“Standard. Adrenaline, plasma substitutes, the usual array.”
“Show me.” She pulls supplies from cabinets, reorganizes the trauma station. Every motion serves a purpose. “I'll need the surgical suite prepped. Full sterilization, instrument sets for abdominal work. Do you have a blood synthesis unit?”
“Yes, but I've never calibrated it for trauma cases.”
“I'll do it to ensure it's calibrated for Draveki physiology.” She strips off the jacket she was wearing, rolls her sleeves past her elbows, pulls her dark hair back into a knot that keeps it from her face as she adjusts the machine. The scar on her left forearm catches the medical bay's harsh lighting, a ridge of healed tissue that speaks to violence survived. I trace its length without meaning to, mapping the old wound across skin that looks soft despite the evidence of hard use. Her pulse beats visible at her wrist, quickened by adrenaline, and I become aware that I am noticing details I have no professional reason to notice.
“How many Draveki trauma cases have you handled?”
Veth doesn't answer. He doesn't need to.
She shows no other reaction than to nod. “Then you assist. I lead. Questions?”
He shakes his head, and the relief bleeding through his fear confirms what I suspected: he recognized the moment someone competent took control. He isn't foolish enough to resent it.
They bring Krel in on a hovering stretcher, four of my enforcers surrounding their fallen comrade. They expect the attack to continue. Their bodies broadcast it. The smell reaches me first, burnt flesh and the chemical signature of plasmadischarge. Then the visual: charred tissue spreading across his right torso, the wound still weeping fluids that should be contained within his body, his skin gone grey beneath the deep charcoal.
Maeve reaches his side before the stretcher settles. She runs assessment over the damage, her focus so complete that the commotion of arriving enforcers exists in a separate reality from the one she occupies.
“Exit the medical bay.” I address my enforcers without looking away from her work. “Now.”
They obey. The doors seal behind them.
“Internal bleeding.” She presses along his abdomen, reading responses I cannot see in the tension of his muscles, the flutter of his breathing. “Liver involvement, probable. The plasma penetrated deeper than the surface burn suggests.”
“Can you save him?” The question is not one I typically ask. Outcomes are outcomes; my enforcers understand the risks of their profession. But she assesses the damage, calculates odds the way I calculate territorial disputes, and I discover I want to hear her answer.
“I can try.” She doesn't look up. Doesn't offer false comfort or hedged assurances. “Veth, we're opening him up. Now.”
The next several minutes blur into a sequence of preparation and movement, Maeve issuing commands that Veth scrambles to follow. The surgical suite comes online. Sterilization fields hum. Instruments click into precise arrangements. I should leave. My presence serves no practical function here, and I have responsibilities that do not pause for medical emergencies.
I do not leave.
The observation window offers a clear view into the surgical suite, and I station myself before it. I tell myself this is assessment. Verification of her claims. I tell myself a great many things that don't explain why my attention tracks the curve ofher spine when she bends over the table, or why the competence in her movements registers somewhere other than professional respect.
Maeve works below me, her movements sure, her words carrying through the suite's audio system. She sounds calm. Impossibly calm, given the catastrophe spread across her operating table.
She talks to him.
The realization takes a moment to register. She is speaking to Krel, her words a running commentary that weaves between medical instructions to Veth and actual conversation.
“Stay with me, big guy. I've seen worse than this walk out of my care, and you will not embarrass me by dying on my first official case.” She navigates the damage inside the incision she has opened. “Veth, clamp that vessel. The one I'm pointing at, yes. Good.”
Her hands go still over the open cavity. Not hesitation born of fear, but recognition. A response she didn't anticipate from tissue that should behave predictably.
She turns to Veth, words rapid and clipped. “Secondary pulse regulation in Draveki males during traumatic blood loss. Does it spike or suppress?”
“Spike. Compensatory mechanism.”
She nods once, absorbs the information, and her hands are moving again before I finish processing what I witnessed. The pause lasted three seconds. Perhaps four. Most observers would register nothing unusual.
I am not most observers.
She encountered a gap in her knowledge mid-surgery and filled it without letting her patient's survival odds shift. That combination of humility and competence is rarer than expertise alone.
Krel's mouth moves. I cannot hear his response, if there is one, but Maeve laughs, the sound warm and unexpected in this space filled with blood and burnt tissue.
“That's the spirit. Keep that attitude. I need patients with attitude.” She reaches for an instrument without looking, her focus never leaving the work before her. “Now this next part is going to be uncomfortable. I'd apologize, but we both understand I'm not sorry. I'm too busy saving your existence to be sorry about anything.”
