Life After-Part Eleven

The pace was slow. Not being allowed to walk hadn't helped Storm's strength any and one of the medications was supposed to keep her a bit weaker than normal. There was a procedure to follow with fighters and medication depending on the severity of the injury. Most doctors never had to use it and it was buried deep in one file or another. Fighters had basic skills in first aid and tried to patch their squadmates up before going over to a doctor. Things that weren't so common like acid or broken bones required the attention of a doctor and most of the time the fighters realized that.
"How far?" Storm asked.
"It's not too much farther," Erik said. "Four or five yards. You can make that, right?"
"Of course I can."
Her voice sounded less that sure, though her face retained its mask-like expression. Control over the emotions of the voice wasn't part of training, but expression was. Fighters had a hard time expressing emotion through their face even when it was appropriate and the times where that was true were few.
"Okay. If you need a hand—"
"I don't want help. I can do this by myself. It's just walking."
Erik bit his lip and nodded. They continued to walk down the corridor with her focused on the middle distance and him looking for the strategy symbol. Whispered fragments of some poem he couldn't place became audible as Storm attempted to block out the pain. Even the burns on her stomach which hadn't really hurt in a while were beginning to complain some. One of the doctors sometime along the way had miscalculated her recovery, but she wasn't about to tell them that. For once since she had gotten into the medical ward she had freedom. Real freedom to go and do something.
Erik stopped in front of the right door. Storm went a bit farther before backtracking. Her face had become a bit pale, but she hadn't complained of pain. He knocked once and Clarissa opened the door.
The chairs and the couch had been moved back to allow room for a large three dimensional map of the deck. A holoemitter buzzed in the back corner. Different colored shapes littered the map with no apparent rhyme or reason to what meant what.
"This is what we're doing today," Clarissa said, nodding towards the hologram. "Let's see how you do."
I need somewhere to sit and some coffee," Storm said.
"No coffee. It'll not be good. Not with your meds. It's the caffeine," Erik said. "Also, no alcohol. Rebeka should've told you but…she doesn't want you committing suicide or anything."
"I don't want to die like that," she said, her voice quieting. "Now if you want to talk to me about this, let's do it later. Clear?"
"Okay."
Clarissa sighed.
"Can you two stop so I can see if she's any good?" she asked.
"Oh. Yeah," Erik said. "Go ahead."
"Do I get a seat?" Storm asked.
Clarissa nodded towards the floor.
"There's that," she said.
"Come on," Erik said. "Let her sit down in an actual chair. You wouldn't do this to other strategists."
Seeing the look of anger creeping onto Storm's face, one of the strategists scooted out of his chair and onto the floor.
"Problem solved," Storm said. She sat down and dropped the crutches on the floor with a clatter. "Now what's this thing?"
"That's for you to find out," Clarissa said. "We have a task for you. You're figuring out what this is, what stands for what, and how to meet the win conditions. Those are that everyone gets out alive and uninjured or the enemy is defeated with no deaths and no more than a fourth injured."
Storm studied the hologram. The decks and the way the rooms were set up together meant it was probably the station-ship. That meant that either the blue dots or the orange dots were the slave-race.
"It hooked to an intifase?" she asked.
Clarissa frowned at the slang and stunted sentence.
"Only if you use correct grammar," she said.
"Computer. Eliminate lower five decks and focus on section six alpha," Storm said.
The image trembled for a moment but did nothing more.
"Let me," Erik said. "I'm used to the interface. Computer. Eliminate the five lowest decks and focus on section six alpha."
The image shimmered, dissolved, and reformed with the lowest five decks removed and sector six alpha magnified. This sector had a high concentration of dots of both colors.
"Blue dots are the slave-race. They've been coming up from that direction," Storm said. "That mean orange dots are fighters. These seem like the last things I've….This's my last fight, isn't it? I can give you our strategy cold. No more than a fourth, right? I think that dot's me. The one in the middle."
Clarissa snapped at one of the strategists.
"Jess? Told you to make this complicated," she said.
A petite Asian woman looked up from a display and lowered her hands from their spot in front of her mouth.
"I found what I could," Jess said. "I've been working with the techs and the programmers along with trying to make these tests of yours. Can't you just let her in and see how things go? It'll be a lot less trouble for the rest of us."
"Please, Clarissa? You need someone with actual experience as a fighter. Storm knows what it's like out there," Erik said. "It'll really help."
"You said an hour and a half. It's been, what, twenty minutes? Not even that," Clarissa said.
Storm picked up her crutches and stood up.
"If you're gonna be like that then I'm leaving. I don't want in your group," she said. "I'll find something else to do. Knitting laser cozies. I don't know."
She walked out of the room before Erik could put out a hand or say anything to stop her. He sighed.
