Learning to Dance

familiar sound of shouting and gunfire filled the air. With a
gasp of surprise, Not-Taz disappeared, and in her place was
a very worried-looking Must-Be-Real-Taz, short hair,
headband and all.
“Up!” she said. “Can you see me? Can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, though he felt a little as though his brain
had been sucked out his ears and replaced with bubblegum.
Taz fiddled with the metal straps, then swore in
frustration. “¡Mierda! Okay, hold still, Up.”
She was a good shot, but that didn’t stop him wincing as
her zapper blasted through each of the four clasps holding
him to the table. “Can you stand?”
He sat up first, shaking his head. It was beginning to
clear.
“You can’t have been hooked up to these machines very
long,” Taz said, as the pew pew sound of zappers echoed
around them. “As soon as I pulled out the IV, you started to
wake up.” She put her arm underneath his shoulders and
helped to push him into a standing position. Her closeness
felt like an electric shock after the hallucination he’d just
had.
“I’m fine,” he said, stepping away from her and testing
his weight on both legs. The room was a mess of blasted
equipment and shattered glass. “Taz-”
Ensign Herrera rushed in, zapper in hand.
“The other team is holding off the Graali but we don’t
have much time,” he said to Taz. “Can he walk?”
“He can walk just fine,” said Up, before Taz could
respond, and crossed the room to the doorway to prove it.
The fogginess in his brain was fading fast. “Didn’t bring an
extra zapper, did you, Garbage-sniffer?”
Taz and Pedro looked at each other. For some reason this
annoyed him. Why had he assigned this idiot to his starship
again?