The hallway, or whatever you called it on a spaceship, was empty. Everyone assigned to their cabins for lift-off at a guess. Or the AI, Pavo, was directing them via similar blue arrows as mine to different parts of the vessel. Like a massive chess game where an artificial intelligence played with our lives.

“So,” I said glancing up at the ceiling. There were no speakers that I could see and no camera lenses. But I’d bet my left tit there were eyes on me at present. “How many assistants does the good doctor have?”

“I thought I’d made that clear, Ms Kereama,” Pavo said. “You are the only qualified pay-for-passage passenger fit to assist Doctor Medina.”

“I think you overestimate my qualifications, Pavo,” I muttered.

“I do not overestimate anything, Ms Kereama. I am aware of your service record in its entirety.”

I stared at the ground and followed the blue arrows like a good little soldier.

“There was nothing you could have done,” the AI said in that maddening monotone.

I shook my head. Receiving compassion from a machine. I really had hit rock bottom.

“You had a 16.66% chance of success at the time. The odds were not in your favour.”

I ground my teeth together and said nothing. Humans didn’t think in percentages. At the time, I’d known nothing but desperation. I’d made a choice, and I’d failed. It didn’t matter if there’d been a 90% chance of success. Or even a 99.99% chance. By attempting to save my sergeant’s life, I’d doomed the rest.

The medbay doors lit up in blue as I approached them. Just in case I hadn’t been aware the arrows had pointed toward them. My steps faltered, slowed, until the pulsing blue light felt as though it was connected to my rapid heartbeat.

I couldn’t hear anything from inside the medbay itself. But in my head, I heard gunfire and mortar exploding and the screams of soldiers.

The doors opened and stayed open. A yawning maw filled with imagined teeth. I could hear the voices inside now. The moans and soft crying. The raised voice of someone in charge. The distinctive beep of life-saving machinery.

“Pavo!” A male voice said. “Where is my goddamned nurse?”

“Ms Kereama is standing outside the medbay doors, Doctor Medina,” Pavo announced for all to hear.

“What bloody good is she out there?” the doctor yelled.

“I believe she is unable to step over the threshold,” the AI replied.

“Of all the asinine things you could possibly say, you pick that?” Indistinct muttering followed. Then a head appeared around the still open doors to the medbay. Male. In his fortifies at a guess. Dishevelled brown hair sticking out at odd angles. Black rimmed glasses sliding down a long nose. “You the nurse?” the doctor asked.

“I...”

“Then get in here. People are hurt.”

“I’m...” He disappeared. The doors stayed open. The arrows pulsed.

“Pavo,” I whispered.

“Yes, Ms Kereama.”

“I can’t do this.”

Silence.

“I do not understand,” the AI finally said. “Simply put one foot in front of the other.”

I huffed out a breath.

“It’s not that easy.”

“I cannot detect an injury that would preclude ambulation.”

I blinked.

“Do you require assistance?”

If I did, I was at the right place. I shook my head.

“Twenty-three passengers, Ms Kereama,” the AI said.

“Nurse!” the doctor yelled from inside the infirmary.

“I’m not a nurse,” I whispered.

“You do not need to be to help,” Pavo said.

I blinked away tears before they could fully form and took a step and then another. Until I found myself in a room marginally larger than Aunt Mara’s and my cabin. A brief turn of my head and I’d counted four beds. Several more patients were lined up against the wall.

“Four beds for a ship with over one thousand passengers,” I said, stunned.

“Yes,” the doctor snapped. “Not my suggestion.”

His eyes met mine.

“What took you so long?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, had to fight my way through the crowd to get here.”

“A comedienne. Just what the medbay needs.”

It sure as hell didn’t need me. Not the me I was now, anyway.

“Start triaging those patients sitting on the floor,” the doctor ordered.

I didn’t move.

“You can triage, can’t you?”

I nodded my head.

“This is not a cruise ship, nurse. We’re fighting for our survival. Or did you think the battle for life ended once we left our solar system?”

“I...”

“You can do this,” he said more softly.

I nodded my head.

The next two hours were given over to scrapes and bruises, concussion tests and the odd fracture. Those I sent to the doctor. The scrapes and bruises and knocks to the head, I somehow managed to see to myself.

By the time the medbay had thinned to just three people remaining in the beds, I had realised I hadn’t had a flashback once. The moment I acknowledged that little factoid, my knees began to tremble and I had to grip the bench I was standing beside before I collapsed.

The lights dimmed without the doctor having said a thing. The gel coating on the wall faded to a soft blue; better to promote wellbeing, I thought. The doctor appeared beside me with a cup of coffee.

“You did OK,” he said, offering me the cup. I took it automatically. “But you’re no nurse.”

I stared into pale blue eyes.

“Cut too many corners,” he explained.

“I thought...The AI never told you?”

“I was told I was receiving a suitably experienced assistant. I’m afraid I made the assumption you were a nurse.” He looked at me. Studying my facial features and then the rest of my body.

I was in yoga pants and a t-shirt. The temperature on board, I’d discovered, was warmer than expected. And I was glad now of the lack of coverings. The past two hours had been sweat inducing to say the least.

“Army,” the doctor finally said.

I nodded my head.

“Australian?”

“New Zealand.” The doctor sounded British.

He let out a sigh. “Active?”

I bit my lip and looked at the ground. There were no blue lights this time to guide me.

“No,” I said. “I was discharged thirteen months ago.”

He didn’t ask. Maybe he didn’t want to know. What good would it serve now? He had no one else to assist him. And given the evidence, he needed help. Over one thousand passengers and a four-bed medical bay. He couldn’t do this alone.

“Is there really no one else qualified to assist you?” I asked.

“That’s what Pavo says.”

“And Pavo is always right?”

He shrugged and took a sip of his own drink. “Who am I to question the gods?”

I looked up at the ceiling and wondered if the AI thought of himself that way. If all four of them did.

“Well,” I said into my drink. “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you expected.”

The doctor stared at me over his coffee cup. He didn’t agree with me. But he also didn’t disagree either.

“Go get some rest, Ms Kereama,” he said.

“It’s Ana,” I replied, allowing him to take the coffee cup from my hand.

“Ana,” he said. “0800 tomorrow, Ana. We’ll see then what you’re made of.”

I walked out of the medbay thinking, hadn’t I just done that?

Shaking my head, I looked at the ubiquitous rounded gel walls of the corridor and couldn’t remember how to get back to our cabin.

“Pavo?” I called.

“Yes, Ana,” it replied. As if what I’d said to the doctor had applied to it.

“How do I get back to my room?” I asked, deciding I could live with the all-powerful artificial intelligence that controlled this ship calling me by my first name.

“Follow the blue arrows,” Pavo said.

I put one foot in front of the other. But somehow I knew the steps I’d be required to take tomorrow and the days that followed would not be as easy as this.