Status Quo: The Chronicle of Jane Doe

by Chris Kuhn

  I hoped he was both intelligent enough to figure that out, and insufficiently dedicated to give his life for the cause.

  Right on both counts.

  The Firian darted out from behind the shuttle, and it occurred to me that I'd been just a few meters away from him before. He ran to the lever and shoved it upward. As soon as it clicked into place, I aimed my weapon at him, double-checked the safety, and pulled the trigger.

  I missed spectacularly.

  The lizard-fucker spun around started to bring his own weapon up. I had one more chance. One shot.

  Aiming for center mass, I fired again.

  I hit him in the right arm, and watched the rifle fall out of his hands. Instead of reaching for it, however, he charged at me. He ran in a zig-zag pattern, changing direction every time one of his feet hit the ground.

  I fired again without aiming, and missed again. Before I could try a fourth time, the bastard slammed into me.

  A powerful arm snaked around my neck as we fell, and I caught the flash of something shiny in my peripheral vision. I wasn't going to last long in this kind of fight. I reached down to where I'd clipped the taser back in the armory. It occurred to me that I hadn't actually noticed its presence since then. Please freakin' be there. Please, please-

  It was.

  I snatched it from my suit and thrust it behind me as hard as I could. It made contact with something soft, and I heard a high-voltage discharge followed by the sound of a scream. The arm loosened around my neck, and I slipped free.

  Standing shakily, I turned to see the Firian twitching on the floor.

  I picked my rifle up and aimed it at him, the weapon unsteady in my hands. I stared at him on the floor, rolling around in front of me. Until now, I'd been clinging to the fantasy that I could just outwit the bad guys. I'd imagined that with enough cleverness and technical wizardry, I could avoid any unseemly personal violence.

  Oops.

  There wasn't much time, and my choice was blindingly obvious. I had to kill him before he got up. If he got up, I was dead. I didn't want to be dead. The Firian looked up at me, eyes widened, as though reading my thoughts. His lips parted slightly, preparing to speak.

  No.

  I closed my eyes and squeezed the trigger.

  I heard a high pitched whine, and knew the weapon had fired. I opened my eyes. There was hole the size of my fist just above the bridge of the Firian's nose. As I looked on in horror, I realized that the hole was starting to close. The Firian wasn't dead yet. They were known for regenerating - as long as they were alive - and the closing wound told me that my work wasn't done.

  I held down the trigger until the problem was solved.

  I felt bile rising in my throat. Nausea overcame me. I knelt down, one knee on the deck. I opened my helmet's visor and felt myself attempt to puke.

  Nothing came out.

  About ten seconds after I stopped whiting out, the smell hit my nostrils. Burnt lizard. I'd never smelled anything like it before. I heard something - an odd sound, like the gurgling of a draining bathtub - and then I smelled something else. The putrid aroma of Firian waste after he lost bodily control.

  This time something came out.

  I looked back at the charred remains of the Firian. I'd heard that people convulsed when they died, that muscles would twitch or spasm. I saw none of that now.

  Everything in my brain suddenly screamed at me to move, and I registered that my suit's alarm claxons were going off.

  It was possible that more of Udo's men were on their way. I wanted to depart before they arrived. I almost left the toolkit, but I didn't know if I'd be able to come back for it. I grabbed it, then ran towards the corridor and opened the door.

  No one was there. Yet.

  I leaned back against the wall to get my balance, which is when I noticed the small gray sphere near the base of the shuttlebay door.

  Motion sensor. Fuck me.

  I'd disabled the Pridemore's own sensors, but that didn't account for anything the bad guys might have brought with them.

  I smashed it with my rifle, making a note to watch for similar devices. Time to go.

  As I pushed myself off from the corridor wall and silenced my suit's alarm, I became aware of an odd sensation. It was a nice feeling, actually, a mild warmth moving across my abdomen. A wave of panic hit me. My hand flew to my midsection and came away covered in blood. My blood. I recalled the shiny object that had flashed in my peripheral vision.

  Knife.

  Jesus.

  I'd been stabbed.

  Log 011: Springing Leaks

  I felt no pain, but that almost made it worse.

  How bad? How deep is the wound? Did the knife damage something I can't live without? For the second time that day, I regretted my complete ignorance of human anatomy.

  I felt a thin layer of sweat forming on my skin. Stay calm. Be useful. I'd have to get to sickbay, which was two decks and three sections away. There were first aid kits much closer, but I had to do more than seal the wound; I had to asses my medical status. Sickbay was the only place with enough technology to compensate for my ignorance.

  Gotta get to sickbay.

  Gotta go now.

  I made it to the nearest stairwell before I lost my balance. Grabbing hold of the rail, I carefully made my way up the steps. Why the hell didn't the Pridemore have elevators? I knew the reason - there were only ten decks at the ship's highest point, and stairs were far less costly to maintain.

