5

Friss ran from the brig, leaving Demi at a loss what to do. She looked at the scorched, smouldering control panel by the door and realised she would never be able to claim she was a prisoner now. Then the thought of someone planting a bug on her began to make her feel a little more than miffed. She began to feel angry and more than a little paranoid.

She began to undress, taking off her jacket, which, she realised, had spots of dried blood on it. Dried blood from someone she once served, or worked with, in the bar. Trying her best to put that aside, she started checking everything on the jacket. The zip, the pockets, the lining, the poppers on the pockets. Everything. When she didn't find anything suspicious there, she started to unfasten her trousers.

"What are you doing?" Friss' head popped around the corner of the brig's door frame, looking at her from head to foot, his forehead creased. "This is no time to get undressed."

"You said I'm bugged." With her trousers around her knees, basic white knickers on display, Demi moved her hands in front of her crotch, far too late to hide anything. "I'm searching for it. Not for your benefit! I don't like the idea they've kept watch on me without telling me."

"Well, you won't find it in your clothes! Obviously." He waved a hand, urging her to pull up her trousers and she didn't hesitate to comply. "No. They probably gave it to you in your food. Medical bay. Now. Well, use, I don't know, counter measures?"

Those last words were shouted over his shoulder after a panicked rustling sound came over the tannoy. With a self-conscious shrug, Friss disappeared once again and, as he did so, a rumble rattled through the ship. The entire craft shuddered and lurched to the side. Demi didn't think the ship had been hit, but it felt close.

She stumbled from the brig, looking both ways along the corridor, wondering where to find the medical bay. More lurches sent her bouncing from one side of the corridor to the other as she tried to scramble along. One shift knocked her from her feet, sending her crashing against the wall, her face squashed against a sign that had a map of the ship on it. A quick look and she had a good idea where to go, fighting against the violent movements as she scrambled toward the medical bay.

Compared to everywhere else on the stolen Gal-Navy vessel, the medical bay looked almost pristine. Several Auto-Exam beds lined against one wall. Taking a momentary breath, she gripped the door frame as several shudders ran through the walls and floor. In a lull, she tried to run to the beds, only for a sharp bang to reverberate throughout the entire ship and her feet no longer connected to the floor.

"It's fine. Don't worry about it. Just a momentary breakdown of gravity plating. Everything's fine." Over the tannoy, Friss sounded like someone had taught him how to sound calm and in control, only for the teacher to end up being very poor at their job. A high-pitched crinkling sound followed Friss' words. "Alright! I see them! Demi, you might want to, I don't know, hold on to something? This will be a bit ... yeah. Hold tight."

The momentum Demi had managed before the gravity plates turned off had worked to her advantage, lessening the effects of the continued attacks on the corvette and sending her floating in the general direction of the Auto-Exam beds. As the nearest one began to float past, she reached out, grabbing hold of the flexible metal arm that held the monitor and pulling herself to the bed, where she managed to lie down and configure the ambient force field to hold her there while leaving her hands free.

She reached up to the monitor, setting the examination parameters and her finger hovered over the 'Execute' button. Whoever thought of calling the button to set the medical Auto-Exam table working 'Execute' had so little understanding of human nature, Demi assumed that they were not. Human, that was. It seemed a little final for Demi's tastes. Putting that aside, she poked out her finger and the world turned into something resembling jelly.

Not literally, but figuratively. It was as though the entire ship had turned soft and pliable. Whatever weapon their pursuers had used, Demi had never heard of it. Even the Auto-Exam bed and monitor appeared to melt into a formless mass. So did she. The finger she had about to use to set the examination 'executing' now looked like a candle that had burned down to practically nothing. She didn't want to think what it had done to the rest of her body.

About to scream, though how she could do that with a throat that resembled a congealed blancmange she didn't know, Demi stopped as everything snapped back into place. Nothing had melted, not least of which her finger or body. Everything had returned to normal. Or as normal as Demi had come to expect over the last few hours.

"Medical bay to bridge!" She hoped the automatic intra-ship communications were not among those circuits Friss had ripped out. "What the actual hell was that?"

