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Medtech Ostrach grabbed the front of Miles' uniform and pushed the tiny admiral bodily back towards the wall of the sickbay. Miles' intense self-defence training had brought his hands up to grab her wrists firmly and hold on the point of twisting, but just in time he had arrested the reflex that would have broken her wrists.
She was pressing him against the wall, barely taller than him, but with the blond bob of her hair bounced angrily, uncomfortably close to his face. "She. Needs. A. Doctor," she bit out.
The tiny voice in Miles' head that he couldn't suppress even at the most inappropriate moments said that some time he had to try this with a woman who was taller. And attracted to him. And wasn't his subordinate. Ruthlessly suppressing his inappropriate urges, Miles made an effort to pry her hands away from his jacket, but they didn't budge at all. He tugged once or twice more for the look of it.
"There's only doctor who knows ANYTHING about her physiology, and he's on the next deck," she told him, voice low and steady, but strained. That jerked back into the moment. "In my professional medical opinion, it is necessary for the good of the patient to call that doctor here, right now. Whatever anyone else may say. However senior they are. Sir."
Miles straightened himself up, giving him an extra half inch in his uniform to breathe. "You don't know what that man has done to her," Miles told the medtech, aiming for a decisive voice but not quite managing it.
Before them, Taura, in all her seven-foot half-beast genetically modified super-solder glory was slumped on the floor against the side of a medical examining table she'd repeatedly insisted she didn't need. Her shirt, sopping with rivulets of sweat, was open around her shoulders where Ostrach had been taking measurements, and her skin was severely flushed all over, with a slight rash. Her breathing was fast and heavy. "Not him," she mumbled viciously. "No Canabda. Gonna gut him. Open his guts up right here on 's deck."
Miles was struck with a sudden temptation to insist on bringing the insufferable Hugh Canaba before her at once and seeing what happened, and struggled to regain an appropriately even-handed judgement. In his quiescence, Ostrach stepped away from him to dial a comm. "Doctor Vaughn," she announced. "Come to the sickbay in aft immediately, there's a medical emergency." There was a querulous reply from the other end, where Miles could tell who was speaking from the tone of simultaneous arrogance and affront without hearing the words.
"No it's not-- A patient needs you urgently, you know who that is. You get here right this damn f****** second. Or I won't be responsible for--" she stopped as the other end cut off abruptly with a sound of hurrying footsteps, skidding and muffled thumping.
Ostrach abandoned the comm and lent over again to feel Taura's skin. She pursed her thin lips and applied another hypospray of what she'd previously described as a "rhinoceros-adjacent sized dose". Miles crouched down next to Taura, taking her large, terrifyingly hot hand gently in his, and she flinched slightly. Then she fumbled for his hand and gripped it tightly, a tiny squeak of pain leaving his soul and fractionally escaping his lips.
"You'll be okay, Taura," he told her.
"O' course," she mumbled automatically. "Mm tough. M al'ays pull through"
Another thought seemed to strike her, and she redoubled her bone-twisting grip on his hand. Miles winced, twisting in her grasp, and worried that he might have leaked a tiny amount of fluid of his own. "No' H'ugh" Taura slurred. "Not him. Gut him."
Miles glanced at Medtech Ostrach helplessly, but the woman shrugged, and raised her eyebrows in the interplanetary recognized signal for "We don't have any choice but to call him, however much of an ass he is. I've no idea what's causing her fever and it's still getting worse."
A moment later, the door chimed, and hissed open. Miles, with the practice of hundreds of awkward social occasions and occasional covert missions, deftly shifted his body sideways to obscure Taura's view of her unpleasant nemesis, and Ostrach hurried over to confer Hugh "Vaughn" Canaba.
Miles stroked Taura's face tenderly and she smiled a little, her breathing still heavy and rapid, but easing slightly as she leaned into his touch. He smiled fondly at her, praying the distress of her current metabolic overload was a temporary aberration and not the beginning of the early death which threatened to claim her alongside all of her siblings.
To the side, the Jacksonian doctor and Ostrach were having a hurried, tense conversation. Miles only caught snippets.
"...need to..."
