Mundus Novus: Go Out On a Limb Part 2

They were gambling with their lives.  There was no time at all to complete the procedure, even in this half assed state.  Mai was afraid of causing further complications but to believe that Alex could get out of this relatively unscathed was naive and downright stupid.

Soon, but not soon enough, the arm was off, completely detached from the person.  Mai quickly grabbed a bundle of gauze and pressed it against the open wound.  “We need to go now.”  She said frantically, standing up and digging her shoulder into Alex’s armpit.

“What?!”  Alex replied sharply, grunting as she was lifted up, “You can’t just leave my arm like this!”

“Hold the damned gauze against your arm, we’ll close it up when we get to the ship.”

Alex did as she was told, pressing the gauze on where her arm used to be.  She leaned onto the slightly smaller Asian girl, which nearly knocked them off balance.

A sharp pain ran down her leg, Alex had almost forgotten about her damaged leg with all the commotion going on about her arm.  She did her best to move, dragging her leg behind her.  It hurt but she ignored it, there would be time to cry about it later.

Mai was much smaller and the weight that Alex had pressed against her made it hard to move fast, especially in her state, but they didn’t have time to deal with this right now.  She wished that she had let one person stay behind, perhaps one of the boys so they could carry her back.

She should have brought a stretcher.

Blood thumped in her ears as fear began to take over, they needed to get out of there now, they had already passed the ten minute mark the guard had told them, if she was to be believed, the building should have blown by now.

“Come on, almost there.”  Mai gritted, speaking more to herself than Alex.  The ship was close now, maybe a few yards off, if they died now, Mai would never forgive herself.

The second Alex’s wounded leg hit the ramp it closed up on them, propelling them forward and onto the ground as the ship lifted into the air.

“Couldn’t have warned us?”  Alex shouted into the loading bay.

“Sorry, no time.”  Elzarth’s voice sounded from the intercom.

A huge boom could be heard outside as they sped away into space.

“Get someone down here.”  Mai said out loud, rubbing her head where she had rammed into a large box, both to the intercom and to Thi and Mark through their bugs.  “I need to close up the wound.”

“Just don’t do it in the kitchen.”  Someone, who she couldn’t identify in her current state, said.

The room was still spinning when Mark showed up after a short while, picking Alex up without an issue to take her to one of the rooms through the atrium where Mai had set up as a makeshift infirmary before all the commotion.  The gauze that she held to her arm had bled through and she had lost a good portion of blood even with the tourniquet and as proper a procedure as she could get out in the field.

“Make sure she doesn’t fall asleep or pass out.”  Mai called from behind the two, running to keep up with them.

Mark placed a very pale looking Alex on a bed gently.

“She’ll be fine.”  Mai told him when she caught the worried look on his face, “Head back to the others and-”

Alex grunted as her eyelids began, leaving Mai’s sentence unfinished.

–

Ezra found herself piloting away safely from the explosion that erupted behind her.  The base had exploded.  Granted, it was later than they had expected – apparently the female guard had the wrong intel, but it  did explode and Alex had just barely made it out alive.

The ship was fine, except for the new parts they needed to install on it, which meant that they had to find a place to land.  Unfortunately, the planet that Rhylldor orbited around was uninhabitable by humans, even with gear, the next survivable planet that wasn’t a threat to them was still a little ways off.  The closest thing they had was a nearby Uniform controlled civilian space station and Ezra had no desire to land there.

She had a certain disdain for Uniforms, more so than the rest of the crew, because her issue was personal.  Her friends came from a variety of backgrounds which determined their individual feelings for U.R.E.  For the most part, the Uniforms were just a nuisance, for her, well it was her past.

Not that she hated them, not really, that was more like Alex, although Alex seemed to have warmed up a lot towards the current trio they had on board, as had she.  When it came to uniforms it wasn’t the people she had a problem with, it was the organization.

Their strict rules, their totalitarian rule (although they deny it) and their “god given right” to a place in the universe irked her.

Ezra sighed, commanding the ship’s autopilot to take them to the station.  They had no other choice.  It was either that or risk an imminent breakdown at any given time.

Spinning the pilot’s chair around, she got up to move towards the lobby where a few of the crew members were resting, trying to distract herself from thinking about the greatest regret in her life, putting that damned uniform on.