Mikki went into crisis mode, pushing aside her emotions. “Come on Ajha! Let’s get him into the tram and get out of here.”
The two women hauled Ajha’s unconscious mate up into the passenger seat of the tram. Ajha sat in the back with Calan’s head on her lap.
“Do you know how to run this thing, kid?” Mikki asked from the driver’s seat.
“Tram One, close doors and return to base,” Ajha said. The doors closed and the hovercraft lifted from the ground and sped through the air back to the Refuge.
The inside lights stayed on so Ajha could see that Calan was bleeding from a wound in his lower right chest. Blood was also seeping on her leg from his back. The projectile apparently had gone through him. He was having trouble breathing, gasping and wheezing.
Ajha whimpered, holding her hand tightly over his wound trying to staunch the flow of blood. By the time they landed ten minutes later in the hover bay, it seemed like the bleeding had slowed. Ajha was profoundly relieved to find Rax waiting at the hover bay with a wheeled gurney.
“How did you know?” Ajha asked.
“He told me,” Rax said. “We should take him to the clinic and give him the healant.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” Ajha asked tearfully as they wheeled Calan down the corridor.
“Because I have the protocol in my programming and he was losing consciousness too quickly to explain it to you,” Rax explained glancing at Mikki with interest. “What happened?”
“A shot came out of nowhere,” Mikki said. “I heard the crack. Then Calan went down. Damn gangers are too poor for real weapons, still shooting projectiles.”
“It looks like he’s got the bleeding under control,” Rax said. “He can probably heal himself, but he thought he could use a little help.”
“We don’t even know if Calan was a target. I don’t think he was,” Ajha said. “I didn’t sense anyone’s attention on us. We were well away from the fight club.”
They wheeled Calan into the treatment room, and Rax went to the dispenser for an injector of the healant accelerator. He opened Calan’s shirt and injected the medication directly into his wound.
“We should take his shirt off and lay him on a sterile pad in the treatment bed.”
“Then what?” Ajha asked with a worried frown.
“We wait. From what he told me about his abilities, it’s like when a cyborg is seriously injured. We go into survival mode while our nanites repair the damage,” Rax said. “He has turned his mind inward to heal his injuries psionically. From what I can see, his right lung is seriously damaged.”
“But will he be okay?” Ajha asked.
“I think so. He is stable now,” Rax paused, assessing Calan’s condition with his onboard scanner. “The bleeding has stopped, and his tissues are starting to regenerate. It will take a few hours maybe more.”
“What can I do to help him?” Ajha asked.
“Stay with him. Let him draw on your lifeforce if he needs to,” Rax replied and gently shifted Calan to the side of the bed. “There is room. You can lie beside him.”
“Thanks, Rax.” Ajha toed off her shoes and climbed onto the bed with her mate and lay beside him with her head pillowed on his left shoulder. She closed her eyes and reached into his mind the way he had taught her.
Her psionic-self went inward, drawn by Calan’s essence. It was a long and winding path to his soul-self.
She found him hard at work building a tubular shaft of cells to fill in what looked like a deep pit. He looked up briefly and gave her a tender smile but didn’t stop what he was doing.
“Are you all right?” Ajha moved closer.
“I’m working on it.”
“I know. How can I help you, my beloved?”
“Lend me some of your life force to give me the strength to finish these repairs.”
Ajha’s spirit went to Calan’s and embraced it from hind. Only then did he pause and turn to hug her as she fed him her psionic energy and her love.
His soul-self basked in her warmth and grew stronger again. As he felt her inner energy wane, he gently set her from him and turned back to the task at hand.
