Lizzy nodded. “Babies learn sign language easier than standard languages, some signs coming naturally, like wanting food.”
“Comes in handy.” He looked at Remy, then to the old woman, tapping his lower lip. “Already working. Going pink again.”
She gave him something of a smile, turning to the males as they finished their task. She rattled off something to them and they backed away from the leaves. From another bundle of leaves they started wrapping their hands.
Jonas watched them, leaving Kev to move on to Remy’s left lung. He gave an odd smile as one finished and held his mittened paws up like some surgeon afraid to touch anything. “Every instinct is screaming for an anti-bacterial, but clearly we don’t really have any choice right now. No offense…” His bobbed his head at me. “Not trying to be insensitive.”
“No offense taken.” I clung to Lizzy’s hand, since she wasn’t needed for translating at the moment. “I know the alternative. Is he ready to move?”
“Another minute. We just have to finish flushing out his other lung and hook up a pacemaker, just in case.” Jonas got up, walking around Kev to pick up a smaller box. “I’m going to take a sample of muscle tissues. I suspect Mr. Batista will need some tissue transplants where the burns went too deep.”
He moved to Remy’s hip. “Going to take a little bone too, just in case. We can grow matching tissues he’ll be less likely to reject.”
He looked up at me. “Even if all this works, he’s going to have a long hard recovery ahead of him.” He cleaned off a patch of unburned skin between his hip and thigh. “You might not want to watch.”
I couldn’t imagine anything worse than how Remy looked right now. Burns covered most of his body and broken bones were visible where flesh was completely burned away. “Do it.”
Remy might not have felt the extraction, but I jerked as Jonas bored into hip bone to get his samples.
Kev finished injected LO into Remy’s lungs, the backflow coming out clearer. He was already feeding wires into Remy’s chest, the computer guiding his positioning of them against heart muscle.
Jonas moved out of the way, coming to stand with me while Kev stayed with the LO unit. The Parredet converged on Remy, listening to the old woman, paying close attention to the fractures.
With their hands wrapped in leaves, they lifted Remy from the bloody surgical blanket. Supporting his broken limbs, they carried him to the bed of leaves and gel, laying him down gently.
Kev kept pace with them, keeping the breathing tubes from pulling loose.
They positioned him and the old woman waved Jonas to join her. He turned to me. “I know you think you have to be brave and all, but this is where we try to put his bones back where they belong. Please, step away for a moment. Please.”
“Come on, Shara. Check in with Schaeffer.” She pulled and I followed. Yinet came with us too, but didn’t try to talk.
We looked around the clearing packed by patients with a variety of burns and wounds, from the shuttle crash or the shootout.
To the side of the clearing were four shapes, covered with emergency blankets. I knew they were bodies of soldiers. To another side of the clearing were wounded miners, our soldiers guarding them.
“What are we going to do with them?” It was a strange questions to come out of my mouth, Kazan not sharing anything with me right now.
The soldier nearest us shifted to look at me. He looked a bit confused by my question, that it came from me when I’d ordered them to fire at will. “They’ll be transferred into our cargo hold, set up as a temporary brig. We’ll bag the dead and send notifications to whatever family we identify. See what they want to done with them.”
“Like send them the bodies?” Lizzy sounded somewhat appalled. “They’re criminals.”
“The ashes, unless it violates religious practices.”
“Pretty damn sure they wouldn’t return the courtesy if it was us.” Lizzy snipped at him, looking at the bodies on our side of the clearing. “No one would know what happened to us.”
“True, ma’am, but that difference makes us the good guys”
Lizzy bit at her lip, looking back to where Remy lay in the care of aliens. “Guess so.”
Right now I didn’t care what side we were on. I wanted to be with Remy.
When we finally got to return to Remy the men were wrapping his body. Kev and Jonas helped, their hands in multiple layers of gloves. They smoothed gel-drenched leaves around Remy’s limbs, looking a lot like the Egyptian mummy process. The old woman worked on his face, being careful of the tubes.
“What happens when this part is done?”
Jonas got up, leaving Kev to learn this bizarre medicine. “We’ll further stabilize his breaks, then move him up to the ship. As I understand the process, we have to keep the wraps saturated.”
He looked back at the old woman. “She agrees to come up with us to manage his care. If we can get him through the next few days and his stats come up, he stands a chance.”
“I have to go with him.” I looked between Lizzy and Yinet, suddenly feeling defensive, waiting for Kazan to pop up and say I couldn’t go. “I have to go.”
“Yes, Shara, you do.” Lizzy signed to Yinet, then wrapped her arms around me. “Schaef can deal with the rest of this. You go with Remy.”
I squeezed Lizzy in my arms and almost broke down completely when I felt Yinet’s cheek against mine. I fought off the tears, but didn’t let go of my two friends until the medics started to carry Remy to the waiting shuttle.
I traded their embraces for Remy’s fingers, the
