24You all can thank, or curse, Chris O'Farrell for giving me this idea. An OC/SI gets ripped out of his home dimension when the Dragoons were testing a repair on one of their supporting jumpships. What will happen next, and will it change the whole Inner Sphere?
A man out of time, and almost out of time.
Chapter 1
By cliff
Fact Checked and Sanity Checked by Drakensis
Editor (that I at least sometimes listen to, so the screw ups are all mine) Drakensis
Ethel 'Jessie' Bowe was slammed forward and then back as she felt the familiar sensation of fingers playing with her intestines. Thanks to her years as a spacer, the Chief knew that something was wrong even before the built in speakers of her space-rated helmet activated.
"This is Captain Karrer of the M/V Oste. We are declaring a mis-jump emergency. I say again missed jump emergency…. This is not a drill."
Jessie's head snapped over to a display that was call a Christmas tree due to the green, yellow, and red lights it would display. Now it was all red as systems checks came in from all over the jumpship. She pushed a button that activated the short range radios built into every person on the ship. "Head count, status, and then damage report. You all know the drill."
There were many shipping lines that didn't require all of their jump crews to have full space suits, and Jessie called them walking dead to their faces. This had been a test jump after major repairs and she had made sure that not only did every person have their suits and helmets, but each team leader had inspected everyone on the ship to make sure they were correctly sealed. All before she gave the okay to make this test jump.
Jessie was looking at a bent main support beam for the KF core. She could tell that the whole room was bent about 16 degrees and that would match what the other teams reported. The whole ship now had a clockwise twist of 14 to 20 degrees going bow to stern.
"Chief Bowe."
Jessie frowned, "This is the chief."
Over the speaker, "Chief, the captain wants you to take a team and check out a chemical alarm that just activated in Cargo Bay 2 over on the hulk."
Jessie was already turning to face toward the nearest hatch. "This is the Chief, copy. Check out chemical alarm over on the hulk."
"Oh my god!" Then the sound the chief knew was of a person getting sick in a closed space helmet, in Zero G reached her ears over the suits radio.
Jessie's training kicked in and she launched herself towards the open hatch that led to the cargo bay they were checking out. A body in a silver suit was coming toward her with pin wheeling arms. Choking sounds came to her ears just as the Chief reached out and took a hand full of suit near the ribs. With a hard tug the suit started rotating hard along the spacer's axis. In a few seconds the imparted centrifugal force would move the 'semi-fluid objects' away from the airways of the endangered spacer.
With the spacer now more or less out of danger, the older chief turned and looked around and she felt something fighting to come up from her stomach. She pushed off the deck so that she could hover a dozen meters over the 'floor' of the sectioned off cargo bay as her mind tried to process what she was seeing. After who knows how many heartbeats she just pushes a button on her suit.
"Captain, this is Chief Bowe. You need to see this. We have a problem... A big one."
Blackwell compound, New Valencia
Federated Suns
I don't remember what I first remembered or what had started my mind working again from a place so black and quiet. I think it was some sounds going on around me, but was it the beep beep, or was it the sound of me moving on plastic bed sheets? The world started to come back as little slits of light that slowly grew larger as my eyes started to work again.
"So that is what purple tastes like." At least that was what I thought I said, or I could have just thought that was what I had heard.
With my mind working a little faster, I could tell that the ceiling over my head was the drop kind I had seen dozens of times before. The local area also had a smell I knew too well for my own liking. My mind connected the beep, beep, beep coming from my right and the plastic sheets over most of my body. I was in a hospital…. again. I couldn't remember why I would be in another one, but I was damn sure in one again.
I must have made a sound because the limited world around me changed again. A long-fingered hand came into view, and it slides the curtain from around my bed in a soft sound of metal moving on metal. The level of sound made the back of my head want to fall off and go running under the bed. Now that I could see better, after many eye blinks to force things into some kind of focus, I could tell that I was definitely in a hospital room, but I thought I was in the only bed, sitting in a room that seemed very large from my point of view.
"Well, this is not the VA." (Again, that was what I meant to say, I think. All my ears heard was "Wlml vaaa.") You never ever got a private room in that place. At best you would 'only' have to share a room with one other and a lot of times it was a four man room to recover in. This all went through my mind that was still very foggy but getting better every few seconds.
The hand now had a face, but I could not see the body from a combination of my position and the lack of fully clear vision. Before I could make my lips move again. I got a bright light shined into my eyes and a few humph noises before the now blurrier face came back closer to me. She was still out of focus, but I could tell it was a woman. I must say that she smelled….. great!
In a soft voice. "They're not ready for you yet. I'm going to give you something to help you go back to sleep, at least until they can see you."
Okay what the Hell is going on! You never let someone sleep who just had a major head injury. Before I can even try to ask another question, the blackness reached up and Gibb's slapped me.
An Ting
Draconis Combine
7 Feb 3025.
Jaime Wolf was sitting in a full command meeting of the Wolf's Dragoons. If something important happened, then Jaime would have been told about it as soon as possible but for a mercenary unit as large and spread out as his, these quarterly meetings were important to keep everyone basically on the same sheet of music. So far all of the line regiments had finished their reports with the Zeta Battalion commander just returning to his seat.
