Except for Cerulean Clinic.
* * * * *
Chapter Two
“Wake up, Roeder, we have incoming. I need a fresh batch of nanites warmed up!” Molina’s voice came from every speaker in the lab. He had no idea where the biochemist was, but he was certain the Human laboratory technician was hiding out somewhere trying to avoid work.
“You don’t have to shout, I got the message, too.” A seventy-five-year-old Human male with extremely thick glasses peered through the door from the tiny clinical diagnostic lab. The man was bald, extensively wrinkled—no, shriveled—in a manner that suggested he had once been considerably larger. He sat in a powered chair despite the reduced gravity. “You do realize I’m not your lab tech, right? I’m only here because your last five techs quit!”
In truth, Professor Roeder was indeed not the lab tech, but rather the station’s only permanent resident. After establishing three pharmaceutical companies, two manufactories, and a rather large family—with three successive wives, all named Emily—on Azure, he had moved to the orbital station so he could keep working after an accident greatly reduced his mobility planet-side.
“I do not understand why you do not let me rebuild your spine, Roeder. We have the finest neuro-grade nanites. You certainly experimented on yourself enough in your youth! I could implant some actuators and motivators with pinplants for control and you’d be running and jumping with your children and grandchildren. Perhaps even making more. Sngh, sngh, sngh.” The scratchy sound from the speakers was Molina’s version of a laugh.
“Not a chance, squid, I know where—and how—you got those designs. I won’t be a party to it.” Roeder used an extension arm—called a waldo after an obscure Earth story—to reach a high shelf and retrieve a vial of what looked like gray dust. “Besides, I need the peace and quiet for my experiments. Emily’s been bugging me to check in on Emily, and they both are feuding with Emily over the allocations for the great-grandkids’ trust funds.”
Molina was about to make an observation that the last lab tech’s name was Emma Leigh, but was interrupted by Ortiz entering the clinic accompanied by a Human merc carrying a second over his shoulders. Before he could ask the whereabouts of the other clinic staff, two more Human males came rushing in. One was short and lean, wearing workout gear, with a slight sheen of sweat on his skin. The other had arrived on the station in the last couple of days; a tall, hulking man, with heavy brows and thick beard stubble.
“Hoyt, help them get the patient on the table,” Molina said. The larger of the two staff members merely nodded and turned to assist without speaking. The big man and the merc wrestled the injured man onto the table, and Hoyt started removing the bloody scraps of armor and clothing. Meanwhile, the second staffer began pulling diagnostic instruments over to the bedside.
“Lu, start an IV. Hoyt, scrub in,” Molina ordered. No matter how effective the nanite treatments, or how fast they were delivered, trauma patients lost blood. Intravenous fluids and a blood substitute developed by the late Doctor Bailey would help.
“Isn’t that supposed to be the Sasquatch’s job?” Lu protested, pointing back over his shoulder at Hoyt who was opening a sterilizer pack.
“What?” Molina’s voice thundered from all of the speakers. “Did you graduate from medical school?” Ortiz took the opportunity to grab the second merc by the arm and lead him out of the treatment room.
Lu shook his head but didn’t say anything. There was a look of confusion on his face.
“No, of course not. You barely made it through nursing school.” Molina flashed annoyance but suppressed the translation. “Doctor Hoyt may not be a skilled surgeon yet, but he will be someday if he continues to pay attention, which you obviously have not.”
“I just thought the Yeti here was the orderly…” started Lu as he started rummaging through the storage unit for intravenous needles and tubing.
They could hear Roeder’s laughter from the next room. “Doctor Yeti. That’s a new one.”
“You just thought. Don’t. Think, that is. Just do as I say.” Molina used a couple of arms to reach the diagnostic instruments, and he started to scan the patient. The chromophores on his skin continued to flash complex lights and patterns, the Wrogul version of muttering to himself.
Lu looked indignant and held up his hands. There was a visible tremor. “I was lifting when the call came in,” he muttered. “I’ve still got the twitch. I’ll need glucose and protein before my hands are steady enough for a needle.”
Molina reached another pair of arms across the room to a small refrigerator mounted to the countertop. With one arm he opened the door, and with the other retrieved a bottle of chilled electrolyte solution. A quick snap of the flexible meter-and-a-half arm, and the flexiplas bottle went sailing across the room, almost hitting Lu on the back of the head. It was intercepted by yet another of the cephalopod’s long arms and resulted only in a gentle tap on the nurse’s shoulder.
“Oh. Thanks,” he said.
“Hoyt, report.”
The doctor-in-training leaned over the patient and used a sterilized surgical probe to point at the Human’s injuries. “Left arm broken in several places. Compound fracture of the left radius. Greenstick break of the left ulna. Comminuted fracture of the left humerus. Crush injury to left hand; multiple metatarsals have fragmented. Simple fracture of left clavicle and ribs nine through eleven…”
The list of injuries continued for several minutes. Molina’s pinplants accessed the information Ortiz had obtained from the merc ship on arrival. The unfortunate soldier had been caught between a bulkhead and a piece of flying debris caused by the accidental firing of a missile’s rocket engine while it was still in the magazine. External blow-out panels had minimized the damage to the rest of the crew spaces, but Lieutenant Young had the misfortune of being too close to the compartment when the engine ignited.
