Chapter Five
MAEVE
Isaved a male's life today. I held his liver together with my hands while his blood slicked my fingers and his pulse threatened to flatline.
Talked him through the worst of it using bad jokes and stubbornness because that's what I had, because medicine is only half science and the other half is convincing people they're going to survive.
And when it was done, when I turned to face the alien who owns my contract with Krel's blood still drying on my forearms, he gave me nothing.
“Rest. You'll be needed again.”
Like I'm a scalpel. A tool to be cleaned and stored until next time. I can deal with that.
The quarters they've given me are too comfortable for the thoughts circling through my head.
I've been lying on this bed for hours, staring at the carved stone ceiling, and sleep refuses to come.
Every time I close my eyes, plasma-scorched tissue floods my vision, the flutter of vital signs stabilizing.
Veth's hands trembling as he passed me instruments.
Krel's mouth moving, forming words I couldn't quite hear through the roar of focus that takes over when a life hangs in the balance.
Drazex appears at the observation window in my memory, watching. Not moving. Not speaking. Watching with an intensity that pressed against my awareness through the glass.
And then, after. His face giving nothing away. His voice flat as stone.
I shouldn't care. I don't care. I'm here to work off a debt, not to earn praise from a crime lord who wouldn't recognize humanity if it bled out on his operating table. So why does his silence sit in my chest like shrapnel I can't remove?
Obviously I'm lying to myself about dealing.
The exhaustion has teeth now. The surgery burned through whatever reserves I had left, and my body is demanding payment I can't afford to give. I should sleep. He ordered me to rest, and following orders is what property does.
Sleep refuses to come, but my mind won't stop working. The surgery replays behind my closed eyes. Not the success. The moment my hands went still because Krel's secondary pulse did something I didn't expect.
The room terminal glows when I activate it, House Draven's medical database opening at my thumbprint.
He coded my access without asking, without ceremony.
The resources here outstrip anything I had during military service.
Detailed Draveki cardiovascular documentation.
The secondary pulse spike explained in clinical language: a compensatory mechanism evolved for a species built to survive catastrophic damage and keep fighting.
I read. Cross-reference what I observed with formal documentation. File the information alongside everything else I'm learning about Draveki bodies.
Three species I treated during the wars. Dozens of physiological variations learned through necessity and blood. The Draveki are different in ways I'm only beginning to map. I have the foundation. I need to build on it.
The database holds more than one sleepless night can absorb. I bookmark sections for later and close the terminal.
If rest won't come, I can at least check on my patient. I push myself upright and reach for my med kit, and the tension in my chest eases by a fraction. That's practical. Purposeful. The kind of thing a tool does when it's functioning properly.
The corridor outside my quarters is quiet, the compound settling into whatever passes for evening this deep in the canyon.
Staff members move past without acknowledging me, their focus on their own tasks, their gazes sliding over me like I'm part of the architecture.
One exception. The female with the throat scar watches from a corridor intersection, her attention tracking me until I turn the corner and almost bump into Teshra.
She has fresh linens stacked in her arms. She takes in my appearance without comment. “The medic who doesn't sleep. I've known the type.” She shifts the linens to one hip. “Still better than where my family wanted to put me. At least here I chose my cage.” She continues past before I can respond.
The medical bay's lights dim to a soft amber glow, preservation mode for a patient who needs rest. Krel lies on the central bed, monitors tracking the steady rhythm of his vitals. The numbers look good. Better than I hoped, given the extent of the damage. He'll scar, but he'll live.
Temperature, blood pressure, the readings from the internal sensors placed during surgery. Everything stable. Everything healing the way it should. I'm adjusting the IV flow when the awareness hits.
That particular pressure against the back of my neck prickles my skin. I don't turn around. “He's stable. Vitals improving. The internal damage was significant but repairable. Three weeks minimum recovery, but he should regain full function.”
No response. He doesn't move, doesn't speak. I wait for the dismissal, the new orders, whatever brought him here at this hour.
