“Ozis”

“Ozis, come on, we need to go!”

“Come on, let’s get up!”

“Ozis!”

I opened my eyes to Sergeant Gerrick standing over me. There was a loud, piercing ring in my ears. I was extremely disoriented. Somehow I had gone from sitting in a chair, watching an interrogation, to laying on the floor. There was broken glass and smoke everywhere. My head was throbbing, I had definitely landed on it.

I tried to get up but something was stopping me. I was too dizzy to stand. Things were becoming more coherent though. I noticed Gerrick had a sidearm in his hands and was looking around the room waiting for me. I looked around more. There was a human on the floor under a chair. They looked dead. The glass came from the dividing window, which had shattered. The parts of the interrogation room I could see were black and deformed. Looked like some sort of blast had gone off.

My vision kept getting blurry and then coming back into focus. I was trying my hardest to get up and follow Gerrick but I couldn't.

“Alright Ozis, I’m sorry, this isn’t going to feel good.”

He put his sidearm in his holster and bent down toward me. He wrapped one arm around my abdomen, picked me up, and put me over his shoulder. It most certainly did not feel good. Everything was sore. I couldn’t tell if any of my injuries were serious. It was almost enough pain to stop me from being amazed at how little effort it seemed to take for Gerrick to pick me up and run while holding me. Almost.

We got out into the corridor. A large group of soldiers was stationed in the hallway, making their way toward the interrogation room slowly, weapons drawn. They pulled us past them, where we were pushed toward two field medics. Gerrick laid me down on the floor in front of them, drew his sidearm, and joined the group of soldiers.

The two medics, one male and one female. Or both female? I couldn’t tell with the masks, they both had long hair. They started looking over me, quickly at first, then one seemed to hesitate and look at the other.

“I have no idea how to help this thing, we need to get it to the medbay and do a scan.”

“Right, I’ll call for a stretcher, put pressure here, piece of shrapnel, looks like ballistic glass, left thigh.”

I managed to raise my head and look down at my legs. My uniform over my left leg had a big rip in it, and the edges of the tear were coated in blood. Looking at it was a bad idea, I laid my head back down. The other medic took out a white piece of fabric and pressed it against my leg. I clenched my teeth.

There was lots of yelling. Some kind of alarm was blaring. I don’t know how long I laid there, but I do remember two people running past holding red cylindrical objects with some sort of hose attached to it.

Eventually, two more medics turned up. One was fairly large. He took a square object off his back and unfolded it, it turned into a long thin rack with handles on the sides. They all carefully lifted me onto it and carried me out of the hallway. One of them looked at me and pulled something out of his pocket.

“This is going to make you feel better until we can get you to the doctors.”

The object was small and sharp and had some sort of liquid in it. He pushed it into my leg where the wound was. It only took a moment before the pain dulled, and then went away. I briefly wondered how the human knew I wouldn’t have some sort of fatal reaction to the medicine, but decided the lack of pain was worth the risk. Once the pain was gone, I fell unconscious again.

I don’t know how long it had been when I woke up again. I do know that I had been moved to a white room and put in a bed. Everything was white, curious. Human medical staff seemed to have an affinity for all things white. I was alone in a room. I was careful not to move. I didn’t know what they had done, nor the extent of my injuries. Additionally, I was connected to a few devices. One had various information on it, including some charts, which I assumed were a heartbeat measurement given the pattern. There was also some kind of bag filled with clear liquid connected to a tube going into my forearm.

They had also removed my uniform, as I was now in a loose white piece of clothing that covered my whole body. There was a mild tinge of embarrassment, but if there was one universal fact of medicine across species, it’s that clothes get in the way. I was looking around more at the room when there were two knocks at the door, which then opened a few seconds later. In walked what looked to be an older man, with lots of white hair on his head and face.

“Well, other than your blood containing a compound similar to urushiol, we were able to figure out how to treat you with relative ease.” He chuckled, “we probably should have asked for information on your anatomy before we had you on board.”

He took a seat in a chair with wheels and scooted closer to me.

“Are you feeling okay?”

“I can’t feel the wound on my leg, but my head is hurting a fair bit.”

He smiled. “Well, if you didn’t want to be injured, I’d suggest not being so close to an explosion next time, they’re dangerous, you know?”

“Evidently. Do you know what happened?”

“Any more information outside of an explosion occurred in the brig is out of my paygrade. Now, I was just checking on you. You’ve been asleep a few hours. We removed all the shrapnel in your leg, it should be fine in a couple of days. I’d suggest getting some rest. If you’re dead set on staying awake, there’s a remote on your bedside that controls the screen on the wall there.”

He left the room. I pulled the white blanket off me to look at my leg. It was wrapped in white fabric, and a pinkish color was starting to get through. They had done a good job, not the exact way we’d have treated it, but it worked.

Another knock came from the door, and I quickly covered up. This time when it opened Sergeant Gerrick walked in, this time in the same white clothes as me. His right arm was in a sling of some sort.

“Hey Ozis, how are you feeling?”

“Better, your medical staff did well despite the lack of knowledge. What happened, Gerrick? I don’t remember anything before I woke up on the floor.”

“We’re still figuring that out. All we know is that once it started answering our questions, some sort of explosive inside the Floriacian detonated. Ironically, the only thing that saved you and I was the same ballistic glass that they had to surgically remove from your leg. Two humans are confirmed dead. The other Floriacians are understandably refusing to speak at all now, and they seemed to have no knowledge of the explosive. We’ve elected to leave them in the brig for now.”

“It’s a shame you didn’t capture any of their leadership alive.”

“Yeah, that would have made things easier. Ol’ Carson had to blow the only alive one we found apart.”

“So, where do we go from here?”

“Between the hit we took from their ship’s primary mass drivers, and this explosion, we’re looking at a few days before we can re-establish superliminal communication. We’re on our own until then, and we can’t travel back to your station on sublight engines while undergoing repairs.”

“What’s our plan after it’s repaired?”

“We’re going to hail the federation fleet in the nearest star system and explain what happened. Then we’ll rendezvous with the 2nd Sol Defense group to escort us back to Federation space, where we’ll drop you off and call a council meeting to alert the community of the Floriacians.”

“Not to be rude, but you humans haven’t been a part of the Federation long enough to call a council meeting.”

“We figure that a new, hostile slaver species takes precedence over those rules.”

“Fair enough. I guess I’ll be staying here a bit longer then.”

Gerrick chuckled. “We’ll find something for you to do to pass the time, after you’re feeling better of course.” He moved toward the door and was about to walk out.

“Wait, Gerrick.”

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For carrying me out of there.”

“Don’t mention it.”