“…compound fracture of the skull, subdural hematoma over Brodmann’s area thirty-nine and forty, pial rupture over Brodmann’s areas forty-six, nine, eight, forty-four, and forty-five.” The Sasquatch-like doctor paused, then continued in a less formal, but no less serious tone. “That’s the language and speech centers, Doc Ock. Even once we fix the other injuries, this guy’s pretty fucked up.”
“I know, Hoyt, but we can do what others can’t. Well…mostly.” Molina went into full action, all eight arms and both tentacles were out of his tank and wielding instruments, adjusting equipment and palpating various injury sites on the patient. “Lu, get five units of nanites. Forget the Type B’s, get me Cephalon Cee-Fourteens, continuous infusion, zero point two five units per minute. Doctor Hoyt, reduce the arm fractures and start making sure collarbone, shoulder, ribs—everything—are aligned, those nanites are going to burn through the fractures pretty quickly. I need to take a look at the head.”
The Wrogul surgeon placed his two tentacles—the fine-tipped sensory appendages not covered with suckers—on the left side of the patient’s head. They started to blur in the technique his kind called fiilaash, and soon sank through skin and skull to directly probe the injured brain tissue.
“It always turns my stomach when I see him do that,” Lu said quietly. Hoyt just grunted.
* * * * *
Chapter Three
“When can the lieutenant come back to duty?” Major Azarola asked from the screen.
“He’s recovering, but we need to discuss his rehabilitation,” Roeder replied. The Human biochemist handled most of the interactions with the merc commanders who brought their troops to be patched up at Cerulean. While it was known the clinic employed Wrogul surgeons, and that those sophonts were the best in the Union, experience had shown the mercs still weren’t comfortable with the idea the Azure Colony Wrogul worked side-by-side with Humans to the point of having an alien Chief Medical Officer or company owner. Technically, Todd owned the clinic, but Todd was off on Earth; Molina was second, but still an alien. That left Roeder as the official representative, with Molina monit
oring the conversation via his pinplants.
“Rehabilitation? What rehabilitation? You fixed him up and cured him, right? Isn’t that what you people do?” The major was starting to sound somewhat belligerent.
“Cerulean Clinic does not cure patients who come in on the brink of death.” Roeder sighed. “Your Lieutenant Young suffered severe head trauma. We set his broken bones and applied nanites to seal the breaks. We replaced his lost blood and closed all of the leaking vessels. We also fixed his fractured spleen, perforated pancreas, and cirrhotic liver. You’re very welcome on that last part. Have you mercenaries never heard of drinking in moderation?”
The major was getting rather red in the face and starting to splutter. Molina was glad neither he nor Roeder was in the same room with him. Not allowing the merc to get a word in, Roeder continued:
“Again, with all of that, he also suffered severe head trauma. His skull was dented and there was damage to the speech and language centers of the brain. We fixed the overt tissue damage, but he’s got a long rehabilitation program ahead of him.
“I can’t afford to have him out of action. We’re headed to a contract on Orkutt, and I need him leading his CASPer platoon.” The major seemed to deflate and shook his head, but after a moment he stared back through the comm with an expression of challenge. “Wait a minute. I know you’ve got the squid-people there. They have stuff they can do with their brains—post pins or something like that.”
“Major Azarola, I assure you, we’ve done everything we can,” Roeder protested.
“No, you haven’t,” the major retorted. “I want to speak to your head squid.”
Roeder started to protest again, but Molina reached down from his perch and laid an arm on the man’s shoulder. “No need, Brent. I’ll take this.” He suspended himself on three arms and lowered his body until his bulbous head and blue eyes were in range of the comm.
Azarola recoiled visibly. From what the colony had been able to determine, Earth-stock Humans had never seen Wrogul out in the Union. They knew of the existence of their species-mates, but the origin and history of Todd’s people prior to his arrival at Azure still remained a mystery.
“Mister Azarola.” The insult was deliberate, and Molina’s subtle way of responding to the squid-people slur. “There are no pinplants for Humans. We simply do not have the experience or the knowledge of your brains that would make that possible.”
“In other words, you want more money,” Azarola countered.
“Yes. Nanites are expensive.” Molina waved a tentacle in a dismissive manner. The truth was they were going to soak this guy for every credit he could spare. Ortiz had been unable to find any useful video—anime or manga—but had learned plenty about the shady way Azarola conducted his operations. “But that’s not the issue. I do have a very experimental procedure, however, it has not been tried on a Human. I can implant a neural mesh to restore communication between language and speech centers. It requires specialized nanites and is a very risky procedure.”
He reflected on the fact most of what he had just said was true. The nanites existed, the schematics existed, and he had just enough knowledge of the Human brain to perform the technique. What wasn’t true was Molina’s involvement. It was Nemo’s technique, damn him for not sharing, and he’d had to “borrow” the notes before his progenitor left Azure to join that Human scientist in the merc company.
