Chapter 11: Starstruck

“Woah! Woah! Relax!” The figure coaxed, her voice high-pitched and feminine.

Yan squinted in the darkness, trying to get a better look. All she could make out was the wave of long hair cascading over the person’s shoulders.

This did not look like somebody she knew.

Suddenly, the lights flicked on, the brightness searing Yan’s retinas. She moved to shield her eyes, only for her arms to pull hard against the cuffs again.

By the time her vision cleared, the person had reached the foot of her bed.

It was a woman in her early twenties. Her oval-shaped face was framed by long, wavy brown hair and the rest of her features were equally soft upon her tanned skin.

She was dressed in the same light blue jumpsuit Yan had seen the engineers on board the Silent Sail wear. Atop that was a stylish black coat.

Dimly, Yan remembered seeing that coat somewhere. Was this the doctor who tended to Luke’s wound?

A mixture of concern and fear was written across the woman's face.

“What’s the meaning of this? Why am I chained?” Yan shouted.

“Shhhh, shhh… It’s for your own safety! And mine!” The woman sounded nervous.

“How could this be for my safety? Let me out, now!”

“Please… it’s the night-cycle on the ship. You’re going to wake people up. I’ll answer you, just calm down.”

Yan took a deep, shuddering breath. She pulled at her cuffs. Felt them dig deeper into her skin. Her knife was nowhere to be seen.

Through gritted teeth, she said, “You’d better have a bleeding good explanation for this.”

“And I - I do.” The woman stammered, sitting down at the foot of Yan’s bed. For a moment, Yan considered kicking her. Her legs were free, after all.

She thought better of it. There might actually be a very good reason for this.

“I’m waiting,” she droned, voice heavy with sarcasm.

“Right, so - sorry. It’s just that you are a very scary woman, you know? The sailors wouldn’t stop talking about you. We’re in the medbay, by the way. Oh, and, of course, I’m very glad to see that you’re awake.”

The woman’s sentences were all over the place. Yan could almost see her mind work, trying to gather the right thoughts.

“Anyway, I had to re - restrain you because… while you were still in that coma, you uh… snatched your knife from the table.” The woman gestured to the small table beside Yan’s bed. “Then, you stuffed it behind your back. Took it out again, waved it around and then… uhhh… stabbed the bed.”

She waved her arms around as she spoke in what Yan thought was most likely a crude imitation of her own actions. The woman ended her performance by planting the imaginary knife deep into Yan’s bed, a few inches away from her hip.

There was a deep gash in the mattress there.

“Oh.”

“Yes… so with some - grudging - permission from your two friends, we… restrained you.”

“I see...,” Yan replied. So some of her actions in that limbo space had carried over into the real world. She had to be more careful next time. If she stabbed herself, fine. If she stabbed some poor sap trying to tend to her wounds, that would not have been great.

For a moment, both women were silent.

Yan broke it first. “And when are you planning on unchaining me?”

“Oh! Right! Of course! Of course!” The doctor dug through her coat and retrieved a key, then paused. “You won’t try to stab me, right?”

Yan shrugged and said, “Only if you deserve it.”

The woman froze. It was like watching a deer get caught in the headlights. Yan almost felt bad for her.

Then, the poor woman relaxed. “Oh, oh… You’re just making a joke! That’s - that’s good. You worried me there.”

Yan did not think that she was making a joke but if it made this woman feel better, sure.

The doctor reached over Yan’s head to undo her cuffs. As she worked, she said, “M - my name’s Isabella. My friends call me Izzy. You’re Yan, right?”

Finally free, Yan sat up against the bedframe, rubbing at her wrists. “Thanks… Isabella.”

“Oh… Uh… That’s n - no problem.” Isabella stammered, disappointment flashing across her face.

Yan pushed the little twinge in her heart aside. She had more than enough on her plate to worry about Isabella’s feelings.

Cheering up quickly, the doctor continued, “And your bodysuit was a mess… You were roughly my size, so I brought you one of mine. Hope you don’t mind being part of the Silent Sail’s crew for a while!”

She laughed a little at her own joke.

It was a tinkling sound that faded quickly away as she noticed that Yan was not smiling.

Instead, she was looking over her new clothes. Her old white bodysuit had been replaced by one in light blue. Yellow decorative stripes ran down the sides.

