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“This is really bad,” Max muttered from the side of his mouth.
Beside him, Firmus nodded slowly in silent agreement. What was supposed to be a pleasant morning of shore leave on Veers’ home planet had become a menacing threat in the space of seconds. Piett wasn’t even sure what particular event had spurred the gathering of this mob, but when a shrill young woman had spotted their uniforms, she’d pointed and screamed with incomprehensible rage.
They were surrounded on three sides, their backs to the shop they had just exited with tea for Piett, and two cafs for Myra and Max.
“There has to be a back exit to the alley,” Veers hissed as Piett’s free hand casually rested near his blaster.
“Use the drinks?” Piett murmured back.
The crowd was getting louder and things like ‘karking Imps’ and ‘boot lickers’ and ‘genocidal bastards’ could be picked out.
Then some sort of ripe fruit sailed through the air to plaster itself on the wall beside Piett, showering him with pulp.
He was well aware that this was merely the promise for more deadly missiles.
“Now!” he called, and both of them flung their hot beverages at the front line of the crowd. Shrieks of anger followed this, but they had already turned for the shop entrance.
Not soon enough.
A rock, lobbed with more luck than accuracy, took Veers on the left side of his head and the General stumbled to his knees inside the shop.
“NO!” Piett yelled, and whipped about to face the first few individuals through the door, flicking his blaster to stun as he brought it to bear.
Five bodies lay as an impediment for the rest of the mob within thirty seconds and the Captain turned back to get a shoulder under Max’s arm. He couldn’t just dead carry the General with this sort of threat on their heels. He needed his friend to move on his own until he found a different solution.
He turned and something collided with his back painfully. He nearly went down, but managed to push off of some shelving and carry on.
“Firms...” Veers slurred, blood pouring down the side of his face and soaking the shoulder of his uniform.
“Right here. Let’s go, General. Stay on your feet!”
The tone of command got through to Max, trained soldier that he was, and he staggered along beside Piett as they raced through the shop, passing shocked faces of workers and customers alike.
“Back entrance?” Piett shouted, and a worker pointed mutely.
He found it through another door to a storage area and then he and Veers were blinking in the light of day once more.
There.
The Force was smiling upon them it seemed.
A double speeder of ancient make was parked a few yards from their location.
Veers was sagging heavily on him now and Piett panted with exertion as he manuevered his friend to the vehicle, dropping him into the passenger seat ungently and running for the other side.
Blessing his time working with pirates and smugglers undercover, Piett ripped several wires free beside the controls and got to work. He could hear the crowd approaching from the side street and did his best to focus on his task.
The speeder hummed to life and Piett pulled back on the throttle, sending them into an ungraceful trajectory, but style didn’t matter at all in this moment.
He had to bank sharply to avoid colliding with angry forms at the end of the street. The mob had grown and he shot off in a different direction as glass bottles and various pavement stones battered the speeder.
He brought them up to traffic level four and took a breath as he scanned the area below them.
Karking hells.
Thousands were down there and they were heading for the nearest Imperial station in the city.
He tugged his commlink from his pocket and flicked it open.
In short order he’d pulled rank on two separate officers (maddening) to speak with the station commander.
“Sir,” he snapped. “Captain Firmus Piett SSD Executor. Do you have eyes on the situation developing in the centre?”
“A local disturbance I was informed, Captain,” the Major replied.
“It may have started that way,” Piett told him grimly. “It’s in the thousands now and they are coming your way. Anti-Imperial sentiment. I can tell you from personal experience it’s violent.”
To his credit, the Major shifted immediately into alert mode.
“What direction are they coming from?” he rapped.
“Northeast,” Piett answered, spotting the building he’d been looking for at last. “I can join you, Major, but I am conveying General Veers to the hospital at the moment—”
“Maximilian Veers?” the Major asked, tone darkening. “As in, the leader of the Thundering Herd?”
His friend was quite famous, and his name was proudly spoken here on his home planet.
“Yes,” he answered curtly, pushing the speeder as fast as he dared in city traffic.
“How bad is it, Piett?”
“Head wound, sir. I’m not certain.” He cast a worried glance to his friend who lay with eyes half open, a gory sight with his blood spattered uniform.
“You worry about the General, then,” the Major ordered. “We can take things from here. I’ve called for orbital back up.”
He cut the connection and Piett pulled up to the emergency station platform, vaulting over the side of the speeder and running to Max’s side as personnel began to run out.
“What happened?” asked the lead nurse, scanner out and running over Veers’ head wound.
