Episode 0: To Steal A Pirate Ship

[Missy Etheridge]

Missy did not glare at the interruption. She did not glare because nice girls Do Not Glare, and she didn't slam the drawer with the lollipops in it shut because nice girls Do Not Slam Drawers. Missy smiled. She slid the drawer quietly closed, without taking a lollipop for Holger. She turned to the newcomer in the doorway.

Going by his slender frame and obvious friction with her patient, she could only assume that this must be the Skinny Bastard that Holger had spoken of. "Hi," she said warmly, delicately removing her bloodstained latex glove and extending the hand underneath towards the Skinny Bastard for a handshake. "Dr. Etheridge; I've just been seeing to your friend here. And you--"

Before she could finish requesting an introduction, the coms crackled a-gorram-gain and the first voice -- Melody, Missy reminded herself -- announced their takeoff with another series of orders, prompting the bearded giant into sudden action. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Missy did not like this; she did not like it at all. The medbay was her territory; she ruled it; she was safe there; she was in charge. If she absolutely had to encounter Melody the Pirate Leader face-to-face, she wanted it to be on her own ground.

"Mr. Holger, I really must protest!" she insisted, scampering after him and dragging on his arm with all the efficacy of a fly trying to hold back a spacecraft. "You're not well enough to be up and about yet, especially during a takeoff! Your vestibular senses may still be affected! You could fall and injure yourself again! Mr. Holger!"

[Izak Archer]

Well, there went that opportunity. Holger was as stubborn as his father, but at least less arrogant. He was not surprised by how quickly he grabbed the knife either, it was probably part weapon and part good luck charm at this point. At least, he assumed as much. He shook his head and sighed at his reponse.

He turned his attention to the doctor standing before him. "I'm Izak. I see you already met our Captain's trained..." he was cut off by Melody before he could finish. Izak turned to see Holger take off, with the doctor in tow. He sighed at Holger's request that he deal with the airlock and rolled eyes and sighed.

"Well, good luck keeping up with him," he mumbled. "I'll see you on the bridge!"

He walked to the control panel and called the bridge. "Let me know when we hit your desired altitude."

[Melody]

Melody turned her head to make sure their tech genius was buckled in safely, even going so far as to absently reach over and yank at his seat belt strap to double check that he was in there securely, her eyes scanning the front and console all the while. A small smile crept across her lips as she returned her hand to the yoke. It had been quite some time since she'd been the pilot of this ship, but it felt natural and easy now that she was back. For a moment, the pilot turned to look over her shoulder, half expecting to see Isa standing there in all her Captain's glory, a firm look on her face and her hands clasped behind her back.
Instead, Pete filled her vision and Mel couldn't help but grimace visibly in horrified disappointment. Shaking her head to rid herself of the sight, the woman turned back the right way round and pulled further back on the stick, fire licking at the front window as they pushed through the atmosphere.

"Let me know when we hit your desired altitude," Izak called back to her, presumably from the airlock comms system. Pleased they they'd been able to stop squabbling long enough to do what she'd asked, Mel slowly reached up for the mic and pulled it down toward her, watching the readouts and clearing her throat in preparation. A red light clicked as it flickered off on the console and the flames dissipated to almost nothing, the ship just about cleared.

"Now," Melody ordered over the intercom.

They were just about to break Atmo and so opening the airlock would likely pull the bodies out, allowing them to burn on their way down before the remnants fell dirt side, the biological evidence of the pirate's presence turned to ash and dust.  At least, that was the plan.

Now out of the planet's influence, the ship righted itself and the pull and strain on the passengers became minimal to nonexistent. Melody exhaled and leaned closer to the console, "Make sure you scramble our launch vectors. I don't want us being tracked while we're making our escape," she asked, chewing on her lower lip. The sound of steps approaching stiffened her shoulders, but she finished keying in a general path away from the planet and to more desolate sections of space before locking the manual controls and turning her chair around to eye the threshold. The grin that began to pull at the corners of her mouth froze and turned to stoic nothingness as Holger and a complete stranger entered. "Another one?" Melody asked, crossing her arms over her chest and eyeing both the messy screaming idiot and the strange beauty contest competitor. "You alright?" she asked curtly, uncrossing one arm to point in the general direction of Holger's head.

