Daughters of Demeter

According to the lifepod's status panel, just over sixty-three hours had passed since launch. Two and a half days.

By some miracle my patient was still alive, but his life-signs were fading. All I could do for him was renew the trauma-shot whenever the pain got bad enough to rouse him. The drug kept his heart beating and his lungs working, but I knew it was probably just prolonging the inevitable.

As for me I was about ready to give up. I felt numb, I went through the motions in a mechanical, almost emotionless routine. Every four hours I checked my patient. Every eight hours I had some water and some food. And every now and then I checked the pod's status panel.

There was no indication of any other survivors. Once the danger was past, the pods were supposed to link up with each other. After twenty-four hours we should have rendezvoused with all the other lifepods. Then we could pool resources and get a tally of the survivors. The fact that after more than two days we were still alone meant there weren't any other pods out there.

There were no windows either, so I couldn't see what it was like outside. I couldn't see the stars, or even the wreckage of our ship. All I had was the inside of this little tin can, and my patient.

Lieutenant Holloway was the only thing keeping me going. If I'd been alone I would have lost hope already. I could override and switch off life support, then a few shots of sedative and painkillers would ensure I'd sleep through the rest.

My patient kept me going. His life was in my hands, and that was a responsibility I couldn't ignore. I did what I could to keep him alive, and he in turn gave me a reason to keep going.

So I continued to focus on my routine. I'd just finished checking on the chief engineer again when the silence was broken by an alarm ping, followed by that mechanical female voice.

"Proximity alert."

My heart skipped a beat. There was someone else out there, another ship or another pod.

The next couple minutes seemed to drag by as I waited for something to happen, and when it finally did I was momentarily startled. There was a metallic scraping noise from below the floor, followed by a couple gentle bumps.

There was another minute or so of nothing, then I felt a strange sensation over my body. It took me a few seconds to realize it was gravity but at a very low level, about a twentieth of a G. It was strong enough to make anything floating loose in the pod fall slowly to the floor. My patient's stretcher settled gently across the four seats on the opposite side, while I sank into one of the seats on my side. My med-kit drifted down and ended up on the floor a pace or two in front of me.

My mind raced as I figured out what it meant. We weren't linking up with another pod, we were being rescued. We were inside a ship, maybe in their hangar. The noises from below were the base of the pod on the hangar floor, now they were gently bringing up the artificial gravity. The exterior was probably being pressurized at the same time, and in another minute or two we'd be free.

I waited impatiently, my heart was racing slightly with excitement and fear. I had no idea who'd be on the other side of the hatch when it opened. They might be friendly, they might be here to help. Or they might not. I knew most of the people out on the frontier were civilized, just like anyone else. I also knew piracy was a thing, that's one of the jobs the Hammersmith was doing. We aided ships in need, and that included destroying or chasing off pirate vessels.

After a couple more minutes, the artificial gravity slowly crept up from a twentieth to a full G. As it did, I felt some renewed pain in my shoulder while my patient groaned softly in his sleep. I'd just given him another shot recently so I couldn't do much more for him now. I could only hope our rescuers would be friendly, and that they had a doctor and an infirmary on board.

After more than two and a half days of weightlessness it was going to take more than a few seconds to get used to full gravity again, but I struggled to my feet and moved to check on my patient.

Meanwhile there were some new sounds from the direction of the hatch. A metallic clang, some tapping, a muffled thud. Then at long last there was a hissing sound from the hatch. A moment later it slid open, and I found myself face to face with one of our saviours.

She was younger than me, I'd guess twenty at most. She had an attractive face, dark green eyes, fair skin, and her dark red hair was in a short, messy bob. She didn't appear to be in any kind of uniform, she was wearing unmarked dark-grey coveralls and black boots. The clothes were a few sizes too big for her, so they were kind of loose and baggy. She had a belt on as well, and it revealed her narrow waist. And I couldn't miss the pistol hanging from the belt by her right hip. At least it was holstered.

The woman had some sort of electronic toolkit in her left hand, she probably used that to override the hatch and open it up. Without taking her eyes off me she stuffed the device into a large pocket at her left thigh.

She spoke up first, her voice was pretty but her tone was firm, like she was definitely in charge of this situation. "My sensors indicated two people on board. What's your status?"

