Equipment beeped as Elkay had finally begun to stablize. The medical lab in the back of the ship wasn’t really meant for the surgery that Elkay had needed, but somehow they had managed to save the former High General from almost certain death. They had used every single bandage on the ship, almost every syringe and 90% of the saline bags, not to mention a few other things they had managed to put together to enable Elkay to have a blood transfusion. The most amazing thing was that there had been another Rethan on the ship to give him blood in the first place.
“You should sleep. Or drink more water.”
Retvik had been sitting in the room alongside Elkay for about two hours now. The voice behind him belonged to Tenuk, who owned both the ship and was the only real medic onboard. He had been rushing in and out, making sure Elkay was breathing but had just realised that he probably should have been keeping an eye on Retvik too.
“I cannot sleep. Not while…”
“Yeah yeah, I get it. But you can’t look after him if you’re not well too. At least drink some water. You donated blood, you need to rehydrate.”
Tenuk handed Retvik a mug of water. Retvik eyed it, then finally took a couple of sips.
“You’re hurting inside, aren’t you?”
Retvik nodded. Something beeped loudly, and he got up to see what it was. Tenuk pushed Retvik back down, then started changing the saline bag, drip-feeding nutrients into Elkay’s comatose body. Retvik growled ever so slightly, not enjoying how Tenuk was treating him.
“Are you a medic?” Tenuk growled back.
“I can change an IV bag.”
“Just let me do it. You’re stressed and hurting right now. I’m not.”
“Who’s piloting right now?”
“Psiksi, of course. And if something happens to Psiksi, then either Kohra or I will pilot the ship. No matter what is going on out there, inside my ship, I have things under control…” Tenuk sighed. “You’re a mess, Retvik. You’ve not been right since we got Levik’s call.”
“The Thantophor has lost his mind, attacked someone we all care about and is now rampaging across the universe!” Retvik snapped. “Nothing is right! We should be… doing more…”
Tenuk finished what he was doing, then wandered back to Retvik, delicately putting a hand on his shoulder. “We have done all we could. We’ve sent out warning messages to every sapient race out there. We even broke protocol and warned several races who aren’t even supposed to know about the outside universe yet. There is nothing else we can do aside from helping who we can and looking after ourselves.”
Retvik didn’t say anything. Tenuk patted Retvik gently on the head.
“Elkay will be fine. Rethais will do a fine job leading in his absence.”
“Elkay is family as well…” Retvik sighed. “Half-brother. The accident we were never allowed to talk about. You know what though? I considered Arkay to be a brother. And Arkay hurt us all…” Suddenly, Retvik paused, staring at Tenuk’s skin. “Uh… Tenuk, you… look…”
Tenuk pulled away, blinking heavily. As his body began to shrink, his eyes split in half and his smallest fingers turned into second thumbs, Tenuk realised he was losing his ability to shapeshift. In fact, he was losing all his Kronospast-born abilities.
“Wow…” Tenuk finally muttered. “He actually did it…”
“Did what?” Retvik asked hesitantly, feeling somewhat queasy from what he had just seen.
“The Star… it is gone… the source of all our Kronospast power…” Tenuk shook his head, focusing his two pairs of eyes. “We need to go to Calestia.”
“Is that not the Kronospast homeworld?”
“Yep!” Tenuk shouted as he rushed out of the room. “And that’s exactly where our friend Arkay is…”