Happy Landing

Riley: *"I'll be a Ching-wah Tsao duh liou mahng. Has anyone else seen this?"*

Dorian shrugged. “Only Vas…but he didn’t notice…” Suddenly, the ship gave a violent lurch. Just as surprising, she was in his arms as they tumbled to the deck, amid the crash of the treatment tools he’d just used on the Fed. “Apologies,” Dorian whispered, his words muffled by the flesh of Riley’s neck before the pair extricated themselves.

Riley: *"Get to somewhere with less... sharp shit and hang on to your ass."*

In an instant, she was bounding away, shouting orders to someone named Devron. *“Ah, the mechanic,”* his mind reasoned as he took to his feet. The pilot’s warning to “hang on to his ass” was a sound one, indeed. Unfortunately, he had a patient. Even now, the last wallop had nearly sent the unconscious Fed from the treatment table. It’d be his ass to which Dorian would need cling, as the man’s acting physician.

Adler threw himself across the inert body. He clutched the edges of the table, while hooking a boot heel on a corner. The Fed stirred. “Mmmmph?” he asked sleeplily.

“Yah alright,” Dorian muttered. “A little turbulence…” A series of violent jolts rocked the medbay. He tightened his grip, struggling to keep his patient on the table.

“Martha?” the Fed asked. “Martha?”

“Ah’m a doctah,” Dorian replied. “Just lie easy, now…”

“I’m powerful sorry, Martha,” his patient slurred. “I din’ mean none of it…” The air in the medbay was warming up. From all around, Dorian heard the staccato roar of Lunar Veil’s fiery ride into atmo. She was descending quickly; if Riley didn’t get control of this plunge soon, the air alone would tear her to pieces before she touched ground. “Please…please,” the Fed mumbled in his sleep, “take me back, Martha. Take me back?”

The Fed’s dream awakened an old sympathy within Dorian. He’d heard delirium in many voices, from wounded boys crying for their mothers to dying men looking to set their final reckonings with comrades only they could see. In his life since wartime, Dr. Adler’s son had chosen for the most part to put those memories away, except some of the most valuable lessons learned right in the bloody abbatoir that had once been his family’s kitchen. The cruelty held in life, and the hidden kindness of death…

The boat came down hard, but from where he lay atop his patient, more or less one functioning piece. Careful not to step on something that might pierce the sole of his boot, the dentist picked his way onto the deck. As the ship settled to quiet, so, he discovered, had the sleeping Fed. The man had another four hours or so before the drug would dissipate in his bloodstream. Time for a quick errand.

Dorian entered his quarters, heading straight for the simple armoir. He slipped into the suit vest. This was followed by the gun belt. He took a moment to check both pistols, spinning their chambers and listening to the quiet whine of their target scans. Satisfied that both weapons were online, he holstered them, grabbed his hat and greatcoat, and returned to the medbay.

“C’mon,” he whispered as he gently slid the unconscious Fed onto an ad hoc bed atop a counter. “Ah may need tha table,” he whispered as he wrapped the man in his blanket. The tools were all collected and placed in the autoclave for what he deemed more or less sterilization. He checked the stores, and found things in generally good order, despite the shaking they’d taken. The only real casualty in medbay had been a bowl of soup.

*“And now,”* Dorian Adler thought, *“we wait.”* Whether the waiting would be for landing related injuries to the crew, or a possible throw-down with the folk who must’ve chased them onto Santo, he couldn’t say. Either way, he was prepared. He leaned casually, one hip against the treatment table, arms folded as he sorted his mustache with an index finger. A thought came to him, offering with it a subtle smile.

“She smelled nice.”