There was no strength or time to sort things out. The time Sher spent talking, Rick used to gather all his thoughts with an act of will, the wompa-rats trying to scatter in his head, and forced himself to sit down. Sitting down was much easier than forcing himself to do it; his body wasn't exhausted, just strangely stunned.
"Take care of the patient," in his voice, despite the unambiguous phrase, there was nothing to read. He had no strength to give it an authoritative or commanding tone; it had gone into the new movement. Rick took the Arkonian's hand so that he could feel his warmth and squeeze his palm in return, but wouldn't harm him with his claws. He tried to give him support, that creature nearby that Shay desperately needed. If he had the strength, he probably would have said something, but he had no strength.
Nick, without getting up, decided what to do. The captain was a smuggler here, but he wasn't in a state to do anything, to command, to give orders. To take command would be to question his authority. Not to take it would be to show that without the captain, no one in the crew knew what to do. In essence, to show that there was no crew as such. Unacceptable.
"Larius," his voice was quiet, but did not allow for objections. "Cap asked to look at the list of orders and identify the main threats. Deal with that for now, we're not finished."
"Dactyl is in the car," Bus meowed from the table. "We should move it."
"I'll take Jethro, we'll take care of it," the pilot nodded. "Call if you need anything."
The mercenary, nodding, took out her deck and occupied the nearest chair. Nick disappeared behind the door, after touching Sher in the Force and conveying a feeling of approval.
"You'll manage."
Sher had already stood up when she heard the cap's words.
"And what was I doing?" the doc chuckled to herself, but remained silent. After all, the cap would eventually have to get used to the fact that she didn't need to be reminded that she was a doctor.
She massaged her forearm slightly to make the collapsed vein on the alien's dark, clawed hand visible, and with a precise, practiced movement, inserted the injector into the bump protruding under the skin. The mixture of analgesic and tranquilizer should have silenced the pain for a while, but constantly keeping the unfortunate on such drugs was not a solution.
"Sir, I have some thoughts on Shay's treatment," she said to Rick, carefully transferring a drop of blood to the analyzer, "but I need equipment that I don't have here."
Several more dactyl crystals were carefully placed in the Arkonian's open mouth, and she held his head to the side until he swallowed the melted crystals. Only then did she allow herself to answer, touching the departing pilot with tenderness: "Nick..."
Her gray eyes turned to Rick again.
"How are you, cap?" she asked softly. "You scared me so much..."
The clawed hand stirred under Rick's fingers - the alien had come to his senses.
"Where are we?" the drug addict's golden eyes darted around the cabin ceiling, at the woman's face bent over him. "Ma'am, we're scared..."
"Among our own," Rick said tiredly, then turned to the girl, "It's bad, but I'll manage."
Enormous effort was spent forming words and phrases and pronouncing them, compared to how it was usually done. This made his speech seem somewhat sluggish.
"Make a list of equipment," the counter exhaled.
Sher's warm hand lay on the Arkonian's shoulder and stroked him.
"You have nothing to fear, Shay, you are among your own, on the ship," the girl repeated the captain's words.
"Everything will be alright, Shay, the pain will pass. Right now. And you'll sleep a little. We will definitely cure you," her intonation carried reassuring confidence.
"Cap, you really need to rest," Sher looked at Rick with concern. "At least a little."
"We are very scared," the Arkonian shook his head desperately. The fit of body-wracking pain was receding, and the reason was clearly not in him. "We really want salt. Just a little salt... Don't untie us!"
"You don't need salt," Rick said, still tiredly, but with confidence in his voice. "You have a team, you have your own. You have no need for the fake."
The Force responded with a surge of insane hope and fear - Larius sensitively raised her head from the deck.
"Your own?" the Arkonian repeated. "Clan?"
"Of course, Shay," the doc confirmed, "you can say that. It's just that we call it a team. But the meaning is the same - your own. We are all different, but we are a team, and you are now one of us, Shay."
She glanced at the analyzer monitor and then back at Shay. "Or should I say - one of us?"
In Rick's opinion, Sher was talking a bit too much, but... His condition could hardly be called adequate, which meant his judgments couldn't be correct or logical. The main thing was that she conveyed the essence, so he could only nod, so as not to create new problems for his mind.
Sher carefully examined the alien's blood analysis results again. No, an error was excluded. The ratio of blood hormones clearly indicated Shay's female gender. For Sher, this meant treatment would be more difficult. Women of all races always have a higher degree of drug addiction than men.
She looked at the cap with doubt. Apparently, he didn't know. But Sher really didn't want to tell him about it right now. The cap, despite his stubborn efforts to hold on, looked unwell.
"Sir," the doctor began cautiously, "I beg you to give yourself a rest. We'll manage. Larius is with me," Sher glanced towards the mercenary. "And Bus.
