Ice Breaker part 8

*shows emphasis*
[thoughts and telepathy]

Flashbacks are indented

****

He was watching. There wasn't anything he could do to help, but they weren't able to prevent him from watching. He was in the hospital, staring across and down into the buzz of activity that swarmed about in Proxima's most advanced operating theater. Lyta had been on the table for hours, the doctors working in teams, with more being done by computers and precision robotics than the actual people because of the sheer intensity of the damage - human hands just were not capable of the exactness and steadiness required. They were repairing all that they could, organ by organ, part by part, and cell by cell.

Zack could not even see her past the mass of doctors and equipment. Whatever portions of his scarlet-crested charge that he might have been able to glimpse were wrapped up in sterile bandages and force fields and the desperation of Proxima's best-skilled healers working under the direct threat from some very important people that Lyta could *not* be allowed to die. Most of them had never met a world president before, but before the retrieval teams had even been able to clear away the rubble covering the endangered woman, they had all been contacted by no less than three presidents: first was Proxima's own, followed by the woman who ran the hospital, and less than a minute after the women had hung up came a call from the man who was responsible for running the entire galaxy-sprawling Interstellar Alliance. The other calls - good or bad - had been diverted by their underlings and had to wait until the final verdict came down. It wouldn't matter anyway, they all knew - despite the fact they did not stop trying with all their power - that she was not going to be saved. The damage was simply too severe.

Rashelle, one of those who had found her in the mangled mess of Ground Zero, had been kept behind at the Ranger Station. Away from the all-seeing eyes of the press, held in Deveax's arms, she had already cried herself unconscious. Another ranger - Zack couldn't remember who - had said that a cryochamber had been prepared for each of the surviving actives on the team, whether or not they had yet been found. The rangers had been forewarned that if any of those higher-psi telepaths went too long without a memory-dose of the addictive music, their mental state would rapidly degrade - the Rangers knew better than the envoy team did, actually, since they had witnessed how quickly insanity and often death followed those few actives who'd left Sanctuary in the days when refugees still needed shepherding to the safety within it's borders. If they'd had even a few weeks of exposure, the ones who could not return to Teep's surface and get away from the EM fields were soon insane: within a matter of days. Months of constant contact with the music and the poor, isolated telepaths had died mere days after separation: a few hours after the dementia set in the very neurons in their brains started rupturing.

The Envoy members had all been under constant exposure for years. A few days without another greedily-scanned dose would be more than enough to kill any of the actives on the team. It was all Lyta could do to wean the new-powered latents among the Sophocles crew off the music in the months previous. But getting the long-addicted latents and (thankfully *low-psi'd*) actives off their addiction proved impossible. Although with the latents on her team she at least had been able to force their minds to go several days at a stretch under silence - the work done by the team would have been impossible if they could not separate and visit multiple worlds at once. But their temporary drug source, Lyta's memories, had now been abruptly severed off, and it looked to be permanent. Unless the impossible happened and by some miracle Lyta was suddenly physically intact, mentally strong, and alert enough to withstand joining her mind to another's . . . they would have to freeze themselves to simply *survive* a hasty, empty-handed journey back to Sanctuary on a White Star at full burn. But even that was not insurance they would not be already dead by the time the cryotube was cracked open. History had already taught the Rangers that lesson.

The guards in the halls, and those outside the hospital, had kept to their orders to keep anyone who was not on Lyta's team away from the survivors, and especially away from the ICU and operating theaters. Lyta was not the only team member to be hurt in the attack, there were dozens of others. Hotel workers, guests, bystanders, news media and Rangers had been caught as well. The two Minbari on the team who were there had both died before Lyta was pulled from the rubble, and the one Centauri present that morning was long since dead. The amphibian pair from non-Alliance space had been dug out, but their environmental suits had cracked and the dehydration was too far advanced: the doctors could do no more than ease their pain a little as they lay dying. Several more were injured, but not enough to threaten their lives. There were many still missing - it looked as though half the team might be dead before this was over. Considering how few survivors were able to be up and about, the lack of visitors was not surprising to Zack. A Ranger had brought word some time before that the only three members nearby that were physically unhurt were almost back from the orbital shipyards. The jumped-up security meant their delay in returning was much longer than it might have been in the days before. Especially since two of the three in question were the only active telepaths on the entire team so far unharmed: the Rangers were quite certain that whoever had destroyed the hotel - and dozens of lives already, the number was climbing every minute as the worst-injured among them died and more bodies were uncovered - would try to target them as well.

