(Note #1: All comments and constructive criticisms are welcome and appreciated.

Note #2: Thank you to my friend Geoff for contributing his medical expertise.

Note #3: Thank you to my friend Mark for his editing notes.

Note #4: The first illustration was created by the Imagineart AI Art Generator. The other three are by Faith Desky.

Note #5: And finally, thanks to volunteer Literotica editor TheNyxianLily for her help with editing.)

Calley sprang into action. In an instant, she was at Sal’s side, helping him to stand. The man was on his last legs and nearly collapsed onto the medtech. She turned to Alezanna, who stood frozen by the communications console and barked out, “Alezanna! Help me out here! We gotta get him to the medbay!”

Calley’s orders snapped the mechanic out of her paralysis. Her long legs quickly brought her to Sal’s side. With her helping to support Sal’s weight, the two women were able to place themselves on each side of him and drag him forward.

“Sal, what happened?” Alezanna urgently asked him.

“Shot…” he weakly answered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Didn’t have… my gun…”

The trio made it to the medbay where they placed Sal onto one of the beds. He screamed in pain as they did so, making Alezanna wince. Calley, on the other hand, settled into an almost serene calmness as she called up her medical training. Now, she knew, was not the time to panic. She had to examine her patient, diagnose his injuries, prioritize what to treat first and engineer a plan of action. Without any effort, her mind focused on the many tasks that needed to be performed.

With Sal on the bed, she ordered him, “Sal, stay still. Try not to move. Alez, sterilize your hands.” She grabbed the Bellixan and led her to a flat device on a nearby counter. Calley placed her hands palms down on it, there was a flash and a quick hissing sound. She then flipped her hands so they now rested on the sterilizer palms up and the device repeated its action. “Now you,” she instructed the Bellixan.

She didn’t wait for Alezanna to finish. Instead, she grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and quickly slipped them on as she went back to Sal’s side and tore open his bloody shirt. She saw a gash some eight centimetres wide in his stomach. It was about a dozen centimeters to the right of his navel and a few centimeters higher. The wound was leaking blood and, judging by Sal’s pallor, had been doing so for a while. “No burn marks around the wound,” she observed aloud. “This wasn’t a blaster shot.”

“Coslove…” Sal gasped out.

The name struck Calley like a slap to the face. She looked away from Sal’s injury to meet his gaze. “What? Coslove shot you?”

Sal rolled his eyes as if in irritation. It would almost have been comical in any other situation, “No,” he said as he shook his head a little. “Call Coslove… shooter’s… getting away…”

The sense of alarm left Calley as she added the information to her appraisal of the situation. She looked down and saw her hands were already blood-stained. But Alezanna’s were not, she realized.

“Alez,” she told the taller woman, “fish my datapad out of my right hip pocket. Call up Daznee’s info and get her on the line.”

“Yes, Calley,” the dark-haired woman said as she followed her companion’s orders. Dealing with a piece of tech was something the mechanic was used to doing, so it helped calm the frazzled Bellixan down a little. It only took a few moments for her to be connected to the Vottonian.

“Hey Calley, what’s up?” came Daznee’s jovial voice out of the device.

With Alezanna holding the datapad close to her face, Calley told the social planner, “Daznee, listen to me carefully. Sal’s been shot. I can’t talk about it right now. I need you to get Coslove to the ship as soon as you can.” She then had a thought and added, “And Yutag too. Bring ’em both down here.”

“We’re on our way,” Daznee said, her tone having become far more serious. The line went dead.

“Coslove’s on his way, Sal,” Alezanna told the injured man.

“I know, pet,” he said. “Ears… still work fine.” He turned his attention to Calley and asked her, “How’s it… looking?”

Calley moved back to the counter and grabbed a device with a pump attached to a small set of tubes. “Go re-sterilize your hands please,” she told Alezanna, who stepped around her and did as instructed. “Then get some gloves off the counter and put ‘em on.” Calley placed the device on a wheeled cabinet she maneuvered to the side of Sal’s bed.

Turning to Sal, Calley told him, “It’s looking messy. You’ve lost a lot of blood. I dunno how you managed to make it all the way back here with nobody noticing you bleeding like that, but I need to start you off with artificial stuff. When Yutag gets here, she can give you some of her blood too.” She handed one of the tubes from the device to Alezanna and attached one of the others to a needle tip. “The problem is,” she continued, “there’s so much waste in your blood now, your kidneys can’t filter it all out of the blood you’ve got left. You’re gonna die of blood poisoning if we don’t do something.”

She inserted the tube with the needle tip into Sal’s left arm. She then told Alezanna, “Use your tube to vacuum up the blood around the wound. It’ll feed it into this purifier and then the clean blood will go back into his body.”

 “Yes, Calley,” the taller woman said as she started moving the tube around the wound.

“Get it all,” Calley advised her friend. “He’s gonna need every drop he’s got.”

She moved to another part of the medbay where she opened a refrigeration unit. Inside were sealed plastic bags of artificially-created blood. Unfortunately, none of the three spacers’ blood types were a match for the others, but she had long ago prepared a few bags for each of them. In case of an eventuality such as this very one. She took one of the bags labeled “Captain” and hung it up on a hook off a cabinet near the blood purifier. She then inserted a tube into its bottom so that the liquid would flow into the purifier and then into Sal.

