Destine

Chapter 134: Triage Allegro

At the appointed time, we emerge and go back to our ship, where we take possession of sixteen identical medic androids, some specialty shackles for unruly nephilim, and some of the psionics-damping drug PDPS (also for unruly nephilim).

Dafnord has the ship's furnisher whip up a conference room wherein to greet the new staff/equipment. "Greetings, sentients. Welcome aboard the ," he tells the androids. We will be leaving outback shortly. Please be seated." They do that, and wait. They're very good at waiting.

We launch and get the same careful escort out that we got in. At the first opportunity, we jump.

Dafnord goes back to the conference room. "Welcome aboard the Munch," he tells them, this time. He explains their upcoming mission to them and offers technical data, with Gannar at his side providing suggestions on how to address an audience of young androids. ("They won't care about anything but their job.") They should pass all subsequent questions on to Gannar.

They do, selecting a spokesman from their number after a short conference on inter-android radio. Dafnord then presents the spokesman with a baseball cap bearing the Jumping Jacks logo and his new name: Aidan.

(At Gannar's request, Tom has made up a list of names for these androids, since they don't have any yet. Since they're all red-haired, he's chosen Celtic names: Aidan, Brian, Colin, Dylan, Egan, Flynn, Gavin, Halloran, Ian, Jock, Kelly, Liam, Michael, Neil, Ossian, and Patrick. One down, fifteen to go.)

We reach Hellene in two days, without incident, and still have three to five weeks to wait until the med-bots arrive from Aurelius. We leave the android medics to get familiar with the field hospitals set up in the black hangar at Jumping Jacks, and everyone leaps ahead by fast-forward.

Everyone but Gannar, that is, who stays behind to look after the androids. He has them go through drills several more times than they would on their own initiative -- 'cause they don't *have* any initiative. He also starts them in on education in social forms and general emotional psychology. For this, he uses TV therapy programs written on Capek, specifically for androids, which he tells them are "neurological support stimuli."

It's all rather like trying to fluff lead. These androids are thoroughly squelched in their (lack of) emotional response. Oh, well. It took Gannar himself more than seventy years to go from manufacture to manumission. Gannar tries to stimulate their initiative and creativity by asking Cantrel to send any minor injuries at Jumping Jacks to the androids for treatment.

When all the medical automation arrives, we wind up taking up two regular hangars and one very big hangar with our field hospitals. Tom, Robbie, and Salimar then fake up a tunnel, on the pantope, to resemble the one on the Tellemataru, only this one leads from Yazatlan, through the pantope, into Jumping Jacks, where our dragon-detecting fays are soon on duty. We also recruit some Jumping Jacks doctors to supervise the androids.

Finally, we assemble our away team -- all the pantope usuals, plus some volunteers among the nephilim, whom some of us have dubbed "Dafnord's Own Ranger Corps," or "DORCs." (Dafnord ignores this...) We decide to grab fifty victims, drop them into our new rescue system, and see how it works.

It works okay, but the senior Jumping Jacks doctor wants to know what idiot is doing triage on these people. Triage. Ah. We hastily gate to the Tellemataru, wait for the hospitals *there* to catch up, then get Sunbird, Rose, and N'Tabo Bey, plus two assistants each, to come do triage on our victim-stream.

The next batch of fifty goes better. At the third, we're getting good. Around batch 10, we're half way through, at most, and people are starting to die because we're not getting them to help fast enough. The nine medics from the Tellemataru start treating on the spot, but they can't be everywhere.

Around batch twelve, Tom realizes that, at this rate, this will be the longest pickup yet, leaving us exposed for longer than ever, in addition to the climbing casualty rate.

So we bookmark the whole mess and go looking for more equipment. What we need is a lot of foam rubber, or something like it, so Tom can drop a suitable batch of victims into a holding area on the Tellemataru, then disconnect from Yazatlan time while they get triaged and sent to Jumping Jacks. (The heck with the fake tunnel, now.)

So we go out shopping in present-day Pericles and find a Zamboni-like contraption that folk use for creating the spongey, bouncey surface of some game they play here. We never even bother to learn the name of the game, and we *rent* the pseudo-Zamboni, rather than having the guy come to the "sports center" and do the job for hire. We leave some very puzzled people behind, especially when we drive their Zamboni around the corner and vanish with it. And then return it to the garage when no one is looking. But we're in a rush.

Tom then drops people into a foam-decked hold with a rapid series of stupid pantope tricks. They get triaged and forwarded to Jumping Jacks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then, when about fifty people are left in the square, Mithriel telepaths "Incoming!" She has spotted another manta ship. Tom grabs a final few people, including the away team, and goes into freeze frame. The enemy has launched *two* missiles at us, and, if we just blow this manta-ship up, the wreckage lands on the city. And these nasties have been known to pack their own dimensional technology. Hm.