All That Glitters Ch. 31

"Your first task will be to report to Commander Sector Twenty-Three, FAdm. Wilhelmina Holstern, who is currently here at TUSNHQ. There, you will be given your new Valour Class ship, NS Styles Dixon. You can use that to return to Liramor-23, where I'm sure you will receive a proper Navy send-off.

"HD-115153 is now yours, Commodore. You have your orders," the President stated. "Make us proud of you as a choice for this command."

Liana gave Ramison and the President a salute and promised to do her best on this, her first assignment as Commodore.

"Wow! That's rather a mouthful for a name, HD-115153," Fiona said, with a laugh and a wink.

"You need to think of something shorter," Cdr. Balakrishna said. "How about Punarjanm? It's Hindi for rebirth, or reincarnation. Considering what is going to happen in that system, I think it makes a good short name."

"I like it," the President said, getting a laugh from the group.

Their brief completed, they moved back to the others.

"Daddy!" a teen girl shouted and ran up to the President.

"Ah, Grace, I hope I haven't kept you waiting too long?" the President asked of his daughter.

"For making you wait though, I have a treat for you. Would you like to meet our distinguished guests from today?

"First, Mind-Ur, the Phrat-Mahi of the House of Ur and the first true alien to ever be invited to the Presidential compound," the President said. "Mind-Ur may I present my daughter, Grace Elizabeth Holloway."

He watched as his suddenly very nervous daughter gave a curtsy and said, "I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mind-Ur." To which Mind-Ur laughed her Pod-Drran laugh.

"You are not pleased to meet me, Chohda," Mind-Ur stated. "You are very much frightened of me because I am so different from you. But I must admire that you stood your ground and greeted me even in the face of your fear. The Pod-Drran honour people who show strength and courage like that.

"Let me introduce you to my family, my House of Ur. This is Caye-Ur, a merchant, who will work with Raymond Clark and Liea Samson to open trade between our peoples.

"Lent-Ur and Ren-Ur, two former members of the Technical Class and now studying at the Liramor-23 Campus of Malton University to acquaint themselves with the human educational system and achieve their status amongst the humans.

"Gend-Ur is doing the same, but her area of expertise is sanitation systems.

"Then there is Dr. Kayl-Ur and her mate, Nurse Hend-Ur, who have been accepted as instructors at the Liramor-23 Campus. They will instruct in Pod-Drran physiology and medical practices of course. They are also taking advantage of their position at the Campus to earn medical degrees in human physiology and medicine.

"And finally, two members of my house that would be proud to meet you, after showing me such control of your fear but moments ago. I present to you Tin-Ur, and her mate, Kord-Ur, former members of the Warrior Class of the Pod-Drran. They respect the strength and courage that you have just shown, Grace Holloway," Mind-Ur ended.

Grace had been shocked to find herself in the presence of real, honest to the God's, aliens, but she had fallen back on the training her father's retainers had given her and greeted them as was expected. Now, she had benefitted directly by following her instructions as she had been praised by and introduced to all of the members of the House of Ur.

"I have another special guest that you should greet, Grace. This little girl shares your name, Matildis Elizabeth Qan-Arl Roust-Polit, the first human child ever to be brought into the universe with assistance from the medical staff of two different species, which is why she has a Pod-Drran name as part of her birthright," Mind-Ur stated.

Grace cooed over the tiny baby and thanked her parents for letting her see the weeks old infant.

"Grace," her father interrupted. "There is someone else I would like you to meet. Please say hello to Cmdre. Fiona Marsh of Liramor-23 fame."

Grace's eyes suddenly got very wide as she looked up into the eyes of the famous Fiona Marsh. With a laugh, her father reached over and helped to lift her chin.
"You'll catch flies, Grace," he teased her.

"Hello, Grace. I am pleased to meet you," Fiona extended her hand. "I would also like to introduce to you my former second in command, then Captain, now Commodore Liana Dostier. Her promotion means that I am about to lose her from Liramor-23."

Grace took the proffered hand of Cmdre. Dostier, her eyes getting even bigger, but her jaw firmly in control and closed, no flies in her mouth thank-you very much!

"I would like you to meet someone who is very special to me," Fiona continued. "This is Junelliya Herlan, and her special friend Juneya." Juneya, in the presence of a teen, was suddenly very active, running back and forth from shoulder to shoulder on Junelliya and bobbing her head up and down each time she stopped.

