End of the evening

Posted on Tue Sep 2nd, 2014 @ 6:04pm by Walter Jones & Jan Valentine & Langar Tarn & Charlotte Ashcroft & Bruce Air (PNPC)

1,141 words; about a 6 minute read

Mission: Session 7: Changes
Location: SS Warden Med-Bay

[Ship's Med-Bay]

Langar sat on the edge of one of the two antique bio-beds in what passed for the medical facilities aboard the Warden. He was holding an ice pack to his jaw and lip with one hand and rubbing his back with the other.

"By the Prophets, that bastard nearly kicked my ribs in!" He complained quietly while Pass was working on Bruce's shiner. "Only got one drink too, don't think much of the nite-life here."

He put the ice pack down and picked up a bottle of clear liquid, that was on the bed beside him and took a long pull. He swallowed, shuddered and looked at the label again. It was black with a picture of an exploding star. The was a blue sticker on the bottle too. "Don't know what it is, but it's strong!" He paused "Damn that's strong!"

They'd passed a merchant's store specializing in alcoholic, intoxicating and herbal beverages and had stopped by to pick up a couple of bottles.

The store owner had been rather helpful, scanning them with some kind of quazi-medical tri-corder before advising them on suitable beverages

"Hmmm....." He said, reviewing the results, "Gray, brown or blue stickers. If you're daring perhaps a pink one. But absolutely nothing magenta, yellow or white!"

"Because they'll more than likely kill you!" The merchant replied, when Lanagr asked why not the others.

"Here!" Langar said and tossed the bottle to Lotte. "That will hit the spot. Actually it will hit spots you didn't know you had. I think I've gone blind!""

The comment made Morgan glance around, but he realized instantly it was an elaboration and returned to his work with the dermal regenerator.

Catching the bottle Lottie regarding the label momentarily: "Next time we'll miss out the bar and cut straight to the store, maybe loot it in the process then bring the booty back with us," Lottie commented. In comparison to her male counterparts the woman was relatively unharmed save for a couple of bruises and some tender knuckles.
She took a swing and winced, "Bleh," she spat. "That's pretty nasty stuff, no wonder he was willing to part with it so readily."

"I heard you guys had a little bit of a ruckus over there." Walt poked his head into the med bay and looked at his crew. "Everyone all right?"

"Not sure what was worse, the local bruisers, or the local booze" Langer said wryly

"Probably a little of both." Jones looked at the people assembled. "Since most of us are here, I've got a lead on our shipment. Most of the stuff is going to be autoloaded into the cargo holds, but I've got a lead on some arms that are headed to the same place that we are going. We've got a meeting tomorrow afternoon to make the pickup. Extra couple hundred bars for hauling the stuff."

"Sounds simply enough," Lottie nodded passing Jones the toxic booze to sample. "How much are we picking up?"

TAG Jones

Morgan sighed heavily, "If this crew is going to continue to self medicate, as I am working, there is no point in my being here. Kindly reserve you alcoholism for outside of medbay."

He pointed to an array of equipment one one side of the room, "There is at least one experiment over there that does not respond well to alcoholic vapours."

He gave Lottie an appraising glance, "Besides which, you would have been better with the grey. The blue may upset your stomach more than the others since you are still lactating. Give me a look at your knuckles."

Turning bright red Lottie shuffled over, "Talk about lowering the tone," she muttered darkly but complied willingly with Pass' request. "I'd forgotten how much you enjoy ridiculing us."

"And I take such pains to remind you regularly," Morgan responded, Looking at the grazes. A quick pass of the regenerator and they were as good as new. "Who's next?"

Langar yawned "I'm good, time to be hitting my bunk"

"Not so fast, Mr Langar," Pass stopped him. "You haven't had your shots. I still need to do a full genetic scan of you to prepare your immunology profile. Or you could just space yourself now. It will be far preferable than wandering around our air ducts without my special brand of protection."

He rolled his eyes at the expression of the others, "Don't worry. It is a contact poison with a carcinogenic latency of 73 years. It is not airborne, and you have all been inoculated when you drank the apple juice I provided about six months ago."

There was a moment of question on his face, "You did all get the apple juice, didn't you?"

"Apple juice? Contact poisons? Carcinogenic latency?" Langar shook his head "And you want me to let you stick hypo-shots in me ?"

Passing him Lottie lent close: "Just do what he says, it will save a lot of hassle, besides he's not killed us yet."

"I think, Mr Langar," Morgan said moving over tot he man, "it is important that we understand each other."

Morgan was a small man, and elderly. He survived for so long looking entirely nonthreatening and unmemorable.

"I don't like you," he began. "I don't like anyone on this ship. To me you are all aliens and abominations. I grew up on a world that had been embroiled in generations of war and we had learned to hate anything that was not us. I have killed 13 billion people in one week, because I had learned to hate all races but my own. If I wanted you dead, you wouldn't even see it coming."

"Now I am on the run, as one of the Federations top five most wanted criminals. So far the safest place I have found has been here in this crew. Consequently, it is important to me that they stay alive. That includes you. Therefore, if you want to try and sleep with three contusions on your ribs and the bruising on your face, you can; it is not life threatening. However, if you were to enter one of our crawlspaces without allowing me to administer a barrier booster to your immunology, there will be nothing left of you to recover except green goo."

No one else in the room seemed all that surprised by Morgan's admissions, but Dr Pass caught the Captain's expression and mumbled, "I may have been lying about the colour of the goo."

"Cool. When you're done being melodramatic, doc, I've got some medical junk I picked up today, some compounds, some equipment. I'm not very savvy in the field of medicine, so I basically got whatever looked interesting or useful." Jan said, hanging back by the doorway.

Morgan jabbed his medicinal cocktail into Langar's arm, "Yes, I think I am done here."

 

RSS Feed