She considered what to do next. The dropship wasn’t equipped with a supply of replacement organs, biological or mechanical. His secondary heart could only sustain him for a few hects at best in its condition. It normally served more as a blood filter for airborne toxins than a blood pump. It supplemented the primary heart during periods of high exertion, but it couldn’t replace it for long.

  The nun examined the wound as well. “I’m sorry child. Perhaps we should just…”

  Marda glared at the older woman, the sigil of the sacred womb marking her as being of the Third Messiahist Church, like Marda. Marda took a calming breath: she wouldn’t give up on Blazer without a fight. “No, we don’t quit. Not here, not now. He never would on any of us.” She stared at the injury, assessiung what to do and the smell of singed flesh making her stomach growl. Her body’s reaction stunned and repulsed her. She couldn’t fathom eating at a time like this, but in that moment, inspiration struck.

  She looked up and keyed her micomm.

 

 

  Mikle replied.

  Zithe then came over the link.

 

  Emotions sometimes managed to slip through the micomm link and Marda could feel Zithe recoil under her vocal assault. She almost smiled at that.

  On my way, Gokhead texted her over the link.

  Marda turned back to the surgical table half a pulse before Mikle ran up to the surgical suite and knocked on the door. Even he knew better than to disturb the sterile environment. The nurse accepted the device and placed the dinged and damaged case on a worktable.

  Marda turned to it. The exterior made her heart sink but looking in the window at the pristine nano-assembler deck, her hopes began to rise that her insane gamble might work. “Sterilize the interior of the unit as best you can.”

  Marda sighed and turned back to Blazer’s failing body. She removed the few bits of living tissue that remained of his heart, placing them in a nanobot infused nutrient bath. Under normal circumstances, this bath could clean and repair minor damage to almost any organ. In the heart’s current condition the best she could hope for was that they would keep it from deteriorating further.

  Gokhead soon arrived at the surgical suite, and knocked at the hatch.

  “Get in here Gokhead and clean yourself up.”

  Gokhead climbed inside the cramped surgical suite and surveyed the scene as the sterilizing mist washed over him. The Nurse cleaned the autocook as Blazer lay on the table. Marda shuffled over to the far wall and tapped a holographic key hovering before it. She pulled a data card from a tray that emerged and handed it to Gokhead. “I told you to scrub up.”

  Gokhead nodded, and squeezed past to the sterilization station. He returned a moment later, the gloves over the sleeves of his body glove.

  Marda handed him the data card. “This is Blazer’s bio-data.”

  Gokhead looked down at the card. Marda watched his eyes dance as his micomm interfaced and read the data lattice. It displayed Blazer’s vital stats and medical history. Gokhead looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

  As the nurse finished sterilizing the autocook, Marda grabbed the nutrient bath with the remains of Blazer’s heart and slid it beside the device. “You are going to take that card and reprogram the autocook to build Blazer a new heart.”

  Gokhead and the nurse both stepped back and stared at Marda. “Are you serious?”

  Marda nodded.

  Gokhead looked at the autocook in disbelief. Autocooks were not the most sophisticated of nano-assemblers. Baseline models could produce nutrient bars, but never complex protein chains. High-end units could produce meals indistinguishable from real food, but this was a military model and lay somewhere in the middle. “I will see what I can do.”

  Marda tapped the card. “Then get to it, how long will it take?”

  Gokhead considered and looked at the unit. “If I can integrate my micomm with the autocook I can work faster, maybe a hect. But I doubt that the finished product will last long.”

  “Then get to work. His secondary heart will only be able to sustain him for a few hects at most.”

  Gokhead nodded and pulled the unit aside as Marda turned back to the shattered form of her husband to address the rest of his injuries.

  Neurosimulation Bay 3, UCSBA-13, Star System: Classified

  Blazer shot up in his seat and clawed at his helmet to pull it off. Once free of the device he looked around the room to find one of the technicians handing him a water bottle. He took a long drink and sat back in the seat again, his heartbeat damping down to normal. “I forgot what it felt like to die in SIM.”

  Blazer hadn’t died in the simulation since their disastrous early outings. This was the first time he’d died after the academy had enhanced the simulations to erase the subtle clues allowing some cadets, like him, to differentiate between simulations and real missions. “I see what Chris meant about how much worse it is.”

  Chris was the only one of them to die in the simulations since the enhancement. Dying in the simulation before was jarring. Now ejection from the system was downright terrifying. Blazer turned to the technician. “How are they doing?”

  The Otlian technician shrugged his lower shoulders and indicated the screen next to Blazer. “All we can monitor here are your vitals, and the machine. If you want to know how your team is doing you’ll have to go up to the booth.”

  Blazer looked up to the control room, where even now, he could see Tadeh Qudas and the other officers and technicians monitoring the team’s progress on a bank of control screens and holograms. Getting up from his couch, he stretched and activated his micomm.

  Blazer felt more than saw Tadeh Qudas’ gaze as those cold impassive eyes turned towards him.