What comes instead is a question.
“How did you know?”
The question pulls me around to face him. He's standing inside the doorway, eyes catching the medical bay's amber light. His angular face gives nothing away, but his posture lacks the rigid formality of our previous encounters. He's not here to issue commands.
The amber glow catches the silver threading through his charcoal skin, traces the breadth of shoulders that block out the corridor behind him.
Seven feet of coiled stillness, watching me with the patience of something that learned to hunt before it learned to speak.
My pulse quickens in my throat, and I hate I notice the way his nostrils flare, scenting me.
“How did I know what?”
“That the internal damage was worse than the surface wound suggested.” He moves closer, not crowding, but present in a way that fills the space between us.
Heat radiates off him, reaching me from two feet away.
He's close enough now that I tilt my head back to hold his gaze, and there’s something about that angle, that vulnerability, that makes me pause.
“Veth assumed the burn was the primary concern. You went straight to the abdomen.”
A test, maybe. Or genuine curiosity. I can't tell which, but my answer will be honest.
“Plasma wounds lie. The surface damage looks catastrophic because that's what heat does to tissue, but plasma penetrates deeper than it chars. If the entry angle is right, and the weapon was hot enough, the real damage happens underneath.” Krel's monitors become the safer focus, anything other than him.
Safer, because looking at him makes my skin feel too tight.
I'm painfully aware of every inch of space between us, and even more aware of how little effort it would take him to close it.
“Field triage taught me to ignore what looks worst and find what kills first. Internal bleeding kills faster than surface burns, nine times out of ten.”
“Field triage.”
“You learn patterns or you lose patients.” Adjusting a reading that doesn't need adjusting gives me something to do. “After a while, your instincts read the wound before your brain catches up.”
He's quiet for a moment. Processing, maybe. Or waiting to see if I'll fill the silence with something he can use against me. I don't. Two can play the waiting game, and I've held silences with generals that lasted longer than this.
“Where did you train? Xenobiology is a specialized field. Most human medics don't have the expertise to operate on Draveki physiology.”
“The military trained me on human anatomy. Everything else I learned from necessity.” Checking Krel's pupil response gives me something to do with my hands.
“When you're the only medic in a forward position and a Thessalian sergeant is bleeding out in front of you, you don't get to say 'sorry, wrong species.
' You figure out where the major arteries are and how the organ systems differ, and you do your best not to kill anyone through ignorance.”
“Thessaly Station.”
He knows my service record, probably read it before I ever walked into his compound.
I shouldn't be surprised. Of course he researched the female selling herself into his service.
Any competent businessman would do the same, but the way he says it carries weight beyond research.
Like he's placing the name in context, fitting it into a larger picture he's been building.
“Six weeks with the medical facilities overrun.” I keep my voice neutral. Facts without feeling. “Three species among the wounded, limited supplies, no evac in sight. You either become a xenobiologist or you watch half your patients die from things you could have prevented if you'd known better.”
“And Kepler IV?”
The monitor controls go still beneath my fingers. Kepler is not a memory I take out to examine unless someone forces me to. The silence that follows his question tells him more than I want to reveal.
“My unit held a position that should have fallen in three days instead of the eleven we held on for. We had wounded we couldn't evacuate and dead we couldn't bury and enemies who kept coming no matter how many we put down. Seventeen of us went in. Four walked out.”
“You walked out.”
“I was too stubborn to die.” The joke falls flat between us, the way it always does. I try again, reaching for something closer to truth. “I had patients who needed me. Giving up wasn't an option as long as someone was still breathing.”
The quiet between us holds a different quality, not uncomfortable. This silence holds space for what I've said, lets the words exist without demanding more or less than I've given.
“You hum.”
I glance up, uncertain where this is going.
“During the surgery.” His gaze remains fixed on Krel's monitors. “You were humming while you worked.”
I hadn't realized. The habit surfaces when my focus narrows, an old reflex from field hospitals where humming kept the silence from becoming unbearable.