“Hit in the head with a rock,” Piett informed him, trying to keep his tone clinical. “It was thrown from about six feet away. He was able to keep his feet and make it to the speeder with my help.”
The man nodded as the grav sled was prepped and the others prepared to lift the General.
“And his name?”
“General Maximilian Veers.”
Piett jogged alongside the team as they began to move.
“Are you his next of kin?”
“No,” he answered as the doors hissed open to admit them to the warmer air of the hospital. “His wife. Myra Veers—she works here.”
The man raised his eyebrows.
“She’s the chief nurse. I’ll have her notified. And you are?”
“Captain Firmus Piett. I’m a friend.”
“How long ago was the injury?”
“About thirty minutes,” Piett responded, watching the grav sled move further away.
Please be alright, Max.
He answered several more questions, informing the man that more patients were likely given the size and violence of the mob.
And then Myra was there, dark hair neatly professional and in her crisp blue scrubs.
“Firmus,” she said, green eyes large with worry. She took in his disheveled appearance. “You brought him?”
“I did,” he replied as she moved to him and embraced him tightly. Pain ripped through him and he stiffened, only now recalling that something had collided with his back.
Myra immediately stepped back and frowned.
“Firmus, where are you hurt?”
“Not bad,” he told her truthfully. He knew nothing was broken, even though he undoubtedly had bruising and abrasions.
“They should have asked you,” she muttered in offended competence, ducking around to get a look at his back.
A beat.
“Firmus Piett .”
She rounded on him and he blinked at her ferocity.
“You are bleeding through the back of your uniform jacket. Come with me. They don’t want me working on Max. Stupid rules about objectivity. But I can work on you.”
“Myra…” he began, his lungs tight with anxiety. It had been years since he’d had anyone other than Henley or the Axxilan fleet doctor look at his back.
There was no stopping the woman who was a sister to him, however. Sometimes she was so like Rilla that he had to pause to breathe through the pain of longing.
“Please, Firmus,” she said more gently. “We can both be near Max this way.”
Well, she had a point there.
Reluctantly, he followed her deeper into the emergency wing and eventually he found himself in a remarkably quiet area. He could hear voices murmuring from numerous different directions, and there was definitely an intense feel all around him, but he was impressed.
“It’s quieter than I pictured,” he told Myra as she led him to a bed and indicated for him to sit down upon it.
“That’s our rule,” she informed him. “Unless things are really bad, we are to keep our voices down to ease stress and allow better focus for the serious cases.”
She activated the privacy fields around them and rummaged in the drawers for her supplies.
“Could you take off your jacket?” she asked without turning. “I can cut off the henley if I need to.”
He obeyed, shrugging out of it and feeling his injuries keenly now that his adrenaline had dropped.
She set down the bandages and bacta in favor of the scanner and made to move behind him, but he stopped her, heart thundering and face flushed.
He hated this.
“What is it?” she asked, scanner out.
“I just…” he paused and bowed his head, unable to look her in the eye for this conversation.
“You are going to see some scarring, Myra, and I would very much appreciate it if ah…if you didn’t speak with anyone about it.”
He felt her gentle touch on his shoulder.
“Dear Firmus. Of course not. Both because I would never discuss a patient and also because it’s you. Now. You are still bleeding and I’d like to do something about that all right?”
He nodded mutely and she neatly sliced up the arms of his henley, pulling it away and moving behind him.
He heard her inhale sharply, but she went to work, injecting him with a painkiller and a numbing agent while keeping up a professional commentary about what she was doing. He knew she could see just how tense his muscles were, but she did not mention that.
“Oh, friend,” she said, picking up the wound sealant. “This…you have some really deep cuts. Did you not feel that?”
“No,” he sighed. “In the moment, I just wanted to get Max out of there.”
He felt another soft pat on his bare shoulder.
“And thank you for that, Captain, but this was…kark me.”
She came around the other side of bed again to see his face.
“Firmus. One inch over and this object could have cut or broken your spine. You get these things checked out right away, do you hear me?”
He wanted to smile, but Myra was in clear earnest, and he could see that she was using this focus on treating his injuries as a way to keep herself from worrying over her husband as well.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, and she shook her head, returning to his back.
“All right. Closed those cuts. The bruising is rather horrific, dear friend, so I’m going to do a bacta wrap, hold on….”
He felt the cool gel applied to his skin and then she began to wrap the bandage that was specially created to allow the bacta to continue to work around his chest and over one shoulder to secure it.
Then she just paused and their small treatment area was quiet except for their breathing.
“These are…awful,” she said in a low voice and he inclined his head in resignation.
