Comfort Cargo

[caela]

Yasmin smiled almost absently as Doc made the introductions to the "patient" who was already in the infirmary. Even having come back from her lunch early he'd already beaten her here and she had to fight to keep from blushing as she pulled on her shipsuit before turning to shake his offered hand. She'd hoped to already be dressed before having to meet anyone in her role as a medical assistant.

"Yes, I've heard about you in your other capacity, though I must confess I haven't actually seen any of your other work. I'm pleased to meet you."

She couldn't keep the blush off her cheeks when he mentioned her other "work". She didn't know what to say to that so she simply did what she'd always done in school. She went into professional mode and pretended he hadn't said anything about the videos.

"The pleasure's mine Officer Peksawara," she said with a gentle smile curving her lips. The man was handsome and if he hadn't been there as a patient she might have become sidetracked but right then her mind was focused on her work and nothing else.

"Please have a seat and make yourself comfortable. Before we get started though I have to ask if you have any objections to my performing your exam today?"

It sounded almost like a trick question but she phrased it lightly and spoke in a tone of voice that was gentle and non-threatening. If he said he didn't want her doing the exam she wouldn't fuss. Some men didn't like women examining them just like some women didn't always want a male doctor. Since this was clearly not an emergency situation she would defer to the patient's preference for his routine care.

 

[Otto26]

"Why would I have any objections?" Peksawara replied, puzzled, as he stripped his shipsuit off and took a seat on the examination table.

"Oh. Sexual purity and roles taboos," he said as he understood. "My culture doesn't have many of those, and none in the context I understand your question to address. The doctor says that you're competent to conduct the examination and, in any case, he'll be observing the entire time. That's a curious idea though. Would your culture question your medical skills because of your legal or sexual status? It's not something I've explored in any depth."

"Which surprises me," Doc commented dryly. "I would have thought your activities would nearly neccesitate an examination of such cultural concepts."

Peks shook his head. "Not particularly. I just need to know the legalities surrounding the acts of sex and procreation. On Yasmin's world there's little regulation regarding voluntary sex and precious little regarding involuntary sex. About what you'd expect from a system run by pirates. On the other hand, there's precious little drive to improve genetic makeup, so I mostly have to give my services away. Duty is sometimes hard."

Doc laughed. "Peks is a... well I suppose we'd call him a missionary, though that's a funny statement as well," Doc explained to Yasmin. "His duty is to improve the genetic makeup of the human race. Mostly by impregnating women."

"You make it sound easy," Peks protested. "There's a lot of work involved in ensuring the hostesses are healthy and of sound mind, ensuring I don't fall afoul of local legal codes, looking for new genetic combinations and emerging genomes, visiting local missions. You make it sound like I just fik every slit I can talk into a vaguely horizontal position."

"Yes, yes," Doc admitted. "I'm sorry, Officer Peksawara, I didn't mean to offend. You must admit, however, that your calling is somewhat amusing when looked at through the cultural gestalt most of the rest of settled space shares."

"Savages," Peks commented, but he did so with a broad smile on his face.

 

[caela]

Would your culture question your medical skills because of your legal or sexual status?

"Question my skills?" Yasmin asked quietly, a confused look on her face as she shook her head. "No, my skill wouldn't come into question. On my world however many men prefer a male physician and many women prefer a female physician so it is something we always ask about before beginning. Patients tend to be less than honest about more...embarrassing...problems if they're uncomfortable with their doctors," she explained with a gentle smile and then fell silent, listening as Doc and Peks explained the Officers "mission".

While the men talked Yasmin worked. Her hands dipping under the sterilizer before she pulled on a pair of gloves. As she'd been taught she did a thorough physical exam, actually touching him to listen to his heart and lungs, and examining his eyes, ears, nose and throat as well. She knew that many doctors on her own world and on others often didn't bother, favoring scans to the more imprecise science of listening and touching but she agreed with her teachers that some things you only noticed through more tactile contact with a patient. She'd also been taught that it helped to form a bond of trust between patient and doctor and since Peks didn't object she continued as she'd been taught.

She made notations on a reader of his height, weight, temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing patterns. When she was done with the physical exam she re-sterilized her hands and changed her gloves before picking up the scanner. Zeroing it out she did an initial scan, recalibrated it, and then scanned Peks again.