  Blazer hurried up the staircase into the control booth. It was the first time he’d ever entered the room, and it overwhelmed him with the amount of information presented. A holo-table dominated the space, the air over it populated by representations of his team and their surroundings. Along the walls, banks of screens monitored each of them while another set controlled their virtual adversaries.

  Tadeh Qudas stood in front of Marda’s monitor as she continued to perform surgery on Blazer. Blazer approached Tadeh Qudas, doing his best to keep his head up, despite his embarrassment at his death in the SIM. “I’m sorry sir. I should have been more aware of my surroundings and kept under cover from snipers.”

  Tadeh Qudas nodded, and Blazer could see one of technicians along the back wall exchange a quick finger flex with his neighbor. So he was the one controlling the sniper. Blazer was sure that Tadeh Qudas had to have given the order to shoot. Okay, lesson learned. It was my fault for being out of cover after all.

  Tadeh Qudas pointed to Marda’s screen and Blazer turned to look at it as well. Marda stood, wrist deep in his chest, reassembling his perforated back. “What is she up to?”

  Blazer didn’t have a clue and then he noticed Gokhead working on the autocook. He pulled up the transcript next to the screen; read it. He stared at the hole in his chest. It was a disturbing scene. Is this what spirits see when they leave a body? “She must be trying to save me. But given my injuries listed here, I can’t see what she’ll be able to do. I mean I doubt that autocook could do what she’s thinking.”

  Tadeh Qudas betrayed no emotion. He was neither a medic nor an expert on autocooks. He was a soldier and tactician. “I don’t know.” He turned towards the primary medical technician. “Contact Dr. Sares. I need his medical opinion on this action. Perhaps we can learn something of value.”

  Blazer and Tadeh Qudas turned to the holo-table as the team made contact with the approaching enemy. Blazer watched, impressed, as his team took effective aimed shots at the enemy. The approaching GF forces were forced to rely on suppression fire that proved futile due to the slope and the trees. What he didn’t like was the position of the AT-APT. It was too far forward and down the ramp. “Not with that bad de-grav generator,” he muttered to himself.

  Tadeh Qudas nodded. The transcript revealed that Zithe had ordered the AT-APT out to that position. “Zithe has a weakness when it comes to dealing with heavy armor. His specialties are in space warfare and small squad tactics.”

  Blazer nodded in agreement, his eyes wide as the chain plaser on the AT-APT opened fire along the path ahead of the approaching heavy tank. Even Arion had to realize he couldn’t go toe to toe with the tank. Maybe he was simply trying to delay its approach as best he could. If only the turret could volley fire all eight rounds at once, it might stand a chance.

  “I will make sure that your ground combat tactics instructor incorporates that in the next lesson plan.”

  Before Blazer could reply, Dr. Sares and a medical team rushed into the booth.

  Dr. Sares and his team looked around, expecting to find chaos and someone in trouble. Instead, they found only the calm hum of the electronics as the technicians ignored them; focusing instead on the battle. “What’s going on? Where’s the medical emergency?”

  Tadeh Qudas looked down at his med tech and before he could even ask, the technician replied, never taking his eyes off the screen ahead of him. “I had to call it that in order to get him to come.”

  Tadeh Qudas betrayed no emotion as he turned back to Dr. Sares. “There is no emergency, but I need your advice right away on a procedure a cadet is currently attempting.”

  Dr. Sares glared at the technician and made his way around the holo-table. “What’s going on?”

  Tadeh Qudas zoomed the holo-table in on Marda as she continued to work on Blazer. She was placing another skin patch on his damaged secondary heart.

  “Standard procedure for sealing a chest wound, why was I called down here?”

  Tadeh Qudas indicated the heart in the nutrient bath. Curious, Dr. Sares pulled out his macomm and linked it to the simulator. He read the transcript and turned to Blazer. “Sorry cadet, but you’re dead.”

  “What about what she’s trying?” Tadeh Qudas asked again.

  Dr. Sares played back the video on his macomm and reread the transcript but continued to shake his head. “It won’t work. That autocook is a standard field model. It’s made mainly for field rations. The specs say that it can fabricate meat, but it won’t be viable.”

  “Why not?” Blazer asked.

  Dr. Sares shook his head. “Look, do you really want me to go into the details?”

  Blazer and Tadeh Qudas exchanged a quick look before that grim death mask turned back to the doctor. “Give him the pilot’s answer.”

  Dr. Sares cracked a smile. “Copy that. Short and simple, the meat will have no nerves, no fat, and weak connective tissue.”

  Blazer stared back at him.

  “Cadet Gokhead can program the autocook with the biometric data to make the muscles of the heart in all the right shapes and places. It simply won’t have the nerves necessary to link it to the nervous system and stimulate function.”

  Blazer looked at the scene again, there has to be something. “What about cardiac stimulators?”

  Dr. Sares shook his head. “You’re an Energy Gatherer. They won’t work on you.”

  Blazer considered that; his abilities were both a gift and a curse, and right now, it was a curse again.

  “It’s a standard problem with Energy Gatherers. We can’t use epidural cardiac or cortical stimulators on your kind. The electrolytic layer in your skin will absorb the shock before it reaches the heart or brain. Therefore, when Energy Gatherers have heart problems, and we need to defibrillate, we have to go in, use internal defibrillators or probes. Even that sometimes doesn’t work.”