[Target,] Zack thought miserably, [what a polite word for it.] Even as he watched the surgeons, he could remember with exacting clarity the long hours after the recovery teams had finally gotten to and unburied Lyta's body.

He had refused to leave the site, not even as far as a First Aid tent, not until he knew Lyta was safe. The medics there could only clean him off and spray-treat his surface skin burns, although he did let them put his broken shoulder blade and arm into splints. But he refused the painkillers - he needed to think clearly, he'd repeated to them, but with Lyta in such a bad state it wasn't as if he could think even semi-coherently.

It had already taken hours for them to find where she - they - were after the attack, and it took hours more to extract her body from where it was pinned down. Uncovering the air pocket, ripping away at it's top and sides to make it large enough to get a medic, then eventually two medics, down safely beside her, cutting away at the large heavy wall-piece that had kept her confined, the blur of trauma equipment that had been passed down - spinal stabilizing force fields, IVs of blood and plasma in a steady stream while they tried to stop the exit points of the blood one by one until in desperation the medics snapped up a full-body force field to keep the blood at least pooled inside her fragmented skin - they could not stop all the injuries from bleeding, especially not the myriad of internal crush injuries. Zack remembered the injections of tissue boosters and micro-surgeons to try to keep her pulped intestines from destroying themselves, the draining of the places that were already infected and pus-filled, more and more injections of artificial white cells. The burn treatments that they put on what patches of skin they could reach to disinfect, the little charred fragments passed out that had been the clothes she had been wearing, black with burns as much as dried blood and bits of ruined skin . . .

Mid-way through, Zack could recall, there had been a sudden, odd puff of dust suddenly sucking into a crack near the workers and when he'd realized it was Backdraft he barely had time to scream at them to "GET DOWN!" before the fireball, greedily sucking in the oxygen that had been revealed to it's smoldering self, had exploded outwards - the medic that had not ducked had been hit by the outer edge right in his face and had to be evacuated. He'd be lucky if he didn't lose both his eyes, and it would take days of treatment before his hair would even consider regrowing, but he'd been several feet from the source of the explosion and it had not killed him, thankfully. The other medic was only slightly burned, he kept working even as a replacement team climbed down amidst the flurry of extinguishing this newest flare-up and the injured workers who had to treat the burns on their own legs and the injuries from fragments impacting.

Even after that extra chaos, he had not given into leaving, no matter how much it hurt to stay. Though he'd lost his sense of time - it might have been days, it might have been minutes, though he was told later it was only on the order of about 4 hours in the attempt to stabilize Lyta. They could not. They finally had to just scoop her up as best they could, as soon as they cut away enough of the wall pinning her leg down, then move her to the hospital. But considering how bad the damage was to the leg once they did uncover it, hindsight claimed it might have been better to just have amputated it right then and there. The recovery team did not want to move her at all for fear of killing her (the doctors were beyond astonished that she was not already long since dead) but they could not do the needed - ordered! - surgery to save what minutes might have been left in her life in the dusty, bloody rubble.

The doctors were convinced - from reports even before they saw her, but actually *seeing* for themselves clinched it - when they did uncover and see how bad off she was that she was beyond doomed. Never mind the trapped leg that was mauled mid-calf and down, or that her internal organs - from her neck to her hips and all between - were now so much mangled pulp, or the deep burns, all of which might have been fatal on their own and which were now combined; they were worried about her pulverized spine. Humans simple do not live from having a backbone crushed along its entire length. Added were blood loss, a fractured skull, and the shock from having plunged four and a half stories after been point-blank to a missile (not a nuclear one, thank the gods, but bad enough) detonation and then having said 4-plus story building fall on top of you.

Lyta was going to die.

Lyta was pretty much already gone, but the doctors had their orders. They continued to try to avoid the unavoidable. Zack had managed to put off receiving treatment until she'd finally been lifted out of the hole - Rashelle's hysterics providing sufficiently distractive for him to avoid being taken to the hospital just as much as his own determination to stay - only to have been stopped from going right along with her by the fact there simply was no room on the medical shuttle. Lisette Deveax had limped over at that point, to sneak a tranquilizer patch onto a rare bit of skin that was not scorched.