His readings were amazing and she looked at him for the first time as a man and not just as a patient.

"Well Officer, if your duty is to help improve the species I would say you are in excellent condition to do so," she teased, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. "You're in perfect health. If I read these results anywhere but on my own scanner I'd think someone had just skimped on an exam and looked up examples of textbook prime results."

She meant it as a compliment and her admiration for what the scanner told her was clear on her face. Smiling once more she told him he could put his clothes back on while she moved to input the information into the ships computer.

She had to admit (if only to herself) that now that the exam was done she was curious to know more about the Officer's culture and why it was his "duty" to improved the genome. The whole scenario sounded intriguing to her but she didn't quite no how to ask without sounding like an idiot or without it coming out rudely.

 

[Otto26]

"Thank you, Yasmin," Peks said. He looked over at Doc, "Do I need to update any of my stock?" he asked.

Doc shook his head. "They're all just fine, Peks. I'll let you know if that changes."

Peks nodded as he pulled his shipsuit back on. "Not that I'll have any call for them at our next port, but I like to keep an eye on things."

"Speaking for the crew, we appreciate that trait, Officer Peksawara."

"Thank you, Doctor, Yasmin." He nodded formally to each of them and left.

Doc gestured and Yasmin walked over to a wall where items were cold-stored. Doc opened a couple of compartments. "Officer Peksawara's 'samples'," he pointed. "Frozen sperm. Available for sale by the gram. Elsewhere we have frozen ovum and purchased sperm samples that constitute his accumulated treasure. Every so often he'll run into an official from his culture and transfer the collection over to their care. Then he starts building a new one. Truly the universe is a wonderful thing to experience," he said cheerfully.

 

[caela]

Yasmin watched the Officer leave and only when the door closed did she let a glimmer of interest shine in her eyes. He was certainly a handsome man and she was curious about him. A curiosity that was enhanced when the Doctor started showing her his "samples".

"Why?" she finally asked. "If it wouldn't be a violation of his privacy, can you tell me about him and why he does...this?" she asked waving to the specimen collection he'd showed her.

 

[Otto26]

Doc laughed. "I don't know what it's going to take to convince you, Yasmin, but there's no such thing as privacy aboard a ship. You and I might refuse to discuss a patient's medical condition, but I promise you the whole ship will know about it within a few shifts. Peks comes from an interesting culture."

He walked over and sat down at his desk. "They re-discovered star travel fairly late. During The Dark, religious beliefs motivated them to pursue physical perfection. They started with selective breeding and, as their medical science improved, moved on to genetic engineering. They got very good at it, but it backfired on them. The exact characteristics of the plague they accidentally created are obscure, but it wiped out half of their population before they found a cure. Since they believe that when they finally achieve physical perfection they will be capable of receiving spiritual enlightment, the plague attacked their entire belief system. The answer they arrived at was that they had allowed evil into their quest; nature was the universe's laboratory and they had abandonded it. The answer brought them more strife; they embarked on a massive war of racial cleansing to remove the artificially enhanced genomes from their genetic pool."

He sighed as a feeling of sadness washed over him. "So now they pursue their goal exclusively through selective breeding. I don't know what Peks did to merit banishment, but that's their equivalent of the death sentence. They consider the rest of the universe to be somewhat... unclean. But while they disapprove of us, they covet our genetic diversity. Aspects of it, anyway. So Peks atones for his crimes by 'improving' our genetic pool and skimming the cream to be returned to his home for experimentation."

He thought about that last sentence for a minute and then apologized for the accidental joke.

"In any regard, he makes money selling his sperm and uses it to pay for sperm and ova from people he finds genetically interesting. He also pays for the storage of said samples here in the lab. If you think your life is hard, consider his, sometime. He's got the sex-drive of a rabbit and can't do anything about it for months at a time. That's why he likes to keep on top of his samples. Whenever one goes bad he has a religiously acceptable reason to masturbate. Any other time, it's forbidden to him. And our next port of call is not going to help; by the standards of his culture it's a hell."

 

[caela]

Yasmin listened as Doc talked and couldn't keep her shock off her face. The society he describe was unlike anything she could imagine. She couldn't wrap her mind around the idea of killing off entire swaths of people simply because they'd had their genomes tampered with before their birth! It wasn't their fault. It would have made more sense to simply let them die out.

