Bridgebuilder

Back to Work

Alex had found himself with a lot of free time since the attack. Worse, there was nothing he could do with it until after the mediboard had released his arm. That first morning after Carbon had left to work on the drives, he had made the mistake of finding out what injuries he'd actually sustained. The list was significant. Burns on all his limbs, of course, he'd known about that. He hadn't known that the burn classification extended all the way to sixth degree until now, or perhaps he'd put it out of his mind instead of living with the horror of that knowledge. Severe radiation poisoning was a surprise, though it shouldn't have been. He avoided symptoms because the board started triage on it immediately.

Entirely unbeknownst to him so far was the blast damage. The railgun round that had penetrated the bridge had given him a concussion and cracked his skull even through the armored seat and thick layer of crash foam. His Amp - a halo of electronics that had been implanted in his skull allowing deep machine interfacing - had been filled with bone fragments and flexed in a direction its manufacturer had never intended. This prevented it from turning on, locking him out of a direct connection to the ship's systems. On the up side, it had kept his brain from being filled with bone fragments. He'd take that trade.

There was more, plenty more to look at according to how small the scrollbar had gotten as it loaded the list of wounds. He hadn't even gotten down to the internal thoracic injuries before he backed out of it and never returned.

Doing anything with the tablet was cumbersome, at best, anyway. Everything had been designed to be used by someone with a direct interface, or at least two hands. Maybe if the gravity had been on, it would have been better. He tried working, but the tablet only had a single magnet in a very wobbly kickstand and the act of pinching the screen to zoom in on some passive sensor information sent it sliding off the table, out of reach. It bounced slowly around the sickbay, taunting him as he decided he'd wait until his other arm was available to try again.

Filling the many hours until then was a remarkably guilty experience. Carbon would show up a few times a day with food, looking progressively more burnt out as days passed. He would be dead without her, he knew, and the first time the door had slid open and he'd been watching some aggressively boring comedy show that had been packaged into the data stores his chest had constricted with panic. He had thumbed it off immediately, set the tablet screen down a little too hard and tried to look not guilty.

It hadn't worked, he could see it in her face. That was interesting. He could see it in her face. Nuances he'd never consciously paid attention to didn't spring out at him, but they were there. Her expression had changed, only for a second. Eyebrows leveling out, eyes squinting almost imperceptibly, ears compressing down further as her antenna lowered. A little sigh, resigned, and her face relaxed again. She knew there was nothing else for him to do yet.

Finally the day came. Both arms, and even his torso, were released back to his conscious control. A bit awkward at first, as he was now naked from the waist up and it was cold in there. Carbon had immediately suggested that she retrieve a shirt for him from his cabin, departing for it before he'd given her the passcode. He knew it should have been soft, he'd worn it all the time, though now it was now rough and abrasive against freshly regrown skin. A small price to pay now that he had his entire upper body back. His lower half was still covered in opaque nanite gel and a privacy shroud, but it was a small victory.

The light gray shirt bore the one of the Civilian Pilot Program logos, a scoutship over a starburst ringed with the program name. It had carried a bit more pride in the past, before he had realized he'd been chosen because someone had lied about his skill set and even that only came about because billions had died on Schon, the Tsla'o homeworld.

That also had given him some pause. He knew the two were not connected at all, but some deep, dark part of him wanted to blame the disaster on his desire to become a pilot. Entirely irrational, but it gnawed at him when awake and hunted him in his dreams.