very useful indeed
For @whumptober day 4, using the prompt “Don’t be scared, I’ve done this before."
3rd Life-ish? This is a part of my doomed space colonists AU, this place is a message. Specifically, this is the part where they're doomed. :)
Grian and Ren, with background established Treebark and background "It's Complicated" Scarian. In addition to the easier-to-tag-for content notes in the tags, I'd generally add that this is both space horror and medical horror.
The first words out of Ren's mouth, when he's stopped shivering so hard his teeth are chattering, are, of course, "Is Martyn all right?"
"He's fine," says Grian, scanning through Ren's neural patterns on the screen. "He was the fourth person Scar defrosted. He sort of insisted someone come get you, that's why I'm here." There's a lot more he could say about Martyn -- about how Martyn had better not be letting Scar fly the ship, mostly, and about how irritating it is that he probably thinks he's right, but -- well. Martyn means well. And he's a good colleague -- Grian cannot quite bring himself to call him a friend anymore -- and Grian only slightly regrets making his way across the ship to manually defrost his husband. Even though his husband is useless, and Martyn basically only sent Grian to get him out of favoritism.
"Oh, right, of course he would be," says Ren. "But there are others who aren't fine?"
"I don't know," lies Grian. He knows. Cryofluid leaks in several of the main cryochambers mean people are going to to be dying, and he has no idea how it will all interact with the reanimation implants. Theoretically even if they're blasted into fine particulate matter, the nanites should be able to reconstruct them, but if they die due to spikes of ice in their brains and the implants think that's how their brains are supposed to look, they might not come back... quite right. Or at all. "We're going to find that out soon enough, I imagine. That's my next stop. But the good news is you're fine too. Which probably means the people in this cryochamber" -- he gestures at the wall of frozen colonists -- "are also fine." He begins yanking the electrodes off of Ren's skull, and Ren winces.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Ren asks hopefully.
No. You're useless, Grian doesn't say. But he is, a bit. Probably Grian should be saving the other doctors and medical staff, or maybe the spare pilots, but here he is saving the ship's doctor's husband, who is a fantasy novelist. There is no real practical use for fantasy novelists in space. There will be no practical use for Ren when they get to the planet, either. (If they get to the planet. That's feeling increasingly unlikely, although Bdubs said he was well on his way to fixing the hull breach.) If their aquaponics setup should break and their emergency rations run out, then Ren will be useful because he is theoretically edible, but Martyn would die and take several people with him before he let that happen, so the point is pretty much moot. "Don't worry about it."
"I know I'm a bit useless," Ren confesses, "but really if there's anything... just say the word."
Grian smiles. "Sure. Of course. You've helped already. Hold out your arm, I need to take a blood sample to finish this up."
Ren does, and Grian readies himself to fight his longtime nemesis, The Needle. He is so very bad at finding veins. At least Ren is putting on a brave face. That is one thing about Ren that Grian appreciates. The man is clearly terrified, and probably wishing he'd stayed back on Earth to finish that trilogy instead of running away to space about it, but he's being a really good sport about it. "You know, when I'm in a tough spot, I try and think of it as research for my next book or whatever. I think, ah, so this is how Captain Whatsisname felt when the ship was boarded by evil aliens."
"There's no evil aliens," Grian says, because Scar is wrong about that, he's just having hyperspace phantoms. This is a hill Grian is willing to die on. (Metaphorically. He's not going to die.) "We just landed on something when we came out of the last jump, that's all. This is going to hurt, sorry," he says, sliding a needle into his arm. The vein rolls away, because of course it does. "Sorry," he repeats, taking the needle out.
"Well, Captain Whatsisname is definitely facing evil aliens," says Ren, warming to his subject. He winces as Grian tries to get that vein again. Nope.
"Is he?" Grian asks.
"Oh yes, they're --"
"What is his name, then?" Grian asks.
"Well," says Ren, uncomfortably. He winces as Grian takes another, very literal stab at it. "Well, it was a placeholder, only..."
"Only what?" Grian asks. This time, there's blood! Not a lot, but hopefully enough for the tests the computer has to run. (Grian doesn't really know. If he was any other type of neurologist he'd have nurses or a phlebotomist or something to do this sort of thing for him, but no, he had to specialize in rocket surgery and he is so bad at this.)
"Well, when you're fifty thousand words in it's really hard to --"
There is a noise. It sounds like -- Grian doesn't know what it sounds like, but it's not a normal sound at all. Like something punched a bunch of air out of the way with magic, maybe. It's not the kind of sound he's ever heard on a spaceship. It's not the kind of sound Grian's heard anywhere, frankly, and he does not like it one bit. He and Ren freeze, although the blood, to its credit, does keep filling the tube.