"...I'm telling you..."
"...know..."
"...o, you listen..."
"...already..."
The doctor was trying to push Ostrach aside, but she squarely barred the way with her body, repelling the slightly larger man with an aura of fury. There was an angry flurry of dense technical jargon, broken when Dr Canaba (latterly Vaughn) finally escaped past Ostrach's protestations and swept decisively over to kneel at Taura's side, opposite Miles. She moved as if to grab him, but he brought up a medscanner, lowering it towards the large woman's arm, and she fell back rather than try to wrestle him physically away from their patient.
As Canaba lent over her, the super-soldier blinked her eyes vaguely, but then her arm shot out, arresting the doctor's motion with a crushing grip on his wrist. Little beads of blood began welling up around the places her claws touched him, and then spurted lightly as she squeezed tightly, squinting to try to bring the man into focus. Canaba wobbled on his knees, grabbing the exam table to keep his balance. He tried to straighten himself but swayed woozily, eyes not quite focused.
Taura's eyes flew fully open. "No!" she growled fiercely, and a twist of her wrist sent Canaba tumbling across the aisle, crashing into the next bed in the bay. He splatted into its side with an emphatic and anatomically intense thud, and fell into a crumple on the floor.
"Idiot," hissed Ostrach worriedly. "I told him..." she muttered as she hurried towards the fallen man.
Miles reached out to hold Taura back, half way between protecting her from exertion and protecting the doctor from her. But the effort had exhausted her and she fell to the floor, sprawling on her face, her weight half crushing Miles' lap. "Taura," Miles cried, squeezing her hand, but she barely twitched.
He glanced across to the other prone form, only an arm length away, but Canaba's body was ominously still.
Ostrach paused in her dash over to the fallen doctor to slap a comm patch on the examination table and a blue light started flashing, indicating the off-duty medtech had been paged for backup. A moment later she was kneeling by the insufferable doctor's unconscious form, simultaneously keeping up a rapid running commentary to Miles.
"That self-important ass-ache, if he'd just told me... Can you reach the medicine kit in the diagnostic table?"
Miles obediently shifted Taura's weight partially off him and reached up and behind him to slide out the stash of supplies kept by every bed in the sickbay.
"Good" she continued, still probing Canaba-cum-Vaughn inquisitively. "Look at the hyposprays. There should be coloured sections, look in the blue one. The drugs should be stored alphabetically."
"Uhhh... Yes," Miles flailed for a moment before identifying the sections. Thankfully the techs were assiduous in refilling the emergency kits.
"One should say Fluxofeltrien. Based on what he said..."
Miles touched a syringe, and then rapidly counted syllables in his head, double-checking there were no similar names. "Yes. An orange and pink striped syringe," he reported quickly.
"The seals all look intact," he added brightly, and then checked the note of doubt creeping back into his voice. Basic injections were part of the first aid every Barrayaran Serviceman or Dendarii Mercenary had to learn, after all. He knew how to follow medical advice reliably in emergency combat situations. He did.
Ostrach had laid Canaba flat on the ground and scanned his head, which judging from her treatment wasn't any worse off that it was normally. But now she scanning his wrist worriedly. She continued to narrate instructions to Miles, briskly but not hurriedly. "Set the syringe to a third. That should be the first mark," she glanced across to see him adjusting the medicine with moderate confidence. "Inject it into her shoulder. Don't worry, a few minutes shouldn't make any difference."
The medtech's attention tightened on her own patient. She was holding his wrist, looking at it worriedly. From the corner of Miles' eye, he saw disturbingly green foamy pus oozing around the claw-scratches on Canaba's wrist. He looked at Taura's claws doubtfully, and then turned his attention to her shoulder. He pressed the syringe firmly in place, and pushed the plunger gently but firmly down to the first mark.
"Good!" called Ostrach. OK, keep holding her, see how she does. Keep the syringe handy, in case you need more.
****
Five minutes later, Taura was still unconscious, but her breathing had steadily regularized and her body felt more relaxed. And, according to the medscanner Miles badgered Ostrach into showing him for the seventh time, her fever had reduced by another measurable fraction.
