Blind Luck

Posted on Apr 16, 2015 @ 12:43pm by Captain Kassandra Thytos

Mission: Limbo

"Blind luck"

(Cont. "Test of Endurance")

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Location: LIMBO

Stardate: 2.150415.2105

Scene: Somewhere in the pit


The Darkness.

A Black that no light would ever cut.

It seemed to Kassandra a solid, tangible prison, a living entity that stripped her of agency and left her naked, bare, the antithesis of everything she was.

And in the inky void lived nightmares, screams, phaser fire, concussive explosions, bodies falling to the ground.

[[She's not a friend,]] The Darkness seemed to say. [[She's someone I used to know. You want to know if she's safe? She's dying, what's safer than that?]]

**I'm not dyin',** she screamed at The Darkness. **I refuse to die, I need to get to the Captain, I need to get to my crew, I need to get home to TERRA to mend fences with my kids.**

"Tell me, what does it feel like to have this happen twice? You hear that? That's your team dying," the memory of Rawyvin's voice tickled her ear.

"Yousonofabitch!" Kass spat, striking out at The Darkness with her fists. The pain slammed through her, and the throbbing in her back brought her back to the present, back to the fear, back to her horrible, sordid predicament.

Kassandra swallowed the bile that was welling up in her throat and worked on cramming all her fear up into a little ball and pushing it deep down to sit like a lead weight in her stomach. She fought the wave of nausea and tried to figure out what was happening.

She wasn't on the floor of the arena anymore, and it seemed her nausea was not entirely due to shock or fear. She wasn't exactly upright, and she was on something that was bouncing up and down. She stretched her hand out gingerly and met warm flesh, an arm maybe? Extremely large, heavily muscled, definitely male.

Could be Klingon or Human. She was hoping for the latter, the last time she'd been in a public match she'd had to fight off Klingon suitors, literally.

She worked her hand up the arm- definitely an arm- gingerly until she reached her back and stopped. That answered the question of how she was still alive. Even with the fight/flights increasing the rate of clotting, the wound had been too big for the flow of blood to have been staunched naturally. She was grateful to be alive, but it was unnerving to realize that she owed it to some stranger's hand shoved halfway into her body cavity. Doubly unnerving because she couldn't even see them.

"You know, people usually buy a girl dinner first" she croaked out. It came out slurred and dry, a thin thing, broken, pathetic, small.

"You were bleeding out. I stopped it," a male voice rumbled from somewhere near her ass. She could feel the vibration of his voice against her chest, an oddly comforting purr. "You have any latinum?"

"What?" Kassandra wheezed, coughing up something warm, syrupy, metallic.

Blood. Her fear welled up again, fear of The Darkness, fear of failure, fear of a situation that she had no control over, fear of dying.

"For a doctor." The voice sounded slightly bemused, as though it couldn't quite believe that she was that dense.

Kassandra was silent for a moment, pushing through the icy knots in her stomach.

Silence.

Oh god.

It was silent.

The blood in her veins turned to ropes of ice, and her breath hardened in her chest.

"Where are we? We ain't in the Pits anymore are we? Take me back, you gotta take me back!" Kassandra could hear her voice sharpening into a hysterical keen, but she was unable to stop it.

"Why?" The methodical cadence of her savior's step faltered.

"My crewmates are back there, right in the middle of that shitstorm-" Kassandra struggled weakly, trying to squirm loose from the massive arms that held her, to no avail.

"Reasonably, what do you expect to do to help? Bleed on the Black Stars?" The arms tightened their grasp on her like a constrictor or a parent with a particularly intransigent child. The question felt like a physical blow, knocking the wind out of her sails, leaving her limp and ennervated. Her head felt dizzy and woozy, and she became acutely aware that shock was setting in.

"I'd have to be able to see them to manage that," she whispered her admission into the man's shoulder, and was surprised to find her body betraying her once more, shaking like a leaf with fatigue and emotion. "You can’t take me to a doctor on the station- ain’t a single one here who’d raise a finger to help me. Hell, they might even decide to finish Kalenda’s job. You gotta take me to the-"

In The Darkness flashes of gold flirted in the front of Kassandra's brain, and she never finished the thought.

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Scene: the makeshift triage

“I’m going to need a bottle, preferably something clean, but I can use the phaser to sterilize it if need be, also something metal, a knife maybe,” Aerdan said turning to the silent mountain that inhabited the shadows of the room. Thomas seemed rather embarrassed by the Marine’s nudity, despite Aerdan’s reminder that a woman who was used to seeing through other people’s clothes would hardly be upset being seen without hers, and had occupied himself watching Sedna suspiciously. “And a name would be nice, I can’t very well call you ‘you there’ can I?”

“Jacen,” the large man rustled in his pockets, and pulled out an empty bottle of Kentucky Bourbon, and a bloody Klingon dagger. Noting the Andorian’s quizzical look, he shrugged and explained. “I had to use it to sterilize her wound. What’s so amusing?”

“Knowing the Major, she probably would have preferred to drink it and face the infection,” Aerdan said dryly. “Help me turn her over.”

