Mutineer's Fate: The Blood Ward

episode 105

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“So,” the nurse said with a bitter smile, speaking loudly over the Klingon screaming in the next medical bed. “, you finally seemed to have learned what it takes for one of us to make it through the academy.” In the repetitive manner of a zoned-out factory worker, the woman waved the subcutaneous osteo-regenerator about the young woman’s clavicle. “Two surprise endings to the bouts this year.”

              “I was told,” the cadet T’Wun bore the sharp ache as her bones knit together without the benefit of anesthetic. “, that the ‘aliens’ were almost always favored to win the bottom bout matches. A review of the…”

              “Whoever told you that was either setting you up, kit, or trying to give you hope.”

              “I checked the records…”

              “And?”

              “Non-humans have won the event nearly every time for the past two decades.”

              The nurse snorted, giving her whiskers a shudder. “Did you account for female Vulcans?”

              “I…”

              “There hasn’t been a female Vulcan to ever make it out of the bouts, kit. Not one. Hell,” the nurse exchanged the osteo-regenerator with a medical tricorder and checked the bones’ progress. “The few that get forced into them always get ganged up on.”

              “I was told… I had not thought to look for that correlation. It did not seem…”

              A sharp burst of specifically vile Klingon curses cut her off. Wor’worgh was making oaths to kill everyone in the room, the doctors, the nurses, and the other patients. As well as, specifically, the other two surviving cadets from the bouts.

              One in each of the bays on the other side of the ward. The saurian was standing, holding up a holo-mirror and inspecting the wound to his eye. There would be no prosthetic surgery forthcoming, not for Kolez. The academy’s Chief Medical Officer had deemed that replacing the cadet’s eye would require an excessive amount of resources at this time.

              “The old bastard knows leaving him half blind will lower his rank and position within the fleet,” the nurse hissed quietly to T’Wun. “But I wouldn’t count Kolez out of the running for getting his own ship one day.”

              “I don’t understand,” T’Wun had been ushered from the field after her win, she had not seen the men’s bout. “There are three?”

              “Used some bm’rr’shh special circumstance ruuuulle in the fourth round to save the human,” the nurse finished with a hiss and spit, then switched the tricorder to a dermal regenerator tool. “Although he did manage to kill Brr’mn…”

              In the other bed lay the first human in two decades to win the bottom bouts, still covered in mud from the arena and still soaked with blood, much of it his own and still seeping from his wounds. Despite the orders of the Chief Medical officer the caitian nurses had left his treatment for last, spending much more time ensuring that the Klingon did not lose the use of his legs and that the wound to Kolez’s eye was sealed off safely.

              The doors to the ward opened as the bodies of one of the “dropouts” was wheeled in and through the room. From outside the ward, a young cadet voice cried out, “MAGENTA!” followed by a few cheers.

              T’Wun’s nurse hissed again. “They’re gonna glorify him now,” she said. “, ‘cause he killed one of us.”

              T’Wun took note of the “glory” he was receiving at the moment. His wounds still lay open and the two caitian nurses tending to him were stapling his face together instead of repairing his flesh with a dermal regenerator. He could have reparative, cosmetic surgery later if his rank warranted it.

              But for now, the nurses let him seep blood through metal staples.

              “What rule….?” T’Wun whispered her question.

              “Something about there being enough slots this year for four cadets so…,” the nurse stopped and looked at T’Wun, the whiskers of her brow furrowing. “Guess they didn’t think of splitting the slots evenly between the male and female units. Probably because once the human made it through the first two rounds, they tried help him.”

              T’Wun could still see the look on Church’s face as she drove the shield through the woman’s neck. There had been a moment after, she was certain, when the decapitated cadet had looked T’Wun in her eyes, with… disbelief?

              “Not this one,” another caitian nurse whispered to them in a hiss. “Hear that?” he asked, indicating the shouts outside the ward. “The kid kept drawing ‘purple’ each round… every round. Didn’t get his hands on a weapon unless he took one off another cadet.”

              “And Brr’mn wasn’t really one of us, K’Riss, he was a ferasan. Somehow snuck into the academy.”

              “Ferasans are us, R’Nurr! Don’t be that way…”

              The young vulcan cadet let the nurses’ argument fade to the background as she leaned back onto her own bed. Her own wounds had been tended to well enough, and they had pumped her full of pain killers despite regulations. Sleep did not come easily but it did take her eventually.

              She thought he was talking to himself at first, their voices were so similar. But while Danes had the slightest rasp to it the other voice was smooth but clearly older.

              “Are you trying to die?” said the older voice. T’Wun opened her eyes only a little but enough to make out the shape of a large man standing over the bed where Dane lay recovering. The room was too dark for her sunburned, vulcan eyes to see much clearly but the tones in their voices were nearly identical. They were related in some way she knew.

              “Why are you here?” Cadet Dane asked in a hiss.

              “Answer me, boy,” the man hissed back. “What the hell were you playing at? First you blow the damn Maru purge… after I WARNED you what it was… and now you pull that stunt in that arena? Do you want to die?”

              The room went silent. T’Wun shifted her gaze about the room to see that only the klingon was still in his bed, pumped full of more sedatives than she was to keep him out through the night. The nurses didn’t want him waking up and taking his revenge during third shift.

              “You know what happens if you don’t graduate, boy,” the man hissed. There came rattling and shuffling. T’Wun opened her eyes a bit more and could see the man had Dane by his throat. “You stop with this nonsense!”

              The two struggled as the larger man shook the cadet violently. “You’ve just got one more rotation to get through, boy! Get into the fleet… then you can jump out an airlock for all I care. But until then…”

              Dane coughed and kicked but could not break the man’s grip. “…until then you will do as I say.”

              That last was followed by a few blows. T’Wun could not see around the large man’s silhouette but guessed that the first were to Dane’s stomach, from his grunts and the last few to his face from the sound.

              “Understand?”

              Dane did not answer for a moment, T’Wun listened as he got his breathing under control. The large man lost his patience and throttled him again. “Do you understand?!”

              Still, the cadet did not answer. “You know WHO Herthal asked about as you were playing around in the mud?”

              Another cough and finally Dane spoke up. “I’ll graduate,” he croaked. The large man let him go with a shove and without another word he walked out.

              T’Wun pretended to sleep for the rest of the night.