I had no issues at all keeping that promise to my girlfriend as the evening progressed and kept to that single glass of alcohol drinking mocktails, water and sodas for the rest. The vibe between the officers was good and we talked to pretty much everyone until I got a message from Ellie. “Commander, could we switch to personal comms please?”

  “Go ahead Ellie, forward it to Luna too if you would.” The rest of the table quieted down as they heard Ellie’s announcement.

  “Commander,” Ellie started to talk into my ear. “Gunnery Sergeant Taylor is at your cabin door, he doesn’t look to be doing very well. High concentrations of alcohol have been detected by my sensors.”

  “Ah fuck.”

  “Do you need me to alert Doctor Winter?”

  I looked at Luna and she gave me a nod. “Uh, might be best, but Luna and I will be on our way too. We will arrive a lot faster.”

  “Copy that, Commander. I’m paging the doctor.”

  “Is something bad happening?” Lieutenant McAllister stood at the ready to rush away if need be.

  “It’s not good but it doesn’t really concern the ship. It’s a more personal matter.” I replied. “But that matter does require our immediate attention so I’m sorry to say that we have to go now.” Luna and I stood up at almost the exact same time. “Please go ahead and continue the party. We had a good time and it was nice to talk to you all in a more informal setting, it has been a while.”

  “Thank you for honoring our little nonsense gettogether.” Lieutenant Zu, who was getting a bit tipsy at this point, gave me a somewhat sloppy salute.

  “Absolutely no problem.” I gave a salute back. “But now we do really need to get going.” I quickly said goodbye to the other officers too while Luna did the same behind me and then, at a slightly elevated pace, made my way towards our cabin.

  “Where is Eva right now, Ellie?” I heard Luna ask as she walked behind me. She had some slight issues keeping up with my rather brisk pace.

  “The Doctor is getting dressed, she will be with you in a bit.”

  I didn’t really say anything as I was too focused on the task in front of me. My brisk pace then ultimately also progressed into a jog as we got closer to our cabin. When I then rounded the last corner and saw Gunny slumped against the wall with a bottle in his hand I abandoned that jog in favor of a sprint.

  I skid to a halt in front of Gunny and bowed down over him. Taking the bottle out of his hand and putting it firmly to the side.

  “L-Lauren…” Gunny’s face and eyes looked red and he had clearly been crying pretty badly. “I feel sh-shit.”

  “Clearly.” I took a moment to assess the situation more. Gunny was incredibly drunk too, almost dangerously so from what I could tell. “Luna, open the door and make a way to the bathroom.” I almost commanded my girlfriend.

  Luna didn’t say anything and instead just obeyed my order.

  I swung Gunny’s arm over my shoulder and lifted him up from the floor, but I was practically carrying him alone, there was not much strength left in his legs. “Get one of those purple DiluFast bottles out of the cabinet.”

  “I already took them out.” Luna already came running back after making sure all the doors were open so she could help me carry the dangerously drunk marine inside.

  We managed to get him into the bathroom in one piece. “Let’s drag him under the shower in case we need to cool him down or if he pukes himself.”

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  “I’m not that drunk.” Gunny mumbled.

  “Like hells you are.” I replied as we forcefully dragged him into the shower. I then grabbed the bottle of DiluFast that Luna had put on the sink and opened it while I kneeled down next to him. Inside were the typical small purple capsules with a small needle attached to the bottom of each one of them. The plan was to ram one in his upper arm and squeeze it out. I took the small protective cover of the needle and prepared to hit him.

  Before I could do so, Gunny grabbed my arm. “I-I don’t need it.” He slurred.

  I paused for a second while Gunny keeps his gaze on me but I saw that his consciousness was falling quickly. So I dropped the capsule from my immobilized hand and caught it with my robotic one, in one fell swoop jamming the needle into his skin, squeezing the contents out. “I know what acute alcohol poisoning looks like, Gunny. Don’t lie to me. If you want to drink yourself to death, don’t do it aboard my ship.” I replied sternly as Gunny lost consciousness thanks to the acting effects of the DiluFast capsule.

  “Was he really that close to dying?” Luna asked.

  I shook my head as I used my body weight to sit Gunny up straight against the wall. “He has drunk a lot… Like that bottle of 96% a lot… I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  At that moment I hear some ruckus at the door as a somewhat bewildered Doctor Winter rushes into the room. “How is he?” Eva basically pushes me to the side as she quickly attaches some kind of medical appliance to Gunny’s arm.

  “We just applied some DiluFast to quickly get the alcohol levels in his blood down.” I replied.

  Eva checks his pulse, pulse and does some other quick medical checks before she answers me. “I think you made the right judgment call at the moment.” She then stares down at the medical appliance. “The alcohol values in his blood were way too damn high but at least they are starting to go down now.”

  “Do you need to do anything else? Need us to carry him to sick bay?”

  Eva shook her head. “I don’t think that will be necessary. The DiluFast is doing its work. I’m going to give him a hydration pack as well, but apart from that, I don’t think anything else will help much.”

  “I’m sorry you had to come here for that.”

  “Lauren, it was absolutely the right decision to call me over. More importantly, do you have any idea what happened?”

  I shook my head. “No, we just got here, we just received a message from Ellie that Gunny was at our cabin and that there was lots of alcohol presumably involved.”

  “Yes, we don’t know anything else.” Luna came to our side after having given Gunny a towel to support his head a bit more.

  “Ellie, would you know anything?” I asked as I walked out of the bathroom for a quick second to see if the door was closed. As it wasn’t I quickly went to close it and collect the bottle that had been left outside.

  “No, Commander, I sadly do not. The only thing I can tell you is that according to my surveillance systems Gunnery Sergeant Taylor entered his cabin about five hours ago, looking sober, after which he exited his cabin four hours and forty minutes later making his way here. Gunnery Sergeant Taylor has made it explicitly clear that he did not want any AI integration in his cabin.”

  “What was his emotional state before entering the cabin?” Eva asked.

  “Unclear, Doctor.”

  “Hmm. This is probably connected to what happened back on Earth, right?” Eva looked at me.

  “I think so.”

  “Have you talked about it since then?”

  “Not really.”

  “Hmmm.” Eva pouted and looked into the bathroom. “Do you mind if I stay for a while longer, at the very least until he wakes up?”

  “Of course not.” I quickly took a look at the time. It was already getting pretty late but luckily there weren’t many active activities on the planning for tomorrow. “I’ll get you something to drink.”

  “Just a coke for me if you would. I need at least some caffeine into me.” Eva replied.

  “On it’s way.”

  “Why don’t you take a seat, Eva? Or are you going to keep standing?” Luna walked over to the table and waited to see what Eva was going to do.

  “Sure, but would you mind dragging the table and seats over here? I don’t think anything will happen as I left my H-monitor attached to his arm, but I would like to keep the Gunnery Sergeant within my field of vision if that’s okay?”

  Luna nodded. “Wouldn’t it be better to lay in him a bed instead? I feel somewhat bad keeping him in the shower.”

  “No, it will be okay. It’s just important that we make sure he doesn’t start choking, but as I said, my monitor should normally warn us of that. Putting him on his back wouldn’t be great. Besides, the cold tiles of the shower are probably quite soothing to him at the moment. Alcohol widens your blood vessels, making people feel toasty.”

  I sat myself down at the table and put the drinks down in the center of it. “Poor Gunny… I hope we can help with whatever is bothering him…”

  “So do I…” Eva nodded and Luna followed suit.