Rance Draysom
Fleet Marshal
High Orbit over Cilare
Rance was glad that he'd insisted on fitting on the medbay to Cutter's specifications. He was about to be one of the first to benefit.
They'd rushed him in after his little escapade on the outlaw shipyard over Cilare, torn up all to hell. He'd barely made it down the shuttle ramp; he could hardly see through a haze of agony, and that was after using up pretty much the entire supply of painkillers his medkit could provide. Other Fleet Marshals had intercepted him, along with poor Ned Rhosen, and whisked them off on gurneys to the nearest sickbays. Flat on his back, Rance watched the flickering hallway lights above him rushing by. He'd walked the corridors of this ship hundreds of times already, but in his present condition he hadn't the faintest idea where he was. It hurt even to think.
Rance knew his injuries were pretty bad. A swarm of starved, panicked mynocks had hacked him up with razor-sharp wings and barbed sucker mouths; he had cuts, some shallow and some much deeper, all over his arms and face. More severe were the pair of blaster wounds he'd sustained when a pair of Droidekas had opened fire on him. He'd been wearing cobbled-together blast armor to protect his chest and back, and that was probably all that had saved him. The first shot had glanced across the top of the armor, burning into the meat of his right shoulder. The second had glanced across the back of his left calf, searing flesh and muscle.
As a pair of Fleet Marshals wheeled him into sickbay, Rance tried hard to focus on his breathing. In and out. In... and out. This wasn't the first time he'd gotten shot, but it was probably the worst. They were getting close now. The room they'd designated for intensive treatment had once been one of the many cargo holds on the mega-freighter, a climate-controlled unit designed to hold perishables. It meant that they could control the environment inside separately from the rest of the ship, and with much greater precision. A large but secondhand array of medical tools and scanners had been "requisitioned" to fill the space.
Rance hadn't seen how Cutter had set it all up, and in the part of his mind that could still form thoughts, he found himself curious.
Cutter... Evie. Rance had known as soon as they'd met that she'd be important to the future of the fleet, but he hadn't realized that she might be important to his own future as well. He wouldn't die of wounds like these, not unless the lacerations got infected really badly. But his strength, his range of motion, his ability to get back on his feet... all of those were very much in the hands of the Flotilla's unorthodox but skilled medic. The two of them had only met in person the once, at the little celebration they'd had for the fleet's formation; beyond that, they'd exchanged a handful of professional notes and supply requests.
Now he was going to rely on her, put his life in her hands. It was shaping up to be an odd and intense second meeting.
