Daughters of Demeter

With Sarah and I back on board the Demeter, the Littlehammer safely under tow, and myself once again properly dressed, we set off for Rolandan-2.

It would be another six days of level-zero jump, and as soon as we were under way the four of us had a quick conversation about what was left to be done and what we should all be working on. Since Rebecca and Jenny had already started on the inventory we decided to finish that up first. Then we'd get to work installing the hoist mechanism.

And in terms of inventory, there wasn't actually much left to be done. All the larger pieces had already been reviewed, so that just left the smaller stuff. Sarah and Rebecca went down to the secondary hold to look at the various crates and things they brought aboard, while Jenny sat with me at the table in the mess and I started going through the two bags of stuff we recovered from the ship's infirmary.

I emptied one of the bags on the table then started carefully reviewing the contents. I wasn't just looking to see what we had, but I also had to check the condition and verify it was safe or usable.

"Apart from the location and the company," I commented as started sorting through the pile of little grey boxes, "This almost feels like being back at work in the Hammersmith's infirmary? Like we got a mixed shipment in and I have to inventory and verify all of it before I stow it in the cabinets."

Jenny asked, "Did that happen often?"

I shook my head, "Not really. Maybe three times? When I was first assigned to the ship I did a complete inventory of the infirmary. Then before we left the Imperium we got a shipment to stock up on everything. And after about half a year in this sector we met up with a supply ship."

Jenny watched quietly as I carefully organized everything on the table into a few piles, then I dumped out the other recovery bag and repeated the process. When I was done I had everything organized into five separate collections. Four of them were piles of nearly-identical small grey boxes, the fifth pile was four larger boxes, and that was the group I started with since there wasn't much to look at.

I opened each of the four boxes and checked the contents, then closed them again and set them all aide.

"Two small limb immobilizers, and two large limb immobilizers," I told my AI crew-mate. "All appear to be in good condition."

"Noted," she replied. "What is a limb immobilizer? I assume it's medical, but I can't help thinking it could be something unpleasant."

I smiled, "They're basically self-inflating splints. If someone breaks an arm or a leg, you slip the appropriate-sized immobilizer over the injured limb then activate it. It puffs up and gently but firmly holds the limb still, so it won't sustain any additional damage."

"Ah. Understood," she nodded to herself.

Unfortunately the next collection wasn't as straight-forward, and unlike the immobilizers the contents weren't all intact. Out of almost a dozen boxes of trauma-shot ampules, most of them were unusable.

About half of the ampules were physically compromised, with cracks or other damage. And even some of the intact ones had their contents crystallized, probably due to being exposed to vacuum. Or maybe it was the freezing temperatures that did it. Either way they were trash, and in the end only three boxes worth were any good.

"These are trauma-shots," I explained to Jenny as I put the good ampules back into boxes and dumped the bad ones into a recovery bag on the floor by my feet.

When I was done I gave her the count, "We have three boxes, twenty-four ampules per box, eight doses per ampule."

She made note of that, and asked "What do they do?"

As I moved on to the next pile I explained, "They're a blend of drugs, basically a strong analgesic combined with adrenaline and a few other things. It's the go-to for any serious injury in an emergency situation? Helps relax the patient while keeping their heart and lungs working. It'll buy more time to do a proper evaluation, or keep a patient alive long enough to get them proper medical help."

"They kept Sarah alive long enough that you could help her," I added. "Without them I'd have lost her in the first twelve hours, I'm sure."

Jenny seemed impressed, "In that case I'm glad you had them."

There were a total of three kinds of ampule for me to inspect. After the trauma shots I went through a dozen boxes of painkillers, and after inspecting all of them I let Jenny know the result.

"Four boxes of painkillers, twenty-four ampules per box, eight doses per ampule."

The next one was a vitamin shot, which seemed fairly useless considering the three of us were all in very good health thanks to Jenny. There weren't as many of those as the others, but I reported the score to the AI just the same. "Two boxes of vitamins, same quantity per box."

"Noted," Jenny replied.

The final set of boxes were slightly larger than all the others, though they were still the same nondescript light grey colour the Imperium favoured for shipping various small or valuable items.

The contents were quite different too, metal aerosol cans rather than small sealed glass jars. The cans also held up better than the jars, which wasn't a surprise. They weren't so fragile, but not being able to see the contents meant I couldn't go by eye to know they were still ok. So I had to test each one to ensure it still sprayed ok, but I used one of the reject boxes as a test target.

When I was finished I let Jenny know, "We have five boxes of wound sealant. Eight cans per box."

"I assume you apply that to injuries," she replied. "How does it work?"

"It's a blend of drugs and other compounds to help clean and sterilize the wound," I explained. "Then it forms a sort of artificial skin. That stops bleeding, and prevents infection and generally keeps an injury stable for a while."

I added, "It's not meant to be a permanent solution, it doesn't replace actual skin and it's not meant to seal serious wounds for any length of time. The stuff can break down over time, sometimes as fast as a few hours. Sometimes it'll last a day or two. The most basic emergency kit a field medic carried would be trauma shots, wound sealant, and a couple limb immobilizers. That's enough to stabilize most problems long enough to get a patient to a qualified doctor or at least an infirmary where they can receive better treatment."

Jenny asked, "You used that to help save Sarah's life as well, correct?"

"Right," I nodded. "I used it to seal her wounds, and if the ship hadn't been wrecked I'd have taken her to the infirmary and started providing her with long-term care... Though to be honest I had my doubts she'd survive, and if she did her career would have been over. You did more for her in twelve hours than our best medicine would have achieved in a year."

