Hankura was already on his way to the agricomplex when Bren contacted him. His smoldering eyes flashed, and he scowled as Bren told him what had happened as quickly as he could. The invasion was over, but the memory still lingered bitterly in his mind.
"Let the bastard die!" Hankura thundered over the vid-com. "I treated my last Tregan in that stinking Tregan prison. What the hell do you think I am?"
His response didn't surprise Bren at all, as he gazed back at the angry face of the physician and let out a sigh. "Hey, don't tell me. That's the message Casir sent. He said you'd understand when you know the rest of the story. Just hurry up and get here," Bren pleaded. "I've got a crazy Zevian woman Casir stunned to keep from throwing rocks at us, a kid crying his eyes out over a half-dead Tregan reject, and I don't know what the hell to do for any of them. I'm just an engineer. Get your tail up here and hash it out with Casir. I’m just the messenger."
"Okay, okay," Hankura finally relented. "How bad is the son of a---uh---how bad is he hurt?"
"Bad, Hankura. I got him good, probably made a real mess of his gut." Bren shook his head distastefully.
"You got him," Hankura frowned.
"Yeah," Bren drawled miserably, "he shot Casir with a nearly spent laser. Oh, don't worry, he's okay---took care of it himself---but he's really upset about the kid and that Tregan."
"What kid?"
"Hell, I don't know. Just a kid about four or five---cute blond boy."
"All right," Hankura said with a glitter of something Bren didn't understand in his eyes. "I'll be right there---about three or four minutes. I'll have Chelle bring a portable surgical cell. It sounds like we'll need it. Tell Casir to hold on."
Hankura knelt with Casir and the little boy beside the fallen Tregan, assessing his condition with his bio-scanner. The boy was Mikal's son, and he loved the Tregan---Orin Hart. Hankura would do his best to save him for that reason, but it didn't look good.
"Good grief!" Hankura muttered at each new reading. "His stomach is shot, lungs are badly damaged, the liver is ruptured, and his bowel is a disaster in most of the upper quadrant." Hankura flicked off the scanner.
"I hope you're feeling okay, Casir. You're going to have to help. Chelle can't get another Tech that we can trust to help us and keep this quiet. You know what'll happen if the Federation liaison gets wind of this---I'm not sure he deserves that. "
"It's going to take a lot of work just to get him stabilized on the way back to Elran, and by the looks of things, the whole procedure will have to be done in that portable cell. He'll die for sure if we try to move him too much. So, I'll need you to do the neural block. As you said, you're still pretty good at it."
"So what do we tell the liaison at the clinic after we're done, and we want to put him on life support?"
Hankura shrugged. "Tell him he's part of your crew. They don't know all of your people. Cran and Bren are nearly as big as he is. Who's to know the difference---besides us?" A pause, as Hankura, eyed Casir thoughtfully. Mother knows why we're doing this! A couple of soft touches for a sob story, we are.
Why the hell else would we come back to this godforsaken rock? Casir gave him a knowing grin.
Why indeed? Hankura returned a wry grin and pushed the bio-scanner back into his pouch belt. There was a lot to be done and little time to waste doing it. Hankura had little time to further consider his motives while he was waiting for Chelle to arrive at the complex with the portable surgical cell. It took every bit of his skill and knowledge just to keep Orin Hart alive that long. The best he'd been able to do was slow down his dying.
Once they got him into the cell and put him on life support, the hard work began. Hankura had an extremely delicate and tedious job of repairing the damaged lungs and reconstructing the Tregan's digestive system with individual protoplasm grafts.
Those grafts would provide the framework for the regeneration of his severely damaged organs. Even with accelerating healants, it would be close to ten days before they would know the grafting procedure was successful. As a precaution---if he lived---Hankura would have to regenerate these same organs in an artificial environment just in case a full transplant became necessary.
However, he didn't waste time on that line of thinking. Even though transplant was primarily the standard procedure in a case like this, there were no organs synthesized in the nurturing tanks at the Elran Clinic, yet. The facilities weren't ready for that and wouldn't be for another day or two. And, Hankura didn't want to think all his careful work would be in vain. He persisted with Casir's and Chelle's assistance for nearly seven consecutive hours of surgery on the Tregan. He completed every procedure flawlessly, but it wasn't good enough.
He took the scan readings twice to be sure there was no mistake even when his gut feeling told him they were right the first time.
"Mother, I don't know what else to do," Hankura muttered, looking up at Casir and then to his wife beside him. "I've outdone myself as it is. It would have been easier to clone him another body and switch brains---and they don't teach that on Velran, or anywhere else I know of. The son of a bitch is still dying, and I can't bring him back."
But---maybe I could. Her thought whispered itself in his mind.
"No!" Hankura pulled off his surgical mask and gripped her shoulders. No, Chelle. It isn't worth the risk. He's just a fucking Tregan. You can't risk your life and our son's for him. I sensed the fault in his mental shield, too... but you can't. He could take your life...
I know that, Hankura. It terrifies me, but he isn't like the others. We can't forget about Lanimer and Nalina. He saved them at the risk of his life. Can we do less?
But, his killings cost Kaara's life and nearly yours.
But he didn't know. Hankura, he was thrown in the middle of this the same as we were. Who are we to condemn him to death when we can save him? He is a man, and we have sworn to preserve human life if it is within our power. We went against that once---we have a choice this time.
Mother of Life, Chelle! I could lose you in the process. His life is not worth yours to me ... you are everything to me---the essence of my life. I can't lose you.
Then, help me, Hankura. Help me save him and keep my life's essence. We could do it together---together our wills must surely be stronger than his.
Hankura stared intensely into her shining blue eyes, torn by the stirring of his conscience and his love for this woman carrying his child. She believed that his love was the key, the controlling factor in her healer's power. If they could keep Orin Hart alive, make him whole again, it would in some small way pay the debt they felt they owed for the killings in their escape.
Hankura prayed that the key would fit the lock.