//------------------------------//
// Triage 
// Story: Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me 
// by DataPacRat 
//------------------------------//

Red, Blanche, and I were sitting and talking around the bridge's big round table, when a certain small, red-scaled Yarl climbed up the stairs, and plunked his tail onto one of the chairs.

"So," I was struggling to explain, "the point isn't just that mysteriousness isn't to be worshipped - that's just a very small part of it. The point is that when you truly understand something, the mystery doesn't just shrink - it dissolves away entirely. Truly understanding something on a deep level means the questions that used to baffle you, aren't even questions anymore, at least to you, any more than "What happens if I let go of an apple in mid-air?" is a question."

When I came to a pause in my attempts to pass on at least some of the structure of rationality that I'd learned, Firebough spoke up, "What speak you of?"

"Do you want the translation spell?"

"Please."

I ran my hoof along the row of sticks stuck into my harness, picked the one I'd established for the task, and invoked the spell. "There we go - is that better?"

'Yes. I am learning your language, but am not good enough in it yet to talk about anything. What were you talking about?'

I tapped my chin thoughtfully. "That would take some explanation in itself... so I'll try starting with some basics. I've got certain goals I want to have accomplished. There's a reasonable chance that I'm going to die before that happens. So I want others to be able to continue my work if that happens. To get them to be able to do that as well as possible, it helps if they know as many of the secrets and tricks to finding right answers as I can entrust them with. There's a lot of such knowledge that depends on other knowledge, which itself depends on other knowledge. So I'm trying to work through teaching as much of that as I can, even if it seems completely unrelated to my ultimate goals."

'Why worry about what happens after you're dead? You'll be dead.'

"Knowledge of all sorts of useful things is increasing all the time. Things that used to be impossible, are becoming routine. There is a... small chance, but a chance big enough to consider, that if I die, then at some point after that, the knowledge of how to bring me back to life will be discovered. But, even if that is discovered, that doesn't mean it will happen, unless there's somebody who wants to go to the effort of bringing me back to life. And, in order for that to happen, there has to be enough of a community still alive to do all that research. If everybody dies and there's nobody left, there won't be anyone left to bring me back to life. So it's still in my own long-term rational self-interest to work at keeping the world from being destroyed, even if it kills me. Of course, I'd much prefer to accomplish that without dying at all, but we can't always get what we want."

'That sounds like codswallop.' I blinked a bit at the word the translation spell picked. 'Something to keep you happy and doing stuff that helps others even if it hurts you.'

Red answered, "Just because it sounds like it doesn't mean it is. That's a big part of what she's been talking about today - how to tell the difference between what sounds like nonsense from what really is nonsense."

Blanche added, "A lot of it depends on knowing some math, so you can add up things, and find out whether they really do end up doing you more good than harm, or more harm than good. How much have you learned about numbers?"

Firebough puffed out his chest. 'I can count to a thousand!'

Blanche raised an eyebrow. "How are you at adding?"

'Er...'

"Can you do, say, up to ten plus ten?"

Whatever Firebough's answer would have been was cut short, as the lookout called down, "Smoke off the port bow!"





There wasn't just smoke - there was a lot of smoke. Red called for a yellow alert, Blanche took Firebough down to the safety of the ship's interior with the pups (and to keep him out of trouble by distracting him with some tutoring), and I headed up to join the lookout with binoculars.

As we rounded a prominence on the coast, what came into view was an entire village aflame, populated by ponies of all three breeds plus what appeared to be ponyish deer, some running around, some lying still... and some being chased by wolves in armor. I saw one catch a unicorn... and when I saw what it started to do to its prey, I lowered the binocs rather than watch the whole thing.

I clambered back down to join Red, and described what I saw. "With the new sleep wands," I said, "it should be fairly safe for us to intervene, save what lives we can, and probably won't delay us too long. But there's still a risk - and you're the captain."

"I want to be able to look myself in the mirror in the future - so we're going in." She barked out commands to Bouncer, who was piloting.

When she was done, I said, "Right - we've got wolves to knock out, burning buildings to search-and-rescue through, and injured to treat. Some of them look... bad. How about we do a sweep overhead and KO any wolves in sight, then drop me off somewhere central to have the injured brought for me to at least stabilize as much as I can, and have teams sweeping through the buildings for any wolves we missed and anyone who can be carried out?"

"What about anypony who's too injured to be moved?"

"It'll depend on whether they need immediate treatment to survive - and how many others there are. I know the idea behind focusing a medic's attention on those who'll have the best chance of improvement from it... but I'm hoping I don't have to make any choices like that." I knew what I'd seen - I knew that some of the hooved people below were beyond my help, even if they were still alive. My stomach was bottoming out on me, and I was trying to roll up my emotions and stuff them in the back of my head to deal with later - and I was pretty sure I wasn't succeeding.