She then moved to the pharmaceutical dispenser and started mixing some chemical compounds together. “Sal, I’m gonna inject you with something to freeze the nerve endings in your stomach. It’ll kill the feeling you’ve got in that area so that when I cut you open, you won’t feel a thing. But don’t take that as an excuse to move around. I’ll need you to lie as still as possible. But don’t pass out, okay? Concentrate on staying awake and aware of what’s going on.”

“Got it,” he croaked out.

She grabbed a portable penetrative scanner along with the syringe of chemicals she’d just prepared. She moved back to Sal’s side again and inserted the needle into his belly. She administered the freezing agent and while waiting for it to take effect, she attached the scanner to an overhead metal arm reaching down from the ceiling lights. She turned the scanner on and moved it into a position where she used it to examine the wound.

“No sign of any metal slugs or fragments,” she announced. “Definite damage to the small intestine, like I figured. Walking over here couldn’t have been fun.” She adjusted the scanner to an alternate display. “Shit! There’s a lot of plastic shards in there! You got shot with a needler pistol!”

“Hurt like a bitch,” Sal opined. With the pain in his stomach lessening, his voice regained a little strength.

“Well, that’ll all have to be removed. Lie as still as you can so that they don’t damage you any more than they already have. Concentrate on keeping your breathing as steady as possible. Alez, is he running a fever? Don’t use your hands to check please.”

The Bellixan handed the vacuum tube to Calley and touched her forehead to her lover’s. “He’s feeling a little warm, yes. Is that bad?”

“It’s not ideal,” Calley responded. “That means the sepsis is settling in. That’s the blood poisoning I was talking about. But don’t either of you worry. Once we clean the wound and the shards are out of his system, I can get his natural immunizers working again. And I’ll be done my work long before any more problems pop up. Alez, get back here to take care of the blood.”

The Bellixan returned to her position beside Sal’s belly. Calley moved back to the counter to gather the saline she’d need to clean the wound along with the scalpels, forceps, clamps and other tools to operate on Sal. “Alez, when I open him up, I’m gonna need you to concentrate on keeping the blood out of my sight. Not only is it poisoning him but it’ll just be getting in my way. The clearer I can see the wounded area, the better. Just think of it as a machine that’s leaking oil. I’ve helped you fix different systems all over the ship. Now you’ll be the one helping me fix a biological machine.”

“A love machine,” Sal added in.

“No jokes, Sal,” Calley warned him. “I don’t need you making me laugh while I’m operating on you. This is delicate work here. Very precise.”

“Understood,” he said. She wished he wouldn’t waste his energy on idle chatter, but had to admit hearing him speak was a sign that he wasn’t fading away. So for the time being, she wasn’t about to ask him to stay quiet.

She placed the saline, some tissues and her instruments onto the top of a narrow cabinet on wheels. She moved it beside her position as she returned to Sal’s side. She pressed some buttons on the rim of the ceiling lights and a cone of blue illumination formed around the area from the lights to Sal’s stomach.

“That looks a litle strange,” Sal observed. “What is it?”

“Sterilization field,” Calley informed him. “It’ll keep everybody’s germs away from where I’m operating.”

She carefully cleaned the area around his wound using the Saline then took a scalpel and made an incision into his skin to widen up his wound further.

“Are we hurting you Sal?” Alezanna asked him.

Calley looked up from what she was doing to see him shake his head. “Of course not,” she reassured her friend. “With the freezing agent I gave him, he wouldn’t feel it if we got up and danced on his stomach. Be careful Alez. Make sure you’re getting the blood.”

The older woman returned her attention to what she was doing. “Sorry, Calley.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s your first time doing this. Just stay focused and you’ll do fine.”

The medtech made some more incisions and clamped the wound open. That done, she used the scanner again to locate the first shard she needed to remove. She told Sal, “Now don’t you move a muscle,” and grabbed the forceps. She inserted them carefully and steadily into the man and slowly clasped them onto the shard. Once it was held by the metal instrument, she removed it, being careful not to damage the intestine any more than it already was. Once the shard was out of Sal, she dropped it into a plastic bowl next to her instruments. “One down,” she announced.

“How many more?” Alezanna asked.

“Quite a few, unfortunately. But the good news is, I don’t think any of them are in too deep. Those Godsdamn needler pistols aren’t made to shatter bones or penetrate deep into a target. Just shred skin and damage tissue or organs. If you survive the initial shot and get medical attention quick enough, you’ve got a good chance of surviving.” She then addressed Sal. “So no excuses, Collondo. You stay with me, buster! No nodding off. If you make your condition worse, you’ll answer to me!”

“Everyone’s mean to me today,” the injured man complained.

Calley returned to her task and hunted down another shard. She directed Alezanna to apply suction to different areas of the wound to help the medic examine different parts of it. The first plastic shard in the bowl was soon joined by several more.