"Juneya is a Scherm's Cat," Junelliya explained. "They are, of course, not Cats at all. They are more like lizards, but that is only a description. They have fur and are warm blooded and they are emphatic. They can sense hostile intent. Juneya feels that you are surprised to see her and very curious about her. She likes that. Would you like to hold her?"

Junelliya lifted her hand up to her should and Juneya stepped on to it. She moved her hand over towards Grace and instructed her how to hold out her hand. Juneya hesitated for a moment but sensing no ill will, gradually moved over to Grace's hand. She then scampered up to her shoulder rumble her purr in Grace's ear, getting a giggle from the teen. After a moment, Juneya jumped from Grace's shoulder back to Junelliya.

"I would also like you to meet a very special couple," Fiona continued. "This is Raymond Clark, a retired captain from the Navy Combat Engineers, and his business partner, Liea Samson. Together, they own PV The Wanderer."

Grace gave a curtsy and shook the hands of the two celebrities.

"I have some people I would like you to meet, Grace," Raymond spoke. "This is my bodyguard, Gillaya, and Liea's bodyguard, Oshiiru Kimiko, 'Kim'. Kim saved your father's life not so long ago."

Graced shook Gillaya's hand, but when she went to shake Kim's hand, she suddenly lunged forward and hugged her hard.

"Thank-you so much for saving my father, Ms. Oshiiru," she burbled, tears in her eyes.

"You need not be so formal with me, Ms. Holloway," Kim told her. "You may call me Kim, as long as you permit me to call you Grace."

"Deal!" Grace said, whipping tears from her eyes and finally shaking Kim's hand.

"Let's get everyone together please for official photos," Mr. Canter ordered.

The photo session left Grace in separate pictures with all the celebrities as well as her in a group photo that included the entire group and her father. Her friends at school would never believe what happened until she showed them the evidence of these pics. Occasionally, it was so good to be the daughter of the President!

************

As the members of the House of Ur were still in relatively good form, Raymond decided to go shopping with everyone. The sensation of the Pod-Drran in the open air mall meant that they had to fight through crowds each time they left one store to go to another. The stores they entered enjoyed the notoriety of having hosted the Pod-Drran and the other dignitaries, most eventually sporting signs stating they had been visited.

Finding themselves hungry, they stopped at a place that made BBQ ribs. Initially sceptical, the Pod-Drran devoured rib after rib, they couldn't get enough of the tasty treats.

"Well, I now know what to have Siobhan make when we have the House of Ur on the ship," Liea quipped.

The went back to shopping, Jennifer, Daniel stopping at a jewelry shop to purchase rings for their upcoming wedding, the shop attendants cooing over the weeks-old celebrity baby.

Ayesha, too, bought some rings for her upcoming ceremony, her and Sean having decided to be married on the ship by the Captain.

Caye-Ur preened when she went into the jewelry store. She told Raymond and Liea which pieces of jewelry she thought would be good for trade goods with the Pod-Drran. Liea decided that another trip to Terra would be necessary in the near future, this time looking all over the planet for the best jewelry as potential trade goods.

At the end of the day, Raymond was forced to hire porters to help carry everything back to their local transports. They made it back to the Valliant and returned to The Wanderer, a little more tired than when they left, but in much better spirits, except for one person, who was about to lose her best friend and second in command...

Terran Union Space Navy Headquarters, Capital City, Terra

Commodore Liana Dostier left the Presidential Compound and immediately shuttled to the nearby TUSN HQ. She quickly found FAdm. Wilhelmina Holstern.

"J-111335-554 Commodore Liana Dostier reporting, ma'am," she said, snapping a salute.

"Good to finally meet you, Commodore. When did that finally arrive?" she asked of her subordinate.

"Approximately one hour ago at the President's Media Conference, ma'am," she replied.

"Stuff the 'ma'am' shit unless we are in public, Liana. It's Wilhelmina, or just plain 'Willy' when we are in private," Holster told her subordinate.

"I'm not sure I'll ever be able to call you 'Willy', Wilhelmina," Liana replied, laughing.

"Right, you know the situation?" Holstern asked.

"Yes, ma'am. I am to take over HD-115153 and prep it to counter possible large scale pirate attacks based on the fact that the facilities there once belong to by the Alnitah and Deneb pirate syndicates.

