Dominant Species (17 page)

Class 3 Tibial Fracture with disangulation. Class 1 stress frac…

Ridgeway was no medic, but he'd seen enough trauma to follow along. He scanned the list, mentally ticking his way through the catalog of injuries when the table emitted a sharp whine. The white bar of light vanished, only to be replaced by a second of crimson hue. In like manner, the red bar of light tracked it's way down the sniper's form. As it did, the ghostly floating bones above her began to sprout web-like strands of blood vessels. The intricate network of veins and arteries materialized along the plane of moving light. Ridgeway could see the faint pulse that fluttered weakly in her neck. Once more, colored auras highlighted every damaged capillary.

"Triage." Stitch spoke the single word with a hushed reverence. "Son of a bitch its doing some kind of triage, checking system by system, prioritizing the damage. Look," he pointed out, "the minor bone break is blue, but the torn artery is orange; more life threatening."

The medic groaned aloud when the system shifted to organ level. Angry red spread like an oil slick across Darcy's lungs and abdomen. Points of crimson light shimmered brightly in her gall bladder and throughout one kidney.

Without warning, the machine fell silent. Every screen was jammed with information, every wound weighed and measured. The ghostly form in the air was complete, coursing with a rainbow of colors beneath its translucent skin. It looked to Ridgeway like Darcy's disembodied spirit floated ethereally.

"Right, well sod the light show," Taz muttered contemptuously, "what the bloody hell does all this do to help?"

As if in answer, a new sound erupted from the table, a wet, gurgling noise like a drain backing up.

Maybe four drains, Ridgeway realized as the sound grew louder.

A thick, grey sludge vomited up through the four openings. the mud-like material pooling rapidly across the table's steel corners.

At once, an anomaly caught Ridgeway's eye. The table was pitched at the same slant as the floor but the viscous flow avoided the table's lower edge, moving as if on it's own accord towards the inert form in the table's center.

"What the fuck?" Taz spat the words that ran through the mind of each Marine.

As more of the material erupted in thick gouts, Ridgeway could see that the sludge was less a liquid than a slurry of metallic sand. The grey ooze sparkled with a prismatic sheen as it crept up across Darcy's skin. His gaze followed the leading edge of the spreading slick. As it pushed forward unevenly, individual grains of sand broke free from the mass and scuttled ahead on their own.

"Oh shit!" Monster snarled, his own recognition matching Ridgeway's. "They're fuckin' bugs!"

A wave of revulsion passed through the Marines as they watched the growing tide of tiny crawling specks swarm rapidly across their fallen comrade. Every curve of Darcy's body began to glisten with a metallic sheen as the four opposing waves closed together. Moving like ravenous army ants, they swept across her torso and poured into the gaping hole in her ribs.

A weak gasp slipped from Darcy's lips.

"Oh no way," Taz hissed, the whine of the CAR renewing. "No fuckin' way…"

Merlin slapped the barrel down towards the floor. "They're not bugs," he barked, "they're machines, little machines, some kinda nanorobotics." He pointed to the hologram as a single word escaped his lips, hushed and breathless. "Look."

Deep in the cavity of Darcy's chest, the swarm spread out. Tiny specks crawled over and through damaged organs. With growing frequency, pinpoints of ruby light rippled through the sludge, giving Darcy's interior the look of a glowing ember.

Ridgeway was transfixed, his attention darting from the open wound to the hologram. Even at such a tiny scale, the crimson starbursts of laser light were unmistakable.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered, his gaze locked on a spot midway down the shimmering image. The bright red stain on Darcy's kidney had already begun to dim, softening in both hue and intensity. As he watched in stunned silence, the palm-sized slick of light faded down through the color spectrum to a soft blue haze.

The cycle repeated itself throughout Darcy's body. Severed nerve cells reconnected, the flicker of neural messages sparking once more along repaired circuits. The sea of blood within one lung receded as the other lung slowly re-inflated. A shard of bloody shrapnel floated up from within the mass of torn tissue, pushed out through the entrance wound. It clattered to the table surface.

