Empyrean Iris

Chapter 17

The human body: an absolute trash pile of pain and agony bent on sending him downwards into a spiral of ever increasing madness. He lay on the floor of the shuttle as everything hurt, his hips hurt, his back hurt, his thighs, his knee, his shin, and his stump.

The insides of his legs had been rubbed raw from running. The sides of his ribcage had been rubbed raw from skin brushing over skin, and when his shoe was finally removed from his remaining foot, he heard the assembled marines gasp and mutter in shock and disgust.

Maverick made a face.

Dr. Krill's antennae vibrated in agitation as he looked over his aching foot.

"Well, now I am definitely not getting my shoes back." One of the marines grumbled.

Captain Vir winced as Dr. Krill prodded at his foot.

"This is disgusting." He finally announced, and captain Vir didn't doubt him.

There was a chorus of ewing as the doctor continued to work.

At the end of his run, it turned out that he had lost three toenails and most of the bottom of his foot was covered in two large blisters, one for his heel, and the other for the pad of his foot. There were some smaller blisters at the tips of his little toes and one along the side of his big toe.

He didn't bother to look, instead lying his head back on the floor and trying to rest. The sweat had long since dried up, and now, the shivering was beginning to take hold causing him to tremble violently, which only made his body hurt even more.

"Do we have any water?" Dr. Krill asked finally done with cleaning up his mangled foot.

"Afraid not, we gave everything we had to the captain to use."

The doctor was a little more than displeased but finally sighed, "Well then, he needs water, and something to eat. You all do."

The captain opened an eye, the little doctor was right. They may not have run the entire marathon like he did, but they still had done some intense running in some pretty extreme heat.

Something would have to be done about that.

He sat up groaning with the help of his men, "Alright, I am sure we can find some back inside, and maybe if we are lucky we will run into that Tesraki, so I can kill him."

The group grumbled in light agreement at that statement.

"Also, remind me to put him on the GA most wanted list. That was seven counts of attempted murder if I am not mistaken, which I rarely am." He yawned, and his stomach growled angrily.

He wasn't sure what he wanted more, a nap or something to eat.

Dr. Krill wrapped up his foot, and Ramirez helped him back to his feet supporting him on the side of his human leg allowing the mechanical leg to take most of the weight.

As soon as he stood up, he wanted nothing more than to lay back down again. He was walking like the cripple that he was, and his back hurt so bad that he was almost considering sending the others off to get supplies while he stayed behind to die.

Too bad that wasn't much of an option.

Looking around at the other marines with a skeptical eye, he was surprised to find that morale was higher than expected. Despite being exhausted, hunger stricken and with throbbing heads from dehydration and heat, they had managed to escape death rather fantastically.

In fact, the more he thought on the subject the more he realized just how awesome what he had done was.

He had run a marathon on a class A1 death planet to save everyone from an encroaching wall of fire.