That's why he likes to keep on top of his samples. Whenever one goes bad he has a religiously acceptable reason to masturbate. Any other time, it's forbidden to him. And our next port of call is not going to help; by the standards of his culture it's a hell.

That made her blink again. A man like the one that just left the infirmary couldn't even masturbate?! That was a crime in and of itself. The girls back at school would have been clamoring to help him take care of that libido.

"Why would our next port be considered a hell but the standards of his culture?" she asked, it was the only question she could think of that didn't sound utterly rude and invasive.

 

[Otto26]

"Yekaterina's Star," Doc said. "They engage in genetic manipulation. Worse, from the point of view of Peks, they've introduced artificial and animal DNA into their genome. To Peks, that makes them physical incarnations of evil, people who actively hinder the human race in their God-ordered quest for physical perfection. He won't have anything to do with them, won't even talk to them unless his official duties require it."

"I find the place fascinating, personally. The physical diversity is visually overwhelming. They've got people with tentacles for fingers, eyes adapted to the infrared, feathers for hair. And, of course, it's always interesting to see canis sapiens."

He saw the puzzled look in her eyes. "Canis sapiens," he repeated. "Thinking canines. They're the results of centuries of breeding and genetic manipulation. In Yekaterina's Star they're a sort of legal underclass that exists to serve humans. Most of them seem very pleasant, and almost pathetically eager to please. Sort of like the Mosc..." he broke off as he realized where his thoughts were taking him.

"Sorry," he apologized. "That was thoughtless of me. Let's pull up the records of our next examination. He's a power-tech, so he's likely to need some cellular repair for radiation induced damage. Would you prefer to use an RNA drip or a stem cell infusion to deal with this condition?"

 

[caela]

Yasmin thought the port sounded amazing. There wasn't much genetic manipulation done on her own planet. What was done was fairly basic. Clearing out mutations or weeding out inherited diseases. Nothing that radically changed the genome. Her own DNA was untampered with as was that of most of her planet. It was something she would have been interested in studying if they'd had the facilities for it.

Hearing about the place from Doc made her wonder if Gibon would let her off the ship or would lock her in her room while they were docked. It wasn't a planet so it wasn't like she could actually escape there but if it wouldn't earn him any money she was just as likely to be stuck aboard the ship the whole time they were docked.

Sort of like the Mosc...

The way he cut off mid-sentence made her wonder what he had meant to say but she respected his right not to say it. If he wanted her to know he'd tell her.

Let's pull up the records of our next examination. He's a power-tech, so he's likely to need some cellular repair for radiation induced damage. Would you prefer to use an RNA drip or a stem cell infusion to deal with this condition?

Looking at the scan on the computer she thought about the question for a moment before answering, "In this scan the damage isn't extensive. The RNA drip would give his own cells enough of a boost to repair themselves. I'll want another scan to be certain though. If the current scan comes up worse I'll want the stem cell infusion so that completely new cells can replace the damaged ones."

 

[Otto26]

Gibon preferred to visually assess fluid connections rather than rely upon the bots. It was a habit borne of decades of experience with cargo containers and, in this case, it saved his lfe. He was wedged between two cargo modules where every regulation said a human shouldn't be when they passed overhead. A warning cry from one of the bots alerted him to the danger before highly-localized electronic jamming severed communications.

Pulling a fiber-optic tool from the array of tools attached to his suit, he peeked the whisker around the corner and slowly scanned the exterior surface of the collected cargo modules. He spotted the movement of one figure and got the impression of several blurs that might be others. The simple fact that they wore stealth suits made them hostile.

They were between him and the main body of the ship, moving back towards the body. 'That makes it standard piracy,' he thought to himself. That meant the pirates would seek to seize control of the vessel. Failing that, they'd try to disable it and pray that their buddies would try a hostile grappling. The only way they could have gotten aboard was via a screened cargo module. Somewhere, in the hundreds of modules attached to the ship, they probably had an explosive device; maybe even a Electromagnetic Pulse Generator. Gibon had to find that before the pirates knew they'd been found out.

It was a diminishing return equation. The longer Gibon took to find the cargo container, the more danger the rest of the ship was in. But finding it quickly meant that Gibon had to take chances that drastically increased his personal risk. Gibon took out a cutting tool and quickly severed the refrigerant line to the cargo module he was working on. A cloud of nitrogen began to form and he aimed the line away from his body, as best he could.

