Space Trippers Book 1: Trippin' (28 page)

Lola did not take the M.M.U’s news as well as everyone else.

The slight girl shook her cotton candy hair in frantic denial as the others conceded to the diagnosis.

“No!” Lola exclaimed, shaking her head and backing away from the others with her green eyes scrunched tightly closed as she tried to fend of the unwelcome report. “No, no, she can’t be dead; she’s not allowed to be. She can’t die, cause I don’t want her to die!” she cried passionately echoing the inner feelings of the two men who glanced grimly at one another by the deceased girl’s side.

As Lola argued for the impossibility of the Virrilians demise Sanic and Tim looked over Valesque’s still body once again, looking for anything that might even remotely indicate she was still alive.

Sanic’s gaze fell on the Engineer’s wounded midsection where the Captain had replaced Valesque’s hand after checking her pulse and saw the tiny communication earpiece that must have fallen out of her lifeless hand.

She never willingly used her communicator, so it was strange that she had put it in her hand when she lay down in the life pod.

Captain Fairbanks, who had not seemed too upset at finding their Virrilian savior dead, had wandered off to check on the condition of the Space Hanger. After having received a message from one of the other crewmembers that the hanger door had been blown and the area was depressurized and trying to suck everything not strapped down out into open space.

Sanic curiously picked up the out of place communicator from the Virrilian’s body. “Are communicators supposed to have a flashing light like that on them?” he asked his more experienced companion as he looked at the device in his hand.

“I never noticed a communicator having any lights on it before.” Tim remarked as they both watched the tiny amber light flick on and off.

Sanic remembered a scene from when the Captain had tried to make Valesque put on the standard communicator, when she found them all in the Med-room. However, Valesque had refused and used her own because it had been 'newly modified'.

Now as Sanic examined the tiny black device he began to wonder how it was modified.

Was it the light?

Why would she have added a light to a communicator?

The steady flashing amber color reminded him of the message-waiting alert found in most crew quarters.

He absently pressed the communicator’s activation switch, just as he would press the message retrieval button in his room.

A hushed broken voice came on for one second.

Intrigued Sanic held the device to his ear as it repeated its one-second long sound.

The muffled voice seemed to be Valesque’s but the message was hard to make out.

“I think it says ‘Not Dead’.” Sanic said uncertainly as he held the small unit up for Tim to listen to the repeating recording.

“That is what it sounds like. Maybe she didn’t know how badly injured she was.” he suggested.

“Why would she go through all the trouble to leave us a message then?” Sanic argued. That explanation did not make sense. She must have known they would think she was dead if she bothered to leave a recording to make sure they knew she was not.

Sanic had a realization. “Is it possible she is in some kind of stasis?” he inquired, leaning forward to get a closer look at the badly injured Virrilian.

Lola’s tearful looking green eyes got a sudden interested look at this suggestion.

“You mean she is not really dead?” she asked hopefully.

“It’s….possible.” Sanic told her as the communicator continued to replay its muddled message. “But I don’t think these life pods can do something like that.” he concluded disheartened again when faced with the improbability of the idea.

“Virrilians can.” the now excited android informed him. “Let me see Valesque’s Vid-screen for a minute.” she requested, snapping the device onto a port that appeared in her wrist as soon as Sanic handed it to her.

Lola was silent a moment as she connected to the ship’s main computers and called up the Intergalactic Encyclopedia.

“I have not gotten up to the V’s in my studies yet.” she commented as she found the correct file and downloaded it into her memory. “But I remember hearing before that Virrilians will go into a type of suspended sleep when they are injured.”

Lola detached the Vid from her access port and started to open the information file she had stored. “V, Virrilians.” she read from the internal text. “Medical attributes; severely injured Virrilians will automatically search out a dark, quiet area and go into a comatose state to repair themselves. This condition can appear to the untrained eye as though the subject were dead. Breathing, heart rate and brain functions will all fall below normal sensor range. The period of repair depends on the degree of injury and can last from 6 hours to 6 years.” she recited.

When she finished going over the pertinent material Lola approached Valesque’s pod and initiated the scanners in her hands, passing them slowly over the Virrilian’s inert body.

“Her heart rate is extremely low, down to one beat per minute. Her respiratory system is also slow and very shallow.” the medical technician reported as she did an in depth scan. “She has traumatic brain injury caused by a closed head injury and severe head trauma, including the blow to her left temple. A dislocated left shoulder and damaged shoulder muscles along with deeply imbedded debris. Her left arm has a stress fracture near the radial head. Her surface abdominal wound is not too serious, but she has other internal damage to her stomach and liver as well as internal bleeding. Her right arm his multiple stress injuries, a Colles fracture, as well as deep lacerations on her right palm and fingers.” Lola diagnosed worrisomely.

“And she is still living?” Tim questioned incredulously as he gazed down on Valesque’s serene face. It was a great relief, as well as a hard concept to fathom, that the deathly looking girl was actually alive after all of that.

If it had been any normal person, any one of them, they would be preparing to jettison them out into space right now.

“She is definitely still alive.” Lola confirmed happily. “Her body has begun to repair the damage already.”

Sanic let out a deep sigh of unabashed relief at this news. “How long will it take until she comes to?” he questioned expectantly, eager to have her back to normal.

Lola looked thoughtful for a moment as she scanned the body again. “With the degree of injury and at the present rate of repair... about… eighteen months.” she estimated.

“Eighteen months?” Sanic and the Pilot repeated incredulously.

“You mean… she is going to be like this for a year and a half?” Sanic complained. It had been hard enough when he had to wait for three days for her to wakeup after the high voltage taser blast. Eighteen months was just ridiculous!

