Memories of a Bearcat, Long Ago

Posted on 10 Jun 2023 @ 6:41pm by Major Porter Wallace & Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri

Mission: M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Pathfinder, Sickbay
Timeline: MD10 2035 Following "The Choice"
2555 words - 5.1 OF Standard Post Measure

He felt a hand squeeze his. Slowly he turned his head to find Ibis, tears already streaming down her face, her hand trying to stifle sobs. He squeezed her hand back.

Wallace had to open his mouth a couple of times and work his tongue to get enough saliva in his dry mouth for him to croak, “Pyrryx…easy-peasy…didn’t…put me in…a coma. So, bearcat…was…tougher. Who knew?” He slowly lifted her hand to lips and kissed it. “I had…a…crazy dream…but…okay…now. I…come back to…you.”

She wasn’t sure if she was laughing or crying as she pressed her face to his shoulder. The bearcat… the mention took her back.

It had been some fifteen or so years ago, when they’d served on the Nimitz-A and she'd only just stopped counting her age in the teens, naive as ever. She remembered being four weeks into a five week expedition, deep in the ice caverns, bundled up in heavy thermal coats and collecting samples with Dr. Rafe Khadra.

The entire cavern had been flourishing with magical biolumenescence. She’d been so enamored with the brilliance of the ice caves that her full attention had been on the beauty of the glowing spores and striped alien fungi; repeated images of the dream-like cavern life refracted through all the glittering ice surfaces, twinkling and pulsing unlike anything she had seen before.

The bearcat's own fur was full of adapted matching biolumenescent patterns making it practically invisible. Her general scans hadn't picked it up. The refraction of the ice had negated broader imaging. Unseen until she was practically standing next to it, the enormous bearcat would have had her in a single strike, if she hadn’t suddenly caught a sense of it telepathically before it sprang, such that she’d moved first, and ducked under a ledge that had barely saved her as the ice shelf had been pulled down by the bearcat’s powerful swipe. After that it had been a mad dash, where only her small size provided Ibis any advantage as she weaved through naturally formed ice features.

She didn’t remember who she’d telepathically screamed for, only that she had reached out instinctively.

While she had spun around the stalagmite columns, she tried to confuse the animal with telepathic misguidance, and it had slowed down, become confused and doubted its own senses. Shaking it's massive head as if it were dizzy or trying to resolve double vision. For a moment she could make out how it saw her, as a very bright hot spot in the surrounding cold, similar to the small warmblooded creatures akin to lemings that the science team had cataloged for weeks. She had to have looked like a good morsel. Animal minds were not generally complex enough to prevent perceptual suggestiveness. So she chilled the heat sensing vision, multiplied it, and confused the mental map…

She would always have wondered if she could have convinced it to turn down a different path and sniff somewhere else long enough for her and Rafe to escape the cavern. But by then Rafe, panicked and trying to help, had drawn his phaser and shot at it which broke her tenuous telepathic link with the animal, the immediacy of the stinging pain bringing it roaring back into its own senses. Before it had only been a little hungry. Now, it reared up and gave an enraged roar from which Ibis ran as hard as she could before all of its paws were on the ground again, after her.

Reaching a dead end with no more easy cover, she had crouched down, anticipating being easily speared by the claws of a paw half her own size, when instead of the blow she had expected, came a guttural human yell and a responding yowl as the animal spun around, senselessly leaping and dashing through stalactites that crashed and shattered into the cave floor like so much glass.

As it turned, rearing up and trying to scratch at its own shoulders, she realized there was Wallace, clung to its back, beating it with a rock and bloodying one of it's eyes. The injured wails the surprised bearcat made echoed through the caverns, as if it was everywhere at once. Even Wallace was small compared to the bearcat. And yet he’d just leapt up onto its back without thinking twice.

“Go, Ibis, run!” he’d bellowed at her as she’d been frozen, still crouching while witnessing his wild rodeo in shock.

The directive had snapped her back to her own senses and she’d sprinted away, out of the cavern and back into the narrow slanted passageway moving to let a security team by as they followed to the scene a little behind Wallace.