After the fifth shard was extracted, the three spacers heard voices outside the medbay. “Oh my Gods!” came the voice of an approaching Daznee. “I’ve never seen so much blood.”

The Vottonian appeared at the entrance of the medbay, flanked by Yutag and Coslove. The trio took in the scene of Calley operating on Sal. The medtech, for her part, quickly looked up from her patient to see who had arrived. “Someone shot Sal,” she told them. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Yutag, your blood type’s compatible with his. I’m gonna need to give him some of yours.”

“You got it, Calley!” the Kutalan said.

Sal turned his head to address Coslove. In so doing, he moved his body slightly. “It was Hoddard who…”

“SAL! DON’T MOVE, DAMMIT!” Calley shouted at him. “I need you calm and still! Whatever it is you have to tell Coslove, keep your voice down, don’t get agitated, and don’t move. Coslove, lean in close to listen to him. Don’t make him reach out to you. I’ve got enough to do here without Sal fidgeting around.”

“All right, Miss Calley,” Coslove agreed. He moved close to Sal and leaned his head down so that it was near the injured man. “Tell me what happened, Ambassador.”

Sal began speaking to Coslove in a low voice to conserve his strength. It was so low that Calley couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of the vacuum Alezanna was using to recover Sal’s blood. She moved closer to Coslove, but not to listen in on what Sal was saying. It was to help Yutag onto the bay’s other bed and connect her arm to the same purifier that was handling Sal’s blood. Her red sweater was so tight that she had difficulty rolling up her sleeve, so the shorter woman simply took it off.

“I don’t normally do this for a guy’s benefit unless he’s bought me a few drinks first,” the diminutive woman observed.

“He’ll have to owe you,” Calley said as she placed a needle tip on the tube that had previously led to the bag of artificial blood. Once she was done, she inserted it into a vein in Yutag’s left arm. Satisfied that the blood was flowing into the purifier, she told her friend “Thanks for doing this for him.”

“Anything for you, kiddo,” said Yutag. “The Four Furies gotta help each other out. Get back to work. I’ll handle pumping fluids into your man. Kinda the opposite of how it usually goes, though.” The joke lifted Calley’s spirits a little. She was glad her small friend was here, and not just because she was a valuable blood donor.

As she returned to her surgery on Sal’s intestine, Coslove lifted his head from beside Sal and turned to Daznee. “Get on the line to the security office. I need a security team to place a woman named Gerta Laswin into protective custody. She’s a recent émigré to the system, so she should be in one of the further stations.”

“Call Mix,” Yutag advised her friend. “If she’s a new arrival, Mix’ll probably know where her domicile is.”

“Good idea,” Daznee agreed as she started entering data into her device.

“Is this Laswin our shooter?” Yutag asked Coslove.

“No,” Coslove said as he turned his attention to the Kutalan. “She’s someone with information the shooter doesn’t want anyone to find out about. Hopefully the ambassador’s revelation he’d found her was recent enough for Chief Delegate Hoddard not to have found her too. Find out where he is right now. He’s about to learn that even diplomatic immunity doesn’t excuse what he’s done.””

“You got it, boss,” the smaller woman said as she grabbed her own datapad.

Calley wasn’t really paying too much attention to what the three locals were talking about. She was focusing on getting the plastic projectiles out of Sal. She had to keep using the scanner to help locate each one as many were impossible to see with the naked eye. She did hear Daznee confirm that a security team was on its way to get this Laswin woman. What pulled her attention away from what she was doing was Coslove. He’d returned to leaning over Sal to listen to what the spacer had to say. But whatever his words were, they were upsetting the bureaucrat. Calley was surprised and concerned to hear Coslove’s voice sounding upset as he told Sal, “No! We can’t let him! What you’re asking—”

Calley was concerned an explosive argument would worsen Sal’s condition. But her worry was unjustified. Unlike Coslove, Sal was speaking calmly without raising his voice. He was so calm, Calley felt compelled to check his vital signs to make sure he wasn’t slipping into unconsciousness. She was relieved to see that, although his body temperature was still rising, its rise was slowing and his heart rate was strong and steady.

“Calm down, Coslove,” she told the agitated man. “I don’t need you upsetting my patient. If you can’t have a reasonable conversation, you’ll have to leave.” Like the captain’s, her voice was calm and even, though her tone left no doubt that she wasn’t to be challenged.

Coslove took a deep breath to calm himself. “All right,” he said to all those in the bay.

Sal resumed speaking and Calley returned to her work on the man’s injuries. She overheard Yutag announce, “Hoddard’s bugging out. It looks like he’s taken out his shuttle on an unannounced flight. Since it wasn’t expected, his ship’s stuck in busy space lanes, so he’s still in-system. But he’s too far away from any station with a tractor beam.”

Calley didn’t hear any response from Coslove at first. As she had her eyes on Sal’s exposed intestines, she didn’t see the other man take his own datapad out. “Send me the info,” he ordered his subordinate. A few moments later, he used the device to open a communications line. “This is Chief of Staff Coslove,” he told whoever was on the other end of the line. “Level one priority. Get me Commander Whrome.”