Miles had laid his rescuee on the floor, after a heroic but brief attempt to haul her up onto the exam table had ended with Ostrach shouting at him not to injure himself and double not to injure her. Ostrach had had much better luck (or skill), professionally hoisting the unconscious Canaba deftly onto the bed with a lack of incidental injuries commensurate with her duty of medical care.
Miles sidled awkwardly over to Ostrach, and the medtech put a hand on his arm gently. "I think she's going to be ok, sir," she told him reassuringly.
Miles looked back and forth bewildered. Ostrach had tried to fill him before when she'd had a moment to spare from her patients, but given up almost immediately when the words had failed to register with Miles over her concern for Taura. "What were you trying to explain, before? What did he tell you?" he asked awkwardly.
Ostrach huffed a sigh. "Not much, before he rushed in there, but... Consistent with what I observed, it seems Taura has a modified form of Garold's Pyrexia."
The medtech gave Doctor Canaba a sharp look. "Deliberately engineered into her, and some of her siblings, he seemed to imply, but... He didn't stop to explain, he just marched over to try to examine her, and see where that got him. But that explained her symptoms, and the drug seems to be bringing her metabolism down to a less extreme level for the moment so the diagnosis was probably correct. Later we'll work out some additive supplements she needs long term, but that shouldn't be a problem. She'll need them in her diet regularly, but I need to wait for Doctor Ass to wake up to confirm exactly what she should take."
Miles absorbed all that slowly, and then ominously swivelled to glare at Canaba's unconscious form. "Deliberately engineered?" he asked dangerously.
"A form of control, I assume," explained Ostrach levelly. "A rather pointless one, although to be fair to Doctor Ass he sounded quite upset about it, unlike some of the other modifications they'd made. Garold's Pyrexia occurs when your body can't manufacture some obscure amino acids, and you don't get enough in your diet. It sounds like they engineered a similar situation deliberately, with a differently chosen set of missing proteins. They must have been supplemented into her diet. And she might have not had enough provided after she was 'sold' to House Ryoval, and none after we lifted her off..."
Ostrach slapped the table ominously, and Miles looked at Canaba struck with a new worry. "The doctor, uh, what is wrong with him? He is going to be ok for us to shout at him, isn't he?" he asked. "That was supposed to be our mission. And we probably need some expertise from him about Taura's condition..." his voice trailed off distastefully and he tried to stop himself gabbling.
Ostrach narrowed her eyes. "He's on the mend," she told him in an unemotional voice. Her gaze swept over Canaba's wrist, which she'd bandaged, but seemed to have stopped sweating pus. "His situation wasn't good, actually. Apparently, on top of everything else, two of Taura's claws had tiny venom sacs in."
She gestured to the mess on Canaba's wrist. "I'm not sure if the sacs actually manufacture the venom or if they were filled manually or something. It was a very nasty stuff, some kind of terrifying snake venom, enhanced beyond its natural intensity. Not really safe for her to be walking around with inside her fingers, actually. One of many, many bad decisions they imposed on her... It looks like it was almost empty, but there was just enough left this afternoon to take him pretty badly, when she squeezed hard enough to inject it." She waved vaguely at the man on the table.
"Even a tiny amount, it had a high chance of being fatal. The standard toxikit didn't recognize it at first, and I really wasn't sure we'd have our doctor to bring home. But surprisingly he started to recover on his own with nothing more than a general antivenom"
She continued her examination of the man, carefully marking each separate bruise.
Miles looked her curiously. "A thorough examination there," he commented neutrally.
"Of course," she replied blandly.
He snuck a mischievous look at her list. "You would not, by any chance, medtech, be wagering on the injuries suffered by someone under your care...? Not even that someone?" he asked curiously.
She glanced over her shoulder. "Sir! That would violate medical ethics, both the letter and the spirit," she said sternly. "If anyone gets access to the sickbay records to settle a bet pool like that objectively, it would certainly be without my knowledge, and definitely without any unsanctioned recompense." She had a very solid poker face.
Miles' lips quirked. "Very well, Cari. Carry on. If it comes up later, you didn't tell me anything."
