She pulled the captain’s blood-caked black hair away from her face and removed the jumpsuit sleeve. Three long scratches went up her right cheek and had caught inside the eye socket, ruining the eye.
She learned long ago to not react to a patient’s injury, because that tended to frighten people. She put a fresh bandage around her head, and heard a low groan.
“We’ve got you now, Captain, you’re going to be just fine,” Maria said, securing the bandage and lowering her head softly.
“Did we get him?” she asked.
“Wolfgang did, I think,” Maria said. “We’ll get the full story later. You’re heading to medbay now.”
“Just say good-bye, let me die, wake me up in the morning,” she said in a singsong voice, echoing an old rhyme from a children’s book that was meant to introduce children to the concept of cloning.
“No, you’re not leaving us yet,” she said.
She left the captain and checked on Wolfgang, who was still out cold. He’d probably come back to it when the gravity was kinder. Maria opened an alcohol packet and wiped the blood and sweat from his face. The cool touch of it on his skin brought his blue eyes open, and his arm shot up to grab Maria’s wrist. Or at least, that seemed to be his goal, but he just plucked at her sleeve.
“Don’t worry, you’re safe now. It’s just me,” she said. “We’ll get you upstairs soon.”
His eyes were unfocused as he looked past her. “It’s very heavy down here,” he said, his voice soft. “Did you get him?”
“Yes.”
His eyes closed. “The captain?”
“She’s hurt, but I think she’ll be okay.”
She didn’t know if he heard her, because his eyes remained closed. She finished cleaning and bandaging his wounds.
Then she had nothing else to do but sit by the bioluminescent vat of Lyfe and wait.
Joanna and Paul came back quickly, Paul looking paler than ever and Joanna rushing to check the other two patients. “Yes, Wolfgang has a concussion. Serious enough, but that looks like the extent of it. How did the captain’s eye look?”
Maria shook her head. “I don’t think you can save it. But there’s no brain damage; it’s not deep enough.”
Paul and Joanna took the captain, and then came back for Wolfgang. Maria managed to wedge herself into the lift with them so she wouldn’t be left alone down there.
Wolfgang was alert now, if a little delirious.
“We need to go back and get the weapons,” he said.
“We’ll put that on the list, Wolfgang,” Joanna said. “Right after ‘catch the killer’ and ‘fix the cloning bay.’”
“What are you talking about?” Wolfgang asked as the lift shuddered to a stop on their floor. “We have the killer.”
“Maybe,” Joanna said, and then he was too far away to argue further. They all breathed a sigh of relief as the gravity returned to the level they were accustomed to.
“While Paul and I get everyone situated in the medbay, I’m going to need you to get some food and water for the three of us. It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid,” Joanna said.
“You got it,” Maria said. “I’ll help out however I can.”
“Great. I’ll need medical help too. I don’t know how much Paul can handle.”
“I can hear you, you know,” came a cranky voice from the medbay. “And Wolfgang is telling me to tell you to hurry up.”
Joanna paused and took a long deep breath.
“A long night, yeah,” Maria said.
“So are we safe now?” Paul asked Joanna as they got the patients situated. Hiro got the spare hospital bed, and Wolfgang and Katrina got cots that Paul had fetched from a storage closet. She injected both Hiro and Katrina with a sedative.
Joanna frowned as she unwrapped Katrina’s face. “Hiro’s restrained if that’s what you mean.”
“I meant did we catch the murderer and now we can relax?” Paul said, averting his eyes from her face. “We’re safe now.”
“It looks like it, but we don’t have enough information yet,” Joanna said. “I’d prefer not to leap to conclusions.”
“But he tried to kill us all again. It’s obvious,” Paul said.
“It’s obvious he tried to kill us this time. But not last time. Let’s just not point fingers yet, and work on patching up the half of the crew that’s injured.”
Paul was feeling decidedly nauseated watching Joanna examine the captain’s face.
“Oh, for God’s sake, go do something useful if you can’t watch this,” she snapped. “Make sure Hiro is strapped to his bed, but don’t disturb his bandages.”
“I don’t think he’s getting up anytime soon,” Paul said doubtfully, looking at the small man who had caused so much damage.
“Strap him down,” Wolfgang said. “I don’t want to leave him alone; we will post watches around the clock. We will interrogate him in here, and then transfer him to the brig and figure out what to do with him.”
“He is my patient first, your prisoner second,” Joanna snapped. “Now stop trying to do my job for me and get into bed. Paul, go synthesize some blood for Hiro—type B-negative. Check the medicine locker for more morphine; we may have to synthesize that too.”
Paul nodded and went to the medical printer, much smaller than the one in the kitchen. He programmed it and turned away as the blood began synthesizing.
“What are you going to do with Hiro?” he asked Wolfgang, whose cot was the closest to him.
“What do you mean? I just told you,” he said.
“I mean after all that. When you solve the murders. It’s pretty clear he did it. Are you going to execute him? IAN can fly us just fine. I didn’t know why we needed Hiro anyway.”
“I will need to talk to Katrina about the situation when we’re in a better frame of mind. I’m sure she has a plan for this kind of eventuality.”
Paul frowned, unsatisfied. “But—”
“Mr. Seurat, please just do your job right now,” Joanna said. He glanced over. She was stitching up Katrina’s face. Paul’s head swam.
A sharp pain brought him back, and he jerked his hand back. Wolfgang had reached over and pinched him, hard, on the inside of his wrist. “You’re useless,” he said. “Go back to recovering the logs if you can’t take it in here. If you faint you’re causing more trouble for the doctor.”
Paul turned from him silently and stomped from the medbay, the back of his neck hot.
“How the hell did someone who can’t stand the sight of blood get aboard a starship?” Wolfgang asked as he left.
Paul stood in his room, dripping with shame. The shower hadn’t been enough to wash the feel of that amneo-sludge, the blood underneath his fingernails, the new-skin feeling off him, or the sticky hatred of the others, and his skin was pink from scrubbing. He had never felt so foul.
Waking up among those murders was the most horrifying thing he had ever been through. No gravity, floating in goo, stark naked, with bodies and blood flowing around him.