A moment later, a male voice came out of the datapad. “Whrome here sir. What’s the situation?”

“Commander, a shuttle belonging to the Palsidian trade delegation left Command One twenty minutes ago. It’s currently making its way past Industrial Station Five. Here’s its registry information. Scramble the nearest fighters. I want that ship intercepted with a stealth approach. Your pilots are to get behind her, jam communications, destroy the engines and tow her back to Command One.”

“Sir,” the officer said in alarm, “that ship’s registered as a diplomatic courier! We open fire on her, we’re starting a war!”

“I’m aware of the consequences, Commander,” Coslove calmly said. “You’ll log the orders I just gave as coming from me and you will follow them. I want that ship surgically removed from our space. And I emphasize that it must not be aware of the fighter approach. The pilot is a fugitive desperate enough to activate his Hi-Vels if he knows he’s cornered. And I want anyone aboard taken alive. Precise fire on those engines.”

“Understood, sir. That ship’s as good as caught,” the officer replied.

“Report back on this line when the ship’s disabled. Once she’s in range of Command One’s tractor beam, I want her placed on platform twenty-three. Coslove out.”

With that, he terminated the communication. A quiet descended on the medbay, broken only by the sounds of the instruments being used to treat Sal’s injuries.

Daznee spoke up, telling Coslove, “Whrome’s right. Firing on that shuttle counts as an act of war. You planning on telling Mom what’s going on?”

“Not until I have to,” he admitted. “If she finds out what Sal just told me, she’ll kill Hoddard with her bare hands. And the bastard is more valuable to us alive right now.” He turned his attention to the wounded spacer next to him and said, “So for now, we’ll play it your way, Ambassador. But if Hoddard doesn’t cooperate, it’ll go badly for all of us.”

Daznee’s datapad let out a chirp. She looked at it and gasped. “The security team found Gerta Laswin. A man was trying to strangle her in her domicile. They saved her but the man attacked the team and had to be killed.”

“Let me see,” Coslove said. He took the datapad and quickly looked it over. “Shame about the assassin. It would have been nice for him to identify Hoddard as his employer. But it doesn’t really matter in the end. Miss Calley, I’m going to need to get Sal’s datapad from his shirt. Please don’t shout at me.”

Calley grunted but didn’t object as the bureaucrat carefully removed the device from the remains of Sal’s shirt. He took a towel from the medbay counter and used it to clean the blood from the device. Calley noticed what he was doing and told Daznee “Daz, could you do me a favour? Sterilize your hands then grab two clean towels over by the sink. Bring ‘em both over here. I need you to clean my scanner. It’s got bloody fingerprints all over it. Then use the other towel to wipe my forehead. I’m sweating like a whore at temple services. Be careful you don’t jostle my instruments.”

The Vottonian did as the medic requested. After Daznee wiped down the scanner, Calley observed, “That’s better. The damned thing had more blood on it than Sal has in him. Now I can see how many shards are left.”

“How many?” Alezanna asked her.

“Looks like eight left. Once I get those out, I do a little tissue regeneration to fix up the damage to his intestines, close him up and he can get some rest.”

“After Hoddard leaves,” came Sal’s voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “I have to see the look on his face when he has to choke down my deal.”

“Your deal?” Alezanna said in disbelief. “Sal, he tried to kill you! If you bring him in here, I’ll kill him, I swear I will!”

“No you won’t,” Sal calmly told her. “If we leave him alive, he’s worth a fortune to us. More starcred than we’ve ever had. More than I thought we could ever get. If you kill him, everything I’ve done since we got here will be for nothing. Including getting shot.”

“He’s right,” Coslove added. “I want Hoddard dead as much as you do, Miss Alezanna. I have my own reasons to hate the man. But this matter is bigger and more important than either of our revenge. If Sal’s willing to move past it for the sake of something greater, I can do no less. Can we ask you to do the same?”

Alezanna glared at him and then at Sal as well. “Oh you bastards,” she said through gritted teeth. “You Godsdamn bastards! I ran away from Bellixa because of things like this, and now you’ve got me smack in the middle of it. You were right Sal. Politics makes you dirty.” She took a deep breath and regained a little of her composure. “All right then. I won’t kill him when he walks in here. I left my daggers in the reactor room anyway. But keep him near the door. If he gets too close to me, I can’t answer for what I do.” With her decision made, the Bellixan focused on her task of vacuuming Sal’s blood and saw that she’d missed some during her conversation. “Look at this mess,” she said aloud. “Your backroom plots ruin everything.”

Daznee had wiped Calley’s brow but now moved behind to reach Alezanna. She wiped both the sweat off her face but also the tears of frustration the tall woman was letting escape her eyes.

By this point, Coslove had three different datapads laid out on the mattress next to Sal’s head. One of them let out a chime and Coslove opened the communications line it was announcing. “Report, Commander.”

“The shuttle’s disabled, sir. No breach to the hull. She didn’t get a call out but she was within sight of one of the space lanes when we shot at her. I hope you weren’t planning on keeping this quiet ‘cause half the traffic near the stations saw what we just did.”

“That’s not an issue. How many aboard?”