"I've got to go and make sure nothing happens," he said. "Can you....I'll talk to you later. You'll be in later tonight, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'll call you. Don't say that she can't be in just because of this. Please. Because she really needs something to do and—"
"Just leave."
Erik also left the room and nearly ran into Storm. She took a few steps back to give him some room, nearly falling over in the process.
"Don't do that if you might fall over," Erik said. "Because I don't think that I can lift you."
"I'm fine," Storm said. "So you still think I can deal with them?"
"You could hear through the walls?"
"Doors aren't that thick."
Erik rubbed the back of his neck.
"I tried to get her to agree. I really did but I don't know if it's going to work," he said. "Clarissa is stubborn sometimes and she really doesn't want you in strategy. I don't know why."
"It's because I'm fighter."
"That's not—"
"It is and you know it," Storm said. "So stop kidding yourself about it. She doesn't want me in because she thinks that I'm going to kill someone or just in general be a bitch and you know what? I might. I don't know. I t depends on if she wants to get along with me or not. I haven't killed you. Haven't even tried yet.
"You've been confined to med ward. I don't think that's saying much."
"Saying a lot that I haven't tried to break out and kill you. Because you have my weapons."
Erik held up a hand.
"Woah. How do you know that I have your weapons?" he asked.  "Because I haven't told anyone that."
"It's standard procedure. The person who's looking after the fighter gets the weapons. I don't know where your room is, but I have access to your file. Wouldn't be too hard to break out of med ward, break into your room, and take my weapons back."
Erik's eyes widened slightly.
"You've done that before?"
"Not exactly that. I've done the two things separately. With fighters, too. Hell of a lot easier with civs. You can sleep through anything. Fighters wake up like that," Storm snapped, "And then you're dead just as quick if they have a weapon. I used to sneak out of the barracks all the time. Never got caught. Not by anyone who mattered, anyway. Snowfall'd find me but that's just because he likes to think he cares about everyone. I'm just gonna get back to med ward. You can go off and make your truce or whatever it is you're planning to do later I don't know what you're gonna say to her, but it'd better be good."
"I don't know either....She said before that it'd take her ninety minutes to figure out if you were going to be good as a strategist. And I guess she wants to have another seventy minutes just to see what you're like."
"That test didn't tell her shit about what I'm like as a strategist."
Storm started walking down the corridor just to be able to move. Fighters had to move to think. It was easier to control anger if you had something to get it out in. Most conversations of any importance took place in a training room where either of the participants could punch something that wasn't the other person. The only thing storm could do was walk and that wasn't good enough sometimes.
Erik ran a few steps to catch up with her.
"It told her that you're good at figuring out what's what," Erik said. "At least, you're good at remembering old strategies. And you aren't afraid to tell her if you've seen anything."
"I'm not afraid of anything. I'm fighter"
"Everyone's afraid of something, Storm. You can't not have a fear."
"I'm fighter. Not afraid of Clarissa and her games. Not afraid of anyone in that room. All seemed scared of me. Edged out of the way, stayed quiet. Either scared of me or her. Clarissa's probably just scared of a power struggle. You know what? Tell her I don't want her spot. I don't need her spot as head of strat. I don't want her spot as head of strat. Lost my chance to be squad leader, might as well give up my chance to be leader of something else important. Go back there and tell her. I just need to do something. Don't much care what it is."
"I have to stay with you," Erik said. "I'll tell her later when I call her. Rebeka made me promise I wouldn't let you out of my sight until you were back in med ward."
"Psh. Stupid promise. You think you need to promise something like that? Common friggin' sense. I'm still at suicide risk, right? Main reason you're sticking with me? Look. I've got a million reasons right now not to off myself and the main one is that I still want to die in combat. So you go back there and tell Clarissa what I said. I'll explain to Rebeka and you know what? This time I wouldn't've hurt anyone. Not even you."
She pretended not to notice when he fell back and then turned to go to strategy. She wasn't about to stop him doing something brave for once in his life. That was another thing that annoyed her about civs. They always slid around to avoid consequences. Rebeka was going to yell at him at the worst. So what? It was as if his life was in danger or anything. Civs were just too timid. Clarissa wasn't, but she was an entirely different weapon. One with heavy fire and an odd power strip she couldn't quite figure out. It didn't take very long for Storm to parse most civilians. Most of them were just as simple as fighters when you got right down to it and it took longer for them to get calibrated to her than it did for her to get calibrated to them.
By the time Storm got into med ward, Rebeka had just finished her rounds and was settling in for a good read.
"I'm back," Storm said. "Erik's gone to talk to Clarissa some more. Haven't killed anyone."
"Good. What?" Rebeka asked. "What happened? Are you okay?"
She put down the sheet she was reading and stood up.