"I do not believe this," Merlin whispered under his breath. The hesitant smile that creased across his face proved the hushed words a lie.

For almost two hours the bugs swarmed through the near-lifeless Marine. More shrapnel was extracted, along with tiny bits of frangible ammunition that had broken apart in Darcy's body. Each scrap of bloodstained debris was added to the growing pile on the table surface. As each point of damage was repaired, the imaging system would shift from one systemic level to the next, continually addressing the most pressing threat. One by one they faded away.

The last glimmers of holographic yellow dimmed to a hazy grey. Only a final, lingering wound could be seen on her ribcage. The crimson shimmer between the silver grains was even more visible on the surface. As though watching a movie in reverse, the torn edges methodically drew together, leaving an expanse of raw, fresh skin where a gaping hole had been just hours before.

Ridgeway stared at the silent hologram. It slowly cycled through each system at an even pace, only soft grey cloudiness breaking the translucent crystalline hues that made up most of the ghostly figure. The image of Darcy's heart beat steadily, her lungs rose and fell in the gentle rhythm of sleep.

"Is that for real?" Ridgeway prodded cautiously.

"I can't tell you for sure Major," Stitch replied softly, "but it damn sure looks that way."

With a soft crackle, the force field unraveled. The Marines inched forward like awestruck kids at Christmas, tentative and filled with anticipation.

The sniper's eyelids fluttered softly. Ridgeway gently took her hand, "Hey Darce, you with us?"

Darcy sluggishly opened one eye. The blue orb ticked from one hovering face to the next before it closed. She sighed wearily.

"For crying out loud guys," Darcy mumbled, "you act like you never saw somebody get shot before."

An explosion of cheers and high-fives erupted, exhaustion forgotten in the wake of a genuine miracle. Darcy's face wrinkled in confusion before her old smile tugged tiredly at one corner of her mouth.

"Hey, I'm touched and all, but give it a rest." she motioned them back with a weak, dismissive wave, "It's not like I came back from the dead or anything."

CHAPTER 18

Four in the morning.

Ridgeway squinted at the blurry digit, a fairly meaningless distinction given their current environment save that a full twenty hours had passed since Darcy's resurrection. In that brief time, their situation had steadily improved, if only by a modest degree. Still, the change of pace was welcome.

The now-functional environmental control system had raised the once frigid temperature in Sickbay to a balmy fifty-six degrees. That alone was a huge boost to both comfort and morale. Consistent power remained an elusive goal that hampered the last stages of armor regeneration, but the overall process had gone well. Merlin and Taz were well into the internal repairs, drawing from spare parts when possible and improvising where they could.

Monster had organized a two-on, four-off watch cycle that allowed everyone to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Aside from ravenous hunger, a shortage of ammunition and a brutal stiffness in his entire body, Ridgeway's world felt a hell of a lot better.

There is that lingering problem of being buried alive, he mused gravely, but he'd take his wins where he could get them.

Ridgeway rose to his feet, giving his aching legs a chance to steady before he took on the uphill hike to Monster and Merlin. The two knelt studiously on either side of Monster's armor where it lay stretched out on the floor. They looked up in tandem as Ridgeway approached.

"Morning Major," Monster tossed out, adding with stereotypical sergeant bravado, "Great day to be a Marine."

Ridgeway grinned back, mirroring Monster's nonchalance. Morale flows from the top down. Clapping Merlin on the shoulder as he took a knee, Ridgeway spoke with feigned gusto. "Yeah, I figure we've been on vacation long enough, how about we pack our shit and go home?"

"Hell yeah, Major." Merlin replied with an energetic nod.

"'Bout damned time," Monster concurred.

Ridgeway leaned forward and looked at the largest of the armored suits. The badly dented chest plate had almost completely reformed. While the surface still carried a blackened scorch mark, only a minor depression remained. Ridgeway knew that before his eyes, carbon nanotubes slid over one another to fill in the gaps.

