Private The Healer's Hand

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

"Another one coming in! Also in critical condition! Code red!"

Yet another sick individual was rolled into the crowded medical bay. All around, doctors, nurses, nurse droids, and any other form of medical personnel were running around trying to treat an outbreak that had swept an entire sector of Kaddak. With a worried huff, doctor Olaya Astrapi rushed over to the new patient. A young child.

If this was taking place on Arkania, we'd have a cure already! This lesser medical system is only leading to more deaths in this outbreak!

The frustrated doctor checked over the child and applied immediate aid before pulling the repulser stretcher towards a tangled mess of IVs and respirators that had not even been cleaned since the last person dropped dead. It was so chaotic! With obvious disgust at how many protocols she was breaking on her face, the young Arkanian woman hooked the boy up and continued to treat him. From behind her, she heard the voice of her assistant, "Doctor Astrapi!"

"What!" Olaya snapped as she worked on her patient, "I'm trying to save lives over here!"

"The lab results came in and..."

The sound of the heart monitor flatlining made her heart fall but the assistant's words were the shattering impact.

"You were right, these people have been infected by an engineered pathogen. This is a mass genocide."

With a sigh, a Mandalorian warrior rushed into the bedroom of her "apartment* complex. She opened the closet and pulled her last needed equipment from the wall. As she darted out of the room, she deactivated the intruder alert devices throughout the apartment just to give her partner a better shot at staying alive here. She knew that he understood this place perfectly. It had been his bunker before it became her's, but Gwyneira Krayt was unwilling to risk her buir's life.

While Gwyn was used to working alone, this particular crime case was something she was unfamiliar with - medical stuff. A massive outbreak has taken place in a sector half across the planet from her. While the doctors were trying to treat patients, lab results showed that this was a manmade disease. Local authorities figured out the stuff was waterborne and it lined up with the entire water system of the sector being contaminated. This was a criminal case, but Gwyn also needed the touch of an expert medic.

That medic she called on for assistance was none other than Kranak Vizsla .

They were to conjugate here, at the bunker, before heading off to the hospital. Gwyn had everything ready. With nervousness, she adjusted the Clan Krayt bandana tied around her neck. As the Karjr marshalling Kaddak, it was her duty to stop criminal activity and save as many citizens as she could. She could only hope that Kranak's more trained expertise and longer experience would help her in a case like this one. She waited, pacing back and forth, waiting for his entrance.

 

[Kranak Vizsla]

Tags: Gwyneira Vizsla

​

The giant armored silhouette came to a halt by the gate opening into the courtyard of the rundown apartment complex. It was abandoned long ago, fallen into relative disrepair. Although it seemed desolate from the outside, the structure’s foundations were strong as the day the complex was built.

As the armored visage of the giant looked up at one distinct floor of the high rise building before him from the rest, past memories he shared with Eliz and Gwyn played in his mind. It had been a long time since the last time he had set foot on Kaddak. Ever since he left, and ever since his beloved daughter received her assignment orders to watch over the planet as a Warden of the Karjr, he had let her use this desolate location as her safehouse to be her base of operations, without hesitation. What’s his was hers. The safehouse would have served her better than it would have served him, anyway.

Walking into the courtyard, the giant made his way towards the high rise apartment building that spanned dozens of floors, penetrating the skies above. With vigilance, knowing not only had he fortified the structure’s numerous entrances with all sorts of nasty surprises in the form of booby traps in the past, he was sure Gwyn’ika also had placed her own inside the compound. Sure enough, he stumbled upon a large number of nicely concealed traps when he began ascending the floors, on his way to the apartment she resided in; laser tripwire mines, anti-personnel landmines, improvised explosive traps hooked up to tripwires… all of which would, at the very least, give a massive headache to an intruder dumb enough to try to break into the young one’s safehouse.

However, non-analog traps, grenades hooked up to thin strands of wire and landmines, their sensors were all turned off. The giant assumed the young one had turned them off momentarily to allow him easier access to the safehouse, knowing he was on his way to rendezvous with her.

After successfully navigating through layer after layer of explosive traps on every floor while making his way up, it did not take long for the giant to stand before the entrance to Gwyn’ika’s safehouse. His hand reached forth for the concealed keypad by the door. Punching in the code, the thick armored door retracted to the sides into its housing, allowing the giant passage inside. <”Kid?”> he called out as the armored door automatically closed shut behind him after stepping inside. Making his way to the living room from the entrance, a heartfelt smile would emerge underneath the man’s featureless armored visage upon laying eyes on the young one inside.