I gulped, "Both injured, one critical. I'm Lieutenant Voss, med-tech. Dislocated shoulder, and mild concussion. With me is Lieutenant Holloway, chief engineer. He's had extensive plasma burns. He needs proper medical attention. A real doctor if you've got one on board. Or a hospital if you can get us to one."

The young woman looked thoughtful as she stood there just outside the hatch.

"Are either of you armed?" she asked.

"No miss," I shook my head. "My patient is in a stretcher and I'm a medic. Neither of us are armed, neither of us are a threat."

After another brief pause she entered the lifepod. Her boots looked almost military, but she moved quietly and gracefully. She was about the same height as myself, around five-foot-eight. The baggy coveralls mostly hid her figure but what I could see suggested she was slim, and the way she moved reminded me of an athlete. In some ways she actually reminded me of the female marines I'd seen on the Hammersmith. Except they were generally scary-looking and unpleasant, while this young woman was attractive. Still, there was a dangerous air about her, and it wasn't just from the gun at her hip.

She had a quick look at the engineer, then asked "He's not doing well, is he?"

"No miss," I shook my head again. Even without my medical scanner I could tell the engineer's breathing had become laboured. With the renewed gravity his condition was starting to rapidly decline. "He desperately needs proper medical attention. Please tell me you have a doctor on board, and an infirmary or sick-bay?"

She didn't respond. The young woman looked thoughtful as she stared at my patient for a few more moments, then asked "You said he's an engineer?"

I tried not to sound impatient as I nodded, "Chief engineer. I'm sorry but he needs help immediately, can you call your captain or your ship's doctor or someone? We can worry about the formalities and paperwork later."

"There's no doctor and I don't have an infirmary," she stated. "I do have a healing pod that will save his life, but the tech isn't... There'll be some side-effects."

My mind raced. No doctor, no infirmary, only a healing pod. Whatever the hell that was.

"What kind of side-effects?" I asked. "I already know he's probably going to loose his legs and maybe that arm, but if it'll save his life..."

The young woman shook her head "It can heal that. He'll keep the arm and the legs. Look do you want to save him or not?"

It wasn't exactly the kind of thing I'd been trained for. The kinds of life-or-death decisions I knew how to make were the ones you made in the middle of a battle. In this case all I had to go on was the hope of a 'healing pod' saving him versus the knowledge he was going to die fairly quickly if I did nothing.

"Ok," I nodded. "I appreciate the help. Is there someone who can assist me with the stretcher?"

The woman answered, "Me. Let's go."

I didn't argue or question. It took a minute to get the stretcher free from the seat restraints. The built-in grav-assist function still worked, and my rescuer took the lead while I took the other end.

And for the first time in two and a half days I stepped out of that little lifepod and into... A rusty old cargo bay.

The floor was metal grating, the walls and ceiling were metal panels. All of it was sort of brown with rust and mystery stains. There was a large cargo door on one side and a slightly smaller cargo door on the other. The two remaining walls were lined with shelving. It was mostly empty, apart from a few unmarked boxes and containers that were held in place by cargo straps. Lighting came from a half dozen panels overhead.

Outside the hatch we had to descend a short ladder to get to the deck, but it wasn't too cumbersome thanks to the stretcher's anti-grav.

"What's your name?" I asked the woman as she led me towards the smaller cargo door.

She glanced back at me and replied, "You can call me Piper."

"Thank you Piper," I told her. "And this ship? What's it called?"

She paused and tapped a panel next to the door, and it slid open revealing another cargo bay. This one was smaller, but looked just as old. It was messier than the first one, and the opposite wall held a normal-sized hatch rather than another cargo door. I figured the larger hold was cleaner because it had just been exposed to the vacuum as they brought the pod in. This second hold was probably never open to space.

"Merchant Vessel Demeter," the young woman answered. "She's a light freighter, but originally designed as a tug and salvage vessel."

Piper guided me to the left, and there I found myself looking at some gear which seemed very much out of place in the messy cargo hold. There was a large sleek black cylinder with rounded ends, it was about four meters long and one and a half meters in diameter. It was laying horizontally on a low rectangular pedestal made of the same sleek black material. There were no visible seams and I wasn't sure what it was made of. Some kind of alloy maybe, or a high-tech polymer perhaps. Several cables from somewhere behind the black tube were crudely patched into what looked like power conduits in the wall of the ship.