[Holger Heyerdahl]

Dr. Etheridge's protests notwithstanding, Holger managed to get himself, with her following closely, to the Bridge as ordered. Blood still pooled from the wound on his forehead, and though the small square of gauze sopped some of the red, it didn't hold, and slipped comically off of his face and onto the floor, where Holger allowed it to stay. "I am fire." He said, not realizing the error of his words. "I found her in the..." He searched for the word. Whether this was another instance of his head injury interfering with his faculties or that he just really didn't know what it was one couldn't be sure. "Doctor room." Close enough. "She is a doctor."

Satisfied with his status report, Holger turned and regarded Pete, who seemed, like so many when compared to Holger's estimation of himself, small and pathetic. "What shall we do with them, Medaly?" In order to keep them calm, Holger put a hand between them and his mouth so as to hide their potential fate. "I can kill them." He said in a whisper that would get him kicked out of most libraries. Not that Holger would ever be caught dead in a library. "Like the others." Still not a real whisper. To emphasize, he slid a thumb across his throat.

Holger lowered his hand and turned to their prisoners and gave them a big, toothy, not-at-all-reassuring-but-meant-to-be smile. "No need to fear little ones. You will be safe with us." A swivel back to Melody, with questioning eyebrows that said, eehhhh whatayathink? There was a lot of upkeep with prisoners; securing them, and feeding them, and... well that was it really. But it wasn't a task that Holger relished. Killing them, on the other hand, while a bit messy (depending on how you did it) one just had to get rid of the bodies. And they already had a system in place for that so, as Holger saw it, easy peasy. He was good either way.

[Rashy Pete]

Once the blonde's harsh and judging eyes turned away from him, Olo crawled pathetically in the direction of the gestured-toward washroom, and pulled himself up toward the sink. He splashed some water in his eyes and tried to think happy thoughts. "It's fine. You're fine. This is fine. Everything's fine. If you ask them nicely and don't do anything stupid, they'll probably drop you off at the nearest spaceport and you'll be back home in no time. Yeah. That's right. No problem. She seems... reasonable. And confident. Really... Well... rounded..." Olo glanced toward his own broken, sagging face in the mirror before the sobs racked him. "Why are they always so pretty and so mean at the same time!?" The half-wailing lamentations drowned beneath the sound of the engines firing.

Before he could say something to the effect of "oh no please oh God why" the mechanic crashed against the wall. Once the ship leveled off at an angle that wouldn't roast its contents as it broke the atmosphere, Olo's attempts to resist the G forces propelled him forward. Trying to stop himself from ricocheting off another wall, he instead planted one worn brown boot into the toilet. "Ah, come on!" Olo freed his foot after a momentary struggle, flinging a mildly disgusting amount of toilet water into the air in the process. Meaning to steady himself, Olo instead set the wet foot covering in the freshly pooled puddle on the floor, slipped, and bumped his face against the hands dryer.

"I just wanna go home!" His cry could be heard by anyone on the bridge. After a quiet pause, the door reopened and Olo stepped out with one pant leg wet below the knee and a slight trickle of blood running from his temple. Taking one look at the newest additions, particularly the big, fiery bear thing who covered his mouth as he spoke, Olo's expression dripped into exasperated sorrow and he made a promise to himself to never go to work again. The bear man grinned as if to show Olo the very tooth daggers with which he meant to peel his face, and attempted to reassure him in a manner that came across as a cruel Reaver joke. "No need to fear little ones. You will be safe with us."

"I forgot to pee."

[Izak Archer]

Izak waited for Melody to give the order to release their evidence and hit the button with little enthusiasm when she did so.

He walked to the bridge just in time to hear the end of the chat going on, and leaned up against the side of the doorway into the bridge. Well, presumably a doorway judging by the seal around the edge. It probably slid into place like a panel.

His thoughts were interrupted by a panicked cry of mercy from the bathroom from who he assumed was the idiot Melody dragged out of the kitchen. Combine that with Holger's not entirely subtly suggested option, Izak burst out laughing. Loudly.

...and perhaps he sounded darker than intended as well.

Brushing by them all, he dropped into the chair at the gunner's station and turned to face them, shotgun on his lap, just as the idiot from the kitchen came out of the bathroom.

"What, did you tell them we were Reavers or something?" He asked sarcastically as his laughter resumed. He stopped laughing as he noticed one of his eyes were watering. Since no one else was laughing with him, he started right in. "Allow me to explain," he said. "We're not Reavers." He pointed with his thumb over to Holger and Melody. "Although the Browncoat over there with the red beard is tougher than at least 50 of them put together. The woman he is talking with is Melody, one of the most foul mouthed pilots you'd ever meet in the Alliance."