Jacen complied, and Aerdan opened a antiseptic swab and gently cleaned the wound in Kassandra’s back. His antennae twitched, and he took a closer look at the blade that Jacen had handed him. Typical Klingon brutishness, the knife was made with expanding blades that were triggered upon being stabbed into flesh, causing massive tissue damaged and creating a sizable wound. Kalenda had missed sliding her knife in between Kassandra’s ribs and into her heart, and slashed a foot long gash into her back before her blade buried itself under Kassandra’s ribcage. He noticed a trickle of blood down the side of her neck and gently turned her head to the side, brushing back her hair to expose a mess of torn circuitry and melted wires. Likely the processing core for her sensor nets, and definitely something that was the purview of one of the Engineers, or perhaps the Science computer division. Not life threatening, at any rate.

Aerdan pulled out several tools from his pockets and began to work. It was not going to be pretty, and Cade was going to complain loudly about having to redo the work in a more elegant manner, but it would save the Major’s life.

He sterilized her wound and began to knit each layer of tissue back together, it wouldn’t hold up to strenuous activity, but it would hold everything together until they got back to the ship. At least she wouldn’t be bleeding out the fresh blood he put into her. With Thomas’ assistance, he moved Sedna out of the shower and onto the small table, and began to pump her blood into the empty bourbon bottle. That finished, he removed the needle from her arm and transferred it to Kassandra’s arm, inverting the bottle and allowing the fresh blood to flow into the Marine’s empty veins. Her color began to improve with the first bottle, and she began to stir weakly, mumbling incoherently.

“It’s my fault, you know. Alla this. It’s cos I killed those people on the CENTURY. Universe warned me after Barbossa, killed my Marines, took my sight, killed you, and I shoulda taken it more seriously, should never have broken my promise. Always had bad luck, look at Icarus, but everything’s gone downhill since I took up being a Marine again. Blackmail from that asshole, all of this going tits up,” the Marine muttered fretfully to someone not in the room. “This just CAN’T happen again, it can’t.”

Good, cognitive function seemed normal, though she still seemed confused. Aerdan started the second bottle, and gave her a hypospray full of a stimulant. He gently patted her cheek to wake her.

“Major, wake up, we have to get a move on,” Aerdan lisped softly, Kassandra made a face and her eyes fluttered open blindly, one hand reaching forward to paw at Aerdan’s face.

“Mister Jos? Is that you? Where am I? What’s happening?” She sat up and winced, her hand clutching the half healed wound on her side.

“Careful, I’ve knitted your wounds, but it’s a temporary fix, you’ll need to be gentle with them until we get back to the PHOENIX. It’s me, and you’re in a room on LIMBO, where we have been working to save your life after Kalenda the Black stabbed you,” Aerdan said running his tricorder over her. Her body temperature was low, but well within the acceptable range, metabolic functions normalizing. Her heart rate had spiked and cortisol rates had raised as well. She had a calm, collected front, but her biometric readings told him that she was terrified. He suspected that the woman would not appreciate him inquiring further. “You are a very, very lucky woman. Whatever you took during your fight bought you just enough time.”

“Did you pull me out? I thought I remember some guy- really huge- helpin’ me,” she felt along her arm until her fingers met the tubing. “Is that a blood transfusion? Whered’ya get blood?”

“I did not, that was Jacen, who is a large man, yes you’re getting a blood transfusion, and we had a donor. Thomas is also here. Focus, Major. We need to get moving and back to the ship, you’ll have time to get questions answered there,” Aerdan admonished.

“Ohhhh. Shit,” Kassandra’s face went blank. “Sir- the Captain was in the pits arena- and Rawyvin Seth was headin’ right towards him- that’s why I left the arena, and why Kalenda was able to get around my sensor net, I was too busy focusin’ on him, I thought for sure he was the main threat. We gotta go back, Jake, Russ, Xana and Eve were both there too.”

Aerdan paused for a moment taking in her words, and then shook his head. Kassandra was struggling to her feet.

“If the Captain is here than we definitely need to return to the ship. We can’t afford to lose our entire command staff in one shot over a well intentioned rescue,” Aerdan said with an air of finality. “And since right now, you and your three Marines are all we have for Security and Tactical, we need to get you back and in fighting shape, literally.”

“Me, my Marines, and Mr. Barnes now if he wants to join us.” Kassandra puffed heavily, winded from the effort of getting upright. “Can’t leave him here if people saw him savin’ me, I’m in no shape to fight off anyone who tries to stop us from reachin’ the ship, and I have a hunch that Mr. Barnes here is more than capable of helpin’ in that respect .Come on. We can at least get my number one fan Lt. Rochemonte workin’ on tryin’ to find the crew’s biosignatures for beam out.”

She put one hand out and tottered towards the door groping blindly. Jacen moved to block the door, removing what remained of his shirt and dropping it over the top of Kassandra’s head.

“You’ll get further with clothes on,” the giant man intoned. The garment was absurdly long on her. She pushed up the remaining sleeve and nodded her thanks.

“So, who knows where we are and how to get back to the ship?” She asked to no-one in particular.
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NRPG: Alright, more later, hopefully, but for now, I'm gonna stop gumming up the works!


Alix Fowler

As

Captain Kassandra Thytos
Marine Commander
USS PHOENIX