Despite nominally being in charge of everything, I had very little idea about how things were progressing, for as soon as my hooves were on the ground, I was busy applying my medical magic. With it, I could save just about anyone - as I'd done with two of the three diamond dogs who were now part of the sweepers. What I couldn't do was save everyone. And if I spent too much time working on one pony's femoral artery, then I might end up letting two deer die who I could have saved if I'd worked on them, instead.

Almost immediately I realized that if more of my crew knew the healing spells I was using, more lives would be saved here. I also knew that spreading such knowledge would be one more way that the secrecy of the whole magical system could be breached, risking everyone and their uncle being able to set each other on fire, mind-control each other, and worse. Reducing the odds of that happening was very cold comfort when a buck died next to me while I was working on a doe.

So I did what I tried doing so often - tried to find an acceptable compromise. Of everyone who'd come with me on the Mikoyan, the two I thought least likely to break confidentiality were Red and Blanche; with Micro a close third, due to her and Safe having let themselves be manipulated. Red was staying aboard the Mikoyan to run things from there. So I had Blanche join me, shoved some of my unspecified, decorative wands at her, and talked her through applying the spells I was using, while I worked on my own patients.

I gave Micro a single wand, and told her one word to use with it: "Pax". While I and Blanche were basically acting as trauma surgeons, Micro worked as a nurse, organizing things, using standard treatments where they could help, and no matter whether or not any individual could be saved, helping give them some comfort and relief from pain.





Firebough might not have understood why we were doing all of this - but even he at least started carrying water to the thirsty.

I was pausing from working for long enough to stuck my muzzle in a bucket at guzzle its contents, when Red flew down to join me. "We've interrogated some locals and some wolves," she said without preamble. "The wolves are part of the blue dragon's army. They were ordered here to wipe out the village that sent the manticore after their master."

I came up for air, and to say, "That was the last village we were at, not here."

"Yeah - half their force is on its way there."

"Oh. ... Fuck."

"I know what I want to do. I also know that that's more time and effort and risk than we were planning."

"We've got a whole planet to save - if we get bogged down dealing with every single raid or injustice we come across, if we try to spend all the time and effort needed to upgrade the local politics to something reasonable, they'll die anyway when the world goes foomp." I wiped my hooves clean - well, cleaner - on a rag, and rubbed my head. "Right. If you do go to at least warn them - first priority, self-defense. Keep the crew alive and ship in one piece, even if that means abandoning the locals. Second priority, long-term assistance - gather what useful intelligence you can, and avoid spreading too much info about us. Third priority, short-term assistance - save what lives you can, however you can. Warn, evacuate, dive-bomb the wolves, whatever. I'll stay here with our non-combatants, and keep working. ... I should also grab some food - I won't be able to do anypony any good if I collapse, and I can't eat while I'm casting."





Fortunately, before I worked myself off my hooves, I ran out of patients who'd die without aid. I'd removed impaled weapons, amputated limbs, sewn together spurting arteries, and seen far too much of the insides of far too many people. Also fortunately, with unicorn telekinesis, everypony had been gathered up - and even the sleep-zapped wolves were nearby, in a closely-watched pile. By this point, the buildings, and whatever contents they'd had, were total losses - I could have tried extinguishing them, but if I had, more would have died. Too many already had - and yes, some while I was in the middle of working on them.

I didn't think I'd ever be able to watch an episode of MASH again, even if I did get back to Earth.

I found a deer who was conscious and seemed reasonably alert and non-panicked, and got directions to the local chieftain - a unicorn, now short a leg, but thanks to Pax, he was dealing with it better than I was. "I think," I said, "everypony here who's still alive, is going to stay that way, at least for a few days. After that - there's a problem. The local Lord ordered this attack. If you stay - and he finds out you're alive - he'll probably send a larger attack. And I can't stay here long enough to deal with that."

'You have done more than we can repay you for. We will find another home.'

"Where?"

'There are always raiders attacking along the shore, some years more than others. Somewhere along the coast will be a village where the inhabitants died, but the buildings and fields remained.'

"Okay, that sounds like a plan. When my ship gets back, we'll be continuing east, with some detours inland. If that's the direction you want to go, I'll talk to our captain and see if we have enough room to bring some of you along, if you like."

'What about them?' He jerked his head at the pile of wolves.

"I've got no sympathy for them - but I try not to kill unarmed prisoners if I can help it. Maybe leave them here when you go. Maybe take them to their Lord and drop them off."

We talked a bit about some of the practicalities, foodstores, and the like, as best we could without actually knowing the state of the Mikoyan; and after a few minutes of that, Micro walked up and interrupted. "Missy," she said, "I've got a patient who's exhausted, but uninjured and trying to help."

"Do we need the extra hooves?"

"Not at the moment."

"Then just 'Pax' 'em, sleep-zap 'em, and let 'em help again when they're in good enough condition to. And if you need me to tell you that, get some rest yourself."

"I will," she said, and then she drew her wand, looked at me, and said "Pax."

I was out so fast I didn't even hear whether or not she sleep-zapped me.