"I was selected as I was the 2 I/C of the Piscium Defence Force at Liramor-23 and we have successfully stopped three pirate attacks there to date.

"By the way, that's quite the moniker, any objection to calling the system Punarjanm? It's Hindi for rebirth or reincarnation," Liana said.

"Sounds like a good name for that system. Your suggestion?" Holstern asked.

"Cmdre. Fiona Marsh's aide-de-camp, Cdr. Damyanti Balakrishna. She's from the Indian sub-continent here on Terra," Liana told her.

"We'll use it in all our communiques, though we will have to use the official title of the system in official reports," Holstern said.

"You are going to receive a new Valour Class ship, NS Styles Dixon, Lt.(N) Joyce Nyalla commanding. It is here now, waiting on your pleasure, in fact, it was originally intended for my use but the isolated nature of your new command meant it now goes to you.

"Your first duty will be to ferry me to Sector Twenty-Three Headquarters in the Crestor System as I do not, as yet, have my own Valour Class ship," Holstern stated with a smirk.

"Whenever you are ready, Wilhelmina," "Liana replied. "We can go see THE ship and get you back to your home port."

Hospital, Hotel Deck, Liramor-23, Piscium System.

Myne Breese, was a beautiful, blonde, young woman who had just finished her mining apprenticeship and had been working at Liramor-23 for just under a month. Only twenty-two, she had been told, of course, that mining in space was hazardous to one's health. This was especially true of people in their first year of work as space miners, who didn't really know what to look out for.

Myne had done everything right, however, being diligent was only part of what mining safety was all about. Sometimes, luck too, was a major portion of safety as being in the right place at the right time was just as important. Unfortunately for Myne, she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Myne had been supervising a laser mining probe that was cutting into a rock being processed. She had come in close to the probe to inspect it after it had reported a minor problem.

The probes laser was still functioning, something that Myne should have been aware of but wasn't. She should never have approached the probe while it was active. Myne was right beside it when the laser hit a pocket of frozen methane and oxygen and caused the pocket to flash from ice into gas. The laser finished the process of igniting the mixture.

The explosion destroyed the probe, which took the brunt of the force for Myne. Not that she got away unscathed. The force of the blast shattered her right shoulder, broke her right humerus, ulna, and radius. It also fractured or broke several of her ribs and broke her right femur and gave her a concussion. Worse, the blast damage the integrity of her EVA suit and shot her away from the cage with more speed than the capabilities of the mini-jets in the other miner's EVA suits, who were unable to catch up with her.

A desperate call for support went out to any small ships in the area for an immediate medical rescue. RH-538 managed to get to Myne and drag her inside the small ship before she lost all of the air in her suit.

She was rushed to trauma where Heyya, Kayl-Ur, Katanya, Silliya, and Hend-Ur worked on her for six hours to stabilize her injuries. She was placed in ICU for the night.

The next morning Myne woke up rather groggily after a very bad nightmare. She looked up into the eyes of Hend-Ur and panicked.

"MONSTER!!" Myne screamed.

Hend-Ur immediately spun around, his back to her. He flung out his arms and shouted "Where? Where? I'll protect you!"

"HEND! Stop fooling around, she means you, mate of mine," Kayl-Ur groused.

"Can't be," Hend stated, matter-of-factly, turning around to face Myne. "I am not a monster. I am a nurse. More specifically, I am your nurse," he told her, pointing out his name tag with a Pod-Drran smile.

"My nurse?" a confused Myne asked.

"Yes, you have been badly injured in a mining accident," Kayl-Ur explained. "You have received a major concussion that we had to deal with. We managed to save your shoulder, splice your right humerus, radius, Ulna, and femur back together. Fortunately, they were clean breaks. However, we can do little to support your ribs other than wrap your chest to help you.

"We have injected nanites to help in the repair process of your shoulder and your ribs. It will take up to a week to heal your ribs and perhaps two weeks to heal your shoulder. Your right shoulder and arm are locked in a secure brace to prevent them from moving while the nanites work on you. Unfortunately, we cannot lock your ribs down. Simply breathing will produce pain for the next three days, after which it will get progressively better each day," Kayl-Ur finished.

"Wait? He is your mate?" Myne asked, still confused because of the concussion, her brain finally catching up to what was being said.

"Yes, and I will ask you to keep your hands to yourself, I know he is handsome, but he is mine," Kayl-Ur emphasised.