“It seems like an incredibly long time to have to just watch her sleeping like that.” Tim commented. “But I guess we should just be glad she is alive at all, after what she obviously had to go through.” he reminded them seriously.

“You want to wait for her to repair herself?” Lola questioned with an almost astonished look. She was somewhat disappointed. “I was going to fix her now.” she said dejectedly. She did not want to have to wait eighteen months.

The two previously distraught men gave the air-headed android a very stern and sour look.

“It would only take me about ten minutes to get all the bleeding stopped and most of the injuries repaired.” she insisted as if she had to convince them to let her do it.

Sanic groaned in unusual impatience with the mechanical dimwit. “If you could do that, then why didn’t you say so to begin with?” he demanded, upset at the unnecessary worry she had caused them.

Lola made a frustrated kind of pout, not understanding why they were suddenly angry with her. But she did not say anything as she turned back to her patient and began her intensive, intricate healing work.

Without Valesque’s tolerant intercession, it was impossible for Lola to function in society without upsetting everyone with her childish simplicity.

A few minutes showed a marked improvement in Valesque’s condition.

She was still covered in layers of sticky, drying blood, but the fresh bleeding had all stopped and her open wounds had been sealed and repaired.

Lola had used specialized lasers to stop the internal bleeding before working to repair the unseen injuries. As Lola worked to heal the last few remaining wounds Valesque’s complexion seemed to return to a more normal color and glow, loosing some of its deathly pallor.

Her heart rate began to increase and her respiration became more evident in the movement of her chest as she breathed slowly in her increasingly shallow sleep.

Lola was just repairing the last of the cuts Valesque had gotten, from dragging her hand on the ceiling as she flew, when the Virrilian began to groan slightly as she awoke from her sleep.

Blinking her eyes open tiredly, Valesque suddenly focused on three happy faces all crowded above her.

She resisted the feeling of alarm at waking up to see people hanging so close over her and instead just closed her eyes and took a calming breath.

Valesque reopened one eye and peered up at the three again with an annoyed scowl on her face.

She was sore, stiff and exhausted. But apparently still alive.

Tim stepped back and regained his normal cool, nonchalant look as soon as he saw she was awake and making faces at them like usual. She looked like a mess but she was going to be alright.

Sanic was his usual overeager, concerned self as she awoke and gave them all an irritated look. “Are you alright?” he asked in urgent concern, “Can you get up? How do you feel?”

Valesque clenched her left hand, feeling the coolness of the metal discs she had been holding when she passed out.

She slowly raised her weary arm and dropped the small round objects into the Ensign’s hands. “Thanks.” she sighed with a small weary smile. “The Yorkie’s taser is around here somewhere too.”

“Are you okay?” the Etherian repeated again as she lay exhaustedly on the bed of the life pod.

“I feel like I was just run over by a 180 ton speeding garbage barge.” she groaned. “I just need to lie here a bit.”

Sanic’s grey, Etherian eyes got misty as he looked down on the battered yet still joking Virrilian. “We thought you were dead.” he told her. “Don’t ever do that again!” he both ordered and pleaded, struggling to keep the tears from his eyes.

“Ah, well I am afraid the Captain will be disappointed though.” Valesque quipped, trying to ward off her uneasiness from all their concern.

“But we did get rid of them, right?” she asked quickly remembering her original objective.

“Yeah, you got rid of them.” Tim informed her with a bit of irritation in his usually composed voice. “But like Sanic said, from now on you don’t do things like that on your own. Okay, Beautiful?” he commanded seriously.

“That’s right.” Sanic chimed in with a happy smile, “From now on we all work together.”

The Captain indeed found herself torn between disappointment and relief when she was informed the Virrilian Engineer was alive and well. It was good she was still around to fix things, but that also meant she still had to deal with her and her traitorous ways.

A few hours later Valesque was wandering around in Dr. Warner’s lab.

Tim and Sanic had kicked her out of her own lab, insisting she was that she was too injured to be helping with the repairs and too annoying to supervising their work on the emitters and therefore had to go somewhere else to rest.

They did, however, mange to keep Lola in there with them so that the overjoyed android would not be pestering the recovering Engineer.

As she now walked around the abandoned room, she wondered to herself what, if anything, Dr. Warner had to do with what had happened to them so far.

Her attention soon turned to the room however. The nice rich colors, the warm leather upholstered couch and desk chair. The large antique wooden desk and hand woven area rug. Even the simple parchment table lamps and other casual, homey touches caught her interest. This was a working lab, but it looked more like a cozy den.

He was certainly more upscale than she was, she noted a little self-consciously. While she had chosen to live on the cheap, trashy side of Saturna 3 he had lived on the posh, high-class side of the planetoid.

And while she had chosen a large utilitarian lab, he had picked out this smaller, more put-together room. Her room was definitely bigger and more practical for her projects at hand, but his seemed to exude self-assurance and well tailored style.

Hers in comparison just conveyed bare, boring coldness.

The difference in just the rooms made her feel rather dumpy and plain, with the need to get herself more together.

While she was absently pondering these differences, Valesque noticed a small flashing light on his computer terminal. She pressed her lips together in an uneasy frown as she made her way over to the signal.

Valesque sat down in the simple leather desk chair and examined the front of the computer as it sat against the wall on a low wooden credenza behind Dr. Warner’s Desk. This was Dr. Warner’s personal computer system, he had brought onboard and installed it in his workroom. This system was not related to the construction and was not tied into the rest of the ship’s computers.