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The triage room was already crowded as Y observed it. Over two dozen of the rescued were in here, many simply needing to be checked, others in need of serious medical attention.
From his frame of reference, they were not moving. Though his metal body was walking through the room, and he was fully aware of its path and actions, that was not all he was aware of.
Every camera in the room were more eyes for him; he saw through every scanner, it was as if he held every diagnostic tool. Data poured into him, and he parsed it nearly instantly, the operations occurring so quickly that it was difficult to even apply a number to them.
And through it all, he was also in each Response Team Shuttle.
The data from his four drones was far lesser, and there was a slight bit of lag in data that required him to wait for each update, but that was fine. It was simple to parse.
All twenty seven people in this room would live without much difficulty, he thought. Only two were serious cases, and he focused them first.
His stream of thought came through to Dr. Zyzus’s feed.
“This man has severe radiation poisoning. I believe his exposure was at least four Grays. Begin the Anti-Radiation Reactive Nano-Drone treatment immediately,” he wrote. He dispatched a drone with the ARRND treatment. It was unfortunate he did not have the man’s entire medical history, but he had access to some of the older file’s from the man’s service medical record, and tailored the treatment to his particular DNA.
The next man was not irradiated, but was heavily burned over much of one arm.
“Place into medical capsule two and begin a treatment mist to clean his exposed tissue. Follow with debriding nanos and a further wash to remove them, then begin replacing the skin,” he ordered.
“Get this man an emesis container,” he noted, catching the look on another man who was about to vomit.
It was not exactly speaking in real time, more of a recording that he sent. Barely a moment had passed, no one had moved appreciably.
He continued on. Ten needed only treatments for shock and could be moved from triage. Seven others had minor injuries that could be treated by nurses. Of the last eight, six needed their own anti-radiation treatments and two needed bleeding injuries sealed.
All very simple. But he had more patients coming; already twelve more were being unloaded from the drones and six more were outside of the ship, merely waiting their chance to unload the people aboard.
He began to prepare another three triage rooms and allocated the appropriate staff, just to be safe.
Lily could recall the time she visited Earth.
She’d been just a girl, her parents having acquired three of the highly sought-after tickets to visit the homeworld.
At the time it had been more annoying than anything to her, disrupting her whole life for a week of travel from her home station of Ran 5-5 to Earth orbit.
Hours on the cramped space elevator, then the shock of experiencing a planetary atmosphere for the first time.
The open skies, the smells of the ocean had been overwhelming and she had hated them.
She’d gotten sick to her stomach and rested for most of the next day, staying inside and refusing to go out for several more after that.
But on the third night her curiosity had gotten the better of her and she’d stepped outside, looking into the dark blue sky.
The twinkling of the stars made them look different than they did from space. The distortions of the atmosphere on their light was novel to her.
And she’d hated that, too, at first. While she had eventually loosened up and found herself enjoying her time on Earth, she hadn’t paid much attention to those twinkling stars again.
Now, she found herself wishing she’d spent more time at night watching them.
The stars outside the window seemed to twinkle like that occasionally, in the corners of her vision. She wasn’t sure if it was just tiredness or perhaps a result of the medications.
She really should have covered the portal back up, but she had used some of the tools on the shuttle to check if any air was escaping. The pressure in the pod was, if anything, a little higher than she expected.
“Ms. Brogan?”
It was Kai again. She didn’t know how long it had been since the last time a message had come in, she’d lost track of time.
Lily knew she should pick up the call, but she found herself spacing out again, staring out into the stars.
She chided herself; even if she was tired and hurt, this was a survival situation. She couldn’t afford that kind of laziness.
“I’m here,” she said. “Do you have any news coming?”
“We’re working as fast as we can to help you, Lily. It may take some more time, but we’re working quickly. Can I get you to check something else for me?”
“Sure,” Lily said, then felt chagrined. ‘Sure’, she’d said. Like it was some casual conversation, not a talk with a Response commander trying to save her life!
“How is Officer Pedraza doing?” Kai asked.
“I just checked him . . .” Lily said, her sentence drifting off. When had she done that? She had to bring up her system, it had clocked the check-in. It was almost twenty minutes ago.
She went back over.
Davyyd was still unconscious, his breathing still rapid.
“He’s okay,” she said, feeling immense guilt. “But he’s breathing really quickly. He stops sometimes, but it starts back up again not long after.”
There was more than six-second pause before Kai replied. “I copy,” she came back. Her voice betrayed nothing, but Lily had a bad feeling.
“I can forward you the medical drone’s data,” Lily said. “I mean, I think I can do that.”
“Yes, please do. As well as its scans of you.”
Lily found her fingers fumbling, feeling oddly numb.
She stopped, noticing that her under her clear gloves her fingernails appeared blueish.
It was just the lighting in here, she told herself. The lights in these pods were a very crisp white.
She finished sending the data, remembering at the last minute to send multiple copies to help fill in gaps due to data loss.
“We’re receiving now,” Kai told her. “I need to ask you one more thing, Ms. Brogan.”
“Go ahead,” Lily said. Then, on a spur of the moment she added; “And just call me Lily.”
“Okay, Lily,” Kai replied. “Can you open the air circulation panel and read me what it says the readings are?”
“Oh. That’s easy,” Lily replied, moving to the instrumentation panel. The air quality panel still showed all green, the air in here was fine. No excessive carbon dioxide, the pressure was still adequate for breathing . . .
“Air quality is reading as normal . . . pressure is up slightly . . .” She read off the numbers. “Humidity is getting kind of high. That’s odd, I checked it earlier because I thought it seemed high but it wasn’t high then.”
“What about oxygen purity?”
“It says it’s fine.”
“I need you to bring it up in your HUD and check the specific measurement,” Kai asked, her voice firm and slightly insistent.
“Okay . . .” She brought it up, pausing a moment before answering. “It says that the air is 101.2% pure.”
That was a weird result. It should not able to read higher than one hundred percent here. Unless it just meant there was too much O2?
Kai didn’t have any reaction to that, as far as she could tell. “Now please do the same with air density reading.”
“Air density is . . . wow, it’s like nine percent over normal. That’s really weird, do we have too much oxygen or something?”
That would explain why she felt a little lightheaded. Maybe the Drone had even turned up the oxygen to help Davyyd?
“Thank you,” Kai said. Then, she added; “Lily, I’ll speak to you again shortly.”
“Okay,” Lily said, her stomach squirming.
Other Terrestrial 