"What?" Myne asked, still confused by the interplay of words.

"It's alright, Myne," Hend-Ur reassured her, patting her left arm. "She is just teasing you. There is nothing you can do to entice me to be interested in you. You don't have enough breasts for my tastes," he told her with a wink.

Myne looked over at Kayl-Ur, who proudly threw out her chest, showing off the obvious four breasts there under her scrubs. Myne blinked several times at the display.

"Will you two stop confusing the poor woman," Silliya said from the sidelines, looking through the window from the ICU nurses station. "You're making things worse for her with her concussion."

"Absolutely right," Kayl-Ur stated. "I am Dr. Kayl-Ur, and the physician of record in your case. I helped Dr. Heyya and Dr. Margo put you back together. Trust me, it was a lot of work. I hope in future accidents, that you will respect the fact that these kinds of injuries are a little too much for us and keep your injuries to something on the little less dramatic side?" she asked of her patient.

"What?" Myne asked.

"There was an explosion," Hend-Ur told the confused woman. "You were right beside it. It caused a lot of damage to you and threw you out of the cage you were working on at high speed. Fortunately for all of us, there was a Rockhound nearby. They caught you and brought you to the trauma word, where a team of six of us, myself and my mate included, worked to save your life and put you back together."

"You will be in ICU for another two days while we monitor what the nanites are doing inside of you," Kayl-Ur took over. You will then spend the next two weeks in the hospital.

"IF you do as your told, you may be allowed to leave the hospital at the end of the second week. However, you are on medical leave for probably the next five weeks as you will be in physio to recover from your injuries after you leave the hospital. That means no external shifts, in fact, no shifts of any kind external or otherwise.

"We will see at the end of those five weeks if we can allow you to go back on shift. Be a good patient for me, listen to my mate when he tells you to do things, work hard during your physio and you will be able to leave the hospital and get back to work earlier rather than later. Agreed?" Kayl-Ur said with force.

"Yes, ma'am," Myne said weekly.

"That's Dr. Kayl, while you are here in this hospital, young woman," Kayl-Ur informed her. "You may refer to me as ma'am, or as Kayl-Ur when you have left us."

Myne finally broke a smile. "It will always be ma'am when I am dealing with you doctor. You are far to intimidating a woman for me."

"I am so sorry for calling you a monster," she said by way of apology to Hend-Ur.

"Think nothing of it," Hend reassured her. "If I had regained consciousness with a human looking down at me, I might have reacted in much the same way," he gave her a Pod-Drran laugh to let her know he was kidding.

"You two have lousy bedside manners," came the electronic voice from Silliya at the nurses monitoring station.

"Huh, look whose talking," Hend-Ur said under his breath.

"I heard that!" came the reply.

Myne had been in hospital before, she never liked it. However, she thought, this time, it could be a very unique experience...

Conference Room One, Liramor-23, Piscium System

The morning brief had finished and Fiona had asked the heads of departments for any issues. Dr. Heyya asked to speak.

"Dr. Kayl-Ur has just been through the medical trauma section and we took her to see how the Marines work their medical evac systems. She asked a rather pointed question...why don't we have dedicated medical evac shuttles of our own on 24/7 stand-by?

"She has made a proposal that I think should be looked at," Heyya stated, throwing the data up on the main monitor.

The proposal was for two medical shuttles permanently latched to the outside of the platform not far from the Trauma Ward. They could be manned at a moments notice and flown to any external emergency instead of having to wait on the availability of Rockhounds, Survey Vessels, or other mining support ships, which may or not be placed for immediate assistance. She indicated that two would be necessary in case more than one emergency in different a location arose, something that had happened on numerous occasions in the past.

Kayl-Ur had set up a training roster for nurses and doctors on using the proposed shuttles, based on information from Sgt. Wiccan, the Marine Corpsman of The Wanderer, Ayesha, and the current rotating Navy Doctor attached to the hospital, the ships rotating their doctors through the hospital for training purposes.

The only thing that Kayl-Ur had left out was the cost of refit to the hull of the platform and the cost of purchasing and outfitting the Medical Shuttles. She simply did not know those details.

"With the platform currently undergoing repairs and enlargement, the cost of the modification to the hull could be covered under that. The shuttles are a different matter. However, Kayl-Ur has stated that the knowledge of medical shuttles has been around for some time and she is surprised that we do not have dedicated vessels for the hospital," Heyya stated.