"What was that?" Ren whispers.
Grian shrugs. "Hold this," he tells Ren, giving him the vial with his own blood in it.
"Evil aliens?" Ren ventures, still whispering.
"It's not evil aliens," says Grian. He creeps slowly towards the door, and then he sees it. It's a... well. It's a dark shape. It's got two arms and two legs and a head, but it's much too tall to be human, and the skull is all wrong, and it's just... standing there... only now now it's turning, and --
Grian is sure he doesn't want to see its face, although he can't say why, but fortunately, before it finishes turning around, it vanishes with another one of those weird noises, leaving a cloud glowing purple particles in its wake.
Grian peers out into the corridor, where he sees the alien is snorting to itself. He watches as it slides its hands into solid wall as if it was liquid. Then it pulls an entire chunk of the wall open, leaving sparking wires dangling. It peers curiously at the wires.
Nope. He's not making first contact with whatever that thing is. If it can do that to walls it can do that to people. Carefully, quietly, Grian closes the door. Then he shoves a chair under the doorknob. It obviously won't stop the creature, but it does make Grian feel slightly better.
He turns back to Ren, who looks ghost-white. "Dude," says Ren. "Was that --"
"I don't know," whispers Grian, "but we're not going to make any unnecessary noise."
"Right," says Ren. "Right," he repeats, in a whisper.
Grian gestures for the ambient nanites to start broadcasting his words to anyone who's awake and alive and supposed to be on the ship. He's not sure they'll be working in this part of the ship, but if they are he needs to convey the message. "Hello? Can anyone hear me?" he whispers.
"Yes, what's happening, did you find Ren?" Martyn asks.
"I'm here," says Ren, although he's forgotten to get the nanites to notice him.
"He's here, he's fine," says Grian. "Look, that's not the point of this conversation, the thing is... I think..." Ugh. "I think there might, in fact, be... neutral aliens? But they might also be evil."
"I told you," says Scar.
"Yes, well, you weren't very convincing," says Grian.
"I didn't know I should be," says Scar, "since I thought as my doctor you'd listen to me and trust me. And also --"
"Shut up shut up shut up," Grian snaps. "Don't you want to hear about the --"
"Oh no," says Scar. Grian suddenly gets an earful of feedback (he sees Ren wince too) and then it fades.
"What was that?" Grian asks.
There is silence.
"Hello?" Grian asks.
Nothing.
He and Ren exchange a look. "I don't think we can hear them anymore."
"Probably the evil aliens," says Ren darkly, as if he knows how evil aliens operate.
Then screens in the room they're in start to light up and flash, and an alarm starts going. Scar's voice plays, but Grian knows it's not him, because he sounds perfectly calm and all the words are pronounced crisply and correctly. "Data Core II integrity damaged. Data core shutdown imminent. All data may be lost if there are no backups. Data Core II can be backed up most efficiently from the area of the ship highlighted on the map."
"Oh no," says Ren. "That sounds bad."
"Well, it's not what the ship runs off of," says Grian, "but it really isn't good. We might be able to do something about it, actually, it looks like we're in the right spot, at least. If we weren't a neurosurgeon and a fantasy writer, anyway."
"Well. I'm creative, you're clever, maybe we can work something out," says Ren. "Have you got enough of my blood, by the way?"
Grian looks to the tube, which is full up. "Oops. Yeah, probably," he says. "Here, let me just..." He manages to get blood all over himself disconnecting the tube, which is just great, exactly what he wanted to do there, definitely -- but he does get the needle out of Ren's arm without hurting him too much. "Right."
"Data Core II integrity damaged," Scar's voice tells them again. "Data core shutdown imminent. All data may be lost..." Grian sighs to himself as not-Scar recites the problem back again. He slides the tube into what he and Martyn have taken to calling the Big Black Box, the machine that runs the majority of their routine tests on blood and tissues.
"What's on Data Core II, anyway?" Ren asks.
"It's all the stuff you need to start human society from scratch," says Grian. "We've got specialists in all kinds of fields, but if we didn't, it'd be a good reference for, let's say... specific types of construction or materials science. There's also a lot of history and folklore and literature on there. Everything Farlands considers essential to a colony's development if we lose contact with the Solar System."
"Oh," says Ren. "Well. That's pretty bad, actually."
"And I think Etho would know what the procedure is for this, but I don't think we usually have a backup of all that," says Grian. His understanding is that there's not really room for it -- the only thing that can store such a vast amount of data in a space that's reasonably portable is, well, an organic human brain. And everybody's already using theirs.