We set the stretcher on the floor while the young woman tapped a small panel at one end of the black cylinder.

"This is the healing pod," she commented as it started opening up.

A seam appeared in the formerly-seamless shell, outlining a sort of door on the top half of the tube. The opening was about two and a half meters long and about a third of the cylinder's circumference. It raised upwards slightly, then rotated around back out of the way, revealing an almost-featureless black interior.

There was a soft-looking flat surface that I assumed was like a bed, it was the same length as the opening and nearly as wide as the cylinder itself, almost a meter and a half across. Apart from that, the interior was the same smooth featureless black as the exterior.

Piper gestured, "Let's get him in there."

That was easier said then done. We could position the stretcher next to the open pod but Lieutenant Holloway was a large, heavy man. It took four of us on the Hammersmith to get him on the stretcher, and that was when I had use of both arms.

"We can't do this on our own," I told her. "Can you call some of the other crew to help?"

The young woman shook her head, "There's no other crew. The Demeter is my ship, and I'm alone."

With no other option we did our best, and I couldn't help noticing Piper was a lot stronger than she looked. Our patient groaned a few times but we got him into the cylinder without bumping him around too much.

Once he was laying inside, she tapped that little panel at the end and the door rotated around then sealed into place. Once again I couldn't detect any seams or any trace of the opening.

"What happens now?" I asked as I stared at the mysterious black pod.

Piper glanced at the panel then explained, "The AI is interfacing with your friend. It'll analyze his injuries, then it'll talk to him, tell him what's going on. It'll ask for his consent, then it'll start the procedure."

I frowned, hung up on the first thing she said. "The what will interface with him?"

"AI," she repeated. "Artificial Intelligence?"

I knew what AI was, but that kind of tech was incredibly illegal. Or rather, it was illegal in the Imperium. I realized, out here in the frontier they probably didn't have a lot of laws like that. The inhabited worlds each had their own rules, but it was pretty much lawless out in space.

Piper glanced at the panel again then announced, "Ok it's already started. Should be done in twelve hours."

"What'll be done in twelve hours?" I asked. "And when you say it's already started, you mean it's started trying to talk to him?"

She shook her head, "It's already got his consent. That all happens pretty fast, it uses a neurological connection to communicate directly. As long as the brain's not damaged the AI will find a way to talk. And twelve hours till your friend's fully healed."

I frowned, "That's not possible. His injuries are too deep, too extensive. How can it heal them in twelve hours?"

The young woman hesitated as she looked me over. Maybe gauging how I'd react to what she was about to say.

She finally responded, "It uses a nanoswarm. It'll disassemble his body on a molecular level, any dead or inorganic material will be purged. Then it'll build him a new healthy body without any injuries or infirmities. Works great on everything but the brain. So long as someone doesn't have brain damage, this pod can take them apart and put them back together better than new."

I felt my blood run cold. I wasn't sure what a 'nanoswarm' was but the term 'nano' was familiar. More prohibited technology. And her description of the so-called healing process left me feeling nauseous.

Piper must have seen my face go pale, she said "Don't worry, it's painless. It keeps the brain in a deep sleep state. I've been through it myself more than once ok? This thing's saved my life a dozen times."

It took me another couple seconds to get past the shock of how it worked, and I was left with one more question. "What about the side-effects you mentioned?"

She hesitated again. "That new healthy body it'll build for him... It won't be the same as the old one. The thing's kind of limited on what templates it has."

Once again my blood ran cold and I had trouble believing what she was telling me. So it was going to heal the chief engineer's injuries completely in twelve hours, but it would do it by essentially turning him into someone else. Or more specifically, his brain would wind up in a new healthy body that was potentially nothing like his original.

"There's one last thing," Piper added. "I mentioned the templates were limited? There's a few dozen of them but they're all uh, female."

My heart skipped a beat as her words sank in, and for the next few minutes I forgot all about my patient. I stood there staring at the attractive young redhead in disbelief, and perhaps excitement.

Finally I gulped and asked, "Can I have a go in there after he's done? Uh, for my shoulder?"