Colonel Griffith Nikitich's head popped up from his digital device. The sudden movement from someone normally so still you would sometimes think that the man was asleep, or dead drew Jaime's attention to the commander of 7th Kommando, the Dragoon's special forces unit.
The colonel met Jaime's eyes. "Sir, I just received an update on one of my development assets, the Oste." He looked around "For those unfamiliar with the name that's the pirate Merchant class jumpship that we captured some years ago. We took her in hand and started modifying her to better support long ranged Kommando mission and WolfNet if the need came up." It was common for WolfNet and the 7th Kommandos to use some of the same assets from time to time and by now it was so common that it didn't cause that many issues between the two different groups.
One of the changes to the Dragoons operating plans had been the banning of using HPG systems after they found out that there was only one group left behind from the Star League that used them. It would cause issues if a mercenary unit had their own HPGs to use them, and - more importantly - maintain them. If the Dragoons used a HPG on a planet that had a ComStar presence, they would notice it. Probably the Great Houses would as well and that would be a mess of trouble.
WolfNet and the Kommandos had an exemption to that rule but used the HPGs very sparingly and only after a lot of planning was expended. This hidden capability had saved the Dragoon's hides more than once, but it was not a move that could be taken without risk. To cover this gap, more jumpships were needed and they could not be 'seen' as being paid for by the Dragoons. That would kind of ruin the whole idea of spying on someone.
"Yes, sir. They were doing some testing of the last few modifications over New Valencia. They were running a test on the jump engine with a short jump between the Zenith and Nadir points before they could be cleared to leave the start system. End state is that the jumpship's hull and jump core are totally wrecked and not repairable with current Dragoon assets on site."
Jaime's eyes only widened a little bit at this odd news. He was always told about it when major end items were rendered useless for whatever reason. They were a mercenary unit after all, and the loss of 380+ million C-Bills worth of equipment was a major end item in anyone's book within the Inner Sphere. But it wasn't just the jumpship, the members of what everyone called Wolf's Dragoons were also very important to Jaime. "Mis-jumps are nothing to take lightly. How many people did we lose?"
Griffith made a face that was rarely seen on this man, as he read down the document that he had just been sent. "It says that we didn't lose anyone. But they found seven bodies in one of the cargo holds of the Mule. They only found the bodies after a smoke alarm sounded off along with all of the other alarms that had to be sounding at the same time within a wrecked jumpship. It turned out that this alarm was caused by a wood burning cooker of some kind smoking up the cargo hold."
He stopped talking as he now looked at a few attached images that had been sent to him through the ComStar managed HPG network. "Blake's Blood!" He was a combat veteran, and what he saw almost made him gag. He wasn't even going to try to understand what he had just seen as his higher brain functions took a short vacation from reality. Suddenly and without another word he slide the digital device over to his boss.
Jaime kept eye contact with the officer that was turning a mix of grey and green, but he did still reach for the device. When Griffith didn't say another word but looked like someone had just walked over his grave, Jaime looked down at the image. Jaime had been a mech jock for longer than most people from where he had come from. He had seen up close and personal a lot of ways that people could die, but what this image showed him was a first for him to witness.
Jaime looked over to Stanford Blake and kept is face still. "This might be better for your department to take over. Have the local WolfNet team see what they can find out about all of this. Sometimes mis jumps can be a blessing in disguise, or so the Scorpions say. Now who is next? I have a meeting with Tetsuhara tonight, and I don't want to be late…again." What didn't need to be said was that this information, like anything else connected to the Dragoons, was to be kept out of any ears that were not one of them.
Blackwell Compound, New Valencia
Federated Suns
End of Feb 3025.
One second, I was in a drug induced nap and the next second I was awake like someone had flipped on a light switch or I had just mainlined a full can of Rip-it. That wasn't uncommon for me to perform this kind of miracle, not after what I had been through in my life. My body has a way of burning through painkillers like a kid through their Halloween candy on the 1st of Nov. And that skill both impressed the medics and concerned any sawbones I had been forced to deal with. This time I made sure that I kept my body from moving, after mentally waking up. That was another trick that I had trained myself to be able to do over my years of being in the army.
After letting my ears work out that I was alone, at least in the local area, I let my eyes slowly open. "Yep, it's a hospital room. Great." The beeping of my heart monitor and whatever the box over my head was doing to make the same noise was new. The room was open with the privacy curtain removed to give me a view from the walls to door. As I looked around, and I slowly let my head turn towards the light. I had a window, and a nice sized one at that!
"Yep, not a VA or military hospital. So. Well. Where am I?" I knew the drill: think and work the issue with what God and Uncle Sam gave me.
I could tell that my mind was still very fuzzy, then again, big surprise. If I was a betting man, I was on some very heavy drugs. I could not move my legs or arms just yet, but they felt…. heavy in a way that I couldn't put my finger on. About the only thing I could move was what was above the neck. "Oh, that is not good."
What happened to me? Okay what did I remember? Me and the guys were having a cookout to celebrate the judge signing off on my divorce from Crazy Woman 2 or as the guys called her….. ex-Wife Number Three. Oh, and it was a long weekend.
