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A short, deeply tanned teenager wearing a fisher’s breeches and vest hopped off a rusty bike and carefully leaned it against the priory’s granite walls before racing into the courtyard fronting the infirmary, his calloused, bare feet slapping against worn flagstones. Though partly ruined during the empire’s collapse long ago, the ancient, solemn complex built with black basalt carved from the island’s cliffs had housed the Order of the Void’s mission to the Republic of Thebes for the last three years and still awed the youngster.
He poked his head through the open door and blinked a few times as his pupils, shrunk by the dazzling tropical sun, adapted to the cool, dark interior. Spotting the Sister on duty, he stepped in and bowed at the neck.
“Pardon the intrusion. Aswan Trader just passed the end of the mole, and she raised the signal for severely wounded crew aboard. The harbormaster asks if you can send a medic team.”
“Certainly.” The lean, equally tanned woman with a narrow angular face framed by black hair climbed to her feet and shook out her loose, khaki tropical robes. “Let me gather my people. You may tell the harbor master we’ll be there when she docks.”
He bowed again.
“Yes, Sister. Thank you.”
The boy vanished, leaving Sister Gwen to call for her fellow healer, Sister Renelle, and the two Friars trained as physician’s assistants, Basam and Achar. She warned Prioress Hermina so the locally hired medical staff and trainees could prepare their small hospital. Then, Gwen gathered her field kit, a backpack containing medical equipment and drugs more advanced than the sort last produced on Hatshepsut almost two centuries earlier, before the Mad Empress’ Retribution Fleet destroyed the local abbey and its dependencies.
The Thebes Priory, now home to the Void’s missionary team from Lyonesse, was the least damaged of the old Order’s houses, just as the Thebes archipelago, a minor district of Hatshepsut, was the least damaged of the planet’s subdivisions. That made both eminently suitable as Lyonesse’s beachhead in this star system.
Sister Renelle, dark-complexioned, gray-haired, and stocky, appeared in the infirmary seconds before the Friars, who seemed cast from the same mold. Both were square-faced, muscular, and middle-aged, with short silver-shot hair and beards. They too wore loose khaki clothes suitable for the torrid climate rather than their Order’s standard black.
The four Brethren, along with three more Sisters and an equal number of Friars, were volunteers from the Lyonesse Abbey. They’d left the only home they knew aboard one of the Republic’s newest Void Ships three years earlier and settled on Hatshepsut with the understanding that it might be for the rest of their lives. However, since their work would be for the greater glory of the Almighty and humanity's reunification, none of them felt any regrets at leaving everything behind. In time, more Brethren would join them as the mission expanded beyond Thebes. Then, eventually, the Lyonesse Defense Force would establish an outpost that would grow into a full garrison with the amenities of home. But that might not happen in their lifetimes.
Gwen made sure her three companions carried sealed packs, then led them into the glare of an equatorial mid-afternoon. The priory sat on a hilltop above the town of Thebes, a major seaport spread out along the three sides of a broad bay. From that vantage point, they could see the nearest of the republic’s over one hundred islands and the countless dun-colored, single-masted sailboats of the fishing fleet bobbing on the calm, shimmering waters just beyond the harbor.
One ship, however, caught their attention as they hurried along the gravel road leading into town, a three-masted merchant barquentine slowly shedding forward momentum as its crew hauled in the sails. One of dozens operated by Theban traders, the ship carried an auxiliary Stirling engine which took over, propelling her at a stately pace toward one of the long wooden piers jutting out from a stone quay.
“Anyone know where Aswan Trader went on this trip?” Renelle asked, her voice steady even though they moved at a half walking, half running pace.
“I believe she planned on circumnavigating Aksum,” Basam replied, naming the medium-sized, oddly shaped continent fifteen hundred kilometers west of the Thebes Archipelago, parts of which largely escaped the worst of the Retribution Fleet’s wrath.
Friar Achar let out a grunt. “Pirate waters.”
“Nothing that can outrun or outgun one of the trader barquentines. But let’s hope their people weren’t hurt during an engagement with Aksumite or Saqqaran pirates because it would mean the ship’s medic has been dealing with them alone for a week or more, if not longer.”
“It would have been worse before we equipped the merchant fleet’s sick bays properly,” Gwen said. “But let’s not borrow trouble. Sailors sometimes fall from masts in a gale and break sundry bones, and there was a storm out over the ocean to the southwest yesterday.”
The four entered Thebes proper at the base of the hill, hurrying past a mix of sagging imperial-era buildings and more recent construction. They took one of the broad avenues connecting the port with the large island’s interior, where farms produced much of the republic’s primary food exports.
By now, whenever the locals saw one or more Brethren moving at speed while carrying an easily identifiable medic pack, they stepped out of the way, just as their ancestors would have yielded to ambulances equipped with flashing lights and sirens back when ground cars still existed. Nowadays, all that remained were animal-drawn carts and the odd Stirling engine-equipped carriages, and the Brethren yielded to them rather than risk being run over by an inattentive driver.
They reached the quay just as Aswan Trader’s crew tossed her mooring lines to the stevedores waiting on Pier Two. By the time they were alongside, both a gangway and the ship’s captain had appeared. The latter waved the Brethren aboard with urgent gestures. After three years, Gwen knew the merchant shipmasters by their first names and dispensed with formality as she stepped onto the wooden deck.
“What happened, Lars?”
