Every joint in my body ached from the awkward sleeping arrangement, not helped by the previous day’s fighting. Judging by the ship’s chronometers I had slept most of the night, but I didn’t feel rested. I pulled myself up and cursed as pain from my leg ripped through my body, reminding me that I needed to be more careful. The gravity on the cruiser was still set low, allowing me to hobble over to Marcus’ stasis tube without putting much weight on my wounded leg. The monitoring panels reported that his vital signs were weak but stable. They also produced all kinds of messages that I didn’t understand but assumed were bad news. The tube hadn’t gone into full stasis for some reason, but reported itself to be in critical care mode. “That doesn’t sound good,” I said to myself. Marcus looked a little better. Most of his wounds were covered with a metallic shine which I assumed had been applied by the machine to protect the vulnerable areas.