"But that's terrible! There must be something we can do," says Ren.
Grian sighs, pained. "There might not be."
And then, abruptly, Not-Scar is interrupted by Real Actual Scar's voice coming over the tannoy. Grian sits bolt upright as Scar says, "Uh, so, um, due to a severe case of what can only be described as... evil aliens... who seem pretty angry with me in particular... we're going to be reentering hyperspace! Again! And they might follow us! I don't know, guys, I'm really really sorry about this, but I'm doing the best I can here. It's been a long day, a bad day, and I think it's actually only been a few hours. Oh god they're looking at me, oh no, sorry, okay, bye, counting down now!"
"What?" Grian stands up. "No! Martyn, you can't -- I told you --" Martyn can't hear him. "I told him! He's not well enough to -- Scar! Scar, can you hear me? Don't you dare --"
Scar can't hear him. He counts down, his voice wavering -- he's so scared, Grian thinks. He's so brave, he realizes, a moment later, a little surprising because Scar is reckless but he's never seemed brave. Foolhardy, maybe. Ridiculous. Not self-sacrificing. He's going to die doing this. And then the most dreadful thought of all: I'm going to lose him. I'm going to lose him and I told him I didn't love him and then I didn't believe him about the aliens and the last thing I ever said to him was "shut up."
And then they're in hyperspace. There's no big tell-tale rumbling, and nothing goes all wonky and prismatic. It just feels like an odd, nearly-transparent film now exists between the world and his perception of it. It's a little harder to breathe, and no one will be able to sleep. And also, Scar is probably dying, and he's probably frightened, and in terrible pain, and there's a good chance that that very experimental reanimation implant won't be able to regenerate him properly from a brain bleed, and Grian's sure it's never been tested in hyperspace, where physics is odd in ways even Mumbo doesn't understand, so he's probably dying for good.
Grian shouldn't have left him hooked up to the ship before going to get Ren. Then again, Grian should've done a lot of things differently.
"Is -- is everything all right?" Ren asks. Inane question. Obviously nothing is all right. Martyn promised not to let Scar do any jumps. Martyn promised, and then Martyn sent Grian off to rescue his stupid useless husband, and now Scar is going to die because Martyn can't be trusted.
Because Martyn's looked at the risks, and he thinks that one dead pilot is better than an entire dead colony ship.
But then, Martyn hadn't been half as cold thinking about who Grian ought to salvage from the failing cryochambers. Oh no. He'd wanted his beloved husband out first. He'd wanted to make sure Grian did a thorough checkup and made sure there were no ice crystals in Ren's brain before Grian could move on to saving anyone more important -- like, say, Scar's endocrinologist, or the atmospheric terraforming specialists, or other people with genuinely useful skills.
The good thing, of course, is that he knows Ren's brain is working just fine, and the body it's in is probably in good condition too. "You know what, Ren? I actually think you can help me out here," says Grian. Ren's skull is a pretty good shape for interface installation too -- fairly average-sized, so all the equipment they have in the lab will suit him. Grian knows exactly where he'll put it, too. And Ren's being such a good sport about everything, surely he won't object.
Grian isn't going to give him the chance to object, of course. Martyn didn't let him have any input about Scar.
"Oh?" Ren asks, perking up. "What can I do?"
"Hang on." Grian checks the readout of the Big Black Box -- nothing out of the ordinary. Perfect. "Can we move you over here?" he asks Ren, pointing to one of the exam tables.
"Oh, sorry, am I in the way?" Ren stands up and hurries over.
"That's fine, but I need you to lie down," says Grian.
"Um. O... okay," says Ren. "Why?"
"Just have to do a few more little checks before we get on with things," says Grian. "Don't worry about it." He grabs a paralytic -- for something like this, he usually has the patient conscious, but he doesn't want them thrashing about, obviously -- and approaches Ren.
"L-look, I don't think," starts Ren, but Grian injects him with the drug. "I..." His eyes go wide, and then it's over. Now all Ren can do is think. And he's going to have so many thoughts soon enough. There's a lot of data on Data Core II.
"Don't worry about it!" Grian repeats, brightly. "Unlike taking blood, I'm very good at this sort of thing."
He's not perfect, though; Grian's starting to fit hardware into the hole in Ren's skull before he remembers that he forgot to use any sort of local anesthetic. It's an urgent situation, though, and needs must.
Ren lies on one side before him, skull open, drooling slightly. Grian fits the hardware to the mass of wires coming out of the ship just to be sure he can plug it into Ren when they're done, or else this will all be for nothing.
Martyn really should've taken better care of Scar. But, Grian has to admit, Ren's not nearly as useless as Grian thought he was.