“We were attacked by pirates aboard a swarm of small, fast boats in the Central Passage five days ago, just before we could clear the last of those infernal islands. Buggers are upping their game, if you ask me. Had to fight them off because wouldn’t you know it? Someone sold them slug throwers. Not accurate at a distance and on the water by any means, not like ours. But put enough of them into action, and the odd shot will find a target. Three of mine took hits before we sank the bastards and their damned weapons. No survivors that we could see, thankfully, so they won’t try that again. Doc extracted the slugs, but they’re doing poorly.”
“Call for a Stirling engine carriage and prepare stretchers. We’ll examine them, perform any necessary first aid, but if they’re doing poorly, it’ll be a hospital bed at the priory.”
“That’s my thought as well.” Captain Lars Fenrir, a man whose tanned, weather-worn features surrounded by sun-bleached hair and a short beard screamed master mariner, gestured at a sailor hovering behind him. “Take the Brethren to sickbay, Matty.”
“Aye, aye, Skipper.”
“While you check them over, I’ll make the arrangements.”
Gwen and her colleagues followed Matty below decks and forward to Aswan Trader’s sickbay, a tiny compartment that would be overcrowded with three injured. The barquentine’s medic, whose primary responsibilities were as a master’s mate — in a ship with a crew of fewer than forty souls, most men shouldered more than one job — met them at the sickbay’s door. He was in his early twenties, barely out of apprenticeship, and one of those trained by the priory. The Brethren knew him as a steady man, conscientious and hard-working.
He bowed his head.
“Sisters, Friars. I’m overjoyed to see you. I fear my patients are on the decline even though I tried my best.”
“Penetrating wounds can get tricky, especially abdominal ones.”
“And that’s the case with two of them. I removed the slugs, stitched them up as well as I could, and gave them antibiotics, but I fear sepsis might set in, nonetheless. They’re sedated and have been since they were hit, but I’ve run out of sedative and most medical supplies.”
Friar Basam let out a grunt.
“Gut shots are always bad. Now stand aside, lad, and let us be at it.”
“Of course.”
Gwen and Renelle headed straight for the two abdominal cases, squeezing in between cots, while Basam took the leg wound. All three pulled medical sensors produced by Lyonesse’s finest supplier from their packs and scanned the victims. In the meantime, Achar rifled through the sickbay cabinets and inventoried the remaining stocks so Aswan Trader could be resupplied before she headed out again. The ship’s medic stayed in the passageway, there being no room left for anything larger than a cat.
“You did as well as possible,” Gwen tossed over her shoulder after examining her patient’s injuries. “He’s in a rough shape, but the odds favor him. Once we get him in our hospital and I reopen the wound, we’ll know for sure.”
“Ditto with this one,” Renelle said.
Basam looked up from his patient.
“Mine will limp for a while, but he’s lucky. A millimeter further left, and the slug would have nicked this boy’s femoral artery. Unless someone receives immediate medical attention, that sort of wound is usually fatal.”
“Then I shall offer a prayer of thanks to the Almighty,” the ship’s medic said in a subdued tone.
Fenrir’s voice came from behind him. “Stretchers are ready, and a Stirling engine carriage is on the way, Sister Gwen. What’s your assessment?”
“The leg shot should pull through without complications,” Gwen replied. “But both gut shots will need further surgery, so I make no guarantees, but your men are strong, Lars. Their will to live might make the difference.”
“From your lips to the Almighty’s ears, Sister. We are at your command.”
“Let’s bring them up one at a time, but slowly and carefully.”
Once the injured lay on the deck near the gangplank, Gwen thanked those who produced the sedatives back home on Lyonesse. Maneuvering stretchers through narrow passageways and up steep ladders wasn’t for the faint of heart or those who could still feel their serious injuries even though they were unconscious.
Thankfully, the crew had erected a midship awning that provided vital shade, so neither patients nor healers suffered under a harsh sun waiting for one of the rare self-propelled conveyances with sprung axles and rubber tires. They alone among ground vehicles wouldn’t add to the unconscious men’s suffering by bouncing over every bump and pothole between the port and the priory.
When the carriage, a box on four wheels with an open aft deck covered by a striped canopy, finally trundled down the pier under the impulse of its primitive engine, Gwen felt an unaccustomed longing for the air ambulances of a home hundreds of light-years away. They could whisk dangerously injured patients to the nearest hospital swiftly and in absolute comfort, cared for by the best trauma healers in the known galaxy. Here? It was no different from bringing sick livestock to the nearest veterinarian, one who didn’t make house calls.
Would that she lived long enough to see this place regain its ancient birthright, so the good people of Thebes and elsewhere on Hatshepsut enjoyed the same existence as those on Lyonesse and the first few worlds it had reclaimed.
But once they were aboard the conveyance and moving through the town, Achar leaned toward Gwen after making sure the driver couldn’t overhear.
“Sister, there may be a problem with Aswan Trader’s sickbay stocks. Not the consumables, but the instruments. Half of the inventory is gone. The medic must have constantly been cycling his remaining pieces through the autoclave without a break, or not sterilizing, period.”
Basam gave his colleague a knowing look.
“Bartered them for trade goods on the side, eh? It wouldn’t be the first or the last. Besides, Lyonesse goods finding their way into every corner of this world via regular trade routes is part of the plan.”
“So long as we don’t run out of stock before the next Void Ship shows up.”
Gwen looked up from her patient.
“Make sure you tell Metrobius once we’ve taken care of these men. He can discuss it with Hermina if he so wishes. Still, Basam is right; replaceable medical instruments going walkabout can only help our mission by spreading the word we’re here to help the planet prepare for reunification.”