Three bots showed up moments later, responding as programmed to a perceived emergency. As soon as they were close enough Gibon's transmitter was able to cut through the jamming and he issued instructions to them. They ponderously scurried off, manually carrying the message to the other bots and putting one of many contigency plans into action.

Gibon didn't wait to see. He'd already started scrambling away from the nitrogen cloud. That, and the high power transmitting he'd just done, were like a strobing beacon to anyone observing the cargo area and looking for the cargo handler that had to be on duty. He headed towards the spine, in the vague hope of reaching one of the emergency supply lockers and jacking into the ship's internal communications lines. He could probably locate the cargo container from there, and move it away from the ship.

He was panting hard, and using up oxygen at an alarming rate, when something tugged at his hip and spun him around hard. His suit began screaming warnings at him moments before he began screaming himself. The pain was beyond anything he'd ever felt before. It went away, mostly, a few moments later as the suit sealed itself by filling with a foam that hardened. In desperation he pulled himself hand over hand towards the spine, not really expecting to make it.

He didn't.

***

Doc looked up as a warbling alarm sounded. "Pirates," he said calmly. "There are going to be casualties. Let's prep for an influx of trauma patients and stand by for orders. If they make it to here... suicide is against my beliefs, but I can help you if you prefer."

 

[caela]

Yasmin was startled when the alarms sounded. She didn't know what they meant but they couldn't be good and she felt a shivering of fear sliding down her spine when Doc said the word "pirates". Even growing up planetside she'd heard stories of space pirates...and rumors of what they did to women, and slaves in particular.

Much as she despised him she'd rather belong to Gibon.

"There are going to be casualties. Let's prep for an influx of trauma patients and stand by for orders. If they make it to here... suicide is against my beliefs, but I can help you if you prefer."

Suicide? It was a tempting thought but she wasn't the sort to kill herself. At least not when she was thinking clearly. Without a thought she reached up, her fingers touching the collar around her throat. It was the only thing that marked her as a slave. Hell if they scanned her they'd find a crewman's implant in her neck and not look any further if she could get the collar off.

"If you want to help me Doc, then take this off me. If they make it this far we're beyond fiked and we both know if they know I'm a slave I'll be treated worse for it. If they think I'm free (and a doctor or medical assistant they can put to work) I'll have some level of protection.

We can put it in your desk and as soon as or if an all clear sounds you can put it right back on me before patients start coming in."

Her eyes were pleading as she asked him to take off the collar. She prayed he'd do it. She might want off this ship and away from Gibon, but she didn't want those things at the cost of becoming a ship whore on a pirate vessel.

 

[Otto26]

Doc simply took one of the cutting tools and removed the collar. The psuedo-plastic of the vat-forge printed collar parted easily under the cutter. Because of what he had been trained to be, he carefully disposed of the collar and sterlized the cutter before replacing it. Because of who he was, he refrained from making comments.

This was the six time, since he'd been aboard the ship, that pirates had attacked it. They hadn't come close to taking over the ship the previous five times and he didn't expect they'd do any better this time. There would be casualties, of course. There always were, and they were generally bad. Sometimes they were even fatal. But he expected most of those to be confined to the pirates. There were only a few ways for pirates to get aboard a vessel, and that meant it was fairly easy for ship's crews to plan effective ways to thwart the pirates. Despite this, pirates could still take a ship if they were fast, disciplined, and willing to take casualties. The Gravity's Rainbow was a bad ship for them to target though. The crew, whatever their other myriad faults, were dedicated to protecting their home and, worse, had been drilled to a high state of proficiency by a paranoid ex-Imperial Navy captain with years of experience in warfare the likes of which most pirates had never dreamed of.

The results were fore-ordained. As the pirates raced for the habitat ring, the crew locked down the ship and began to push them back. High dispersion plasma guns were thrust into gun ports in the habitat ring and the crew began sweeping them back and forth across anything coming out of the cargo area. Too weak to damage the ship or the cargo containers, the plasma sprays still did horrible things to the ad-hoc armored space-suits of the pirates.

When the cargo bots found the container the pirates had hidden in, they cut it loose and boosted it away from the ship. A small missile ensured it wouldn't do any further damage to the ship. It was necessary, even though the captain knew it would cause problems a little later. The threat of the pirates taking over the ship died quickly. The pirates took longer.