"Don't worry. Everything is fine." He sounded hopeful, which was a big improvement from the borderline panic of the earlier communication. The rustling sound from Lap did not sound nearly as calm. "It was the only thing we could do, alright? Please remain calm, Demi, everything will be as close to normal as we can possibly get as soon as this next bit is done. Sorry."

"Sorry? Sorry!" If she weren't strapped to a Auto-Exam bed by a discreet force field in a ship that had lost all gravity or sense of serenity, Demi would have stormed up to the bridge for an explanation. Instead, she shouted at ceiling above. "What next bit?"

She soon found out as everything suddenly became extended beyond reasonable limits and flattened into something that the Planeian, Lap, may have considered somewhat familiar. Demi, the Auto-Exam bed, the medical bay, the ship. Everything had become flattened to something less than the depth of a sheet of cheap Repli-paper. Thinner. Demi felt as though she were losing all sense of what she was. Who she was.

Everything snapped back into place, becoming three-dimensional once again and Demi swore she would never complain about being overweight ever again. An oath that she knew very well she would break the next time she binged upon pizzas, ice-cream and hot dogs while watching trash romantic comedies after a night out left her alone and barely even drunk. Not that that happened often. Not too often. Not so often that it had become a problem worth worrying about. Much.

Yet, everything seemed to have calmed down. No more rumbling passed through the ship. No lurching. No bouncing. No sudden less than feasible changes of matter into blobs or flatness. It all felt ... calm. Whatever Captain Friss had done, it appeared to have worked. Which gave Demi the opportunity to deal with the pressing situation of an unwelcome bug inside her.

"Gravity plating, restored." A breathy, somewhat sexy, artificial female voice came over the tannoy. It annoyed Demi with it's effortless sultry sounds. "Thank you for your patience. Other systems will be repaired presently."

"Oh, sod it! I thought I'd got rid of that. Vocal interfaces. Ugh. Give me a decent screen with flickering green type flashing across it any day. Lovely." Friss, seeming to come from nowhere, leaned upon the Auto-Exam bed monitor, making it squeak as it moved to the side. "What are you doing in bed? Get up! We have plans to pore over."

"I'm looking for the bug, like you said." With the monitor out of reach and turned to the side, Demi couldn't switch off the force field to see the results. "I just set the examination running when ... whatever that was happened."

"Emergency wormhole jump. Risky. Messes with all the known laws of physics and quite a few we don't know. Usually incredibly dangerous and deadly. Sometimes weird. Oh, and it wasn't Gal-Navy after all! Just some pirates. You probably aren't bugged after all." Friss turned the monitor around to look at it and his eyes widened, puffing out his cheeks. "You really are bugged. And not pregnant. Mazel tov!"

Friss turned on his heel, moving towards several doors and draws set into the wall on one side of the medical bay. In silence, he opened one draw, taking out a surgeon's gown. He took great care in putting it on and fastening it. Then, from another draw, he found a medical mask and rubber gloves. The mask he fastened behind his head, the gloves he snapped into place and then snapped them several more times. For fun. Then, from another draw, he pulled out a Repli-steel object that had far too many sharp edges and appendages that looked designed to gouge.

"Oh, no! No! You have got to be kidding me!" Demi began to struggle against the force field holding all but her arms down. She tried to stretch for the monitor, to release herself, but Friss had moved it out of reach. "You are not performing surgery on me! No! I don't trust you to cut up your own food!"

"Just lie back and relax. We'll have that bug out in a jiffy." He approached the bed, holding the sharp object before him. Demi continued to struggle, readying herself to scratch Friss' eyes out. Or bite him. Something painful, at least. Until he stopped. "Idiot. It's a Gal-Navy Auto-Exam bed! It'll get rid of that bug easy. Ultrasonics. Non-invasive. I was just yanking your chain."

He tossed the wicked-looking medical object over his shoulder and began removing the mask. Pulling the monitor to him, he tapped out the surgical parameters, identified the foreign object and set the Auto-Exam bed into operation. A mechanised arm rose up from beneath the bed on one side, folded outwards until a laser pointed towards a place on Demi's abdomen. The laser flashed, the arm retracted and the force field switched off.

Demi stayed on the bed, her hands gripping the bedsheets. If she moved now, she'd kill Friss, with his stupid grinning face that didn't seem to care that he had just terrorised her, and she couldn't do that. She wasn't certain Lap could fly the ship.