Feeling a little naked without her weapon, Yan asked, “Where’s my knife? And my belt - well, I guess that one isn’t mine.”

“Don’t worry, all your stuff I left with -”

She paused as footsteps thumped down the metal staircase just outside the medbay.

“- them.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Doc - I mean, Yan! As I live and breathe! You’ve returned to the world of the living!” Yan could feel the purple spiky hair even before its owner popped out around the open doorway.

Luke appeared behind him, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He said nothing but a smile hung on his face.

“Thank you, Isabella, we’ll take it from here,” Neon said.

“Ahh…” There was that usual uncertainty in Isabella’s posture, then she straightened up. “No. The patient needs more rest. You two can come back later!”

Neon sighed. “Doctor’s orders?”

“Yes. Doctor’s orders.”

Yan put a hand on Isabella’s shoulder. The younger woman froze. “I think I’m well enough to speak to them.”

“O - okay.” Isabella coloured, scrambled to her feet and rushed out of the room.

That was not the effect Yan had intended. Regardless, a little textbox popped up in Yan’s vision, announcing, “Rizz +1”.

Yan shrugged, swung her legs off the bed and pushed herself into a seating position.

Luke set two chairs down in front of her and plopped down in one. Neon took the other

“That Isabella… what’s her deal?” Yan asked, eyes on the door to make sure that the doctor had left.

It was Luke who replied her. “Everybody on the crew - everybody still alive, that is - is in awe of you. There’s rumours flying around about how you conjured lasers out of thin air and fired them like an elite Zelorian sniper. That’s a mercenary company turned interstellar kingdom, by the way. I mean, I was there and I was floored.”

Neon laughed. “Quite literally too! When the Wolf dropped you, you tumbled to the ground like a sack of potatoes.”

“Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. You needed stitches after getting fragged by your own grenade.”

“Touché.” Neon held his hands up in mock surrender.

“Anyway, I don’t know her but she sounds a little starstruck.” Luke turned back to Yan as he spoke.

Neon interjected, “Not a bad idea to have a doctor-slash-engineer in awe of you, though. Free patch-ups and tune-ups!”

Yan was starting to realise that when it came to Neon’s words, it was best to ignore every other sentence. The man had enough energy to tire her out by proximity alone.

Deciding to change the topic, Yan asked, “So, what happened after I passed out?”

Luke nodded as he replied, “Right, you wouldn’t know. Well, we rammed the pirates. We had speed, we had ten times their mass. So, they exploded.”

“That simple?”

“Well, they managed to fire an entire salvo into the bridge before that. Killed two sailors. Almost decompressed half the ship. You, we managed to haul out just before a laser turned your insides outside.”

Yan suppressed a shudder. She had already come so close to dying so many times since setting foot into this world.

“It’s been about three days since then,” Luke continued.

She slept for three days? No wonder all her aches were gone.

“Oh, and I hate to make a habit of it, but I stripped your kill for you.” Luke handed her a data chip and her knife, the latter wrapped in cloth. “You can claim everything else from the armoury later on using that entitlement chip.”

She nodded her thanks. If she was going to upgrade Sierra, get her memories back and go home, she would need every bit of stuff she could get.

Neon said, “Okay, now that you’re up to speed, we have questions. First, just who in the world are you?”

“Yan?”

“We know that. Where’d you come from? What’d you do before you came here?”

“I… I don’t remember much.”

“But you remember something. Come on, don’t keep us waiting!”

Yan hesitated. She had no desire to share her life story - or what she remembered of it anyway - with people she barely knew but she did feel some camaraderie from having fought alongside them.

Besides, they have both saved her life at least once.

Maybe she did owe them an explanation. An abridged one, at least.

“All I remember is that I was somewhere very different from here. There wasn’t much in the way of technology but some people were able to use magic and qi. I was in a fight. Then, there was an explosion and I woke up here. In Regina’s body.”

“Magic? Qi? You’re pulling my leg, right?”

Yan shook her head. “Luke saw my magic bolts. Those are a form of magic.”

“That wasn’t some newfangled technology from Dr. Regina’s eye?” Luke interjected, surprised.

Yan had almost forgotten to ask him about that.

“No. And you two know about the ghost eye? Sierra?”

Luke and Neon exchanged glances. Then, Neon asked, suppressing a giggle, “We know about Sierra but ghost eye? Is that what you’re calling it?”

