He stood straight as Tanin and Trove drew even with him.
“Twins are investigating,” Tanin said immediately. “See anything?”
“No, captain,” Vytln grunted. “Been quiet. Haven’t seen anyone suspicious. Haven’t seen a single shinuk either.”
Tanin inclined his head, silently acknowledging the report. “I’m going to go check on the females. Stay here until the twins return, then come inside. Ship lockdown after you get back.”
“Aye, captain,” Vytln said, leaning back against the wall.
Tanin went to the dock doors and punched in the code, opening it. Trove followed him inside, back up to the ship, where they had to request permission to enter. Alred had made it so that only those inside the ship, or himself, could open it.
Trove immediately peeled off. Going to the weapons room, no doubt. It would be the height of foolishness – and illegality – to shoot their weapons here, this close to a station. But if it was that or let their crew get hurt, it was an easy choice for them.
They had built this life from the ground up, they could do it again if necessary. Protecting the crew was more important than anything else.
“Alred, report,” Tanin said as he made towards the medbay where, he figured, Rok would have taken the females.
With a blink, Alred appeared at his side, walking with him down the hall. “Goldie is unharmed. A bit shaken up, but no injuries. Garnet has three broken fingers, some bruising, but nothing major. She is joking around to try to calm Goldie.”
“Is she in the mediring now?”
“Ah, that’s the thing,” Alred said, tone sheepish. “I don’t have human bio scans yet. I cannot steal them without being flagged and bringing unwanted attention onto us.”
“Yes, but I am their sponsor now. I have the right to those.”
“Actually, you don’t. Their healer has the right to request human scan data to add to their database for the purposes of treatment and health maintenance, but we have no official health officer on board. And I do not have the ability to override the mediring’s safety protocols. Well, I do. But not without doing the scan and repair manually and, as I have said, I don’t have that skillset.”
Tanin stopped, turning to face him. “Are you telling me we have no way of healing her?”
“We do. Goldie has already splinted her fingers and given her pain medication. But if you’re asking if the mediring can do it, no. None of us know how to operate the machine that way, our mediring isn’t advanced enough to scan her and form its own healing protocols, and even if it was, you’d still need a healer to oversee the process to make sure it doesn’t try to ‘fix’ something that’s not actually broken. Especially when it comes to the humans.”
“So, she has to heal the slow way.”
“The natural way, yes.”
Tanin let out a growl of annoyance, running his hand over his quills. Trying to flatten them back out before he went out in front of the females. He didn’t need them to see him agitated. But it was frustrating how little he could do. An old, dying subspace generator, inefficient shielding, a mediring that none of them could use, and a food synthesizer that was so out of date, everything it made tasted like the amino acid powder it used as a base.
They had all been problems before the females got here, but now that they were here, they suddenly seemed that much more unbearable. The females were getting sick, they couldn’t have their injuries healed, and he couldn’t even provide them proper food. Thanks to the gems Gissrn tried to hide them with, he now had the funds to fix those problems, but he had to get them to the space station that could perform those repairs first.
“Are you stressed about this?” Alred asked, surprised. “I’ve never seen you stressed.”
“I’ve never had to take care of females before.” Tanin let out a long breath, squaring his shoulders to face the problems head on. “The twins are going to try to figure out who attacked her. It was a shinuk though, so I assume Gissrn is involved.”
“Rok already told me. If it was Gissrn, how did he even find us? Why hasn’t Ikvar dealt with him yet?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We don’t know that itishim. The mediring can still scan the females, right?”
“It can. As long as we’re not trying to heal anything, it works just fine. Are you thinking they have a tracking device in them somewhere?”
“It’s a possibility. And it’s what I would do if I were Gissrn.” Tanin started walking again, Alred’s light form trailing behind him.
He heard the females before he saw them. The medbay doors were open. Garnet’s laughter was carrying into the hallway. It greeted him as he turned into the room along with her smile as she looked his way.
“Tanin! There you are!” She cried out jovially, holding out her hands like she expected a hug.
Though the machine was useless in healing her, she was sitting on the side of the mediring bed, legs dangling over the floor. Her hair was still a mess from where thatvektingshinuk grabbed her, but she had straightened her clothes.
Her short sleeves couldn’t hide the large, hand shaped bruise on her upper arm, and no sleeves could have hidden the tape binding three of her fingers together on her left hand. The sight of which made his quills start to tense with the urge to stand again. He kept them down by sheer force of will as he approached.
