sorry ... I wish I were there for you ... I did what I could ... please...”

“She can't hear you.” Nyk turned and saw Aahhn reviewing a portable vidisplay.

“Aahhn! Tell me she'll be all right.”

“I wish I could. Nykkyo, your friend did experience some brain injury.”

“Even with stasis?”

“Your stasis canister probably saved her. When I saw the degree of tissue hypoxia, I was surprised we could reanimate her.”

“Are her injuries permanent?”

“We detected some other tissue damage, but we think it's reversible. We've repaired her wrists. She severed some tendons along with her blood vessels, but all that's been patched up. There may be some lingering numbness in her left thumb, though. We used a lot of synthetic blood -- she was down to ten percent of her own by the time we were done.” Aahhn poked the vidisplay. “I'm worried about her heart. It started right up, but we'll need to watch her cardiac rhythms carefully for a couple of days.”

Nyk picked up one of Suki's hands and examined and stroked her wrist. Barely noticeable scars betrayed the places where she had cut herself. “What can you do for her heart?”

“It may be weakened permanently.”

“What about the brain injury?”

“We're using neural induction. We have salvaged cases worse than hers, but not much worse.”

“Will she be all right?”

“It's too soon to tell.” Aahhn looked at her vital readings on the side of the pallet. “For the life of me, Nyk -- I don't know why you'd take the risk to bring her here.”

“It was her only hope. She'd have been declared dead at an Earth hospital.”

“The condition of a member of that planet's population is no concern of ours. You know that. You should've left well enough alone.”

“No, Aahhn. This was the right thing to do.”

“Well, now she's here. I've instructed my staff to treat her as any other patient. Protocol dictates any attempted suicide must see a psychomedic. I suppose we'll need you to interpret for us, once she regains consciousness -- if she does. That won't be until we discontinue the neural induction, which won't be until mid-morning tomorrow.” Aahhn set down the vidisplay. “It's late and I'm calling it a day. Why don't you go home and get some rest?”

Nyk headed for the tubecar platform and rode to his apartment. He took the lift to his floor and approached the door.