He then pointed to Jo, "He's one of the best hackers in the business."

He finally pointed back to himself, "I was one of the top gunnery officers in the Alliance before ending my enlistment. Now I'm here, and I'll be quite blunt, we're pirates...and one, well, I guess you could call Holger a revolutionary."

There was no point in killing them. They needed a doctor and he assumed the other one was a mechanic of some sort judging by the ingenuity he used in the kitchen. They needed help, and conveniently help was standing with them in the bridge.

"Well, what do the rest of you think, now that I got the introduction out of the way, how about we bring them into the proverbial fold?"

[Joakim Soong]

Jo sat tense in his chair during the take-off, anticipating disaster until the moment they broke atmo. As the ship soared into the black without incident, he relaxed. The hard part was over and, after he took care of any tracking concerns and some follow-up procedures, his job would be done as well. He didn't have any time to dwell on his mixed feelings about that last part, because a bloodied Holger entered the cockpit, followed by a blonde, impeccably groomed stranger. Great, that's just what they needed, more unexpected guests to tend to.

She's the ship's doctor, he realized even before Holger pointed it out; it wasn't very difficult to work out, given the way she was fussing over the giant's head injury. But something seemed off to him. Why is the ship's doctor, of all people, staying behind when the rest of the crew is sick?

They were soon joined by Izak, who gave the strangers a rundown of their crew. Jo didn't like it. The more they told their hostages about themselves, the more likely it was that they'd have to follow the feds out the airlock. As much as Jo disliked the Alliance and everyone who associated with them, he hadn't quite developed the same stomach for callous killing as the rest of the crew had.

"Well, what do the rest of you think, now that I got the introduction out of the way, how about we bring them into the proverbial fold?"

"You want to recruit them?" he asked. He wasn't sure if he liked that any more than the airlock option. He glanced at Melody and tried to gauge her reaction to the situation.

"I mean, I wouldn't be too worried about him," he said, nodding towards the screaming idiot who had now been reduced to a tearful mess of an idiot. "But do you really trust her to poke around your bodies? I'm not sure I would."

He eyed the doctor warily. She didn't look like a particularly bad person, but there was no telling with these Alliance hún dàns -- and wasn't it just common sense to exercise caution when taking in people from the opposite side of the war? And doctors, of all people? They might not carry firearms, but they wielded terrifying power.

"The Hippocratic oath is nice and all, but it's not like medical degrees come with an automatic detonator that makes your head explode if you break it."

[Missy Etheridge]

"You are neither fire nor fine, Mr. Holger," Missy said pointedly, retrieving some spare gauze from her coat pocket and using it to delicately pick up and contain the bloody square of it that had landed on the floor. "And it is my medical recommendation that you return to the 'doctor room' immediately to rest and..." She trailed off. Holger clearly wasn't listening, far too preoccupied with his 'whispered' schemes and grim gestures of death. Remarkable how quickly one could adjust to constant threats of execution; Missy found herself nearly bored of them by this point, and only barely managed to refrain from rolling her eyes at his underwhelming reassurances.

The Screaming Idiot/Possible-Birdman appeared at around the same time, sopping wet, bleeding, smelling of the ship's washroom, and whining about pee. Missy warred internally between staying as far away from him as possible -- lest the dams break, as it were -- and doing something about the bleeding, then reminded herself that her survival depended on her being as useful as possible. She passed him a corner of clean gauze before taking the rest of it to attempt to tend to Holger's more serious wound, though between his height and his animated stride, she had little success reaching it before the Skinny Bastard returned.

He made introductions with rather more maniacal laughter than Missy would have preferred, given the situation, but at least ended with a suggestion that didn't involve guns or airlocks, so Missy marked one point in his favor. Of course, he still hadn't been helpful enough to provide many actual names -- Missy couldn't tell if that was intentional or not -- but she was perfectly content to keep thinking of him as the Skinny Bastard for the time being.

She turned to Melody, who was younger than Missy would have expected -- barely even as old as Missy herself, if she had to guess, but pirates tended to start young, didn't they? Hopefully, their pilot and obvious leader would be amenable to reason. Missy opened her mouth to support the Skinny Bastard's argument, but the hacker got there first.

"You want to recruit them?" he asked, and Missy wasn't at all sure she liked the skepticism in his tone. She couldn't exactly argue with his quick dismissal of the Screaming Idiot, but bristled when he got to her. He had absolutely no right to assume that any doctor would be so cavalier about their oath! Not at all incorrectly, in her case, but Missy dismissed that as irrelevant beside the greater offense of even suggesting it.