Monster himself was another story. A band of syntheskin encircled his massive left bicep, a dark bloodstain on the elastic material. Ridgeway shrugged toward the injury and gave Monster a reproachful look.

"Y'know, two minutes on the table would clear that up."

Monster's face wrinkled forcefully. "Bull-shit!" he said, emphasizing the syllables. "You can dump my ass in a tank of bugs when I'm dead and gone, but ain't no way in hell them little bastards gonna crawl inside me while I'm watching, that's for damn sure."

Ridgeway's lip curled up in a wicked smile. "Monster", he chided reproachfully, "I've seen you stand up to tanks. Are you telling me that you're afraid of a few little creepy-crawlers?"

A poorly suppressed chuckle burst from Merlin as his face turned up to Ridgeway. "That's pretty good Major, Gunny afraid of a bug." Still laughing, the corporal turned left and ran nose-to-nose into a crocodile smile stretched below a pair of dark eyes that looked back with anything but mirth.

"Funny huh?" the big sergeant prodded, one eyebrow arched dramatically. Then his voice dropped a full octave, the smile belying a simple question that reverberated with menace. "You wanna go first?"

Ridgeway fought the tug of his own grin as the engineer blinked rapidly, all hint of amusement evaporating.

"I'm thinking there's a repair job that can't wait," Merlin improvised, "I'm gonna go find it."

"Uh-huh," Monster affirmed, the carnivore's grin glued to his face as he nodded firmly. Merlin scooped up a pack of tools and eased down slope in obvious search of a less hazardous environment.

"Hit a nerve?" Ridgeway poked with a malevolent smile.

Monster looked Ridgeway dead in the eyes, the first trace of his own humor glinting in the dark orbs. "Yeah, go on. You may get to laugh, but he doesn't."

"SRD," Ridgeway intoned with mock reverence.

"Damn straight," Monster confirmed, "shit rolls downhill."

The two men shared a brief chuckle that all too quickly dwindled to silence. Ridgeway watched as his friend turned and made his way aft, doubtlessly in pursuit of the next item in a long list of duties.

While quick to jab in fun at Monster's blatant aversion to the bizarre medical system, Ridgeway could find no fault in the sergeant's logic. Given everything they had seen, there wasn't a RAT on the team who wanted to get within five meters of the steel and glass table. Darcy's reconstruction may have been a quiet miracle, but the truck driver's experience proved a different matter altogether.

Broken, frostbitten and hypothermic, Jenner had been the next to ride the table. At one level the decision was a genuine effort to save the Rimmer's life. On the other hand, the test was admittedly an experiment to see if the table worked consistently. As the only non-Marine, and a Rimmer at that, Jenner had been the obvious guinea pig.

As his injuries were largely internal, there was no significant external wound to use as a portal. Undeterred, the micro-machines simply cut a door of their own. Lasers designed to weld flesh together proved just as able to cut flesh apart. Jenner's abdomen had parted with a wet slurp of breaking suction. Cauterization had reduced blood loss to a negligible level. The slit sagged open and the bugs poured in.

The remainder, focused largely on injuries to the head and upper thorax, chose to enter through Jenner's nose and mouth. The image had been revolting enough on an unconscious figure, Ridgeway reflected, but as the oozing tide of crawling specks rippled over Jenner's lips, the Marines discovered a major wrinkle in the system. Jenner woke up.

Stitch later determined that small infusers in the table's surface should have doped the conscious Rimmer into a state of oblivion. Those infusers, it appeared, had run dry long ago. In lieu of strap and buckle restraints, the table immobilized a patient through some kind of electrical field that paralyzed voluntary muscle, but not the conscious mind. The next two hours were ugly to watch, even for Marines.

It had been really ugly for Jenner.

No one could tell if the burning skin was to blame, or an overloaded gag reflex, but the trucker snapped out of his delirium like he'd been hit with high voltage. Panic-stricken eyes bulged out of his skull, unblinking as tiny specks scuttled across glistening corneas. The trucker could only manage a constricted, high-pitched whine, but even that broke into a wet gurgle as clots of bugs passed through his windpipe.