Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
ZORN
Er'dox's sparring staff caught me across the ribs with enough force to crack bone if I'd been human. As it was, the impact just drove the air from my lungs and sent me stumbling sideways on the training mat.
"Your head's not in the fight," Er'dox said, not even breathing hard. The Chief Engineer moved with economical precision, his bronze skin gleaming under the gymnasium's harsh lighting. "That's the third opening you've given me in as many minutes."
I recovered my stance, adjusted my grip on my own practice staff.
The Zandovian combat gymnasium occupied an entire section of Mothership's lower decks with high ceilings to accommodate our size, reinforced floors to withstand the impact of beings who could bench-press small shuttlecraft.
At this hour, only a handful of crew members used the space, giving us room for the weekly sparring session that had become ritual over the past year.
"Again," I said.
Er'dox obliged. This time I blocked his first strike, deflected the second, and actually managed a counterattack before he swept my legs and put me flat on my back.
I stayed down, staring at the ceiling, my ribs protesting. Not injured, Zandovian physiology could handle significantly more punishment, but definitely bruised.
"You did the right thing," Er'dox said, offering his hand.
I let him pull me up. "Which part? Forcing Bea into therapy? Threatening her with medical leave? Driving away the one person I—" I stopped. Shook my head. "She won't even look at me now."
"She will. When she's ready." Er'dox set his practice staff aside, grabbed two water containers from the sideline.
He handed me one, and we moved to the bench press area where we could talk without the crack of impact wood punctuating every sentence.
"Dana avoided me for three days after I made her stop working eighteen-hour shifts.
Told Jalina I was overbearing and controlling. "
"What changed?"
"She collapsed during a shift. Exhaustion-induced syncope, nothing serious, but it scared her.
Made her realize I was right." Er'dox took a long drink, his expression distant with memory.
"The ones who work themselves to exhaustion aren't running toward something.
They're running from it. You can't make them stop.
You can only be there when they finally hit the wall. "
I'd hit my own wall years ago. After the Keltor Station disaster, when I'd lost fourteen patients to a contaminated air supply I'd failed to detect until too late.
I'd buried myself in work afterward, taking every shift, volunteering for every rescue mission, trying to save enough people to balance the scales.
It had taken my mentor, Dr. Varesh, who'd died two years past, to physically drag me off duty and force me into counseling.
I'd resented him for months. Then one day, I'd realized the nightmares had stopped. That I could think about Keltor Station without my chest constricting. That the fourteen deaths no longer crushed me every waking moment.
Healing had required acknowledging I needed it.
Bea wasn't there yet.
"She hates me," I said quietly.
"She hates that you're right. There's a difference." Er'dox studied me with those amber eyes that saw too much. "You care for her."
Not a question. A statement that made denying it pointless.
"Yes."
"Does she know?"
"I haven't told her."
"Why not?"
I gestured at nothing, at everything. "She's my subordinate. My patient, in a sense. There's a power differential that makes any personal relationship ethically complicated. And even if those factors didn't exist, she's made it abundantly clear she wants nothing beyond professional interaction."
"Has she?" Er'dox leaned back against the padded bench, considering. "Or is she just protecting herself from something that scares her more than medical collapse?"
The gymnasium doors opened before I could answer.
Zor'go walked in, his crystalline markings catching the overhead lights in ways that made patterns dance across the walls.
The Head of Mothership Operations moved with that peculiar grace tall, lean beings developed, efficient, almost elegant.
Behind him came Vaxon, Security Chief, who made elegant impossible through sheer physical intimidation.
At 8'8", Vaxon was the largest of us, his charcoal-black skin marked with tactical patterns in electric blue.
Where the rest of us had adapted to integrated crew life with varying degrees of success, Vaxon maintained the bearing of the elite warrior he'd been before Mothership.
Controlled. Alert. Perpetually assessing threats.
"Starting without us?" Zor'go said, grabbing practice staffs for himself and Vaxon.
"Starting to lose without you," Er'dox corrected. "Zorn's distracted."
"The physician situation." Vaxon didn't make it a question. He'd sat at our weekly meal three days ago, and heard the entire conversation. "Has she responded to intervention?"