The AI looked like she wanted to blush, "I'm just glad I was able to help her, and you as well Amanda."

"Me too," I smiled. Then I gestured at what we had left on the table, "So all this stuff is good. I'm going to put it away in the storage room, the rest of it is trash. We'll probably dump it overboard or something. It can't be used, and it's not safe to put it into the ship's recycling system."

She stood up, "I'll leave that to you. While you're doing that I'll check in with the others, but I believe they're almost finished as well."

Jenny headed down to the secondary hold while I was moving the usable medical supplies into the storage compartment just aft of the lounge area. By the time I had that done the orhers were already back up from below, so the four of us could all compare notes.

I filled Rebecca and Sarah in on what we had in terms of medical supplies, and I let them know where I stored it all.

The boss suggested, "This is probably thirty days overdue, but you should go through all the first-aid kits on board, make sure they're all stocked up and everything in them is in good condition. There's probably a half dozen of them throughout the ship."

"Good idea," I agreed. "And I suppose doing that when I first signed on wouldn't have made much difference if we couldn't actually replenish them. Now we can. I'll get started on that as soon as we're done here."

"Thanks Amanda," the captain replied. She gestured towards the recovery bag on the floor I'd been stuffing the rejected supplies in, "What's all that?"

I explained, "That's all the stuff we recovered that can't be used. Unfortunately most of the drugs we brought back were damaged or otherwise compromised. The numbers I gave you is just the stuff that's actually usable. The rest is basically toxic waste and needs to be dumped. It can't be put into the ship's recycling."

"Understood," Rebecca responded. Then she got started reviewing the rest of the salvage.

"Obviously our big-ticket item this time around is the ship's boat," she stated. "Even damaged that's probably going to bring in the big money. Not as much as the computer, but definitely worth our while. Next to that, we have two missile launches, each with eight missiles. And three double-laser turrets, they look a bit banged-up but should still work. The long-range sensor array and two dozen missiles round out everything we've got to offer Mel when we get to Rolandan-2."

Sarah took over, "Rebecca and I went through those seven cases we collected from the armoury. We found all, or at least most, of the missing shotgun ammunition. Three cases of HDLI shot shells and two cases of HDLI slugs, for a total of five thousand shells. The other two cases were grenades. One carton of stun grenades and the other one's fragmentation."

Rebecca added, "My contact on Ecclestone's World will take that off our hands, unless we want to hang on to it. It won't be worth much either way, and we'll definitely keep at least one case of HDLI shot."

"The only other thing's the tools we pulled out of the engineering workshop," Sarah said. "And I don't think we're going to sell any of that. I've already stowed everything in our workshop here. It might be worth some money but I'm happier having that gear on board, incase it's ever needed for repairs or other work."

The captain agreed, "It's not worth our while finding buyers for that kind of thing anyways."

After a pause she stated, "So I think that's it for the inventory? We're keeping the tools and medical supplies, put a question-mark on the grenades and a few cases of shotgun ammunition, and all the big stuff we'll offer to Mel."

I asked, "What about those four containers of emergency supplies you recovered from the Hammersmith the first time? That's still down in the hold."

"Right," Rebecca frowned. "We won't get a good price for it at Rolandan-2. I suppose we can try and find a buyer at Ecclestone's World. We'd get the best price at Deveron-8, but it's well out of our way and I don't particularly like visiting there."

"Why not?" Sarah asked. "Apart from being outside your normal route?"

Rebecca sighed, "That's where Ellery died."

"Sorry boss," Sarah apologized.

"Don't worry about it," the captain shook her head.

There was a brief pause, then she decided "I'll ask around when we reach Ecclestone's World. If we can get a good price for that stuff, we'll sell it there. If not, we'll just hang onto it for now."

Sarah and I both nodded quietly, then the boss added "I think that's it? Let's take it easy for the rest of today, then tomorrow morning we'll start getting that hoist installed. Ok?"

None of us had a problem with that.

"I'm going to deal with the first-aid kits before I call it a day," I said as I got up. "It shouldn't take that long to go though them."

Sarah offered to help, and the two of us got started.

It turned out there were actually nine of them on the ship, all stored in obvious and logical locations. There was one in the locker just outside the cockpit, then one each in the starboard and port secondary airlocks. Another was located in the galley, and one more in the upper deck of the engine room.

Sarah went and rounded up the five kits on the upper deck while I got a box of trauma shots and a box of wound sealant out of the storage compartment, then the two of us sat back down at the table and went through the kits one at a time.

We ended up grabbing a box of the painkiller ampules as well, since there were times you didn't need the full trauma shot but did want to help someone with pain.

Every first-aid kit we looked at needed to be restocked, the contents were all expired or used up. It took us a half hour but when we were finished all five kits on the main deck had a fresh can of wound sealant, two trauma shot ampules and two painkiller ampules.

When that was done we put all the kits back where we found them, then went down to the lower deck and looked around. We found four more down there, one in a locker by the main airlock, one in the secondary cargo hold, one in the workshop, and the last one was in the engine room's lower deck.

We got them sorted out as well, and finally I took the opportunity to restock my own med-kit too. That had been taking up space in our cabin, but I ended up bringing it out and stowing it in the storage compartment with the rest of the medical gear. I'd barely looked at the thing since joining the Demeter, and it didn't make any sense to keep it cluttering up our cabin.

Finally we rejoined Rebecca and Jenny in the mess, and I got started fixing dinner for the three of us.