Page 9 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded

“But there are actually only two things that you have to do. You have to show up to the appointments – Doctor Green will arrange everything else for you and let you know the times andlocations – and in the meantime, you need to step back and allowDaxto look afteryou. I know that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you right now, and I will certainly be explaining it in more detail – maybe once we’re back home, because not all of it is suitable for public consumption. But before we get to that bit, I’d actually like to know how you came to have Dax in the first place. Because there’s absolutely nothing about that in your service record.”

I finished the yoghurt and set the bowl aside, dragging the eggs towards me instead. “It’s a fucking awful story,” I told him, shoving the first bite of eggs into my mouth. “And you think you’re having nightmares now? Don’t blame me when you start leaving the lights on to go to sleep. And remember that you’re the one who asked me to tell you this.”

CHAPTER SIX

Zeke

One Year Earlier…

Iclung to the side of the pilot’s chair as I peered at the console of the exploration frigate. On the screen – cracked now, and streaked with blood – the Ixralian wormhole loomed large in front of us. “The board is green,” I recited, though I was sure no one was listening. But that was protocol; before jumping through a wormhole, make damn sure nothing was coming the other way.

“Into the ripple in five… four… three… Oh fuck…” I lurched sideways, not from the jarring pull of the wormhole, but from the fact that my right leg had just given out beneath me. Maybe I should have been sitting in the chair. But I’d tried that, and the intense stinging in my right thigh had got me back on my feet in a hurry. As it was, I wasn’t sure if the venom was going to kill me or not, but I was currently maintaining enough presence of mind to try and get my three surviving crewmates back into Alliance space while they were still alive.

A moment later, the wormhole sucked us in, and I was thrown across the ship’s cabin. I hit the wall, then simply rode out the waves of pain and nausea until the ride evened out.

“Captain?” a thready voice called. “Captain? Zeke! Don’t you fucking die on me.”

That was Ru. Lieutenant Ru Dolve. Bravest woman I’d ever met in my life.

“Zeke!”

I forced myself to roll over, though the siren call of unconsciousness was beckoning. I wanted to answer it. Anything to escape from this nightmare of a reality. But I had to get the others back home. I couldn’t abandon them to this hell.

“Alive,” I croaked, managing to get my knees under me and push myself off the floor a little way. “Matchi?”

“Unconscious,” Ru reported. “But the bleeding’s under control. He should make it to the station if we don’t have any delays.” A delay, in this case, would be one of two things; our damaged ship giving out before we could make contact with the Delaville Space Station, or one of thosethingsfollowing us through the wormhole. That thought alone was enough to get me onto my feet, and I staggered back towards the console. No way in hell was I going to stick around to see if we’d been followed.

“What about Gasrin?” I asked, as I struggled to focus well enough to plot a course for Delaville. Last I’d seen, he’d been relatively unharmed, though looking a little green. I meant that literally, and given that as a Wasop, his skin was naturally a bright yellow colour, that had been cause for concern. It could have just been fatigue, or fear, or it could have meant something far more serious.

“I… uh… We’ve got a problem,” Gasrin’s tremulous voice answered me. I glanced back at him and found him staring down at his own leg. It didn’t seem to be bleeding, though there was a tear in the fabric of his pants over his left thigh. But given wherewe’d just been, the absence of an obvious wound didn’t mean much.

“Let me get us pointed in the right direction, then I’ll give you a hand,” I told him. I forced myself to work slowly, to press each button on the controls carefully and deliberately. Given how much my hands were shaking, trying to rush through it would just enter the coordinates wrong, and I’d have to start again. So in this case, going slowly was actually the quickest way to get us out of here.

Once that was done, I glanced at the screens that showed the view from the rear of the ship, relieved to see that both displays were empty. If our luck held, then we hadn’t been followed.

With the autopilot engaged, I made my careful way across the room towards Gasrin. It was getting harder to walk, with the sting in my leg and the burning sensation in my side. But like hell was I going to give up. “What’s the situation?” I asked him, as I slumped against the wall next to his chair.

Eyes wide with fear, he pulled the flaps of fabric aside, revealing a wide section of his leg, yellow skin with black stripes. That part, at least, was normal for a Wasop. But as I leaned closer, I saw the cause for his concern. A row of raised ridges sat under the skin, each lump about half the size of my thumb.

“Oh, fuck,” I blurted out, before I could think better of it. I probably shouldn’t scare him any more than he already was. “How long have they been there?”

“I think it was just before we crossed the bridge,” he replied. “I got caught by one of the vines. But I couldn’t say for sure.”

I didn’t bother asking any more questions. Our hellish escape from Ixralia had involved more than one battle, and in this case, the end result was the same.

“Lie down on the floor,” I told Gasrin. “I’m going to cut them out. Hold him down,” I instructed Ru.

She looked affronted for a moment and held up the bloody, bandage-wrapped stump where her left hand used to be. “How the fuck do you-?”

“Sit on him,” I ordered, tugging her toward Gasrin’s chest. He made no protest to the plan. He’d seen the result of this exact situation in half a dozen of his crewmates, and the brutality that I was about to inflict upon him was by far the lesser of two evils.

Ru sprawled herself across Gasrin’s torso as best she could, her purple skin pale and blotchy, and shimmering with sweat, while I pulled my knife out of its sheath and gave it a cursory wipe. But honestly, infection was going to be the least of Gasrin’s problems for a while.

Without waiting for Gasrin to brace himself, without giving myself the chance to second-guess my decision, I cut a long line down his leg, adjacent to the oval lumps. Gasrin screamed and thrashed, and I straddled his legs, holding them as still as possible.

I had a space wrench in my pocket – a far more advanced version of a nifty little tool I’d once seen in a museum. That one had been called a ‘Swiss Army Knife’, and I’d marvelled at how imaginative it must have been for someone to envision the first one. Now, hundreds of years later, the tool contained as many electronic devices as manual ones, and I briefly wondered whether it was ironic that I was going to attempt to save the life of my crewmate with two of the simplest tools I possessed; the knife I’d already used, and the plier attachment on the space wrench.

Once more avoiding giving myself time to think about what I was doing, I jammed the pliers into the wound I’d created, twisting them this way and that until I managed to grab onto one of the small lumps. I pulled it out and dropped it on the floor, stomping on the thing with a heavy boot.