Somehow, Charity arrived in the med bay after everyone else had. Despite beginning the journey first, she'd managed to get lost a handful of times before taking a moment to calm herself before heading out again. By the time she got there, Jed was already working on Francis and King was seated near Mister Cooper, who appeared to be working on himself.

"Tsk," she clicked softly, heading over to where he was resting against the shelf and slapping the disinfectant out of his hand. "Stop that," Charity muttered, opening the drawers and managing to find some gauze, bandages, tweezers, and cotton pads. "The med bay is wonderfully organized," she noted, perhaps trying to lift the mood or distract from their business in here, "Do we have you to thank for that, Doctor?" she asked Jed.

Carefully, the debutante set to re-disinfecting the wounds, covering the less severe ones with butterfly stitch bandages, gauze, and tape, and grimacing at the ones that would need some stitching and proper care. She could do it, theoretically, but she'd leave those bigger ones to Jed's expertise. Once she'd done all she could for him, Charity turned to where King sat and kneeled before him.

"I'm going to try to remove this shoe, see what we're dealing with, and maybe get it cleaned up. We'll have to buy you a new pair," she told him, smiling sheepishly as she looked up at his face. "Won't that be fun? Maybe we can demand Mister Little Sebastian pay for them himself," she added, her smile apologetic now.

"Not hardly," Jedikiah replied as to if he was responsible for the orderly nature of the med bay. It was more or less set up as per SOP, standard operational procedure. Everything in its place, a place for everything.

As Charity moved to get a blood soak shoe of of Akhsar King's foot he spoke quietly, calmly; much as she had been acting. "One moment Captain. That might let loose a bit of flow we don't need quite yet."

Dr. Rembo bandaged and moved to assist Charity, "such a wonderful and appropriate name you have Captain."
He raised the foot And he helped to get the shoe off King, checking for severe blood loss as he did so.

Talk about an exit. A street fight, a drug delivery, a gang war, and an explosion at the docs. In terms of flying under the radar this was... well, FUBAR, to put it mildly. But they were all alive, bloody, battered, bruised, but alive. Well, Francis was shot, and unconscious, but alive until the Doc said otherwise.

Any one you walk away from, right?

Once they broke atmo Charity and the Doc made themselves busy giving orders and checking the wounded. King was impressed by Charity, she wasn't quite a real Captain yet, but the foundation was there. When he took the job to find her, if someone had told him that she'd be Captaining a ship with a crew, he wouldn't have believe it. But here she was, doing her best to act like a real Captain, even with the shock and adrenaline in her system. Remarkable woman.

King and Coop supported each-other too the med bay. There was no shame in it, they were both soldiers, and getting roughed up was nothing new to them.

He heard Cooper mutter something about a tiny bastard, and given their mutual quintessences King could guess who he was thinking about. He grunted in agreement with the sentiment.

Once in the Med-bay Cooper deposited King into a chair. The Doc was busy with Francis, so Coop started checking and disinfecting his own wounds. Each puff of disinfecting spray was accompanied by sharp yelp, which King couldn't help but chuckle at. Disinfecting spray caused stronger pain responses than most battle wounds, he didn't know why. Something Psychological probably, or the lack of adrenaline.

"Don't laugh, you're next, mate."

King grinned and put his hands up in mock surrender. Coop was right, and as the adrenaline left Kings system he became more and more aware of his foot. It wasn't going to be fun getting that boot off.

"Okay... maybe I'll get a rifle..."

King pointed at Coop and then gave him a thumbs up. "I'm telling ya, a good short barreled rifle with extended mags and a couple grenades would have made today much smoother. Or a tank. A tank would have been nice too, maybe an airstrike... Man I miss air support."

King was very confused for a moment when Charity entered the Med-bay, she had left the cargo area before he and Cooper, and they were moving much slower than usual. She must have ducked into a room to compose herself, because she seemed much more herself as she bustled around taking care of Coopers injuries. Once she had finished she turned to King, and as the prophet Cooper had said, King was next.

Charity, in all her frippery, knelt in front of him. King blinked. It wasn't something he would have expected her to do on purpose. "I'm going to try to remove this shoe, see what we're dealing with, and maybe get it cleaned up. We'll have to buy you a new pair," She looked up at him with a sheepish smile. "Won't that be fun? Maybe we can demand Mister Little Sebastian pay for them himself," He smiled grimly. "Yeah, a new pair of boots is the least he could do."

He was abruptly pulled out of the oddity of the moment when Charity touched his boot, and his body reminded him what pain felt like. He yelped, not unlike how Cooper had just few minutes prior. He grimaced and made a soothing gesture to Charity, whose smile had turned apologetic. "Its fine, I've had worse."