She’d stood in the passage, heaving for breath and hearing the sounds of the fight reverberating off the ice walls. After a few minutes of what must have been one hell of a ride, the bearcat’s roaring had ended. She could sense that it was alive, but asleep. And something of the same sense of Wallace, also alive… but fast losing consciousness.

Curiosity drove her back to the cavern’s mouth and she looked in. She’d found the cavern had been full of disturbed bioluminescent life, floating down in the air from where it had been tossed up in the flurry of movement the caverns weren’t accustomed to. She could see the draft of the place sweeping the highlighted spores along in gentle eddies, as if the caves had their own breath. The huge creature lay on its side, purring like an idling motor in its harmless state as Security officers very cautiously checked it with tricorders to be sure it was knocked out. She was awestruck now, being able to take in the whole form of it, laying still. It was a magnificent thing, heavily muscled and powerfully shaped.

Meanwhile Rafe, going into doctor response mode, was turning Wallace onto his back. There were three deep, clean slashes right through his chest, and Ibis looked away while Rafe initially treated him with a few hypos from his kit— coagulant? painkiller?— before holding something to the marine's chest to stave off the bleeding and calling for the officers to help get him back to the base camp.

At the time, the Nimitz had still been a week out on the schedule to collect the away team on its return trip through the system. She still had samples to collect and to process. But between each venture, ever more respectful of the security protocol, she would return to the base camp around the shuttles, looking in on the medical tent. Rafe had stabilized Wallace with the medical equipment he had on the shuttle, but the Marine would need a heart transplant, he'd informed her.

“He lost his heart for me?”

“He’s a Marine.” The doctor had shrugged as if that itself was enough of a reason. “They run headlong into that sort of thing for anyone,” Rafe had told her, kissing her on the forehead. “That’s why he was assigned to a science mission he’s otherwise useless on.”

For the majority of the trip, everyone had been tired of Wallace's difficult attitude and short tempered remarks in camp. He wanted all kinds of perimeter checks and weapons management when there was nothing around but endless ice. If there was any happiness around the dining tent, he was an absolute killjoy about it. And no one found him more insufferable than Rafe. Ibis had tried to tell him she didn't think Wallace was always that angry on purpose. Something had happened to him. And maybe he was right some of the time.

In truth, Rafe knew they hadn’t been following the security protocol when he had shown Ibis the next cavern ahead of the group, looking to make better time on the day’s expedition, and maybe enjoy her wonderment for a little romantic time to themselves. Still, how should he have anticipated a predatory animal of that size? If he’d known, of course he would have made very different choices. What really concerned him about the case wasn’t the heart replacement. It was the venomous bite through his shoulder. The extent of toxins that had spread throughout the marine’s nervous system before getting him into stasis, that was where the challenge in treatment lay.

Ibis picked up on all of Rafe’s meandering thoughts on the situation and said nothing of them to Rafe as he continued to reassure her. “Don’t worry yourself. When we return to the Nimitz, I’ll install him a state-of-the-art cardiac replacement. Better than the old one. Cold and hard enough to match his mean personality.”

When Rafe wasn’t looking, she held the grouchy Marine’s hand, telepathically trying to touch his sleeping mind with her gratitude, but not finding enough of a sense of consciousness to latch on to.

Now, aboard the pathfinder, Ibis found herself thankful to the bearcat and to Rafe, pushing away her tears with the palm of a hand.

“The doctors… they said your artificial heart kept you alive when… when maybe a natural one would have failed. I guess we should thank the bearcat,” she laughed.

He smiled weakly, squeezed her hand. “I’ll…send…a card.” Smacking his lips, he rolled his head to either side trying to spy a cup or glass. “Water?”

She patted his shoulder and reached for an electrolyte water the staff had left for him. He had a feeding tube installed directly— she could see it running under the coverlet. Probably it had been simple to put in during the surgery when his innards were laid open anyway.

Ibis held the straw as Wallace wet his throat.

“You’ve only been out of it a couple of days. It’s, like, thirty-some-odd hours since they stabilized you in surgery.”

He nodded his head. Curiosity got the better of him and Wallace tried to sit up so he could take a look at the damage. He barely felt anything beneath his throat: his legs could be missing for all he knew. Lifting his head, he only could see the sensor cluster arching across his midsection. His brain fogged with pain medicine and antibiotics, he tried to lever himself higher on his elbows, oblivious to the impossibility of the maneuver.