"I can assure you that I have absolutely no intention of poking around anyone's body unless it's medically necessary, dàrén," she pointed out primly. "And I might also point out that I'm even now taking on great personal risk to serve my oath in the case of Mr. Holger here, in case you need further evidence of my dedication to my profession."

With that, Missy turned her nose in the air and pivoted on her heel towards Melody once more, then softened her miffed expression back to a gentle smile. "He does still need to return to the medical bay for observation and to re-bandage his wound," she added sweetly. "Permission to escort him back there and see to him?"

Missy discreetly held her breath as she awaited Melody's reply. It was a bit of a risk, acting as though she were under the assumption that the pirate leader was already her captain, but if she could get away from the bridge and back to the medbay, she might just be able to keep her distance from most of the band until she could make her escape at their next port.

[Melody]

"I am fire,” Holger informed them and Melody lowered her hand, recrossing her arms and frowning up at the man. A twinge of worry crept up in the background of her mind and the woman turned her chin away just a bit to stare skeptically at them all out of the corner of her eye. He most assuredly had a concussion and needed to lay down, unless they were all keen on his brain being even more ‘creative’ than it already was.

"I found her in the...Doctor room. She is a doctor,” he added, after some time to think over the word for Medbay or Infirmary or Hospital Room and missing all of them all together. Although, the one he’d settled on wasn’t entirely wrong either, so Melody had to give him points for a half success. Her brow quirked only slightly and the pilot frowned at the blonde, staring at her as she tried to clean up the biohazard waste and tend to the viking man at the same time, which did award her some fraction of a point in the fully frustrated ex-Alliance pilot’s mind.

"I just wanna go home!" came a shout from the bathroom and she turned her head a bit to watch the Screaming Idiot make his way out looking like he’d gotten into a fight with the toilet and lost handsomely. One side of her upper lip twitched upward in a baffled sneer and her brows knit together, eyes narrowing as she tried to work out how this man had made it to today at all. He was an accident in the process of happening. 

"I can kill them,” Holger offered, and really, Melody wasn’t too upset at the idea. One of them likely had access to sharp medical tools and the other was bound to destroy the ship entirely on accident. He might wake up in the morning, trip over his slippers, and manage to slam his hand on a self destruct button no one had known was there…

"I forgot to pee,” he whimpered and the pilot let out a breath, sitting back further in the pilot’s chair and rolling her eyes. Her frustration only grew when Izak began to introduce them like this was a rutting town hall meeting. Mel’s head turned toward the man very slowly, shock, horror, and rage melting into one unidentifiably negative emotion across the features of her face.

"Well, what do the rest of you think, now that I got the introduction out of the way, how about we bring them into the proverbial fold?" He asked. Melody balled up her fist, sitting on the edge of her seat now and ready to lunge across the space between them to throttle the man to death. However, their tech spec managed to verbalize her incredulousness a heap less violently.

"You want to recruit them?…The Hippocratic oath is nice and all, but it's not like medical degrees come with an automatic detonator that makes your head explode if you break it,” Jo reminded them, and that gave Mel pause. She wondered if he could install a detonator in the doctor’s neck that might explode should she turn on the crew and her oath. Icy blue eyes slid over to their hacker and she stared at him in thought, one brow aloft and an worrying amount of interest clear on her face.

"I can assure you that I have absolutely no intention of poking around anyone's body unless it's medically necessary, dàrén, and I might also point out that I'm even now taking on great personal risk to serve my oath in the case of Mr. Holger here, in case you need further evidence of my dedication to my profession." The blonde defended, seemingly offended by the insinuation that she wouldn’t keep to this imaginary oath she and her ilk made to no one in particular. With another eye roll, the pilot stared hard at the blonde when she’d turned to address her, “He does still need to return to the medical bay for observation and to re-bandage his wound. Permission to escort him back there and see to him?"

Finally, Melody stood, waving her hands as though waving away their arguments and speeches. “Okay okay, ni men dou bi zui,” she began curtly, first pointing an accusatory finger at Izak, “First of all, this isn’t a ta ma duh group therapy session. Our business,” she waved her hands at Jo, Izak, Holger, and herself, “isn’t any of their business,” again a wave of the hand, this one encompassing the Screamer and the Doctor. “The next time you introduce us to a gaisi de group of absolute strangers, I’ll throw you out the airlock myself,” she growled, eyeing him through thin slits before she sighed and turned that attention onto Holger.