The Doc came over to assist Charity, which King took to mean that Francis was gonna be fine. "One moment Captain. That might let loose a bit of flow we don't need quite yet." "Its alright Doc, definitely fractured, might be broken. Don't think it broke the skin though, or I'd probably have bled through the boot with how much I've been moving on it."

King gritted his teeth as they got the boot off, and as the Docs fingers poked and prodded to check then extend of the injury. "Well, whats the damage, Doc?"

"I'm telling ya, a good short barreled rifle with extended mags and a couple grenades would have made today much smoother. Or a tank. A tank would have been nice too, maybe an airstrike... Man I miss air support."

Growing impatient, thinking of his wounds as a mere annoyance, he quipped back:

"Tell ya mate right now I miss the medics..."

The impatient veteran was rifling through the med bay cabinets next to him and found a canister. It would resemble a shaving cream container, but inside was a coagulating foam that solidified and sealed the wound. Rather than wait for the doc to do his work, the mechanic and former Special Forces engineer was plenty used to settling for field medicine. Coagulating foam like this was worth more than its weight in any precious metal during the war. Now he was serving on a top-of-the-line vessel that had it stocked away in the medical supplies. The doc would still need to check some of his other more superficial wounds later, and an x-ray might be in order after all the hits he took out there.

But Cooper Brown, exile of the Golden Trail, was not keen to sit about and be tended to right now. He remembered the old man who'd taken a stand with him took a bullet, but went straight for the cockpit. Nobody had checked on him yet, and Coop knew he was in shape enough that he wasn't going to keel over any time soon. Old rule from his training. You never exfil until you have a complete headcount. He could feel the ship lift off earlier, but he could tell they'd stopped moving. He pressed down the button on the nozzle and filled his stab-wound with the goop.

Grunting as he got up from his seat on a counter in the med-bay he addressed the Captain, and Doc Jed:

"I know this bollocks might give me cancer in ten years but somebody's gotta go check on that law-man."

Casually, he tossed the canister of coagulating foam to Jed. There was a faint look of concern in his face. The sort of bad feeling a man of his history was well aqcuianted with was working his way through his bones. Not giving anyone a chance to make him stay put, he was marching through the sleek halls of The Odette with a slight limp. Grunting every other step or so he trudged along until he got to the threshold of the pilot's domain.

The door slid open with a hiss, Cooper's eyes went straight to the limp hand with a trickle of blood running down it. The former law man had fought well, but blood loss caught up with him. He was breathing, but his arms were idly hanging at his sides and his eyes were closed. Darius had faded off into a dream, meanwhile back in the real world the mechanic slapped the intercom.

"Doc! We need you in the wheelhouse! Bring that bloody medical foam..."

By the time anyone arrived Cooper was already taking over control of the helm from the other pilot's seat. The Odette roared back to life. They were out of the atmosphere but had stopped moving once they escaped the confines of gravity. He noticed there was a red indicator on their radar dot. The lawman had forgotten to get clearance to even take off from the local tower. Last thing they needed now was the local feds coming after them for a traffic infraction after all those gangsters got dropped in the street.

"Tower... this is Odette requesting clearance for take-off and expedited departure through atmo...How's traffic looking?"

Now the mechanic just had to hope whoever was working at the tower wasn't paying much attention, or didn't care. The Golden Trail exile's hand hovered over the throttle.

*Narration assist from NSB

"Its fine, I've had worse," King assured her, her smile turning into a gentle laugh, despite the seemingly dire situation they'd just escaped.

"One moment Captain. That might let loose a bit of flow we don't need quite yet," Jed cautioned before she could yank the shoe free of King's damaged foot. That was a good point... Luckily, they had a real doctor with them to remember such caution, instead of working solely on theoretical information and things they'd read in books. She had all the hypothetical know how without any of the real world experience.

"Its alright Doc, definitely fractured, might be broken. Don't think it broke the skin though, or I'd probably have bled through the boot with how much I've been moving on it," he told the doctor. Charity let out a breath, thankful that things hadn't been as bad as she wagered they could have been.

"Such a wonderful and appropriate name you have Captain," Jed complimented as he helped her with King's foot, which was blessedly blood-less.

"Well, whats the damage, Doc?" King asked curiously, followed by Coop's, "I know this bollocks might give me cancer in ten years but somebody's gotta go check on that law-man."

The Captain flinched slightly as the canister of foam flew in their direction, only settling once it had reached it's intended target, which wasn't her. She took a long, slow, careful breath. Clearly, she was a little more shaken up about their adventure than she'd thought. There was a pit in her stomach and her hands shook slightly as the adrenaline finally wore off. Had she ever been this exhausted? She worked carefully alongside Jed, acting as his nurse while he tended to King's battered foot.

