Rene down beside the bed on a stool of carven root wood. The piece was slightly too tall for a human anatomy but it served well enough. His eyes were on Solae but his thoughts were on Oanh Park’s warning about the increased dangers of shock for someone of her exquisite engineering. It didn’t seem that she was hurt too badly but it might not be obvious until it was too late. It took a moment for the girl, Lasha’s, words to penetrate the haze of his mind.

“What? No I don’t think…” he paused to take stock of his injuries, uncatalogued while the adrenaline and fear had coursed through him. Vines and branches had scraped and scratched him bloody. His boot was soaked crimson from where fragments of riverstone had lacerated his leg. His forearms were singed, filling the room with a faint stink of burning hair. A black rind of metal, deposited on his hands from the driving bands of the rifle, itched but wasn’t really painful.

“I’m fine,” he lied, not wishing to take the Syshin’s attention away from Solae. Instead he picked up a pair of simple pliers and peeled his trouser leg away from the bloody flesh. Gingerly, he tugged a fragment of stone free. It hurt but had the vaguely pleasurable quality one sometimes felt removing  thorn. He began repeating the process as best he could, wishing he had a few more doses of Min Ho’s hormone booster. When he had removed all the fragments he took a jar of herb smelling ungent that Lasha offered him and slathered it over the skin. It stung, which he hoped was a sign of its efficacy and not a warning that it was toxic to humans.

“You are hurt,” Lasha observed with a frown. Rene began to wash his remaining injuries, the water growing black with dirt and grime. He winced as he rubbed more of the salve onto his friction burned arm.

“Yeah, well, you should see the other guy,” he told the alien in one of the many variations of the ancient joke. The Lasha blink in blank incomprehension. Rene made a dismissive gesture that was probably every bit as effective as his attempt a humor.

“I’m more worried about So… about my bonded,” he told her truthfully. Lasha nodded in understanding and took a cloth dipped cool water and began to bathe Solae’s forehead. The noblewoman’s chest continued to rise and fall gently. Rene had no idea what she had been injected with, but it didn’t appear to be repressing her respiratory system. Had the drug been tailored to Syshin it might have been worse, but he guessed it was an off the shelf analgesic. Maybe some mix of animal tranquilizers. 

“Does it bother you?” Lasha asked suddenly. Rene blinked in confusion.

“That she is hurt, of course it…” but the Syshin was already shaking her head.

“Among The People, it is a great trauma to take a life,” she explained, “That is why the Inyorin dye their plumes black, to show they are willing to face it.” Rene nodded in understanding.

“Did it bother me to kill the slavers?” he asked. Marine training was very thorough. Most humans were instinctively reluctant to harm others, they would instinctively shoot to miss or strike to wound rather than to kill. Rene and his fellows spent hours shooting at human like targets and on holographic ranges which provided even more realism so that when the moment came they would be prepared to do what they needed to. He tried to picture the men he had shot in his mind. All he could summon up was gray confusion and blurry faces in a sight picture. He shrugged his shoulders uncomfortablely. It seemed a long step from the person he had once thought he was.

“I guess it didn’t,” he admitted. Lasha shivered slightly at the words.

“I suppose I am Inyorin among my people,” he went on, feeling an obscure need to justify himself to the beautiful alien. That was sort of true he supposed, he had volunteered, although not out of some burning desire to protect the community. Amellia’s bloodied body flashed before his eyes and he squeezed them shut in instinctive, if useless defence. It figured that he could remember that body.

“Many of your people kill,” Lasha commented, “that is why you have an empire.” Rene nodded but didn’t speak. What did you say to that?

An hour passed without Solae waking but Rene noticed that her breathing had grown deeper and more regular and the color returned more quickly when he pressed on her fingernails. Without knowing what the slavers had used or in what dosage it was hard to know if she were metabolizing the drug fast or slow, but she was clearly recovering. Rene allowed himself to relax by slow increments with each small improvement.

“We have taken a prisoner Rene Bonded of Solae,” Enro rumbled, waking Rene from a light doze. His eye flicked to Solae, reassuring himself that she was still there before his conscious mind processed the words. The Syshin was smeared with mud and his clothing was torn and stained. An ugly red mark, perhaps the equivalent of a bruise or a lump, distended the side of his head, although if the contusion caused him any discomfort he didn’t show it.

“A prisoner?” he asked, puzzled as to what use the Syshin had for a prisoner. 

“The man who fell from the railbridge, broken legs and ribs.” Rene had a dim recollection of a plasmabolt bursting beneath one of Solae’s captor feet, splinters of wood and metal spraying up into his legs and toppling him to the rocks below. Rene, focused completely on Solae, hadn’t given the man a second thought. He had been out of the equation and didn’t matter. Except apparently he did.

“We will…” Enro  made a series of burbling trills which Rene couldn’t understand. The Marine nodded more as a placeholder than in agreement to the unknown sentiment. Enro  was about to go on when Solae suddenly coughed. Rene was by her side in an instant leaning over her when her eyes fluttered open. He let out a long relieved breath.

“Maybe there is something to that sleeping beauty story afterall.”