“Sensors show only the pilot. With the engines down and his reactor damaged, his life-support’s failing but we’ll have him on Command One in fifteen minutes. Way before he suffocates.”

“Good work, Commander,” Coslove acknowledged. “Extend my commendations to the pilots for their fine shooting.”

“I will, sir,” the officer’s voice said. “I must say I’m curious to know why this action was necessary.”

“My office is still gathering the facts. You’ll get a briefing in the next few hours. Until then, direct all enquiries you receive to the press office. Coslove out,” the bureaucrat said as he ended the communication. He then turned to Yutag and told her, “When that shuttle’s placed on the platform next to this one, I want a security team to board her and take Hoddard into custody. Warn the team that he’s armed but that I want him taken alive and brought here.”

“You got it, boss,” the Kutalan said as she used her datapad to follow his orders. “How you gonna spin all this to the public? If people saw the shuttle get attacked, it’ll be all over the news soon.”

“A carefully-assembled collection of falsehoods will have to do for now,” he said with a shrug. “Hoddard’s attitude will dictate the final story we release. In the meantime, I better let the governor know some of what’s going on.”

“I wouldn’t mind knowing that myself,” Daznee admitted.  

“Patience, Daznee,” Coslove told her. “When Hoddard gets here, I’ll lay it all out, I promise. Both what happened and what the story we’ll release will be. Right now, things are too much in flux for me to explain. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go get yelled at by your mother.”

He left the medbay and headed in the direction of the reactor room. Again, all conversation in the bay ceased. Save for Sal, who said, “All things considered, I’d rather get shot again than be in that guy’s shoes right now.”

As if to punctuate his observation, the sound of Governor Madzen’s voice could be heard in the medbay despite Coslove being in a different part of the ship. Her words weren’t decipherable, but her angry tone was unmistakable.

Calley extracted another plastic shard out of Sal and placed it in the plastic bowl with the others. “Almost done with these. Daznee, could you lower the scanner and move it between my eyes and the wound?” Daznee did as instructed and Calley saw the location of one of the last shards. She told Daznee, “Okay, move it away. How you holding up, Sal?”

“Tip-top,” he assured her. “After this is all over, I was thinking of running a marathon.”

“I said no jokes, Sal,” she admonished him. “After this is over, you’ll get some rest for the next couple of days. Medtech’s orders. What about you, Yutag? Tired yet?”

“I wouldn’t mind a nap,” the security agent admitted. “After Hoddard gets here though. I don’t wanna miss the fireworks.”

“As soon as I finish with these shards, I’ll come over and let you keep the rest of your blood. If we take out much more, you’ll pass out.”

“Typical man,” the Kutalan said to Sal. “Takes everything a woman can give him and leaves her unsatisfied.”

“You’re not catching me at my best,” he apologized facetiously. “Come see me in a couple of days. I might well be the richest man in the system by then.”

Calley enlisted Daznee’s aid in checking the scanner again. She also reviewed Sal’s vital signs. His body temperature was still a little high but had ceased climbing. His speech, she noted, was no longer halting and his wits were obviously fine. For the first time since seeing him shot, she allowed her emotions free reign in her mind again. By this point, what she mostly felt was relief. She knew that, barring any new catastrophe, her man was going to pull through this.

She then had Daznee wipe her brow again before resuming her extraction of the last shards. As she did so, she heard the plodding footsteps of Gork passing the medbay entrance. “Looks like Coslove’s activated your maintenance robot,” Yutag observed. “Guess there’s no point in leaving all that blood to dry in your dining area.”

“Galley,” Sal corrected her. “On a ship it’s called a galley. And I hope Gork’s not as pissy as the robot that followed me back to the ship. Damn thing seemed upset that I was bleeding all over its nice clean floor.”

“Ah, that explains it,” Daznee said. “I was wondering why there was no blood on the hanger floor. Guess our robot workforce might be too efficient. Sal, do you remember where you were shot?”

“Conference Room 8, other side of the hanger deck. That robot started following me as soon as I left the room.”

Daznee told Yutag, “You might wanna have that room sealed off. It’s a crime scene now. We’ll need to investigate it when we charge Delegate Hoddard.”

“Sure,” Yutag said as she used her datapad once again. “But I dunno about any charges getting laid. The man’s got diplomatic immunity. He could’ve shot Sal in front of half the system and there normally wouldn’t be much we could do about it. Hells, we’re the ones who could catch heat ‘cause we fired on his shuttle. But I don’t think that’s gonna happen. I dunno what led to all this going down, but I got a feeling Sal does, don’t ya Captain?” she said as she shifted her focus to the wounded spacer. “You’ve got something on him and you’re gonna squeeze him dry, aren’t ya?”

Sal smiled at her and said, “We’ll see.”

Calley extracted the last of the shards from Sal’s intestines. After dropping it in the plastic bowl with the others, she grabbed the bloody towel she’d used before and wiped down her hands. “Keep up what you’re doing,” she told Alezanna. “I’ll be back in a minute.” Before she could move away, Daznee stepped forward and wiped down Calley’s face again with the other towel. Once she was done, Calley went over to Yutag and removed the tube that had connected the Kutalan to Sal.