Rick looked into the girl's eyes, and for a fraction of a second, uncertainty and then guilt flickered through the material of his lenses. For some reason, he didn't want to leave. Not in the sense that he thought they couldn't manage without him, but because he didn't want to be alone. And there was something else he didn't want to say.
"I'm not sure I'll make it to the cot," he said with a sad smile, then added, "Sher."
She already felt guilty about her recent impudence, and Rick's words, his sad smile, only worsened that feeling. "Found time to prove something to the cap when he's feeling so bad," she thought sadly.
"How about someone escorts you and sits with you, if you don't mind?" Sher suggested. "And you should lie down, cap..." she added quietly.
The mercenary watched them intently, then shifted her gaze to Bus. The Kushiban twitched the fur on its neck and darkened.
"It seems we have more problems than we could have anticipated," Larius announced quietly. "Troy's people have declared a hunt for you, sir..."
"We're not in the fleet," the guy shook his head, chasing away the fatigue, "and I'm no sir, Larius. As for Troy's people..."
He carefully freed his hand and slowly got onto all fours, then slowly raised one knee, and, holding onto the bed, slowly stood up.
"As soon as Muha gives us a connection to the Black Sun, Troy's people will have such problems that they'll forget about me," he said tiredly, realizing that the first step was not so much difficult as it was scary to fall. He smiled sadly again and looked at Larius, "I need to get to the cockpit. It's just that I'm not sure I can get there myself."
Sher rushed to help Rick up, supporting him under the arm.
"Larius, could you escort the cap? I can't leave... Shay," she finally managed to say the name in its feminine form. "And also... You need to dissolve this packet," Sher patted her pockets and remembered she wasn't in her usual clothes.
"I'll find it now... And you need to give the cap something to drink. There are plant components, but it should help."
"I'll escort you," the woman nodded, taking the weight of the captain's body onto her shoulder. "Let's go, sir."
The Kushiban, raising its tail, rushed towards the exit.
He didn't have the strength or the desire to explain to the fighter again that he was as much of a sir as a Trandoshan was a vegan pacifist, so the counter simply headed for the door with the woman, noticing that he liked physical contact.
What is this curse...
"Just in case, we need to get the speeder into the hangar," he said aloud. "Then check the ship's weapons. We'll raise the ramp, and the ship will become a fortress."
Sher, almost at the exit, placed the finally found packet into Larius's palm and watched them go. Whatever feelings were stirring in her soul, she turned to the Arkonian with a calm smile.
"Are you feeling a little better, Shay?" she asked the dark-skinned alien.
The Arkonian nodded, her bright yellow eyes not leaving the doctor's. Her addiction had gone quite far, and she understood that she couldn't get rid of her craving with sheer willpower. No matter how much she wanted to... But - clan...
"We don't hurt as much anymore."
"Good," Sher smiled encouragingly at the woman, "then tell me a little about yourself, okay? What do you like to do, what's your favorite dish, how old are you, Shay?"
Sher asked these questions, of course, not out of idle curiosity. Medical treatment could only dull the pain, but not solve the problem. Sher already knew how she would cleanse the alien's body of the traces of the substance that caused such addiction, how she would activate the brain's biorhythms... But what could she replace Shay's color hallucinations with?
It was still difficult for the alien to speak, but she tried. From her story, it turned out that she was quite young, but she had a good sense of rock formations and could design a mine by instinct better than a computer could. Most of all, she loved dactyl and... salt. And her clan.
"But you didn't always love salt, did you?" the doctor persisted, bringing up data on the state of the second circulatory system on the analyzer monitor and glancing at the Arkonian. "What did you love before it, Shay?"
"Clan," the Arkonian answered immediately. "And stone. We loved stone very much. To hear how it talked to us. It told us where the crack was. Where the void would be. Where not to direct the machines... They promised us we would talk to the stone. And money for the clan."
"And what happened next, Shay?" the doctor's gray eyes looked at the alien with warmth and participation. Behind the simple words of the Arkonian lay another small tragedy of this vast galaxy. Sher took the alien's hand, and her slender fingers twitched on Shay's dark skin. This light squeeze was meant to be understood by the Arkonian as well. It meant: "I'm with you."
"They brought us here," Shay replied. "Said to wait. And they never came back. Others came, took others. They left us. Said we looked scary. No clan. No money... We looked for a clan. No dactyl either. We ate food for others. There was salt... It was easier. Then we found work."
The girl listened to the alien very attentively. The past must be paid its due, perhaps even mourned. And move on.
"Everything will be different now, Shay. Now you will have dactyl, and the opportunity to talk to the stone will surely present itself again. And you are back in the clan. In the team, that is," Sher corrected herself, smiling. "You have no reason to use salt anymore."
