Chapter 39 Surgery
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Claw was not happy, yet it shouldn't have been able to be happy at all. It was a computer intelligence, placed within the suit that had bonded to Commander Malachi Joseph Prey. Even though that was the case, it still wasn't pleased. The weapon that had hit them had cleaved Malachi from just above his right hip upwards through the twelfth, eleventh, ten, ninth, eight, seventh, six, and fifth rip. It now rested against the bottom of his fourth rib, and within an inch of his heart. If that dagger had hit on his left side, there would have been nothing it could have done. The loss of blood would have been completed within seconds. As if was it had been able to stanch the gush of blood enough to preserve his life and not much else. He would have exsanguinated with another half pint of blood loss. Then there was the flight back. On final approach Malachi's vitals had flat lined, and between the choices of making a pretty three point landing or restarting his heart it had gone with the no brainer.
But now doctor, whatever his name was, was trying to make it move. Saying something about not being able to get to the Commander's wounds very well with all this black goop in the way. Well, this black goop was the only thing keeping Malachi alive, and it would not move for anyone. It wasn't until sometime later, when Malachi's vitals started to recover, that Claw became confident enough to let the doctor begin, but only one tiny vein at a time. Doctor whoever was a quick study, though. Claw uncovered the first tiny vein and blood began to splatter all over the staff's fine white uniforms, ruining their looks. But they recovered quickly and over the voiced shouts. The doctor, with great skill and determination, clamped the vein and sewed it back together. After the first was fixed, Claw left another uncovered. This time, the staff was right on top of it. This went on for hours, veins were closed, arteries sewed shut until there was only one thing left to repair: his liver.
The blade had cut almost a third of Malachi's liver off from the whole. The blade had left it bisected from bottom to top at an inward angle. If not for Claw, that wound alone would have ended Malachi's life. It had sealed the entire organ inside its blackness and even then it had been very close.
"We're lucky it was his liver. With this much cut off, he should be fine in a month or two. All we have to do is remove the smaller portion and sew up the rest. It'll regenerate, as long as we can tie him down and make him rest." The doctor had the small portion of his liver removed and was on its way to the cryo freezer for storage in a few moments. Another few minutes were needed to close up the liver itself, and then to set all of his broken ribs. They weren't broken, each was cut as the razor-sharp blade passed. Each had to be set, stabilized. Then the doctor sewed Malachi's chest back up and left the room.
All three of the nurses spent the next hour washing the blood from his skin, placing clean blankets over him, and setting up his monitors and intravenous feeds. They didn't dare move him, so the blood soaked sheets had to stay on his bed, as well as his now red spotted shorts.
Claw spent that time monitoring his humans vitals as well. His blood pressure was returning to normal levels, pulse was fine, the only unexplained abnormality was the slow energy drain it was experiencing. All systems were returning to normal. Why would there be any kind of drain on Malachi's systems now? It hoped that question could wait. Once he regained enough energy to open a comm channel, it needed to talk to Central. They had much to discuss.
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The blackness was everywhere. It clung to her, dripped from her finger tips, great drops of it fell from her nose, it was all around her, inside her, everywhere. Yet her mind knew this was normal, a part of her wanted to scream in abject terror, but the majority of her yearned for this, accepted it, clung to it as much as it clung to her. Until, with a faint impact, Tamar managed to push one eye open.
"Why do we always get the shit jobs?" The blonde haired young women wearing the chevrons of a third class petty officer on her left sleeve asked her companion.
"Because we're the lowest on a very short totem pole. Now get busy. Senior chief wants this finished before the end of today." First class petty officer Bixby ordered as they both walked up to Malachi's demolished fighter.
The fire fighters were just finishing their business, the smell of firefighting foam still hard in the air. They both clambered up onto what was once been its wing.
"I still don't understand why we have to check over this crate. There can't be enough left of this thing to do anything, let alone be dangerous." Third class petty officer Prevost complained.
"And that's why you're still a third class, Prevost. Did you do any of the studies on these Talons? They carry seventy two air-to-air missiles, two titanium slug magnetic accelerator cannons with enough ammunition to feed the Gatling guns for thirty-seven seconds of fire. By the looks of things, he hasn't fired even a fifth of his missiles and none of his cannon ammo. It's a wonder this thing didn't go up once it hit the deck. So yeah, we're going to go over every square inch of this thing. Do you have a problem with that petty officer?"
"When you put it that way, no, but I still think it's a waste of our time. Why not just jettison this thing into space and be finished with it?" Prevost asked, climbing over the port exhaust nacelle.
"In case you didn't hear me the first time, this thing is full of unexploded ordnance. Just one wrong movement before I set everything on safe could tear this entire bay open to space, or worse." Prevost gave Bixby a worried look.
"Then should we even be walking around on this thing?"
"Oh, don't worry about it. Besides, if it does go up, we won't even feel it."
"That is not very comforting." Prevost dead panned. "I'm heading towards the port wing. The secondary missile safety switch is along and under the wing root, right?"
"Yeah, the panel isn't hard to find. Just enter your access code and hit the green button."
"Even I know that, sheesh." She said as she slipped out of sight down the high side of the fighter.
"Sometimes I wonder." Bixby muttered, still trying to get to the cockpit to secure the engines.
With the fighter tipped forward onto its nose, it wasn't just a matter of climbing the rungs built into the fighter's outer skin. At the angle they were, it was more like climbing up the side of a mountain using only the strength in your arms and hands. Even for a twenty-six-year-old who always tried to keep himself in good shape, it wasn't as easy as it looked. In a few minutes, though, he had himself perched on the last rung and stared down into the pilot's seat. As he caught his first look, he almost lost his lunch.
"Nice of senior chief to warn us about this," he grumbled, stifling a gag.
Most of the time, he would have just jumped down into the seat and, with a flip of a few switched, secured the engines from any inadvertent activation. This time, he stretched as far as he could and pushed the buttons and switches one at a time. There was no way he was going to get into that cockpit, not with the amount of blood there was in there. It was everywhere, it still ran down the chair, dripped from the canopy, there were even red patches still on the control stick. Bixby was glad they were just going to melt the thing down for recycling once they had removed all the explosives and fuel.
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