“Move!” Blake stated at the junior doctor, rather firmer than she’d normally have, but right now wasn’t the time for niceties. She’d been down on Daloon, rushing headlong towards the sounds of sirens following an explosion on the outskirts of Tama Flats, when she’d suddenly been called back to Atlantis by Terax.

Site to site, straight from running down the street to the ship’s primary sickbay – Terax’s sickbay. Oh sure, the entire medical department was his, the entire medical complex was in one place, save for a smaller facility in the engineering hull, but he and she had settled on an uneasy truce of keeping their distance. It wasn’t a professional disagreement, but a personality one.

All of that was put aside right now however as a crisis presented itself and took priority. She’d not had time to scrub up properly, merely made sure her hands were splayed out as she pushed through the bio-field around the surgical bay, letting the field do its work of cleansing her hands before shoving them into waiting surgical gloves. She wasn’t really present through the transport, clearing across sickbay or gloving up, but came to opposite Terax as they worked on the mangled body before them. The lack of perception from being on automatic, preparing oneself for this sight was just a coping tool she’d been told, her mind too busy preparing to commit actions to memory that weren’t important.

“What happened?” she asked, taking in the man before her.

“Bomb in a residential home. We scanned for and beamed everyone out immediately,” Terax answered, his left hand waving over to the other surgical bay. “Wilcox and T’Lanith have the other.” His other hands were working to stem bleeding from a chest wound, green blood rapidly making work difficult.

She didn’t need any further information, assessing injuries. Terax had his situation, but this man had other injuries, just as life-threatening and she was a doctor after all. A frontier doctor, which meant every discipline was technically something she could do.

A quick assessment, then a few orders barked to a nurse, another barked to the junior surgeon she’d pushed aside earlier to come and assist her, this man rapidly gaining the attention of numerous doctors and nurses all in an effort to save him.

No one, save for T’Lanith, was a telepath in the room, but doctors, like engineers in a crisis, had a shared mentality. It came from training, experience, and working with your colleagues. You learned to anticipate their actions, and telegraph your own so they could do the same. That was the intent at least, the hope, so as to make an effective medical team.

Luckily for this man that rung true. The same for the other it would turn out. Hours had passed, desperate moments spaced with methodical ones as they triaged damage to keep their patient alive, then went back over their work to make good what they could, fix their adhoc repairs properly, race desperately to save their patient when fate decided to intervene. More than once she found herself cursing numerous gods, and more than once she heard Terax doing the same.

But in the end, they had prevailed, beating Death once more at their game. Both men had lost a limb, their right arms, likely indicative of where a bomb had been placed in the room. Other bodily damage concurred. Both patients were now under the care of other doctors in the ship’s ICU, the four doctors now in Terax’s office, recording all they’d seen and noticed before it fled their memories.

“Shrapnel all on their upper right.”

“Legs seemed mostly fine. Likely something between them and the bomb.”

“Crushing damage was light, so not enough to collapse the building.”

“Shock damage I saw looked consistent with low-speed explosives.”

“Recovered shrapnel looks like it was all meant to cause extensive bleeding.”

“Lucky we could scan and beam them out eh?”

It went on like this for a bit before everyone had captured what they could, agreed on a preliminary report, and then went their ways, save for her and Terax. She stayed seated, the Edosian waiting for the others to leave before he looked up at her and spoke.

“Yes?”

“Why’d you call me to help you when you had T’Lanith, or Wilcox?” she asked.

“I wanted to see your work,” he said plainly. “And I know your record. My experience with Romulans is minimal, yours is extensive.”

“That’s it?” she challenged.

“I took what I was told was the most important patient. I wanted the best trauma doctor on the ship with me. Laroux is a capable surgeon and I’m glad you utilised them as your second, but I needed someone else with me who specialised in making difficult calls to save a patient.” Terax’s voice was much less harsh than it normally was, a professional talking to another, not two people who didn’t seem to get along outside of their work like it normally was. “Your work was satisfactory.”

She scoffed at that, catching his eyebrow rising at that in response. “Satisfactory? It was fucking amazing thank you.”

“It was adequate to the task, even above average once we had saved the patient’s life. My logs will reflect that.” He crossed his left and right arm under where his middle arm protruded from his chest. “With some proper discipline Doctor Pisani, you could make a fine, an excellent even, ship’s doctor.”

She’d politely, through gritted teeth, departed Terax’s personage, taken a shower, and then headed straight for the Captain’s Mess with the intent of drinking her way past Terax’s dismissive tone and attitude. What she found instead was a number of the ship’s officers present, clustered around the room’s singular holodisplay. Her entrance had garnered some attention and a wave from Mac had brought her to his side. “Nice work,” he said quietly. “Any update on when we might ask them some questions?”