Despite assurances that they could kick loose from the ship and try to be picked-up by their conspirators, none of them did. The nature of criminals is to believe that all others are as debauched and dishonest as themselves. They would have shot people out of the sky and so they believed that they would be. Rather than die easily, they chose to die hard. And they did. The crew and the bots had to hunt them down in the vaccuum of the cargo area. It was bloody.

The casualties began streaming in shortly before the last of the pirates died, cornered near the bow sensors and trying to rig a demolition device they could use to bargain for their lives. Yasmin was doing a good job on triage and, after a bit, Doc stopped checking on her. He simply worked on stabilizing those in immediate danger and left the least injured to be treated by Yasmin. He didn't even see two crewmen still half in their space-suits drag Gibon into the infirmary, his mouth bubbling blood.

 

[caela]

Yasmin just blinked when he so easily cut the collar from her throat. She really hadn't expected him to give in to her plea that easily and with fear still knawing in her belly the best she could do was to nod her head in thanks. She just couldn't seem to make her throat work.

There was no way for her to know the ship had been attacked before or how well trained it's crew was. She could have asked Doc of course but she was too frightened to really think straight.

At least until the wounded started to arrive.

It was a baptism by fire that was for sure. As the wounded were brought in she simply went to work. Her mind shut down the fear and she concentrated on the patients in front of her. As the wounded were brought in she was near the door, the worst were placed on cots for Doc to see, the absolutely life threatening moved to the head of the line. The broken bones, cuts, concussions etc. she took care of herself to keep Doc free for those with severe injuries.

She saw the two crewmen dragging in a third between them, saw the blood bubbling at his mouth, along with a host of other injuries and instructed them to put him at the head of the line to see Doc. With the blood bubbling it was likely he had a punctured (or worse ruptured) lung and likely worse internal injuries. He was by far the worst and she called across the infirmary to Doc that he needed to see this one...now.

Focused on her own work she made her assessment and went back to setting the broken humurus she was working on. It was a nasty break with sharps of bone driven up through the skin tearing it open in places but not beyond her abilities.

She was so focused however that under all the wounds she never realized she'd just sent Gibon to Doc for saving. She never realized she'd seen Gibon at all.

 

[Otto26]

Doc glanced at the next man and, despite his focus, felt a fleeting moment of irritation. 'Students', he reminded himself. The single word, replete with connotations of learning and expected errors, calmed him. Well... 'calm' was a relative term.

"Yasmin," he snapped. "Freeze that man!"

He finished the man he was working on and checked the medical monitors looking for his next emergency. It was readily apparent and he moved over to begin working on the man for the second time. Something about the readings nagged at him, but he couldn't put his finger on the source.

 

[caela]

"Yasmin," he snapped. "Freeze that man!"

Startled Yasmin looked up at the earnest look on Doc's face. A blush colored her cheeks as she realized that there were many more patients to be seen to and that she needed to freeze the worst of them to work on later. Right now there was no time.

Murmuring her apologies to the patient she had him lay back and deftly froze him as Doc had ordered. Moving through her side of the room she did the same for half a dozen more patients before returning to caring for the minor injuries that could be cared for and sent back to their quarters to rest.

 

[Otto26]

He finished sealing the last flap of skin and stepped back from the table, weariness rearing it's head with a suddeness that staggered him for a moment.

He looked around the room, regaining his balance by rebuilding his mental image of his immediate surroundings. It took a moment, but then he was relaxed and merely tired.

"Good work, Yasmin. Order the frozen cases for thawing. We'll do the least injured first and work our way into the bad cases."

He stepped, carefully, over to the wall console. "Bridge this is medical."

"Medical this is bridge, go."

No image appeared on the screen, but he didn't expect one to; not during an emergency.

"Casualties are stabilized. Can we please start moving them to containment?"

A pause.

"Yes, Doctor. The orders have been issued. Any deaths?"

Doc shrugged. "We're just getting started on the frozen wounded, I'll let you know in a segment or two."

Behind him he could already hear the armed crewmen hustling the wounded pirates out of the door. Already restrained and with heads covered by bags and a more than a little drugged, they offered little resistance.

"Yasmin, show me the patient order and then prepare an operation plan for the first patient. I want to know how you're going to proceed."