  I didn't give a shit; I wanted elevators.

  I emerged from the stairwell and stumbled my way toward sickbay, clutching my abdomen.

  Twenty meters.

  You can do this.

  Ten meters. The door is right freakin' there.

  The dizziness was increasing. I tried to summon up my steely resolve, but it had apparently taken the day off. The pain, conspicuously absent during the actual stabbing, had now asserted itself with a vengeance.

  I lost my balance and dropped to the deck.

  Oh, hell.

  I'd read stories about people who had been stabbed multiple times and lived to tell about it. I'd only been stabbed once, and now I was curled up in the corridor.

  You need to do better.

  Get up.

  I didn't get up. Instead, I half-crawled, half-slithered my way down to sickbay. I reached up, opened the door, and rolled myself inside.

  Sickbay. It was a place I usually avoided. Being in my mid-twenties, I was immortal and had no need for such a facility. Amazing how a little knife wound alters your perspective.

  I stumbled to the medical scanner near the wall, almost tripping over a small dead body with a giant bald gray head; our Chief Surgeon, a Miliari everyone called Doctor Lance. The scanner was large, but it came with a handheld accessory unit. As far as I could remember, the accessory unit did all of the actual scanning. I didn't know what the large box on the wall was for.

  I was sure I could work it out later.

  I flipped the accessory unit to triage mode, which forced the computer to categorize my status in a way I could understand. I ran the gadget over the site of my wound, staring at the linked screen on the wall.

  Most of the readings were gibberish to me, but the triage indicator showed that I was a Category 1 patient - in other words, I was likely to live regardless of what care I received. Yay. Below the category indicator, however, was a triage score. A score of 100 meant that I was almost certain to live, while a score of 0 meant the opposite. The machine that felt I'd earned a 71, which was just barely in the "likely to live without treatment" category.

  Less yay.

  I put the scanner down, then pulled myself up to the display and tapped my triage score. The screen shifted, displaying a synopsis of computer's reasoning. It seemed that the primary threat wasn't damage to internal organs - amazingly, those looked okay - but blood loss.

  That, at least, I could fix.

  But it's gonna hurt.

  A lot.

  I g
rabbed the nearest first aid kit, popped it open, and stared at the packets of cauterizing agent. There were three varieties available, and they came in green, yellow, and red.

  I was sure that I needed red.

  I took off my helmet and wiggled half out of my suit. I got down on the deck, lying face up, and tried to find the least painful way to get my uniform top away from the wound site. I had only marginal success in avoiding pain, but a minute later, I was ready.

  Don't look. Don't think. Just do.

  I ripped open the packet and poured its powdery contents into the wound. I wasn't prepared for the results. It was the worse pain I'd ever felt in my life, and I bit down on the sleeve of my uniform to muffle my scream.

  Son of a bitch, that hurt. Women talk about childbirth hurting, and I haven't had the pleasure, but I'd bet that this shit made having a baby feel like scraping your fucking knee.

  Might have picked the wrong colored packet.

  Now - too late - I read the packets. The green and yellow ones were just disinfectants and coagulating agents. The red stuff chemically burned your injury shut.

  Little details.

  How long did I have to lie there for the nasty powder to do its thing?

  I grabbed the red packet (which was now torn in half) and consulted the instructions. It didn't specify. It said to wait until the wound was sealed.

  At least it was good advice.

  I glanced down at my abdomen, which was a mess of red and brown fluids (and now semi-solids). It hurt worse than it had before. I stumbled back to the scanner and checked my status.

  A score of 96. Better. Much, much better. I tried standing normally, but I was still dizzy. I assumed that would go away eventually.

  Water.

  I hadn't had any water in hours, and I was desperately thirsty. It's a medical facility, right? Water is essential to life, so there's gotta be water lying around. Apparently no one had explained that to the room's designers. There was, however, a cooler meant to store personal food items. I hobbled across the room and popped it open. There was an assortment of beverages inside, including several bottles of delightful water.

  I grabbed one, chugged it down, and started working on a second. Damn, I'm dehydrated.

  Pain meds. Need some.

  I suddenly remembered what the boxy part of the scanner was for.

  I moved back to it, placed my thumb against the pad, and examined the resulting screen.

  Recommended medication for patient: Hydroxycodone (500mg). Do you consent to this treatment?

  Goddamned right I do.

  The device whirred briefly. A small door slid aside, releasing a translucent purple cylinder with pills inside. I opened it, took two pills, drank more water, and plopped down on my ass. The pain subsided within moments. Apparently the blue pills did their shit pretty quick.

  Yay science. Now what?