"Duh," replied Cari Ostrach. "I mean, Yes sir."
She glanced at the list one last time. "If anyone did bet on her poisoning him, they'll probably make bank," she commented.
****
Hugh Canaba blinked awkwardly awake, to see a small, intense blond woman withdrawing a hypospray from his neck. He slapped it away impatiently, and she glared down at him.
"Are you feeling well? Any pain in your extremities? Okay, that's good," she continued blithely, barely giving him a chance to respond. He didn't think she liked him.
She slotted the hypospray away dutifully, and turned to actually address him. "You seem to be doing okay. What was that venom?" she asked flatly.
"Venom?" he asked, confused, and then went paler. "From Taura? Those should have been removed year ago..." he trailed off, and the medtech prodded him with another impatient glare.
He flailed protestingly. "Those glands were a horrible idea from the start. I made sure they were emptied as soon as I had the influence..." He looked down at his bandaged wrist and flexed it awkwardly. "She survived longer than any of the others, they must have grown back in. I didn't expect--"
"You didn't expect venom glands to be live," cut in the medtech angrily. "Of course you didn't, or you wouldn't try to manhandle her, despite her strength, and claws, and fangs."
Canaba gathered himself primly and tried to sit up. He winced.
"You have some bruising elsewhere, as well as the poison," informed the medtech. "Well deserved, in my medical opinion."
He let that pass with a glower, and more carefully levered himself into a sitting position, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed.
"You should remove--" he began, but the woman cut in abruptly.
"I'll handle it," she told him crossly, and he nodded reluctantly.
She looked at him sternly. "Is there anything else I need to know about her metabolism, other than the couple of sentences you managed to explain before you charged in and made yourself even more useless?"
He tested his weight against the edge of table and subsided again before trying to slide down. He glanced across to Taura. "Nine seems to be doing okay, so I assume you tried administrating a pituitary antagonist and it worked to bring down the fever," Ostrach nodded impatiently, and Canaba shared a potted summary of the modifications he remembered, and the dietary additives they'd had Taura on for that and other reasons. "It was a very ill-conceived notion in the first place, as I always said. Since Five defected, and his new house ignored my warnings until it was tragically too late, I didn't want to risk any additional stupid waste. I thought this was taken of, if House Ryoval had just... Anyway."
She watched him steadily. "And no, I don't remember any other pieces of deliberate sabotage either," he added. "And, yes, I've looked for any other hidden time bombs that might have been slipped in to her genetic code without my knowledge, but nothing came to light."
There was a silence between them, and after a moment, Canaba began carefully manoeuvring himself to his feet.
"If she suffers any more problems, do ask if there are are specifics you need my help with," he added stiffly. "Despite how I've been treated, I want to do right by her."
The medtech's face twisted angrily, but she controlled herself, and bit out "Thank you doctor. I do too," fairly calmly.
She moved round behind him, encouraging him rapidly towards the door. "If you can walk, I am throwing you out before she wakes up," she informed him matter-of-factly, "I assume you'll know if you have any other complications."
She slowed slightly. "But I did have one other question. The venom in those sacs was very nasty. Do you know how you shook it off so quickly?"
Canaba shook his head in surprise. "I never would have thought... But yes, I think I know. During my PhD I happened to apply a retroviral treatment which rendered me immune to a variety of snake venoms. It was not without downsides and not of wide application, but the circumstances of my PhD necessitated it."
"You were forced to test your research on yourself?" asked Ostrach, fascinated and a little horrified at Jacksonian medical practices.
"That would be far from the most eccentric imposition a house has put onto any of its younger researchers," Canaba told her tartly. "But in point of fact, no, the senior researcher I was forced to work with at the time had a sadistic attachment to a different pseudo-educational theory of training people, related to the final exam. I chose to apply the treatment to myself, for reasons I don't wish to dwell on in casual conversation."
For once, Ostrach failed to summon up a retort, and Canaba limped resolutely towards the exit.
Just before he reached the door, he turned, adding a final word over his shoulder. "For better or worse that is all behind me now. Perhaps Barrayaran academia has fewer snakes in it, but I'm not hopeful."