  “What about implants?”

  “No, there aren’t any in her kit. She will have internal defibrillators, but those are only made to get the heart going, not regulate and control it.”

  “What about my secondary heart?”

  Dr. Sares looked at the counter over the holo-table and shook his head. “Your secondary heart will give out at least a hect before that corvette arrives. I’m sorry cadet.”

  Blazer shook his head as Tadeh Qudas zoomed the table back out to show the battle raging outside the dropship. “We’d be better off if she’d just let me die.”

  Tadeh Qudas and Dr. Sares both nodded. “At this point she’d be of more use with a gun outside.”

  Tadeh Qudas nodded again and turned back to the tech monitoring Marda. “I agree, but it is a lesson she has had a hard time learning. Allow her to proceed.”

  Blazer wiped at his upper lip, he hated to see Marda working on him like this. Since she couldn’t tell they were in a simulation, he knew that she saw her husband dying before her. She would never give up, but for the good of the whole, she had to. Looking back up he saw Dr. Sares watching her on his macomm, considering her technique and her plan. “Sir, you’re looking at this much too curiously for this to not work at all.”

  Dr. Sares smiled back at him. “Well, if she had the right equipment then the principle of what she’s proposing is sound. Mind you nothing made in an autocook would last long, a cycle or two at best really, a decle on the absolute outside. Autocooks aren’t organ printers. They’re designed to make food that breaks down easily for consumption.”

  Blazer considered that for a moment. “Don’t count her out yet then. She might be thinking of something. I believe in her.”

  “Belief doesn’t always mean that something will happen cadet.”

  Dropship TK-114, Dalcine 3, Dalcine System (Contested)

  Marda sighed and set aside her suture wand. She’d done all she could. A harrumph from Gokhead made her look up. The autocook was on the table. She felt her fists begin to ball up. “What?”

  He indicated the autocook. “I’m done.”

  Marda turned to find it assembling the heart. “How long until it’s ready?”

  “Maybe thirty pulses, that’s some dense muscle tissue.”

  Marda nodded; the nanobots inside the window were building the heart layer by layer. “okay, I thought it might take a while due to the complexity of the tissue.”

  “Marda, it’s not going to work. It’s fabricating the meat of the organ, but that’s it. It’s not sophisticated enough.”

  Marda sighed, “I knew going in that that was a possibility, nurse.”

  The nurse looked up from her station as she monitored Blazer.

  “I need you to get me out two internal cardiac stimulators.”

  The nurse looked at her for a moment, befuddled.

  “Now!”

  The nurse didn’t say anything and ran over to the medical cabinet in the wall. Inside she found two packs of the shrink-wrapped devices and brought them to Marda. Marda looked at the devices for a moment to ensure they were the correct models and handed them to Gokhead. “These are designed to jump start a heart. I need you reset these into pacemakers. Set one to act as a defibrillator we can trigger remotely, and the other as a cardiac regulator. You should be able to find the instructions in your micomm database, or in my medical macomm.”

  Gokhead stood there for a moment examining the two devices. “That might work, but how long will it last in that mode?”

  Marda shook her head. “No more than a cycle or two. But that’s more than long enough to get him out of here.”

  Gokhead nodded and ran to his worktable and set to work.

  ***

  Outside the dropship, Zithe took stock of the battle. Arion wove the AT-APT through the enemy ranks as best he could, shooting and dodging to avoid the trees and rocks littering the valley floor. His objective was to sew confusion in the attacking ranks. It was all part of his plan. The AT-APT could never engage that tank in a stand up fight. Nevertheless, even with the damaged de-grav generator it was still faster and more maneuverable than the heavy tracked vehicle. So long as Arion kept out of the tank’s line of fire and kept its crew distracted, he would buy them the time they needed.

  Arion replied over the link.

 

  Arion replied.

 

 

  Arion followed Zithe’s instructions, racing towards the ridge, the main battle tank in pursuit and bringing its cannon to bear.

  Arion replied with a blue go light over the micomm link, the emoticon of a confused face within it.

  The sensors in Zithe’s helmet registered the energy build as the tank powered up its cannon to fire. In just a few cents the turret’s capacitors would be ready.

  Arion whipped the AT-APT around an old growth tree a hair’s breath before the main battle tank’s heavy particle beam cannon discharged. The lancing beam stabbed out, digging into the bluff behind Arion. The beam continued to slice through the tree as it tracked the AT-APT for a few centipulses before it died, the capacitors and particle reservoir discharged.

  No one needed to tell Arion twice, and he opened fire with the chain plaser cannon on the roof of his AT-APT. Everyone could see Zithe’s plan now. Firing the tank’s main cannon weakened the shields for a moment. While most of Arion’s shots still bounced off the energy barrier, some struck the armored skin, and a handful pierced the tank’s thick hide.

  “Good call Wolf Lead!” Arion hooted

  Zithe looked up as part of the bluff fell away slamming into the ground at the point where he ordered Arion to turn.