The Only One

Everything was machine-made; finely made, too. The wonders of technology she'd only read about, these men had experienced.
    While the returning raiders boasted about destroying the skyport, Jal tended his companion. The outsider's breaths were ragged, likely from exhaustion and injuries hidden beneath his soiled uniform. He'd been in a violent crash, but he wouldn't realize just how affected he was until later. Shock hit you that way, Taj knew, a delayed reaction, like when she'd gotten flash-burned.
    Jal raised Cheya's visor, making the lower portion of his face visible. His jaw was slack and his lips dry.
    Muttering softly, Jal dipped his head in prayer.
    Taj bit back surprise. She hadn't expected such a show of faith from this hulking warrior. In her community, it was the women who prayed, and the men who were prayed about. She said, "I hope your prayers work.
    It looks like your friend could use all the help he can get."
    Jal lifted his head, fixed her with a steady but glazed stare as if she'd called him back from a long journey.
    "He will be healed. And he will live." His accent was heavy, his tone aristocratic stopping just short of haughty. "Like his ancestors, Cheya will survive."
    Jal's confidence made her angry. "If the bandage holds until we reach base camp," she retorted, " If infection doesn't set in. If the medicines we fabricate or steal heal the wound—"
    Romjha's hand landed on her shoulder. Her body gave an involuntary start. His fingers flexed gently and communicated with alarming perception. Easy, they said.
    "Doesn't he realize where he's crash-landed?" she argued under her breath. "We don't have fancy tech. We don't have miracles. After today, we likely don't even have a future."
    "Taj," Romjha warned.
    Thinking of how he'd seemed to see inside her when they were in the caves, she was afraid to look at him now and find his stare just as perceptive, just as penetrating. Under the perceived scrutiny of the commander and the other raiders, she struggled to keep her temper in check. To Jal she mumbled, "We'll do what we can for your friend."
    "Yes. Stop the blood." Jal regarded her with cold bronze-gray eyes. "Work quickly, healer."
    "I'm not a healer."
    He looked confused. "But you are a woman," he stated, as if that explained it all.
    She glanced down at her breasts. "Else I'm a very unfortunate man."
    Jetter coughed to cover his amusement.
    "You are a woman," Jal insisted. "You heal."
    "I make munitions. I blow up things. I lik e blowing up things."
    Jal's hands clamped hard around Cheya's thigh. Blood welled between his fingers, glistening on the sinews and knuckles. A crimson stream escaped the dam formed by the fleshy connector between his thumb and index finger, pooling in the hollows of one thick, corded wrist.
    An image of her father's fatal injuries, his arms ragged, leaking stumps, splashed across Taj's mind's eye like blood from a torn artery.
    Joren had died slowly, horribly. By the time he had staggered back to the caverns after that fateful solo raid, his body had been nearly drained of blood. No one knew how he made it back all those miles without a rover. But he'd not wanted to die topside, alone, without his loved ones there to hold a vigil, to play chimes until his last breath to guide him safely to the Ever After.
    Sweat dribbled down Taj's temples. Her chest felt suddenly heavy. Maybe if someone had been topside with her father, had slowed the bleeding, he'd be alive today.
    She dropped to her knees and crawled to where Jal crouched before his friend. "All right. Someone had better shore up that field dressing. And since none of you seem to be doing it, it might as well be me."
    She thrust her arm at Aleq, her fingers splayed wide. "Give me your shirt."
    After a fleeting moment of surprise, the man stripped. She snatched away the wad of damp homemade black fabric and caught his scent. It had been so long since he'd last visited her bed, she'd forgotten it.
    Holding the cloth between her teeth, she tore Aleq's shirt into strips, then contemplated her unlucky subject with far more trepidation than she had her unstable radite crystals. Sighing deeply, she began her hasty repairs.

Chapter Six
    What we can assume about the rest of the galaxy has changed. Had he really said that so casually?
    Romjha paced behind Taj and the outsiders. What a laughable understatement if what these men said was true.
    They had told his raiders they'd defeated the warlord. He could almost believe it.