He recovered within an hour, to find that his broken bones had been set, braced, and fused together, and almost all of his burns treated as well. Almost. He hadn't let them finish before he was trying to leave. Deveax had barely slowed him when she'd pushed him back down and snarled, "Lesharr did not *die* just so you could make an ass of yourself! You will let yourself be treated and you will dress! Then we will take you - she will be under the blades for many hours yet. Do what SHE would want!"

He had let them finish, but the moment he was semi-decently clothed, he was off, his fury at Deveax for being 'an interfering little weasel bitch' only slightly mollified by her leading him right to the waiting area - one where he could see what was going on, finally.

Zack was still there, watching the surgery teams, his forehead resting on the clear partition that keeps the operating theater clean. He could think just clearly enough to know he'd be knocked out again - for even longer this time- if he tried to interfere in the sterilized environment of the theater itself. He was supremely exhausted, but was not able to sit down. Another few minutes, and the door behind him crashed open - Aaron Massey (a P6 man in his mid thirties who'd lived through more than a century's worth of life while inside of a Psi Corps prison, on the envoy team to oversee mineral trade and the outfitting of the cargo vessels) had come screeching in. Ecathe Keewatin (a Brakiri of about the same Psi levels of Massey, his job was medical rather than mineral) was a second later, though the Brakiri couldn't brake in time and half-collided with a chair sitting next to the far wall. Zack did not say hello. "Tarington isn't with us," Massey would wheeze out when he'd caught his breath some minutes later, "he's gone off to the - the site - we could all feel it, even so far away, when she - we think there may be a way to help her, if any of the vorlon tech remnants can be located - but we needed to be here. To - to see Lyta."

Just back from navigating the maze of security that ran all the way from the orbital shipyards to that room, they were both obviously upset, though their own fears were not nearly as visible - or as broadcasted - as poor Rashelle's had been. They both sounded to be near tears, but Zack did not look away from the bright glare of Lyta and the doctors to check their state beside him in the darkened observation room. Neither one of them was strong enough to broadcast words, or else they would have never been able to even consider leaving Teep's surface for the so-much-faster death that came to a higher telepath who'd become addicted to the music, but they were thankfully keeping their shields and blocks up to full, or else the overwhelming emotions from the pair would have been enough to level the normal human standing beside them.

Zack didn't really want to know how they were feeling anyway. He could guess it was a very close match for his own emotions when a sudden swarming in the theater below/in front of him stopped his stray thoughts. Some of the doctors were having to pause as they attempted to re-start her heart. Again. It was encased in a protective force field to keep it from drying out or splitting or leaking, but their efforts proved futile after a few extra-tense minutes and they moved back to keeping her on the bypass machine, all while the other pairs and trios of doctors continued non-stop to work on her legs and abdomen. The amount of blood on the fronts of the heart team had increased, especially on the one who got sprayed in the moment they switched over & the force field was dropped. Ecathe had stumbled back a few paces as the small stream bubbled out, his whispered prayers increasing in volume for a few breaths. Zack did not flinch, but Massey might have paled - he did not check to see how the telepath was faring. He had seen the same thing several times already, and knew that the spray had been comparatively minor - though it meant there were unrepaired holes left, and knew that any blood loss was still critically bad. The doctors could keep pouring more into Lyta's body indefinitely, but as long there was enough that did *not* leave before moving the needed oxygen to where it had to go, the blood would not matter much if the rest of her died.

Zack could hear Ecathe muttering some sort of new prayer, this time in a language he didn't know. [No, wait-] because he did recall some of its words, though they had not been said in such an urgent tone - [where have I heard them before?] The stray thought wandered by . . .

The gathering they'd had about a month before - the week before Christmas, though that holiday held little meaning in itself for most of the trade envoy and Rangers present. Over half the entire team had been there that afternoon. To cope with the uprising of frustrations, Lyta had made the lot of them take the rest of the day off to party. There were less than 50 people present in total, not so many as to intimidate the telepaths, and any that were not a member of the trade team were either friends or guards - though there was not a single Ranger uniform to be spotted on any of them. Throughout the dinner, people had been standing up and giving a few words each that they thought were suitable to a festive occasion. Lyta'd had to push the first few, but as the minutes went on and reservations decreased in the rare absence of uniformed guards about them, the trade team had relaxed and actually started to enjoy themselves. Rashelle lifted a glass to a plainclothed Charles Anderson, and toasted the excellence of the security, a fact that now made Zack Allan especially remorseful - Anderson's pulverized corpse had been what had protected Rashelle's skull from being completely crushed in the building's collapse, though the young girl had not yet been told of this. And what Ecathe had said had included the same phrase that he was now whispering, but back then it had all the team members - and those Rangers who knew the Brakiri language - cheering him.