Coslove stepped back into the medbay as this was going on. As usual, his face betrayed no emotion so Daznee asked him, “What’d Mom have to say?”

“A great deal, most of it curse words.” he answered. “But she’s placated for the time being. She’s content to let Sal and I deal with Hoddard however we see fit.”

“You didn’t tell her what I found out about him, did you?” Sal asked with some concern in his voice.

“Of course not. I’ll leave it to you to perform that unpleasant task later. Hopefully when you’re still looking weak from your injuries. She always had a soft spot for you, so that might help assuage her anger.” Coslove looked up to address Calley next. “Speaking of looking weak, Sal’s still pale. Could he use another blood transfusion? I have O-Negative blood, the same as Yutag.”

“Oh sure!” Calley agreed. “The more blood we can give him, the better. Hop on the bed.”

“No need to move, Yutag,” the bureaucrat advised. “I prefer to remain standing. Delegate Hoddard will be here soon and I’d rather not face him sitting down. Miss Calley, please use a longer tube than that. I might need some freedom of movement. Yutag, please cover up and then cover the delegate when he gets here.”

Calley placed a needle tip on a longer tube while Yutag put her sweater back on and produced her concealed blaster pistol. Coslove offered his left arm to Calley and she inserted the needle into it. Once she assured herself the transfusion was proceeding as it should, she grabbed a new device and connected it to another metal arm from the ceiling. “What’s that one do?” Sal asked her.

“Tissue regenerator,” she explained. “I’m gonna use it to fix up the damage to your intestines. The shards may be out but your guts still aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So just stay still and let me fix ‘em up. And when this Hoddard guy gets here, try not to get frisky. The regenerating ray can damage your insides if it’s used where no injury exists. Like I said earlier, this is delicate work.” She moved back to her previous position next to Sal’s still open stomach. “Alez, keep up the suction near this area,” she said, indicating a portion of the exposed intestines. “Daznee, stay close. I’m gonna need you to pull the scanner down now and again and keep my sweat out of my eyes with that towel.”

“Okay, Calley,” the Vottonian said, but there was a strange inflection to her voice. Calley turned her attention to her and saw her looking unwell.

“Don’t throw up on me, Daz,” Calley told her friend. “I really don’t need that right now. Look at something else if you start feeling sick.”

“Okay,” the social planner agreed while looking past Calley. “Guess I’m not cut out to be a nurse.”

Calley got to work applying the regenerative ray to Sal’s damaged intestines. While she did so, Coslove and Yutag busied themselves moving some things around the counters. It might have annoyed Calley otherwise, seeing as this was her work area, but she understood that a dangerous man would soon be here and they were figuring out where to safely put him.

While Yutag was out of the medbay to go fetch a small stool from the reactor room, Coslove announced “Hoddard’s in custody. He’ll be here in a few minutes. Ambassador, I took a look at the trade proposals you advanced throughout the negotiations. I think you’ll approve of our final offer.”

Calley didn’t see him show Sal what he had on his datapad, but whatever it was caused the wounded spacer to chuckle. “No jokes, dammit!” she admonished the men without looking at them. “One wrong move right now and you’ll be shitting blood for a week, Sal!”

“Sorry, Calley,” the captain apologized. “But this isn’t a joke. This deal’s the sweetest one I’ve ever been a part of. It’s so beautiful, I might start crying tears of joy here.”

“Tears, I have no problems with. Just don’t make me strap you down. Stay still until I finish up.”

She was still at work when the group heard the sounds of footsteps on the ship’s gangplank. “Over here, gentlemen,” Coslove called out to the new arrivals.

Despite herself, Calley paused her treatment of Sal’s injuries to look up and see who was coming in. Two men in uniform brought in a third man dressed in an outfit not dissimilar to Sal’s hoity-toity one. The main difference as that the man’s vest was less ornate and his shirt hadn’t been reduced to a bloody rag by the day’s events. He had a narrow face with sunken cheeks. His expression was one of anger mixed with disdain at those around him. His clothes were disheveled, a testament to some rough treatment he’d gone through recently. Calley, of course, had no sympathy for him. It would be more precise to say that she hated the man intensely.

She wasn’t the only one. As soon as the trio appeared, she felt Alezanna tense up next to her. “Easy, my love,” Calley whispered to her. “You promised to let Sal and Coslove handle him. And if you do anything, you’ll have to sterilize your hands again.”

The Bellixan let out a long breath and both women returned their attention to treating Sal’s wounds.

Their moods weren’t improved by Hoddard’s attitude. “Coslove!” he exclaimed when he saw the bureaucrat was present. “I should’ve known you’d be involved in this outrage! When my government finds out—”

“Chief Delegate,” Coslove calmly interrupted him, “why don’t you have a seat and try to calm down. We have some matters to discuss.”

“You can go to each of the seven Hells, you sniveling—” the Palsidian snarled before a kick to the back of his knee dropped him to the floor. In his rage, he’d missed the slight nod Coslove had given the security officer behind Hoddard.