"Thank you, again, all of you," she said to anyone and everyone in the med bay. "I know that whole...scenario was a lot more violent than we had anticipated. I can assure you I will be speaking very sternly with Mister Little Sebastian and get this all sorted out," she continued, looking back up at King and finally standing, her hands brushing off the front of her dress. "King, I'd like to speak to you alone about...the details of what happened. As the XO," she requested.

"Doc! We need you in the wheelhouse! Bring that bloody medical foam..." interrupted Mister Cooper's voice from the comms unit on the wall. Charity looked down at Jed with wide, worried eyes.

After the rest of the crew scattered, Pele was left pacing around the cargo bay like an abandoned wind-up toy, gradually running out of steam as the adrenaline that had fueled her mad dash for the ship began to subside. She was at a loss of what else to do; she had no station to man, and she was uninjured and therefore in no need of medical attention of any kind -- as far as she knew. A crisis counselor might have begged to differ.

The frazzled companion eventually wandered off in search of a place to sit down and regain her composure. She glided through the foyer, past the med bay -- only distantly registering the voices within -- and found herself in the forward lounge. Forgoing all grace and decorum, she slouched on a chair, placed her elbows on the table and leaned her head on hands, trying to make sense of the mess she was in.

At least it's better than being with Cecil back on Londinum, she told herself in an effort to make herself feel better about her life choices.

Was it though?

No, it was definitely better than going back to Cecil now that she'd managed to piss him off enough to send his goons to manhandle her... but was it better than if she'd never left in the first place and just accepted her fate of being the trophy wife of a crime boss? At least then she'd have some power and status, right? Now she was just a lackey. No, even worse than that. She was someone you had do your dirty work without properly cluing them in on what was going on.

She, Pele Cortina Kesher, was... a patsy.

The realization cut through Pele's daze like a hot knife, and something begun bubbling in her chest, the same anger she'd felt when she'd realized Cecil had sent Johnny to pick her up like she was some lost and found item. Who did this Tiny Tim person think he was, making a patsy out of her? Her fingers, which she'd been running through her hair, balled up into fists.

Jedikiah caught the canister and sat is aside. He wasn't a fan of the dermo-superglue except in emergencies.
Like field dressing when there's too many holes and not enough hands to tend them. Cooper Brown struck Jed as a veteran, though there wasn't anything about him that indicated where or for whom. Later he'd try to pin the man down and cut through the magic gloop that he had used to seal his own injuries.

The shoe of Akhsar King was off. Fractured was an understatement. Mangled would be more accurate. King insisted he'd had worse, Jed would not have like to seen that, or even the scars. He gently pressed King in to a more relaxed and reclined position and elevated the foot. It swelled up fast as the boot was off.

"You might need a lollipop after this one Mr. King." 
The Doc would indeed need pictures but for now he gave a direct shot of anti-inflammatory.
"The way it's swelling up it's going to hurt. More."
A hand reached for another injection. "Painkiller?" He offered, holding it up.
"A very good one?"

Cooper was gone and then on the commm, "Wheelhouse?" He said, then, "oh. Of course."
He took the foam coagulant and his medical bag after giving the injections to King.
"Keep it elevated." He meant the foot. And he meant it for the Captain as much as King.
"If gets any bigger than a football, give him another injection."

Then with a graceful turn he exited the sickbay and raced to the bridge.

 = = =

On the bridge Mr. Cooper was doing the flying and the clearance paperwork.
Jedikiah slipped his arms under Darius Black and got him to the floor then cut quickly away at his clothing with a scalpel. Once his injuries were apparent he went to work.
"

When Charity and the Doc finally got his boot off King was gritting his teeth and his knuckles were white from gripping the arms of the chair. There was a brief moment of relief, but it was short lived as the throbbing in his foot indicated that the swelling was starting.

"You might need a lollipop after this one Mr. King." King chuckled through gritted teeth as the Jed and Charity worked. "The way it's swelling up it's going to hurt. More." "Pains nothing new to me, Doc. I'll be fine, just get on with it."

"Painkiller?" Jed offered, holding up an injector full of the stuff. King's scalp was suddenly wet with sweat, and he emphatically shook his head. "A very good one?" "No painkillers. No narcotics. No offense Doc, I know you're all "Do No Harm" and what not, but if you stick me with that thing I'll put you through that bulkhead over there." He paused, a sheepish look immediately appearing on his face. "I'll feel bad about it, but... yeah. Sorry. No painkillers." The refusal had come out much more... intense than he had intended. He'd apologize again later, for now he just let the man work.

At some point Cooper got up and left, something about checking on the lawman they'd picked up.