“Glad I have you then,” he answered, trying to lighten her mood. “I would do more for Max, you know that—”
“I didn’t mean the wounds I just dressed,” Myra said tightly, “but thank you all the same. I meant…this.”
And her small hand rested on his left shoulder blade and then trailed along his back, fingers tracing marks he knew well.
He breathed out, battling himself.
“It doesn’t hurt.”
“They were never treated.”
She came around again and surprised him by hopping up beside him on the bed.
“They…were treated with the best we had at the time,” Piett murmured, memory as fresh in his mind’s eye as though it was yesterday.
“I know, little brother, I know,” Rilla said, voice shaking with her own tears as she worked. He sobbed under her hand, the pain unbearable as his big sister cleaned the stripes.
They had no pain killers. He must endure, but why could he not just lose consciousness?
She was gentle and did her very best, pausing to stroke his hot face with her hand and kiss the top of his head.
“How old…?” Myra faltered.
“Seven,” he said. “I was accused of theft.”
Her hand found his, where he was gripping the edge of the bed, and gripped hard.
“You didn’t.”
He snorted around a tight throat.
“Maybe I did. You don’t know, Myra, life was—”
“You didn’t,” she interrupted firmly. “The child becomes the man, Firmus.”
“I was tempted to many times,” he informed her, the spectres of constant hunger rising before his eyes once more.
She made a small noise of distress, squeezing his hand again before hopping off the bed and rummaging in another cabinet. She came up with some plain, grey sweats.
“Here. You should be more comfortable. I’m admitting you.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Myra. I need to get back and see what can be done to help.”
She folded her arms. “Not if you have been medically informed that you can’t. And I just dressed those injuries, Captain Piett. You should not be doing anything strenuous for the next 24 hours.”
He loved her, but he had his duty…
“Myra. I need my commlink so I can contact the Executor. I suspect that I will be recalled and I should report on the situation.”
“You are welcome to contact the Executor,” she replied calmly. “But I’m not doing this because it’s you and I love you, though it is and I do.”
He couldn’t help the smile.
“I would pull anyone from duty with your injuries. So—” She found his commlink and handed it to him. “You report to the Lady. And I shall too.”
“ Myra —” he started, but she ducked out, with a little smile.
Somehow he felt that Ozzel would find a way to get him back to the ship despite injury and shore leave, but on contacting Venka, he discovered that Henley had accepted the medical advice of the ‘planetary medical authorities’ and he was told to remain in hospital until released.
He wasn’t quite sure how to feel about this—-somehow he felt he was getting special treatment—-but he tugged on the sweats Myra had left him, and then sat on the edge of the bed once more until she called in.
“Are you decent?”
“Yes,” he said, mouth curling at the corners. She entered and smiled back.
“Max will be fine.”
He sagged a little in relief and she came to stand before him.
“I have arranged for you two to be placed near each other. And your people on the ship were lovely about accepting my medical authority.”
He snorted, imagining Henley’s diabolical glee in finding someone else willing to take Piett off duty.
“Mmm. Myra, look—-I have had far worse injuries. I feel as though I am shirking my duty—”
She sighed and crossed her arms.
“Yes, you would. But you’re not, my friend. You are allowed to rest and heal, you know.”
There was a beat.
“Could you…” he hesitated. “Myra, Max doesn’t know about—”
“Of course I will not say anything, even to my husband,” she said and stepped right into his space to cup his face in her hands. “But you listen to me, dearest Firmus. You have nothing to be ashamed of. Those scars are reprehensible, but not for you . Is the man who...who whipped you still living?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly.
“Then I hope I get to meet him someday with a scalpel,” Myra said fiercely, kissing his forehead and then resting her head to his.
He chuckled a little, raising a hand to pat her forearm.
“I pity anyone who gets between you and those you care for,” he told her. She gave a final stroke to the back of his head and released him, her sparkle back now that she knew her husband would be all right.
“As you should,” she declared, and glanced at her datapad which had emitted a quiet ‘ping’. “Come. Your room is ready.”
Much later, Piett woke up to a darkened room, and glanced over to see that Max also had his eyes open.
Firmus grinned as his friend put a finger to his lips and glanced down at the form tucked in beside him.
Myra hadn’t even had the energy to toe off her shoes, and had snuggled into her husband where she slept as only the truly exhausted could.
You all right? Max mouthed at him.
Piett nodded. You?
In answer, Max kissed the top of his wife’s head.
Firmus relaxed once more secure in the knowledge that, for the moment at least, his world was as it should be.