Zack still had no idea what the phrase meant, but he sure as hell didn't feel like cheering. And he began - impossibly - to feel worse as the memory rolled on, just like a million-ton warship with its braking systems destroyed will continue to move forward.

That had been the day - evening - that they had first kissed. Not the little brushes of lips against a cheek that they'd used a few times to say hello or goodnight when they were reasonably alone; but an actual, real, tongues-melting-together steal-your-breath-away kiss that made history spin in a whole new direction for all involved.

Three such kisses, to be even more precise. A few moments alone, and the overall good feelings that were swarming about the group manifested for him through Lyta, who had moved up to him and kissed him - hesitantly at first, but that single tender one was immediately followed by a very long, extremely passionate, minds-touching-revealing-all-desires shared kiss that left them both seeing spots from oxygen depravation, his hands exploring her body's curves and the flow of her hair as her fingers entwined around his back, underneath the fabric of his jacket.

Then they'd had the horrible luck to have been interrupted just before they started another kiss, by a Ranger that Zack never gotten a good look at and so could not later punish. A Ranger, furthermore, who left the formerly-closed door between them and the main group open . . . but before she went back to the others, Lyta gave him a third kiss, on the mouth if not with her tongue, and anyone who could look through the doorway had seen them pressing together for it. She had even smiled at him after doing so.

Zack had been in a very happy near-delirium for several minutes afterwards. She was willing to openly show her feelings, that she honestly had feelings - very deep, very *adult* feelings - for him.

The still-dizzying effects of the memory did little to dispel the misery that was very much existing in the waiting and observation area. Zack supposed that he might have been considered lucky - or very important, anyway - to have gotten a place where he *could* watch - it was likely the only such room in the hospital, and possibly the city, where it was possible. The robotic mini-fusers were now whirring around too fast to be seen clearly. Reconnecting the spinal fragments, he guessed, from where they were concentrating and the way all the doctors were being so careful to not touch or otherwise jar the body during the delicate process.

Zack and Lyta had not been able to find the time to kiss like that again, except for a few seconds right at the end of New Years Eve, which didn't really count since they were not alone then. Most of January was gone, now, and it looked like he'd never get a chance. He hadn't ever thought something would happen - there had been threats made against her and the rest of the team, of course, daily if not more frequently, but he couldn't grasp the idea that she'd end up . . . like this. After all she had been through, in the past few years, in her entire lifetime - to die like this? The thought occurred to him that at least she'd not have been in pain since there were no brainwaves. She'd likely have blacked out just as she impacted the ground - but the memory that haunted him from the blast and the fall - [what a horrible last memory for her to have]. He had been plotting something - just what, he hadn't been sure of yet - for Valentine's Day during the times he wasn't mad at her for any recent hooky sessions. [Didn't she realize how worried that made me?] He thought in anger, but it faded fast.

No point to it now. Lyta had not died yet, not physically, but that was only because of the machines - [electronics,] Zack thought with bitter sarcasm, [her now-hated 'screaming' electronics] - that kept her body going, and restarted the essential parts when they stopped - something that was happening more and more frequently, to her entire shattered self. Lyta might not be officially declared as deceased - the surgeons had been ordered *not* to do so, by more than a few extremely important people - but her brain (bruised, half-crushed, and bled dry of cerebral fluids before the recovery teams could even pull her from her fate-intended tomb) had zero activity, in any part, for any reason.

The surgeons, for all intents and purposes, were operating on a corpse. It was only the forced barrage of treatments that kept some - *some* - of the individual cells functioning, and from the tiny scraps of second-hand medical knowledge Zack retained as he looked at the myriad of scanners and diagnostic instruments, those individuals were on a steady march towards the sum of zero, minute by minute fading into hour after hour.

And there wasn't a damn thing Zack Allan could do about it.

(end p 8)

chapter 9
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