Page 1 of Star-Crossed Captive
Chapter one
Elara Five, Deep-Space Medical Station
Outskirts of Sector Five
Iwon’tloseanotherone.
Blood coated Nia’s hands, the by-product of her patient’s wound, a defender she’d nearly sent to palliative.
But when she’d put her hand on his arm, felt the vibrancy running through his veins, hisfight—her heart stuttered. She couldn’t speak the words that would have sent him to the last medical bay he’d ever see.
The sterilizer at the side of the hover bed whirred. She ran her hands underneath the bright white light, the blood disintegrating beneath the rays. Once clean, she picked up her regenerator tool and held it tight to stare at the unconscious defender with chin-length black hair—his wound went right to the bone.
“You sure about this one?” Ezra asked from beside her, their black medical uniforms matching hundreds of others in the triage bay.
“I’m sure.” She turned on the regenerator with a flick of her thumb. It hummed as she brought it close to the exposed femur.Save this one.Too many had died already. She took a deep breath.Focus.She’d already been on her feet for six non-stop hours.
“Stimulant,” she murmured.
Ezra shot the drug into the side of Nia’s neck a second later. The triage bay brightened. Her spine straightened and her heart rate accelerated, thudding heavily in her chest as her hands steadied.
The defender’s life blood spilled from his thigh to the bed. Ezra hooked him to fluids, lifted the transfusion portal, and paused.
Nia saw why—the dead PALM on the defender’s left hand. There was no way to get an identification number, name, or blood type. Without missing a beat, Ezra inserted the portal in his arm and the synthesized plasma ran into the patient’s system.
Shouts from across the triage bay echoed. A new surge of wounded entered on hover beds, shunted into neat rows in the voluminous space. More silver and gray uniforms.
Too many wounded. Too many to save.
Finish with this one. Move on to the next.
Ezra held the leg immobile as she ran the regenerator along the exposed muscle. “He’s a big one,” the med assistant murmured, hands steady on the man’s thigh.
She didn’t acknowledge the statement but had to agree. Even lying down, the defender dwarfed them both. The Tellusians would see this one coming and run in the opposite direction. Her patient twitched but remained unconscious.
Ezra injected another sedative into the defender’s bloodstream and his movements stilled.
The triage doctors shouting orders and the groans of the wounded drowned out the regenerator’s hum. Nia’s nostrils filled with the familiar but disquieting odor of lacerated flesh. She concentrated on healing each delicate layer of muscle, creating new tissues with her synthesizer. Every stroke of her hand brought the mended muscles closer to his epidermis. As her patient’s vitals stabilized, she resisted the urge to take a break and turn on her PALM, her Personal Automated Link to Media that was connected to her ocular implant, and find out what was happening with the nearby battle.
Her forehead beaded with sweat. With plasma and fluids pumping into his system, the defender’s vitals strengthened with each beat of his heart. She healed the epidermis of his thigh, the dark hair on the outer edge of the wound singed where the laser weapon had sliced him.
With the last of his skin healed, she turned off the regenerator and braced her hand against the bed. A deep breath fortified her enough to address her patient’s second wound: the laser burn that had cauterized a large portion of his oblique abdominals, his uniform partially melted to his body.
Ezra pressed and smoothed regeneration gauze to the newly healed flesh of the defender’s thigh. “It’s even a pretty scar,” he said with a grin, covering the last of the pale, pink skin.
She smiled. “You know I take pride in my work.”
“That’s an understatement.”
A shout made them both turn. Nia’s heart stuttered, and she froze in place. A defender resisted treatment two hover beds over. The large man swung, knocking a doctor to the deck, then flattened a medical assistant with his next punch.
Without hesitating, Ezra ran and dove, tackling the wounded man to the deck. Defenders on security detail rushed to help while her med assistant held the thrashing man.
“You okay?” she shouted over the noise.
Ezra nodded, his face a grimace until a doctor pressed a dermal syringe into the defender’s neck, tranquilizing the soldier.
Swallowing, she returned her focus to the wound on her patient’s torso. She lifted the fabric of his uniform where it wasn’t melted and—
