"Oh, look!" Becki called Thayer over to the computer. Waiting for the search on the name Mike had given her -- one "M'allim Rouddim" -- to finish, she'd turned to snooping through her own old e-mail, and had come across something she had nearly forgotten, when having Thayer back had made her forget the anxieties it had caused.
He came to look over her shoulder, reading the subject line out loud: "'I love you. I'm sorry.' What's this?" he asked as he read over the rest of the message.
"Did you never get it?" she asked hopefully, watching him chuckle and then settle into an amused grin at the words she had written days ago. "I sent it just after we left for Paris. And then when I never got a reply . . ."
"I never did see it," he confirmed. "If I had --" His hand caressed her cheek in apology.
"No matter now," she murmured.
"No matter," he agreed, bending to kiss her.
"Hey Wing," a voice from the beaded doorway leading to the cockpit broke into the moment. They both looked up to see Mike's head emerging from the curtain.
"What's up?" Becki asked.
"Mind if I borrow the royal one for a moment?"
"What for?"
"Manpower. And maybe to cover me, too, depending on what's going on out there."
"Out where?" asked Thayer now.
"Nick called for stretchers. Something happened to Crispy and the new girl, Sylvana."
Kristy stopped in her tracks, she'd been meandering toward the hatchway to watch the sun continue its rising over the Holy Land when she heard Mike speak. "Oh God...."
"Where are the stretchers?" Thayer was in motion even before Mike's gesture toward the med bay, and moments later the two of them were heading for the Red Home's entry ramp with two of the flat med-transports floating on their repulsorlifts before them, loaded down with bacta patches and emergency medkits.
Becki glanced at the computer to see that the search was still nowhere near complete. "Wait -- I'm coming too," she announced, heading down the ramp after the others.
Terrified, Kristy followed, not sure what help she could provide, but - she just HAD to go.
Only long experience with the grisly aftermath of combat broke most of the stretcher brigade out of the silent shock that was their first reaction on seeing the inert forms of Josh Nolan and Sylvana, and Nick, by contrast mostly unscathed and quite collected, though grim-faced, standing silently over the two.
Then training took over; Mike and Becki hurried a stretcher each over to the fallen, followed by Thayer, who hesitated only long enough to ask Nick what had happened.
Kristy stood stock still, unable to move but for the trembling of her limbs as her eyes remained fixed upon the individuals being taken care of. That woman, the terrifying one, was lying, limbs in such positions as they should never naturally take. And Josh... there was blood everywhere about them. She wanted to run to them, to help, but.... The haunting image of the two, hand in hand, leaving to go 'let off some steam' kept repeating itself in her mind. She'd seen this woman in action, she knew she was dangerous. Why didn't she think to say anything? Now, two members of their team were down, one of whom was a friend whom she'd failed before, and a sickening feeling settled in her gut as she stared, frozen in time.
Mike quickly pulled down a medkit and began trying to clean the multiple cuts and stabs Josh had suffered. There was a sucking sound coming from Josh's chest, and Mike winced as he saw the source was a bubbling stab-wound in his side. He pulled out some bacta ointment and shoved some within the wound, hoping it would do the job, while he placed a patch overneath it all.
Gently, Mike pulled up the back of Josh's shirt, noting another gash along the back, this one looking much like the cauterisation a lightsabre would leave. He looked around, something prompting him to see just what had made the wound, and he saw a small laser-scalpel, still activated, lying on the ground not far from the two.
Alarm bells rang in his mind, as he noticed that was the self-same scalpel which had been raised against him not many hours earlier.
By Sylvana.
Tucking that bit of information away in his mind for later, and the scalpel itself away in his pocket, he continued patching up his Australian comrade.
The uninjured Australian comrade, refusing to comment on the events that had led to this situation, knelt to help with Josh. Meanwhile, Becki had just opened a bacta patch and was moving to apply it to a particularly nasty gash in Sylvana's forehead, when Thayer grabbed her hand to stop her.
"Wait," he cautioned. "You do know that she's allergic to bacta, yes?"
Becki's look of horrified surprise said otherwise. "She what?" She drew the patch back hastily. "How do you know?"
"She's allergic to bacta," he repeated patiently. "She told me on our way here - you mean it is not common knowledge among the team?" Thayer raised an aristocratic brow.
"Not to me at least," Becki shook her head, setting the bacta patch aside to sort through a medkit for something more mundane to use on the wounded medic.
He frowned in thought. "That's odd. Surely Sci at least knows. She has . . . great medical skill, from what I saw. Yet for herself, bacta is not among our options."
"She's not allergic to peroxide, I hope?" Becki pulled a dark bottle out of the medkit.
"Not to my knowledge."
"Good." She set to work dousing a pad of cotton with the antiseptic and dabbing it gently onto Sylvana's myriad cuts and scrapes, wrinkling her nose at the constant fizzing of the peroxide as it worked at the wounds.
While Becki worked on the more superficial wounds Sylvana had acquired, Thayer pulled out from the kit a few splints. He half-winced as he set the joint of her knee back in place with a grisly pop, then set two of the splints on either side, wrapping them with a roll of gauze from the medkit. When he'd finished there, Thayer gingerly worked at setting Sylvana's badly broken arm as best he could, before likewise splinting, and wrapping it down.
Blood soaked the bandage about her arm, but there was nothing he could do about that - he prayed that she hadn't pierced a major vein or artery, or her continuation on this plane of existence might not last much longer.
As for her head... he shook his head, her nose was mashed nearly flat, nothing he could do about that, and there was a very definite dent near her temple. He hoped bone hadn't managed to wedge itself in her brain.
"Should we try getting her to a hospital?" he mused aloud to his fiancée.
"It's nothing the Home's not equipped to handle," Mike spoke up, his voice bearing a hint of a ship captain's wounded pride at the maligning of his vehicle.
Thayer looked over his shoulder at the English-born, "However, are we equipped for someone allergic to bacta, who has a smashed nose and a skull fracture? Someone with a compound fracture such that, without proper care, she may never be able to use that arm again... should she even survive?" Thayer's voice was calculating, sounding not much unlike the tone he had used back in the days of the resistance. Things like this, he was all too familiar with. It was a pity that one with such extraordinary abilities to add to this team, should possibly never be allowed to contribute.
"Of course we are," Mike smirked. "Planned specifically for just such a combination of injuries, you know."
Thayer looked down to the unconscious woman, gently laying a hand against her throat. He panicked momentarily, until he was finally able to discern a faint, erratic pulse. "I hope so," he said in a low voice, his eyes tight with dismay.
"Be that as it may," Becki interrupted, "hospital or shipboard, anywhere's better than out here in all this dust. Is it safe to move them back to the Home now?"
"We're fine here," Nick said as he and Mike carefully lifted Josh to lay on their repulsor sled, before moving over to help Thayer gingerly do the same with Sylvana's helpless form.
Only after the injured fighters had been taken care of did Nick move to where Kristy stood. Horror was written in the poor young woman's eyes as they took in everything. He stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the blood-spattered stones as he gathered the small Captain into his arms.
That was when she could move again. She huddled against the Australian, her tears pouring heedlessly to soak his shirt as she sobbed.
He held her gently to himself as they walked, along with the others, returning again to the med bay whence they all had originated, looking somber and downcast, like mourners who follow a hearse, as they followed the slowly floating sleds.