  I surveyed the room. There was probably some useful shit in here, right? First aid kit for sure. Maybe other stuff.

  Other stuff.

  Air.

  My reactor suit had been punctured by the knife, and would no longer protect me against changes in the ship's atmosphere. But something else could. The portable oxygenator I'd needed to save Coates had to be around here somewhere.

  Hopefully.

  I moved from the clinical portion of sickbay to the medical storage room. The door was locked.

  Naturally.

  I cut through the thing with my micro torch, although that took a couple of minutes I hadn't wanted to spend. I yanked open the door and walked inside. The shelves were filled with interesting things - expensive things, no doubt. I glanced around the space, looking for the items that I knew - hoped? - would be there.

  I found them.

  Portable freakin' oxygenators.

  The units were small facemasks. They didn't supply oxygen from a tank - they produced it. Which was to say they took CO2 and pulled the C out. I grabbed one of the gizmos and looked around the room.

  Scanners. Racks. Surgical kits. Socks. Disaster relief kits.

  The disaster relief kits were meant to be distributed in the event of mass causalities or a humanitarian aid mission. They were similar to first aid kits, but there was one critical difference. They had food. I didn't feel hungry, but I knew I needed food. I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd last eaten. I grabbed three of the kits - enough for a couple days - and stuffed them under my arm.

  I moved back to the main section of sickbay, and then stood there like an idiot.

  I hadn't the slightest idea of what to do next. The shuttle was kaput, and no alternate plans sprang to mind.

  Exhaustion was hitting me hard, and things were starting to fade. It might have had something to do with the little blue pills, but I also I realized that I hadn't had solid sleep in... huh. I didn't even know. That, coupled with the day's festivities, had sapped all of my mental and physical energy. It seemed like I should do things, but I was too exhausted to think about what they might be.

  Not gonna cut it.

  I could either sleep now, while I was in no immediate danger, or risk collapsing from exhaustion at a less opportune moment.

  I didn't want to sleep in the main section of sickbay, but one of the surgical bays might work. There was no particular reason anyone would come to this part of the ship.

  The knife. The knife that had stabbed me. The knife I'd left on the shuttlebay floor with my blood on it.

  It wouldn't take a genius to guess my next destination - especially if they followed the blood trail I'd probably left. My pulse quickened. How long have I even been here? I didn't know. I moved toward the door, setting my supplies down for the moment. Aiming the rifle in front of me, I slid the door aside.

  Empty.

  On a whim, I yanked a pillow and blanket from the sickbay bed near the door. I figured I deserved that much. I moved rapidly down the corridor and climbed the stairs up to the next deck, eyes searching for another maintenance room.

  Come on, come on.... damn things are all over the ship until you need one.

  I found one.

  It took me a second to get my bulky supplies inside, but I managed it. I shut the door behind me and locked it. Glancing at the shelves, I saw backup pumps for the ship's waste disposal system. Good. Not gonna be on anyone's priority list. I walked behind a large container and set up shop for a serious power-nap.

  I stripped off my uniform - ripped and bloody as most of it was - down to my underwear and sports bra. I threw the pillow and blanket down and set the tool kit off to the side, then put my rifle next to my impromptu bed.

  Good enough.

  I dropped my head onto the soft blue pillow, then slipped the oxygenator onto my face. It was uncomfortable and smelled like sulfur, but I decided it was worth it. They knew that I was alive now, and Byers still had full access to the ship's environmental systems.

  Gotta make sure I wake up. I shut my eyes, listening to the odd sounds of air moving through the oxygenator. I was exhausted, injured, drugged up. Despite the clumsy mask on my face, I figured that sleep would come quickly.

  It didn't.

  My brain was refusing to shut down. It didn't take long to figure out why. Today had changed something, something that I hadn't particularly wanted to change. I'd been inducted into a sorority of dubious value.

  I'd never killed anyone before. Now I had, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with that fact.

  The Navy would discourage me from dwelling on it. I envisioned a uniformed man behind a desk, glancing at the clock in annoyance as I kept him from his golf game. He would explain repeatedly (and with growing frustration) that I'd committed no crime.

  Which was true. Probably. I wasn't a lawyer.

  Other people - not in the Navy - would encourage me to collapse beneath the full weight of my actions. They'd explain with unrelenting severity that I'd taken a life.

  Taken a life.

  The phrase sounded trivial when robbed of context, as t
hough the life had been candy in the hands of a disobedient toddler.

  Shouldn't have taken that life. Put it back where you found it.

  My ex-boyfriend who wanted war stories would not be happy. He wouldn't understand why I was contemplating such things. He'd tell me that I'd killed in the line of duty and that I should feel proud. But he was an idiot. He probably thought the Pridemore was bristling with trained killers, men who slew dragons and existed primarily to validate his worldview.