Having two or three exes was not that uncommon, and if you didn't have at least two broken relationships after twenty years of service, you were asked some pointed questions on how you were able to pull that amazing feat off and how much it cost you.
Now that I was thinking about it. I could remember the smoke smell of good mesquite wood slowly burning, and the taste of my second beer. Then I remembered pain, lots and lots of pain. It was even more pain than when I had lost my M1 tank outside of Fallujah.
"Okay go back." What else did I remember? I had blanks spots. But was it because of the drugs or whatever gatecrashed my cookout with a boatload of surprise violence?
Trying to work that out was cut short when the door to my private room opened. I pulled my eyes away from the window to see a pretty face in loose-fitting clothes entering 'my' room. They didn't look like the nurses' scrubs that I had seen before, but they looked like they did the same kind of job.
"Oh! You're not supposed to be awake for another hour!" She didn't shriek, just used a tone normally used for a boy with his hands still in the cookie jar. It also was a voice that was just a little too loud for this room. She walked up to the bed with sure steps and went to work. "How are you doing? It's a pretty day, don't you think?"
Oh god she was a nurse, only someone like that would sound so cheerful in a hospital this early in the morning. Then her hands went under the covers.
OH GOD WHAT IN THE HELL IS she doing! Oh, crap I can't feel her hand! What the Hell happened to me!
I was seriously about to come unhinged for a few seconds. I saw an off yellow bottle being pulled up and then out of my limited line of sight. Oh, please God, please let that be my pee in that pee bottle. Please let Crackers still be down there.
Hey at least I kept my mouth shut, two points. That was another trick you learned in the military when you dealt with hospital staff. Keep your damn mouth shut. She had hit a button and I started to raise in the bed and her outer hand had reached under the covers around my hips again. At first, I had no idea what she was doing until I saw the bed pan and plastic tube come back out into my limited field of view. You would not take the catheter out if there was damage down there. I was able to get my breathing under control only because now that I was not flat on my back. The new position made it so that I could also see that both of my arms and legs were in casts. At least that explained some of why I couldn't move my arms or legs.
Before I knew it, I had a straw in my mouth. Oh god did that feel good! It was a large water cup, and I drank most of the water it held without stopping unless I really needed to breathe.
After a huge amount of water, she fed me hospital food mixed in with more water like I was a baby. She even was talking to me like a child. I made a note that if I had the use of my arms, I might have throttled her on the spot. I had never liked being mothered, at least not after high school. Then again, I was not speaking back only looking at her. When I tried to talk, only a dry croak came out.
About the only information she said of any value, was that as soon as the doctor came and talk to me, they could move deeper into my recovery. First they could remove the nerve blocker that they had given me to stop me accidentally doing more damage to myself and to make sure I didn't undo all the work they had done for me. I understood the words that she was saying, but I didn't remember nerve blockers working like the way I was feeling. I was put through one more degrading act, before I could see the saw bones. I had to have a sponge bath, and that is something that this normal and healthy thirty-two year old man should not have to deal with. Then again, I remembered about a half a hundred other vets that had to deal with the same situation, after a bad run in with IEDs or RPGs.
One bad thing about getting a sponge bath by a pretty woman. I had to use my brain to keep my mind off of what she was working on what part of my naked body. You have no idea what doing multiplication tables can do as a distraction for….. an uncomfortable situation. The brain was like a muscle, the more you used it the more flexible it would remain. That was something one of my reclass instructors had told the class of old farts like me, and I had to admit it was seeming to be true at this time. And I think it will be proven true to my satisfaction a number of times in my near future.
I was never alone after the nurse showed up for more than half a minute at any one time. I could tell also that there were at least four 'nurses' keeping a physical eye on me, and my inner alarm sounded off with how they were acting like I might jump out the window or something. When the doctor came in, he was not alone. Now I expected the nurse to leave with the old saw bones in the room, but she had not moved from where she was standing with a thick notebook or Ipad of some kind in her hands. It must be letting her see all of my medical readouts on one screen and who knew what else it would tell her.
"So, Mr. Mendenhall how are you feeling?" The man in the white lab coat spoke but the tone was pure military.
For about half a second, I almost asked him how he thought I might feel, but instead I just gave him the answer he was looking for instead of being a pain. "ukuss….hiiiiit…..meee."
He asked me a few dozen of the normal questions that you would get after getting your bell rung, but nothing that was a surprise. I must have answered them correctly as my throat started to work again. At a head nod to the nurse, I felt first cold in my arm and then slowly I could feel something in other parts of my body. That was when I found out about the rest of the damage that had been done to me. When he told me about the broken bones and then they put an image up on the large flat screen at the foot of this bed as proof of the damage. I could not help but be… impressed.
Okay twenty-five broken bones, and they also just happened to be each of the bones that I have broken before, and strangely the breaks were in the same places I remembered. That has to be a record! It was just too bad that my Spidey senses were ringing like the bells of a medieval church for a noble's first wedding. Something was going on and they were not talking about it.
###
Note:
The images: Think of the movie Philadelphia Experiment at the end when you see what happened to the rest of the crew of the destroyer.
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