“Here, lie back. Let me…” She wished she could converse with him telepathically, to prevent him from straining himself. Getting up and walking around for a moment, she figured out the control slides on the bio bed and brought him to a slight recline, then shuffled a small bolster pillow under his neck. “Is that any better?”

Wallace grimaced, a sharp pain shooting up his spine, and nodded. The pain went as quickly as it went and he looked down to see his toes tenting the blanket at the bottom of the bed. He sighed. The thought of losing a leg somehow had panicked him. An artificial heart was one thing, but a biosynthetic limb seemed somehow strange.

He eased his head back onto the pillow. “If they…replace…anymore parts of me. I’m afraid, I’ll become…more machine…than man,” he joked. “Artificial life…is still illegal…right?”

“I don’t know… I thought you were always a little more human after you got your new heart. At least to me.”

“Seems like…you saved me…more ways than one.”

“I guess, if you’re getting creative about it.” She smiled, thinking of the heart and the ironic way that had played out. “But I couldn’t transport you. It was a Marine unit that got you out. The Captain of this ship sent them.” She explained as far as she understood. She pointed out a biobed just beyond his where another man was resting. “That’s Major Finn. He led an extraction for you.”

“What a…jerk,” Wallace smiled slightly. “I had it…completely under…control. Now…he’ll get…the medals.”

She laughed and bit her lip. “They might get more than that. Commendations and promotions. I hear someone on the extraction team actually killed the governor. I think a Lieutenant named Tahriik.”

“Good…” Wallace patted her hand. “What ship…is this?”

“The Pathfinder. It’s a Nova class, garrison ship of Obsidian Command. I met the Captain. A woman named DeHavilland.”

“Nova…a science ship. Good. You'll...be at home. What about…Olivia? Ikemba?”

“The kids are okay. Olivia is wearing a sports bra for a shirt and a pair of nightshorts. It’s the best I could do.” She shook her head but smiled. “Ikemba has discovered chocolate ice cream. ‘Chocca’ as he calls it. He practically bathes in it every meal. Olivia insists on eating sushi and crabmeat, of course. The medical staff wants me to make her drink a protein supplement. I haven’t gotten any in her yet.”

“Mmm. It’ll…take…time.”

“I had to put ocean sounds up for ambient noise in our quarters. I didn’t realize how upsetting the silence would be for them. Ikemba has calmed down a little. Olivia tries to be difficult with anyone who approaches her.”

“Mmm.” Wallace felt his eyelids begin to droop. He wanted to listen, but
just the act of being awake was hard. Combined with Ibis's voice and the comfort that she and the children were safe, he started to drift into sleep.

“They were asleep when I came to check on you. One of the Ensigns assigned to us is with them. I asked her to stay. I know the computer can tell me if their lifesigns wake, but I just can’t leave them alone.”

“Mmm.” His eyes were nearly closed.

“I gave the captain the data recorder and the letters. She promised to see the information through to the right channels.”

“Mmm. Good. Yes. Channels.”

Sensing he was falling asleep and catching very little of what she was saying any longer, Ibis continued to talk softly, just to help him lull to sleep. “I washed the kids. I took a shower. I’ve taken so many of them. Six or seven. A meal and a shower and a meal and another shower.” She chuckled at the ridiculous luxury.

When his repeated mumbling acknowledgements stopped, it seemed to Ibis that he had fallen asleep, still clutching her hand. She stood and with her other hand, reached across her Wallace, and refolded his coverlet.

As she repositioned it across him, Wallace’s eye opened by a hair and he said, voice slightly slurred from weariness, but somehow resolute, “Elizabeth reminded me...she asked me…do it different...this time. Do you think…Captain…would marry us?” He yawned and returned to his deep, content slumber.

Pausing over him and watching his breathing slow into rest, Ibis held the back of his hand against her heart and tried to understand what she thought he had said. His dead wife had reminded him to ask to remarry? “Go to sleep, Major.” She put his hand down on his chest. “Make more sense tomorrow,” she told him, kissing his cheek.