“Have a seat,” the Chief of Staff advised him. “From where you are, you’ll note that my associate has a pistol trained on you. I’d like you to concentrate on that and contemplate if throwing out insults and accusations is the best of ideas. I’ll also point out the Bellixan lady assisting in the surgery going on here is a trained duelist. You shot her lover and are now in a room with her and a multitude of sharp objects. I really think you’d be best served by keeping the atmosphere here as relaxed as possible.” He turned to the two men who’d brought Hoddard in and told them, “Station yourselves at the ship’s exit. I’ll call you when I’m through talking with this man.”

He let the advice settle on the angry diplomat. Hoddard glared at him but said nothing. He seemed inclined to keep his cool for the time being. He sat down on the stool Yutag had brought in earlier and waited for Coslove to continue talking. Since the Palsidian wasn’t threatening anyone at the moment, Calley stopped paying attention to him. She returned to healing Sal’s intestines but listened in on the conversation that followed.

“You’ve already met the governor’s daughter,” Coslove began. “And of course you know Ambassador Collondo.”

“Heya, fuck-face,” Sal said from the bed he was lying on.

“No one else here cares to know you so I’ll dispense with introductions,” Coslove continued. “As you can see, your attempt to silence the ambassador failed. Furthermore, the assassin you sent to murder Gerta Laswin was killed before he could do so. She’s in protective custody, giving my security team a very informative statement. You really aren’t very good at tying up loose ends, Hoddard. Shooting the ambassador I can write off as a panicked reaction. But leaving a disgruntled accountant with so much knowledge of your finances alive, well, that’s just carelessness. Especially when your illegal businesses were making you so wealthy. Had you shared some of your starcred with your subordinates, they might have shown you a little more loyalty.”

“What’s his line, boss?” Yutag asked. “He moving chems?”

“No, he’s a slaver,” Coslove said coldly. “And as dim a view as we take of that trade in this system, the Palsidians made it a capital crime over a hundred cycles ago. Palsidia makes a big show of being a forward-thinking culture. I guess that’s what made the illicit slave trade so profitable, eh Hoddard?”

The delegate gave no answer Calley could hear.

Coslove continued to address him. “So we can dispense with the threats of diplomatic accusations. Yes, we damaged your shuttle, but it’ll be fixed up. The same can be said for Ambassador Collondo, and he’s willing to let bygones be bygones, aren’t you, sir?”

“Why not?” Sal said casually. “What’s a little gunplay between friends now and again?”

“As for the attempted murder of Gerta Laswin, I won’t insult your intelligence by claiming we can tie you to it. The assassin was Palsidian, yes, but that hardly means we can connect you to him. I suppose, based on how badly you’ve bungled everything else today, I might find some way to implicate you in that end of this affair as well, if I looked closely enough. But I’m not really inclined to do so. You’d simply invoke your diplomatic immunity to avoid any conspiracy charge. My government would send a list of our grievances to Palsidia, your people would respond accordingly and, in the end, nothing of any great importance would happen.”

“So then why bother to bring me in at all?” Hoddard asked.

“Because you still have some value to us. Exposing this affair gains neither of us anything. You acted badly to us, we towards you, but it’s tit for tat, isn’t it? Now, you being a slaver, that’s another matter entirely. If I were to advise the Palsidian government of that, it would lose a great amount of prestige. To have one of its major representatives be so corrupted…” He let the sentence trail off, it’s implications not lost on the diplomat.

“Coslove,” Hoddard said with alarm, “do you know what they’d do to me?”

“I have a vague idea, yes. You’d be tried for a capital crime. To erase the dishonor you’d brought to your government, I imagine they’d really make an example out of you. Yutag, I seem to remember you once wrote a briefing report about the Palsidian justice system. Could you let us know what this man is facing?”

“Oh sure, boss,” she said. “Everybody knows Palsidia doesn’t mess around with stuff like that. Like how, eighteen cycles ago, one of the senior officials was found guilty of selling state secrets to a military rival. They executed him by feeding him Roxanian poison. He didn’t stop screaming for twelve hours, and they broadcast every second of it. Sometimes, you could even see the smoke coming out of his mouth as it burned him up inside. Not how I wanna go out.”

“Barbaric,” Coslove opined without much conviction. “Now, I have no love for slavers, Hoddard. So the idea of seeing you suffer like that holds some appeal to me. The Rangxu government and its people wouldn’t much mourn you either. But there’s only one problem. You’re the ranking trade delegate for your government and my people have spent sub-cycles negotiating a trade agreement with yours. If you’re killed or recalled before we finalize the agreement, all that work is lost. Your government will send a new ranking delegate and the negotiations will start all over at the beginning. So here are our terms, and I suggest you pay attention because they are the only ones you’ll get going forward.”

There was a pause and then the Palsidian diplomat said, “All right, tell me what you want,”

“I’ve prepared a statement for you to approve before I release it. It states that your shuttle had catastrophic malfunctions when you took it out today. You couldn’t navigate nor could you reduce speed. You asked for our aid and we were forced to damage your craft to prevent inter-ship collisions.”

Hoddard snickered derisively and told Coslove, “And I suppose you’ll want me to record a distress call you can play if anybody asks to verify this claptrap?”

