Deck 10, Section K, Vogtland Base, Dresden System
09/06/817 AS, 2038 Station time
"Oh, for Christ almighty's sake, get the syringe already! She's dying here, and just because you think that you're more important that doesn't mean we should lose another pilot!"
Nika Haupt was scared. She had been for the past few weeks, and she still was. Vogtland, the "promised land" after Freistadt, had turned out to be more of a hellhole than the first "Freeport" could have ever been. She'd gone here because she had nowhere to run. The explosion in her home was still audible in her mind, and it would very likely be for ages. And now, just because she had a bachelor in medicine, she was assigned to the sick bay. Well, better than the fighter cockpit.
Two hours later, she was the last one left in the room. Most pilots today had suffered minor wounds, except for the young Lieutenant. First female officer she'd met, so far. Shrapnel hit inside the stomach, multiple internal organs wounded. As she was about to greet her, two people came into the room to speak to the Lieutenant - probably goons that thought her responsible for her fallen comrades. True or not, she wasn't having that.
While behind her miss Heinrich was waking up, Nika was finishing her harsh speech on the two Fliegers.
"I don't care if she's a woman, if I'm a woman or if you're Kanzler Niemann himself! This is my goddamn sickbay, and you talk to my patients whenever I, and only I decide it's fine for them. We clear? Oh, feel free to go and tell the Hauptmann. That girl is going nowhere until I've found a way to fix her spleen. Clear? Clear! Now piss off!"
Nika smiled. It felt good to show a few goons who was the boss for a moment - even if it was just for a moment. She gently pushed the Lieutenant back down on the bed - her wounds, even using the best medical tools available to her, would take a while to recover. Two weeks, at the very least.
"No worries, would've done the same for every patient. Don't need more people dying on those tables."
She offered her right hand, small, sleek, almost like the hand of a pianist. Pretty atypical for a hessian, especially the Wedding Band on the ring finger.
"I'm Nika. And before you ask, Flieger. Came here from the Five, they got a real doc there - and that meant they could use me here. Oh, and try not moving to much. I'd hate it to have to cut you open again, one time's enough."
Nika shied away a bit. The comment about her marriage was not exactly making her feel good, but she didn't show it.
"Damn well you're going to stay here. I don't know what you did, but somehow you managed to rupture your spleen. I'd suggest checking on your dampeners, they are probably set too harshly. Or something is broken. Don't know really, isn't my area of expertise."
She paused again. The question wasn't quite clear cut - did she refer to her role as a pilot occasionally, or was she asking about her past?
"Well here on Vogtland I'm doing mostly medical stuff. I'm not particularly good in the cockpit, you know."
Nika checked on the bandage on Anna's arm while talking, undoing it to replace it with a new one. She'd lost a lot of blood. "It's not that it disagrees with me", she admitted slowly"It's just that I hate killing people. I'm just not good at it, and even thinking about doing something like this to someone -"She pointed at Anna's bandaged torso" - makes my stomach churn up" She hesitated. Everyone, including her husband, saw this trait as a weakness. "You're not gonna tell anyone, are you?"
"Not saying that I can't do it. I just mean that I hate to do it. And if you hate to kill, you really don't exactly become good at it, you know." Her tone was relieved, even friendly."Right, now that you know about my reasons to be here - how does a woman, a bretonian at that, become a Lieutenant?"
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