It would also require Cephalon N-one nanites, the rarest and most expensive in terms of raw materials. Fortunately, he knew where to find them.
When Todd was rescued from his crippled starship, the only thing to survive was the sealed rescue pod in which Todd had been found, amnesic, but otherwise uninjured. The moment non-Wrogul DNA had been detected, all the instrumentation in the pod had melted down, leaving only bare metal and trace organics…except for a single cube of hull metal two meters on a side.
Inside the cube was a treasure trove that became the foundation of Azure’s biotech industry. Inside the cache they found several million Union Credits, some extremely rare and valuable elements, and two fabricators capable of manufacturing nanites. These particular fabricators produced even the most specialized nanomachines and nanoassemblers—ones used to assemble the pinplant brain-computer interfaces every Wrogul had almost from the moment of their budding. Only Todd had the knowledge of how to duplicate his own pinplants, although his budded offspring, and Molina’s own predecessor, Nemo, had been studying how to adapt the BCIs to Human brains.
Manufacturing nanites had proven to be easy, and the growing industrial base on Azure relied on the technology that jump-started their economy. Medical nanites had proven more difficult, but the ten-year-old Wrogul-Human owned Cephalon Industries had developed their own fabricators and varieties of nanites, including the Cephalon C-14 Trauma line used to repair the merc lieutenant. Neural mesh nanites, such as the N-1, could only be produced by one of the two original fabricators, and used some of the extremely rare and expensive raw materials. Found within the cache had been osmium, niobium, ultra-pure carbon, silicon-gallium-arsenide matrix, ground sapphire, heat-stabilized solid He3, ground red diamonds, and the rarest of them all, F11—the element essential to power generation and spaceflight across the galaxy.
The nanite fabricators used only vanishingly small quantities of these raw materials, and less than ten percent of the cache had been expended since its discovery. Still, even one hundredth percent of a Galactic fortune added up to serious money.
Molina returned to the conversation and flashed a pattern of lights from his chromophores that were meaningless to anyone who did not know the Wrogul. Roeder saw it, and just put his head in his hands.
“How badly do you need your lieutenant?” Molina asked with a hungry look in his blue eyes.
* * * * *
Chapter Four
It was necessary to send someone down to the surface to collect the nanites. Molina decided he didn’t trust anyone else to do the job. Besides, he had a five percent interest in Cephalon, and only Todd’s DNA could open the cache. It was fortunate, then, each Wrogul was a budded clone of their progenitor.
The major hadn’t been happy about the extra three days to retrieve the nanites, perform the surgery, and out-process his officer, but at least he was getting the man back at about ninety-five percent capability. The procedure had been a success—mostly. The neural mesh preserved Lieutenant Young’s brain function for speech language but could not immediately restore the control of the muscles and tissues associated with speaking. That would take time and therapy. Now they were waiting on a custom-programmed translator pendant to allow him to communicate with his troops.
Molina was back in his quarters, contemplating the payment for this latest case. He hadn’t completely refilled the cabin with water, instead he had released just enough to form a bubble around his sleeping frame. The water was hyperoxygenated and continually circulated between the inlet and outlet spouts to allow him to remain stationary for extended periods of time. This way he could watch the Tri-V without a lot of distortion or distraction. The anime collection was being neglected though, and the display showed text and numbers. He’d tried to get the major to pay the clinic fees in hard currency so he could recoup the costs of his personal capital involved in the experimental procedure.
Clinic fees were regulated by the colony’s financial administration and used as a cost-center to offset transport expenses for personnel and materials shipped from Earth. As such, the extra income that might have resulted from the neural reconstruction had simply been applied to the transport costs. Instead of paying Cerulean Clinic, Major Azarola would instruct the Basque Blades home office on Earth to deposit funds with Matson Lines. The next outbound Matson freighter would debit that account to pay shipping costs for cargo bound for Azure. Roeder had once told him that it was called triangle trade; a nice arrangement for the colony, but it did nothing for Molina’s bottom line.
The truth was the clinic and the colony were short-sighted. Su
re, Roeder and his contemporaries were filthy rich, but it was all because of Todd. The cache and the fabricators represented riches beyond imagining, but those men—not to mention his progenitor—had been shortsighted. They couldn’t imagine the riches Molina could. Without the triangle trade agreements, he could have demanded—and gotten—a percentage of the Blades’ contract payout. Within a few years, they could own a piece of just about every merc outfit on Earth…or at least the ones who utilized their clinics. There were a few, the vaunted “Four Horsemen,” for example, who would be hard to crack. Still, he’d heard rumors that one of the famous merc companies was not averse to a little profit on the side.
No, with the right resources and billing, the clinic could have made it big. They just needed the right…attitude.
For example, the components needed for the nanites were among the most expensive substances in the Galactic Union. That alone would demand a premium price. The ground red diamond that went into the nanite fabricator represented a few thousand credits. The F11 consumed by the compact power source was probably ten thousand credits.
Do No Harm Page 20