Her expression softened considerably and Mel took a second to just stare at the concussed giant before making a judgement call, “Don’t kill the blonde. You need to lay down,” blue eyes slid toward the doctor and her expression hardened, “But there’s no way in guai that I’m letting him alone with you,” she informed the woman. “He’s right,” she gestured toward Jo, deliberately not telling the lady his name, “You could be doin’ all this so we don’t throw you out into space, watch your blood boil out your ears through the window. So I’m gonna keep my eye on you until I feel like you’re not a threat. Or you’re dead, whichever comes first,” she told her, shrugging nonchalantly.

Her hands slid over her face and another breath slipped past her fingers. “You, you, and you,” she lowered one hand and pointed at Izak, Jo, and Holger, “go to the Med Bay. I want you both checked out after your…play date with the law, and I’d like you to see if it’s possible to  get camera footage of the medbay redirected to my console here,” she told them, waving her fingertips at the pilot’s nook. Slowly, Melody eyed the Screamer, “Take him with you. After you’re checked out, make him clean his mess in the galley,” she told Izak, rolling her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all. “I’ll see where we’re headed and we’l meet back up in the lounge in…what…” she looked up at Holger, “half an hour? Forty five minutes? Somewhere in there.”

[Holger Heyerdahl]

"I do not need a doctor and I do not need to lay down." Holger said. His defiance might have been admirable, had it not been immediately followed by, "To lay a doctor down would be need to lay a down, doctor. Need lay doctor lay, I do not do doctor." With a stubborn grimace, Holger stopped and collected his thoughts, briefly imagining them as chickens on his family farm, running to and fro outside of their coop. "Naughty chickens..." He said under his breath, not realizing had spoken out loud, nor that his hands were actively reaching for imaginary poultry running about his feet.

It was getting harder to concentrate. The chickens were moving far too fast for him to catch them on his own. A wave of dizziness and nausea took hold, briefly righting his mind. The truth of the situation became clear. He knew what he had to do. His arms full of his thoughts, and imaginary chickens, Holger blinked at Melody as he realized everyone was staring at him. "Do the chickens put away, Melanie?" He handed them over to Melody, plucking some imaginary feathers off of his already filthy clothes. "I need a doctor and I need to lay down. I will kill the chickens but later." He turned and allowed Missy to guide him from the cockpit, stopping only for one last word on the matter. "After the lay down doctor I will be promise to kill chickens." Important enough to say twice, perhaps, at least in his current state. "And the screamer man." Just doing his best, but now, to bed! "And the doctor." Clearly his injury was affecting him. Holger was always a little strange, but for him to- "And the bird man." Oh, come on- "And Izak."

Well.......

[Izak Archer]

Izak shook his head, sighing. "Why not recruit them Jo?" He said with one hand pointed toward Missy. Her caustic wit was certainly impressive enough to keep up.

Melody cut them off before he could continue. He sat there as she expressed her opinion, but part of him paid it little mind. She was still short sited. Isa was the brains behind their operation and at this point, she was probably missing, hence her temper flaring.

"Fine, let's get this over with," Izak said as he stood. "Would the wiggy moron follow along please?"

He looked back to Holger as the browncoat started spitting out more gibberish. He pointed back to him. "Oh and uh, doctor, you may want to corral your patient."

[Rashy Pete]

"Allow me to explain," Olo flinched visibly, as if he caught himself falling asleep while operating one of the spaceport's mules. It happened a lot. "We're not Reavers." "Aaahh ha ha ha... okay."  "Although the Browncoat over there with the red beard is tougher than at least 50 of them put together. The woman he is talking with is Melody, one of the most foul mouthed pilots you'd ever meet in the Alliance." The maintenance maestro shook his head in a barely animated manner more like a mild tick, unsure which he liked less: believing this tale or letting his captors know he wasn't buying it. "No, no. No names please." The haircut continued introducing the rest of his compatriots, in a clear attempt to humanize the savages in Olo's mind.

"He's one of the best hackers in the business." "Okay." Olo wasn't sure what the man meant by "hacker", but he imagined the chopping of bodies must be an impressive skill among Reavers. "I was one of the top gunnery officers in the Alliance before ending my enlistment. Now I'm here, and I'll be quite blunt, we're pirates...and one, well, I guess you could call Holger a revolutionary." "Haha alright I'm ready to go home please."