Jed looked to be about done for the moment, and Charity finally stood up from where she had been helping."Thank you, again, all of you," she said, looking around at those still in the Med Bay. "I know that whole...scenario was a lot more violent than we had anticipated. I can assure you I will be speaking very sternly with Mister Little Sebastian and get this all sorted out... King, I'd like to speak to you alone about...the details of what happened. As the XO," she requested.

"Sure thing Cherry. Soon as the Doc gets a cast on me I'll be up and - Doc! We need you in the wheelhouse! Bring that bloody medical foam..." Coopers voice cut in over the intercom. King swore under his breath, only now realizing the hadn't been under thrust for a while.

Jed grabbed his medical bag and headed for the bridge. King gave Charity a worried look. "Day keeps getting better and better..." A dead lawman, former or otherwise, would be a very bad thing to have on their ship.

Eavesdown Docks - Flight Control Tower

"Hey, Rog'. You should come take a look at this."

Roger, a cigar clamped in his teeth the same as it had for the last twenty-five years he'd been operating the control tower at Eavesdown Dock. "What now?" He said under his breath as he went over to the window to see what Martin was talking about. In twenty-five years Roger had seen it all, and while Martin had been there about half as long, he was just as jaded. His joints creaked as he got up off his chair and shuffled over to the window. Martin flipped open the blinds and Roger got a good look out over the entirety of the docks and what he saw dropped his jaw, sending his cigar tumbling to the ground. "Mother of god." It looked like the entire docks were under attack, but not from an invading force. It looked more like microscopic antibodies attacking themselves, confused where the infection may be. The antibodies might have missed Odette taking off from the ground, but Roger didn't. He ran over to the comm and picked up a line to call them, but on board the ship, Cooper had beaten him to it.

"Tower... this is Odette requesting clearance for take-off and expedited departure through atmo...How's traffic looking?"

Roger pulled out the daily log of ships cleared to take off. It was a foolhardy effort, maintained more by habit than successful use. But every once in a while he got lucky. He scrolled through the list of ships, knowing most of them were pseudonyms.

Mai Thai.
Medici.
The Nebuchadnezzar.
Nutcracker.
Orange Peony.
O-ren.
Peabody.

No Odette. He typed out a quick cross-reference in the Cortex Registry of ships and didn't see Odette listed there either. He sighed and picked up the comm. "Roger..." He tried not to think about the years of jokes at the expense of his name being the affirmative radio call. "...Odette, was it? I don't see you in the log. What's your ID number?" Roger looked up to see that a number of other ships were leaving and his switchboard was filling up incoming calls. Off mic, Roger turned to Martin. "Hey, Martin. A little help?" His partner was nowhere to be seen. "Shit."

"Uh, roger that tower...I definitely have an ID number." A pause. "Bloody over-designed piece of garbage has the ID number buried under some bloody pile of rutting menus and icons... Mate... I'm filling in for a co-worker and between you and me we're having a real one. Vessel name is Odette, arrival and departure date are both today. You want, we can wait for the next closest federal patrol to come by and take us in for the flight control infraction, I understand..."

Roger rolled his eyes. Guy seemed honest enough, but the flight controller had enough experience to know the first one to leave a fight usually started it. He reckoned Port Authority would want to talk to this "Odette". He looked again for his partner as the call request still came in. "Standby, Odette." Roger turned from the Comm panel and made his way toward the open door where he assumed that Martin had gone.

"Roger that..."

Wincing at his name, but glad the ship was doing as told, Roger peeked around the corner to see Martin laying halfway down the stairs, blood pooling from a wound in his head. He barely got a look at the broken glass from the bottle that had brained his partner before being ambushed with thrown projectiles himself. Eavesdown was a war zone and he could see the flashing lights of Port Authority descending into the chaos. Wouldn't be long until the Federals in riot armor would arrive. "I'm too old for this shit." He muttered, before returning to the control panel and shutting the whole thing down. Roger grabbed the mementos that had collected on his desk over the years and promptly retired.

---

On board the Odette, things weren't fairing much better. As Cooper waited for a response that would never come, Jed may have been pleased to find that while Darius' injury was severe enough to cause conscious losing blood-loss, it was a clean through and through wound that would likely only need to be closed and the patient replenished of blood. Of course one couldn't be too sure it didn't hit anything vital, but after years of experience, Jed had a hunch Darius would be just fine after some stitches and rest.

Moments passed and no word yet from Flight Control and just when Cooper might have considered calling again, the line went dead. Cooper shrugged and hit the accelerator and the Black unfolded before them.

Just because the bleeding had stopped, didn't mean the wounds were healed. Odette had a few days to think about everything before they got to Iscariot.

END OF EPISODE 1.