Yan blushed and shot Neon a stern glare.

“Sorry, sorry! Yes! Bionic eyes are quite common in Known Esildea - that’s the name for our world, well, the known part of it anyway. In fact, Dr. Regina never bothered to hide it. But back on topic! Really? Magic? Qi? That’s stuff you’d find in a novel!”

Yan sighed. Reaching deep within, she noted that her mana had refilled. It was still a small puddle at the bottom of a huge, dried-out pool, but she had enough for a few spells.

She drew out a strand of blue and cast it over the bedside table.

[Lesser Illusion]

A grenade shimmered into existence on the table. This close up, it was quite obviously fake. The image flickered in the air, blurring at times.

Still, Neon’s eyes lit up and he reached out to grab it, only for his hand to pass clean through.

“Ahem. That’s just projection tech, ain’t it?” Neon said, feigning disinterest.

She shook her head. “Well, you can believe what you want to. I’m telling the truth.”

“I’ll believe you when you materialise meteors from thin air.”

“And won’t you just say that’s portal technology?”

“Ah… Good point.” Neon laughed. “But, that’s something I’d be really interested in! Portal tech isn’t really a thing - yet! Or at least, it’s unsafe, untested and… exactly what Dr. Regina was doing before you appeared. Do you recall that archway in Dr. Regina’s lab?”

“Yes. Was that the portal?”

“Well, I’ve only ever seen it once and it was off. Can’t be sure but I’d bet my last credit that it’s a portal.”

So she did come through that archway. It just had to be switched on. And whole. If Neon was right about portal technology in Esildea, that was her only way home.

Home. What was she doing, lazing around?

“I have to go back!” Yan shouted, surging to her feet.

“Woah! Sit down!” Luke jumped up from his chair, one hand reaching out.

Yan slapped it aside with her right hand.

“Hey, hey! We get it! You’re gonna rip out your IV drip!” Neon shouted, pointing to a tube spilling out from her left arm. It was almost taut. One more step and she would have torn it out.

After another moment, Yan complied grudgingly. Luke and Neon were only trying to help.

“Sorry, Luke. It’s really important to me that I go home.” The little bundle in the straw mat flashed across her mind as she said that.

“No problem, Doctor. Your entire vibe doesn’t faze me. I’ve seen worse.”

Neon continued, “Look. You can’t go back to Prometheus.”

“If you’re afraid that I can’t handle a few soldiers, think again,” Yan snarled.

“A few soldiers? You’d be lucky if they only have a company of soldiers there! Aramian Dominion probably has that place locked down tight. Besides, we don’t even know if that archway is still working! And even if it was, how would you turn it on? Dr. Regina was working on that project alone. She’s…”

Neon looked Yan up and down as his voice trailed off. Then, he continued, “Nobody has her research. If the Doctor were here, she could make it happen. She was making it happen…”

Luke finished Neon’s sentence. “Until the portal room exploded, you appeared, and Aramia invaded.”

Yan forced herself to calm down. Sense was being spoken and she was not one to spit on it. Instead, she had to know her enemy.

“Aramia. Aramian Dominion. What are they?” Yan asked.

Luke shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “A sprawling interstellar empire attempting to bring all Esildea to heel. Their soldiers are as numerous as the stars and their ships as endless as the seas. Their emperor speaks of a Golden Peace through the Diktats of Order but… but there has been no peace since he took the throne and no order but the one achieved by truncheon. War is their watchword.”

A sombre silence descended upon the trio.

Finally, Yan said, "I’d have expected the two of you to have been more… unsettled by me.”

Luke grinned. “And we would have been if the Doctor didn’t warn us in advance. Told us to expect anyone, anything to walk out of that room one day. We were vigilant and it paid off. Besides, this universe has far weirder things than you - no offence.”

“Dr. Regina doesn’t say much but when she does, you sit up and you listen hard. I… I hope she’s okay. Wherever she is. Come to think of it, she’s a bit like you… erh… Not particularly talkative but crazy good at the things she did,” Neon commented.

The silence returned. Yan knew that Neon was trying to say that she was curt but she let it slide. Better for them to have a poor impression of her. She did not want them to stick around. They would just be more unwanted responsibility.

The intercom crackled to life, cutting through the stillness in the room. “All hands on deck! Narius Port is on sensors! Prepare for some well-earned shore leave, lads!”