“No need. I have several very good forgers at my beck and call. You meet all sorts of interesting people working counter-intelligence for two decades. Now, the trade agreement. Here’s what we had in mind. And let me remind you, this is non-negotiable.”

Calley was still working on Sal’s injuries so she didn’t see Coslove hand Hoddard a datapad. She did, however, hear the latter man proclaim, “I can’t agree to this! I’d be recalled and drummed out of the diplomatic service!”

“Most assuredly,” Coslove agreed. “Your government will blame you for the highly favourable terms we receive in the agreement. They’ll assume, correctly, that we used some leverage to get you to agree to this deal. They’ll examine your financial transactions looking for bribes we may have paid. But here’s where the irony comes in. Your income as a slaver predates your assignment here so those payments are the ones your people won’t bother looking at. The very breadth of your illegal activities will raise them above suspicion. Not being able to find anything in your finances, they might assume some chem scandal is at play. Or maybe a woman. It’s a little old-fashioned, but it still happens. The end result will be that the Palsidians won’t be able to accuse us of anything concrete enough to invalidate the trade agreement. They’ll hate it, but as it was agreed to by their chosen agent, they won’t be able to get out of it.”

“But they’ll blame me for it! My career will be over!” Hoddard sputtered out.

“Your career ended the second you tried to kill my ambassador. He might have been inclined to allow more favourable terms but I’m not. The only decision left to you now is how your career will end. If I bring Laswin’s testimony to your government’s attention, your career ends with your long and no-doubt-painful demise. If I don’t, it still ends but with your disgrace and, I’ll wager, your exile. But you’ll remain alive and still in possession of a sizable fortune. If you miss your political power after this, there are plenty of systems far enough or morally-suspect enough for you to make a new start in. I’m handing you a setback, to be sure, but I have no doubt you’ll land on your feet.”

There was a pause in the discussion as Hoddard weighed what little options he had. Finally, he said, “Let’s be clear what our agreement is. I sign off on the ridiculous drivel about my shuttle and hand you the most advantageous trade deal in the history of the galaxy. What do you provide in return?”

“Silence,” Coslove stated. “Aside from Gerta Laswin, the only people who know you’re a slaver are in this room. Yutag, Daznee and I want what’s best for Rangxu, and that’s you signing off on the trade deal. My agreement with the ambassador was that he and his crew will receive a portion of the tariffs, which will make them very wealthy. Their greed will ensure they’ll do nothing to jeopardize their income.”

“Starcred is my greatest weakness,” Sal acknowledged. “I’m not really proud of that, but I’m not too ashamed of it either.”

“So none of us will breathe a word of your business to my government or yours,” Coslove continued on, “I’ll ensure Laswin’s testimony is never seen by either one either. I’ll keep her employed somewhere quiet to make sure she keeps her silence as well. Rangxu’s finance department can always use a good accountant. The dead assassin will be classified as a suicide. Just another case of a high-strung man throwing himself out of a window backwards. The whole affair will obviously be suspect, but since the truth doesn’t advance any of our interests, none of us will reveal it.”

Calley had Daznee move the scanner into position over Sal while the delegate mused. She saw that Sal’s intestines were as repaired as she could make them. He was no longer in danger of blood poisoning and no projectiles were left inside him. His temperature was still a little high, but she knew rest would fix that. Relieved, she took a moment to look at Hoddard. The Palsidian was looking over the datapad in his hand with a sour expression on his face. Then, with a heavy sigh, he entered some data into it and handed it back to Coslove. The Chief of Staff took it and turned his back on Hoddard as he placed the datapad on the medbay’s counter next to a heavy microscope. “Excellent.” he said. “Repair crews are already inspecting the damage to your shuttle. They should have it repaired by the time you get out of the hospital.”

“I’m not injured,” Hoddard told him as he stood up.

Coslove’s speed surprised everyone in the medbay. In a flash, he grabbed the microscope, spun himself around and smashed it into the delegate’s face. From her vantage point, it was clear to Calley that the slaver’s jaw was dislocated.

“You are now,” Coslove hissed. He then regained his composure and called the security agents he’d stationed at the Ravenfang’s gangplank. When they appeared, he told them, “Take him to the hospital on Habitat Nine. It’s isolated enough for him to stay at until his government recalls him.”

The agents got Hoddard to his feet and the trio left the medbay. Once they were gone, Coslove leaned on the empty bed next to him and announced, “Sorry about the damage to the microscope. We can add it to the list of things my government is paying to repair on this ship. I must remember not to strike people while giving blood. It really knocks the wind out of you.”

Calley got to work closing up Sal’s stomach. Once she was done, Coslove had recovered enough to leave with Daznee and Yutag, as all three had much to do. The medic, satisfied that Sal’s condition was stable, administered a sedative to allow him to sleep. She also offered one to an emotionally-exhausted Alezanna, who set herself up on the other hospital bed next to Sal’s and fell asleep holding his hand. Calley stood watch over both of them and reflected on the events of a very fateful day.

NEXT CHAPTER: Calley struggles with an important decision.