Olo looked at the doctor Missy as if he expected her to get him out of this situation somehow. He would look to Rasputin for help, but the fickle feline seemed to have abandoned him for the time being. "Can I have my cat back?" "Well, what do the rest of you think, now that I got the introduction out of the way, how about we bring them into the proverbial fold?" Olo's heart stuck in his throat. He never would've imagined his life would lead him to this point: recruited into a band of lunatics. "You want to recruit them?" The team's axeman questioned the haircut's intentions, and Olo's confusion only increased as he considered the possibility that one of the best body-choppers in the business might be the voice of reason between them. But then he started talking about hippo raddish toast and Olo decided they were equally insane.

The woman who escorted the crazed fire monster started using a lot of big words and Olo's focus abandoned him. He looked at the blond woman, Melody if the haircut could be believed, but when her wide, crazed eyes met his and she rose with her arms flailing he immediately looked down at the mustard stain on his boot.

Melody chastised the haircut for spilling the proverbial beans about their crew before turning her attention to the hippo raddish toast lady. "You could be doin' all this so we don't throw you out into space, watch your blood boil out your ears through the window. So I'm gonna keep my eye on you until I feel like you're not a threat. Or you're dead, whichever comes first," Melody warned the other woman. Olo felt waves of attraction, disgust, and shame roll over him as a tingle crawled up his spine.

Pointing around the room, Melody commanded the woman and the haircut away with the fire giant before her eyes fell upon him. Olo smiled awkwardly for a moment before thinking better of it and forcing his expression into a stern, serious, and somehow even more comical facade. "Take him with you." "Oh, that's okay. No thanks." "After you're checked out, make him clean his mess in the galley. I'll see where we're headed and we'l meet back up in the lounge in...what..." Melody looked to the fire giant. Olo wondered why she asked the chicken killer for direction. Was he secretly the one in charge? Olo's eyes went wide and his head tilted back as if his mind blew straight out the back of his head. "half an hour? Forty five minutes? Somewhere in there."

"Fine, let's get this over with," The haircut stood and approached Olo where he sat on the floor. Gears, missing teeth as they were, started turning in Olo's mind as he began to put together the group's pecking order. "Would the wiggy moron follow along please?" Olo sighed heavily and began to pull himself off the floor before the bearded, bandaged behemoth began babbling about doctors and chickens and a bird man and someone named Isaac. Olo thought back to the stunted legged man with bottle lenses in his safety goggles and a lopsided haircut who only ever seemed to eat beef stroganoff for lunch. Why would they want to kill Isaac? Was that the real reason they'd come? If he'd never switched shifts with Isaac in the first place, would be even be here now? Olo looked at the haircut as the four of them exited the bridge. "So why are you here to kill Isaac? And who are you calling wiggy?"

[Missy Etheridge]

"You could be doin' all this so we don't throw you out into space, watch your blood boil out your ears through the window. So I'm gonna keep my eye on you until I feel like you're not a threat. Or you're dead, whichever comes first."

Missy opened her mouth to express the absolute shock and dismay she felt at the very idea that her actions could possibly have such selfish motivations, what a truly tragic 'verse it was that even the saving of a life could be viewed with such a mercenary perspective, how even the very notion of...

But she didn't get the chance before the pilot was off and snapping orders, which was probably for the best.

Apparently, she was to accompany the various and sundry back to her home base -- gǎnxiè zhòng shén for that -- and do something resembling her actual job. Well, there were worse fates, Missy supposed. Worse fates still possibly on the horizon, perhaps, but at least her position seemed relatively secure for the moment. She mentally crossed her fingers and hoped that one of the crew members had an as-yet-undetected diagnosis requiring lots of close monitoring and in-depth medical knowledge. If she was lucky, maybe Holger's head wound would turn out to be slightly worse than it appeared -- not too lethal, but maybe just enough to keep her skills useful a while longer.

Speaking of whom...

"To lay a doctor down would be need to lay a down, doctor. Need lay doctor lay, I do not do doctor."

Missy resisted the urge to bury her face in her hands as her patient went staggering off after imaginary chickens. "Just a little verbal dysphasia; it's very common in cases of blunt trauma to that area," she reassured Izak as Melody managed to convince the giant that he belonged in the med bay. She took Holger by the arm and half-guided, half-towed him back towards the ward as he continued to recite his shopping list of imminent murders back over his shoulder into the cockpit.

"You lie down," Missy ordered him briskly, pointing him towards the nearest cot as the motley little band shuffled into her home territory. She put her hands on her hips and surveyed the others appraisingly. "Who's up first?" she asked of them, making sure to keep her tone light and upbeat.