"I'm fine. Clarissa told me to give the strategy of my last fight, she got mad at a strategist, I walked out, told Erik to go back and tell Clarissa some things. That's it."
Storm clacked over to her bed and sat down, putting her right leg up. She winced.
"I've really got to fix those meds," Rebeka said. "You don't have to be in pain. You aren't in the barracks anymore. We won't judge you."
"I need to be aware of what's going on," she said. "Randall said I'd be semi-conscious if you put them up anymore and I need to know what's going on. It's bad enough being out of the fight."
She closed her eyes, let the crutches drop to the floor, and lay down on the bed.
"Storm. Talk to me," Rebeka said. "What's going on?"
"I need the fight. Nothing without it. Spent teen years training to spend the rest of my life in the fight and now I'm out of it. I don't have anything else," Storm said. "What else is there? Strat doesn't want me, don't have skills in anything else."
"But they might take you. That's why Erik's talking to Clarissa, right? You can' give up on strategy yet."
"Yet. Clarissa'll fight everything I say. Don't know how long I can take that before I try and kill someone."
"We should look into anger management techniques. I'll get Randall on it."
"I'm—"
"I know. You're fighter. But you're dealing with civilians now. We don't know how to react if you threaten to kill us. It's not like being in the barracks and it's not like being with your squad. This is a new situation and you need to learn how to deal with it. Think of it as an undercover mission."
"I hate undercover missions. Only good thing about being out of the fight's that I don't have to do them."
"What about not getting enough sleep at night?"
"Fine with that. Fine with everything else. Even fine with after combat if it means I can fight again," Storm said. "You just don't get it. The fight is my life."
"I told you before that you might not be able to get back into combat. You didn't seem to be this worked up about it."
"Wasn't sure if you meant it or not. Doctors can't be sure all the time. Guess you did."
"There's not a lot we can do about your situation. We did what we could. As long as the acid doesn't go any farther then we can deal with what we have. If it doesn't we still might have to amputate. But things are looking okay. They're better than they were before. Where were we? Anger management. I'll get Randall to take a look through some files and give you some techniques so no one gets killed. Will you try them?"
Storm shrugged.
"Might," she said.
"No. You will. You've got fighter training which means you're dangerous. Either you learn these techniques or, and I'm really sorry about this, we'll have to keep you sedated or locked up which no one wants," Rebeka said, her voice sharpening some. "You're being really difficult, Storm. I'm allowed to keep you sedated if you don't cooperate."
"Fine. Get Randall to look up techniques and I'll look at them. But I'm making no promises."
"I am. If you don't learn some control then I will make sure that you stay sedated. I can't have you running around where you might kill someone. I can't have that. I'm your doctor."
"Aren't you supposed to do what's best for me?"
"I'm supposed to do what's best for you and for everyone. There's not a lot I can do if keeping you sedated isn't hurting you much and it's helping everyone else."
"And you'll tell Erik this when he comes in?"
"If you're asleep? Yeah. Are you going to sleep? Because you should probably try and get back on a normal sleeping schedule."
"I'm a fighter. I don't have a normal sleeping schedule. I'm going to go to sleep at at some point I'll wake up. Get whatever news there is from Erik."
"Don't you want to talk to him yourself? It'll help a lot."
"I really don't. Just give me the gist."
Storm relaxed. Fighters leaned to take whatever sleep they could whenever they could. Most of the time they were sleep deprived except for right after combat. Fighters didn't attack injured fighters. It was part of the rules. Of course, most of the rules were suggestions that were enforced with weaponry if a fighter got caught breaking them by the wrong person. Storm tended to not get very much sleep at all. As Snowfall's second she had to make sure he wasn't attacked. They slept in shifts but Storm was much better at functioning under sleep deprivation than Snowfall and she rarely got enough sleep. Being in the medical ward meant that she could relax, at least a bit. Since there was very little chance of her getting back in the fight, as much as she wanted to, there was no point in keeping her habits as a fighter. Not keeping them was easier said than done, but Storm had made an attempt with sleeping. It was an excuse not to talk to people. Even Randall didn't understand that sometimes she just wanted to hit things and she would be better after she did that. Fighters were trained to contain their anger until combat came around and if Storm couldn't fight then she had no outlet for it. She dearly hoped that Randall's techniques would involve some fighting. If they didn't, well, there wasn't much chance that they would work well. The few times the fighters had been talked to about containing their anger they had been told to count backwards. It had never worked for Storm. She would have to count backwards from ten multiple times to stop feeling angry and even then she would still take the first opportunity possible to punch the target of her anger. The superiors had given up on getting her to control her anger and instead settled for keeping her from killing any civilians. What seemed like a reasonable goal had only been mostly achieved.
She took a few deep breaths and managed to slip off to sleep.