Straight to business, but his attention was split between waiting for her response and the screen. She shook her head in denial. “When they come around I suppose,” she answered.

“Turn it up!” came a voice, an officer in yellow, one of Rrr’mmm’bal’rrr’s people, and the volume of the screen was turned up.

She recognised Marik Kavos straight away, standing behind some sort of podium in the dawn light, a banner behind him with his stupid Citizen’s Guard logo on it, then the emblem of the Star Empire above it. He had a couple of his goon squad behind him, all of them in their off-brand uniforms. From what she’d heard, she was glad she’d missed the meeting with him.

“This brazen attack, this cowardly attack!” Marik bellowed, looking past the camera like he was addressing a crowd, which she imagined was likely just his own people hooting and hollering for effect. “It proves the weakness of the Magistrate and his Fool’s Assembly! It proves the weakness of the Public Order officers, of the planetary garrison! They refuse calls for martial law until the perpetrator is brought to justice! They refuse the assistance of the Citizen’s Guard to track down this coward who brings death to our beautiful Daloon!”

She couldn’t help but moan in mental anguish. The stupid rolling off this puffed-up idiot was no longer confined to one planet but allowed to be broadcast into the universe at large, but importantly into a room where she had intended to get a drink. “Fucking hell,” she said deflated.

“He’s playing to a crowd,” Mac admitted, turning away as the rest of Marik’s press conference continued along the same line.

“It’s a fucking trap,” she said, then excused herself just long to get a drink and return. “Deploy the garrison to the streets, the Magistrate is overstepping his mandate and must be resisted. Don’t deploy them and he’s weak on crime and should be overthrown by someone who will do something.” She sipped at the whiskey she’d gotten herself. “Seen it before.”

“No doubt. Pity this Major Kavos though,” Mac said with a grin. “He’s got the Captain to contend with.”

———-

Tikva’s morning had gone up in just as much ruin as the house of Ritihe Faler. She’d been scheduled to meet with the Democratic Daloon Movement that morning but they’d changed their mind, opting for safety and security in light of the bombing. She couldn’t blame them really, it was the sensible thing to do. Then she’d waited, like so many others for reports from the public order investigators, from her own medical personnel, on the fate of the house’s residents. Both survived, but barely and unlikely to be conscious for some time.

But before they could even consider damage control they had Kavos agitating on the news feeds with his incessant spouting of nonsense. Damned if they acted one way, damned if they acted another. Rel warned her about sending anyone down, not wanting to make a bad situation worse by playing into fears of a Federation invasion. Points to that woman and points to her for agreeing, even going so far as to back her own security detail down to just Ch’tkk’va and Ensign Ryans, though cheekily supplementing with Lieutenant Fightmaster. He couldn’t be Security, he was in red, besides, look at him.

The boy needs to eat.

The boy needs to grow up. I’m sure he’s lying about his age.

Well, no one could hit him if they tried, he’s too narrow.

“There you are,” Pam announced as she barged into the office she herself had assigned to Tikva while she conducted her business. “You should go back to your ship. This could get ugly.” The tiny, ancient little Romulan woman didn’t speak with her normal gruffness, or directness, but more with a grandmotherly tone now.

“And give the impression that I’ve been scared off? I’m sure that’ll play into someone’s plan somewhere. Kavos is up to something.” She’d been looking out the window in the direction of Kavos’ auburn with pretensions of glory, pondering the news feeds, the seemingly random bombing in the light of successful discussions and on the eve of formal debates starting.

“He’s an idiot. He’s not up to something, someone else is up to something,” Pam stated, then moved to sit in a chair, actually having to climb slightly into the seat. “And I hear your Commander MacIntyre had an incident in orbit yesterday with a Commander Koteb.”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Koteb, son of Tanok, scion of the House L’rilt,” Pam said.

She turned slowly around, staring at the old, wisened political figure. “Koteb, son of Tanok? As in Governor Tanok?” She took a few steps and sat herself down in the seat next to Pam’s. “You think it could be related Pamisa?”

“Empire falling apart, Daloon relatively stable and self-sufficient, wayward son looking for any port in a storm to set himself up as a warlord to fight over the scraps, highly likely.”

She shook her head. “Great. He promised to return.”

“Of course he did. Bullies always do. What are you going to do about it?” Pam asked.

“Get Daloon’s defences in shape and get these debates moving. We need to change the media conversation and make Kavos look like he’s a day behind.” She shrugged in thought and offered a wry smile. “Shouldn’t be hard should it?”

“Ha!” Pam barked out. “Easier said than done, but not by much.”