"By avoiding me completely." I took another drink of water, wishing it was something stronger. "She communicates exclusively through medical reports now. If we're in the medical bay simultaneously, she finds reasons to be in a different section."
"Give her time," Zor'go said. He began warming up with practice movements, his staff tracing geometric patterns through the air.
Mathematics in motion. "Jalina avoided me for nearly two weeks after I made an emotional miscalculation.
I thought I'd destroyed everything between us.
But humans process differently than we do.
They need space to work through complicated feelings before they can articulate them. "
"How long did it take?"
"For Jalina? Thirteen days, four hours." The precision was very Zor'go. "She appeared in my office, called me an emotionally stunted calculator, and kissed me. Best day of my life."
Er'dox laughed. "Dana's approach was less dramatic. She just started showing up at my quarters with engineering problems that didn't exist. Took me a week to realize she was creating excuses for proximity."
"Elena throws things at me," Vaxon said flatly. “But we’re just friends.”
We all turned to stare at him.
"Throws things?"
"Small objects. Fasteners. Occasionally insulated wire." Vaxon's expression remained serious, though his eyes held something that might have been amusement. "She claims I'm too large to miss. I believe it's her way of initiating interaction when direct communication makes her uncomfortable."
The image of tiny Elena hurling wire at Mothership's Security Chief while he tolerated it with warrior patience was almost surreal.
"Are you... courting her?" Zor'go asked carefully.
"No. We maintain professional antagonism punctuated by brief moments of forced cooperation." Vaxon paused. "Though I find her company less intolerable than most."
"High praise from you," Er'dox said.
"She's brilliant with electrical systems in ways that fascinate me despite my limited understanding. When she explains her work, her enthusiasm transforms her. She becomes incandescent." Vaxon seemed to realize what he'd said, clearing his throat. "Professionally speaking."
Right. Professional.
I understood that particular delusion intimately.
"So what you're all saying," I began slowly, "is that patience is required. That forcing the issue will only drive her further away. That I should maintain professional distance while hoping she'll eventually process her feelings enough to initiate contact."
"Basically," Er'dox confirmed.
"And how long might that take?"
"Could be days. Could be weeks." Zor'go began stretching, preparing for sparring. "Could be never. That's the risk with humans. They're unpredictable."
"But worth it," Er'dox added. "If you truly care for her."
If. The word implied doubt where none existed.
I cared for Bea with an intensity that complicated every aspect of my professional judgment.
I had cared since the moment I'd watched her save three lives during the Veridian outbreak while running on forty hours of no sleep and pure determination.
Since I'd seen her break down in my arms, trust me with vulnerability she showed no one else.
Since I'd realized her dedication to healing others was directly proportional to how much she refused to heal herself.
"Then I wait," I said.
"And work," Vaxon added. "Distraction helps."
"Speaking of which—" Zor'go gestured toward the sparring mats. "Shall we?"
We were divided into pairs. Er'dox partnered with Zor'go this time, leaving me facing Vaxon across the practice mat. The Security Chief stood nearly eight inches taller than me, outweighed me by a considerable margin, and had combat training that made him dangerous even with practice weapons.
This was going to hurt.
"Try to focus," Vaxon said, raising his staff. "Your physician needs you to be functional."
He came at me like a tactical assault. I blocked the first three strikes through reflex, counterattacked on instinct, found myself immediately on the defensive as he pressed forward with relentless precision.
Where Er'dox fought with engineering efficiency, Vaxon fought like warfare itself, calculated, overwhelming, impossible to predict.
The crack of practice staffs echoed through the gymnasium. Impact jarred up my arms. I dodged, blocked, attacked, defended, and still Vaxon kept coming. My ribs protested from the earlier beating Er'dox had delivered. My shoulders burned. My breathing came harder.
Good. Pain was clarifying. Pain kept my mind from cycling endlessly through Bea's gray-blue eyes, her controlled voice when she'd told me she didn't want counseling, the tremor in her hands she thought I didn't notice.
Vaxon's staff cracked against mine hard enough to send vibrations through every bone in my body.
"She's scared," Vaxon said, conversational despite the violence between us. "Not of you. Of caring for you."