She reached for the monitor again, with symbols and formulas appearing on it, understandable only to her, and, beaming, looked at the Arkonian.
The functional nature of the disruptions in the second circulatory system and the organ using ammonia was incredibly pleasing to Sher. This was restorable. If, of course, Shay stopped messing with salt.
"Now it all depends on you, Shay. You have to help us," the doctor's eyes were serious, despite the soft tone, "And let me feed you some more dactyl..."
"We will try," the alien whispered. "We will try very hard..."
Sher nodded approvingly.
"That's good. Then we'll succeed."
She carefully fed the dactyl to the alien in small portions. Oh, how she needed a hemosorption apparatus to start treatment right now. And she had it. Or rather, it was with Orri, in his tiny clinic. And, since she was no longer Orri's partner, she needed to get the apparatus.
"Now try to fall asleep, Shay," the girl stroked the alien's head.
Her tangled hands stirred - the Arkonian checked if she was securely tied. The result satisfied her.
"Don't untie us," she asked again before closing her eyes. "We're scared..."
"Bus will pass it to Nick," the mercenary's hands were strong. Muttering something under her breath, the iridescent alien ran down the corridor towards the elevator.
"I need to pull myself together and establish a connection, a normal team connection."
"Well, that's great," Rick thanked the stars that the cockpit wasn't far. "What do you think, Troy's people... Are they seeking revenge or just decided to punish an impudent person?"
"When the head of a dangerous group is removed, what does the group assume first?" Larius answered a question with a question.
"That someone wants to take their territory, their business, their power. That's their mistake and our chance. They don't know who you are. But sooner or later they will find a thread and unravel the tangle. While they are looking among their competitors, we can manage to frame them under the 'Sun' and leave."
"And maybe, under the guise of a commotion, we can steal... abscond with their treasury?" the guy asked a rhetorical question. "Again, we'll replenish the weapons locker."
Finally, he sat down in the armchair, his armchair. For some reason, this was important now.
"Besides Troy's people... Are there serious people who have started hunting for my soul?" this question was no longer rhetorical.
He settled comfortably in the armchair, allowing himself not to think about how his body felt, and to focus on what was pressing. He wouldn't have the strength for complex work, but he was already capable of superficial judgments.
"Only a couple of lone hunters," Larius replied. "Serious guys. But they don't have any more information than Troy's."
"Alright... a couple of hunters is an unnecessary headache. It's worth remembering, but not worrying too much about it," he frowned, calculating his next moves. "We're not flying to 'Cosmosaray'. Ninx is too valuable an acquaintance to risk his hospitality. So, we'll make the ship our home right here."
He paused, gathering strength.
"When Nick takes the car away and finishes unloading, let him grab Jetro and crawl first to the main engine room, then to the maneuvering engines, and check the shields," a superficial inspection revealed no problems, but no one said there wouldn't be any if you dug deep enough.
With a couple of movements, Rick brought up the ship's weapon systems on the screen.
"There are two twin lasers here, check in both compartments if the information is true, and report to me from each control room. Then, with Bus, check all communication systems on the ship and find the bugs. Find them, but don't touch them."
He looked at the woman questioningly.
"You've already found something," Larius dropped the formalities in the absence of third parties. "Let's look."
She headed for the exit, glancing back at the door.
"Should I send Bus to you? It will be easier with him."
Rick almost said that he was to blame for what happened and should feel it to the fullest. But another thought came to his mind. The longer he was in this state, the greater the threat to the crew. His crew.
"Let him come," he nodded and switched to the ship's system readings.
The fluffy alien appeared quite soon. He squeezed through the door, swaggered through the cabin, jumped onto the captain's lap, and sprawled out as if he had spent his whole life pretending to be an overgrown felinx.
"Bus, have you tried washing?" Rick asked, looking at him. "Your fur... it's kind of dusty."
The alien snorted. And turned green literally. His long, fluffy fur took on a delicate pistachio hue.
"I'm clean," he explained briefly. "I was just nervous."
"Ahem," Rick suppressed a surprised cough almost instantly, almost. "And you're always like this? Mimicking."
"It depends on the mood," Bus replied. Now, a calm, soft feeling emanated from him, close to peace.
"Hmm," Rick involuntarily succumbed to the feeling emanating from the kushiban, "And why do you turn brown?"
"Because I feel disgusted," the alien remembered something, a chocolate sheen ran over his fur, but it disappeared immediately.
"Because of what?" curiosity was always strong in him. "If it's not a secret, of course."
"It's not a secret," Bus suddenly turned white, and the emotional background disappeared, as if the creature lying on Rick's lap was incapable of feeling anything at all.
A short flash of rage a reddish wave across his fur. Fear responded with purple, pain with piercing yellow. Deep disgust caused a brown hue. When the alien's fur turned black, Rick felt like he was being attacked.