<”Someone’s taken up renovation,”> the giant said with a chuckle as his gaze shifted from the young girl’s visage to his surroundings. The interior had changed from what he remembered from years ago. Although it all appeared unfamiliar to the giant at a first glance, he could still very well remember the memories he had made here, as if it all took place yesterday. This was the very house he had uttered the ancient Mandalorian vow, the Gai Bal Manda, and took Gwyn under his wing as a Foundling.

The place had a history he kept close to his heart as a result.

<”I like what you did with the place.”> the giant’s gaze would return over the young girl’s pair of amber, cybernetic eyes. <”How worse has it gotten since your last transmission?”> pleasantries put aside for the moment, the giant asked whether the number of cases had increased substantially or not since her plea for his assistance and insight to this biological form of terrorism.

Not only briefed by her of the situation, he had read several reports regarding the planet’s spiked water supply. It had no way of naturally occuring; whatever their intentions were, whether to perform a trial run of this unidentified, waterborn plague, or whether to damage Enclave’s interests through economical disruption caused by containment procedures to slow down or completely halt its spread.

Or there was no motive behind it other than the desire to kill off a chunk of Kaddak’s populace for pleasure.

One way or the other however, they would find out, bring this issue to the light.

​

 

[Gwyneira Vizsla]

Gwyn beamed when Kranak complimented the far brighter and more colorful bunker. But she nodded at the question of the infected and went serious, "The number of hospitalizations had only grown. Same with drug dealers. A bunch of fraudulent drug dealers lying about their drugs offering a cure or resistance to this thing. Admittedly, I've been doing a lot of drug sweeps lately. But I need to get to the source of all this chaos."

Despite the circles under her eyes, she confidently marched for the door as she double checked her gear, "I was going to stop at the hospital where there's the most concentration of infected people. I'm hoping to get more details on this disease itself and where to look beyond the fact that it's waterborne."

She exited the room, expecting Kranak to follow, "We need to stop whatever is spreading this."

It was alarming. Even the outside of the hospital was filled with cots, makeshift beds, and floating stretchers of sick people. Doctors and nurses swarmed around, desperately fighting for the lives of their patients. The visor of Gwyn's buy'ce reflected the lights of all the machinery hurriedly hooked up outside. The sounds of coughing and vomiting patients was terrible. Gwyn looked around, feeling aimless. The steps leading to the building was too crowded to enter.

"Ah, the Mandalorians who have come to investigate. I have been expecting you."

Gwyn turned to see a sight that made goosebumps ripple up her spine. Beneath her helmet, her nose wrinkled and she snarled silently. An Arkanian doctor approached them, weaving around another stretcher hooked up to a breathing apparatus.

She looked tired, circles wrapping around her pupilless eyes and bringing color to her pale skin. Her tied back hair was messy and tangled as she daintily pulled a glove off with her mouth and extended her free hand, "Doctor Olaya Astrapi, head researcher of this crisis. I apologize for the mess, we simply have no room to properly offer you visitation."

She looked away, pointing towards the Tauntaun and speaking, "All of my research and files are right here in this suitcase."

In her other hand, she held a durasteel suitcase, large and sturdy, which must have contained everything needed.

"If your ship has a holoprojector and computer, I could easily show you everything." She gazed between the two Mandalorians, an eyebrow raised, "As if your warrior culture would understand virology and medical research, but you still need to know what you can garner from this."

The Arkanian's obviously demeaning attitude caused Gwyn to clench her fist as she took an aggressive step forward, growling, "I understand this stuff just fine. And so does my partner, an onfield medic."

Despite carrying a heavy suitcase, the doctor was able to cross her arms, "Whatever. Do you want to catch the fiends making my patients sick or not? Every second we waste is a life lost, and I will not accept a single patient's death lightly."

Without even asking, she turned and marched for the ship, suitcase in hand. Gwyn panicked. An Arkanian entering her ship?! No! That was an invasion of her privacy! That-

A flatline sounded from behind her, a heavy, pained gasp echoed in her mind as she heard a patient die. She gritted her teeth beneath her buy'ce, stomping towards her ship. "Karabast."

Kranak Vizsla