“Crap. Sounds like Second Bravo’s been running their racket again.” The senior NCO reached for the combat uniform top that had been balled up and discarded under the folding table. He held it up, shook it out, and donned it. He then grabbed a bottle of deodorizing fabric spray and lightly misted himself.
The young medic was looking around nervously around the room. “Sir...Sarn’t. The cap’n might have seen me come in here. I need to get back to loading. “
Martin finished straightening his ACUs and picked up the plastic cups and empty bottles. He put them in the trash, adding more litter to cover them. “Go, Baby Doc. I’ll see if I can’t mollify the Hamster.” Finished with the cleanup, he turned back to the medic. “…And tell Gutierrez that Second Platoon and I are going to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting after this evac!”
* * *
Martin stood at attention, waiting for the officer to wind down. He knew it was serious; the officer had not called him ‘Top’ a single time. All he could do now was wait it out. There would be no excuses or passing of the blame. His headache was receding as nanobots readjusted the fluid balance in his tissues and eliminated the last remnants of whiskey from his bloodstream. He no longer looked like he’d been drinking, which was part of the problem: he and the captain knew that it was exactly what he’d been doing. Martin wordlessly handed over the written pharmacy logs. Network connections were intermittent and unreliable this far forward, so they’d resorted to written logs. Unfortunately, they were easier to forge that way. If Second Platoon had been selling drugs and nanos on the black market, he would make sure that each and every one of them pulled convoy duty until the end of this war!
There was a strange prickling feeling on his skin, the hairs on arms were standing up and there was a smell of ozone. Targeting beam! “Captain! Incoming! Down!” The office exploded as the beam disrupted molecular bonds, releasing the energy bound in the materials of walls, ceiling, and furnishings throughout the structure. Explosive beams meant there were rooks in the area; rooks meant a heavy attack underway!
The captain was down and bleeding, but still had a pulse. Martin pulled an auto’jector out of the holder on his belt. No medic, doctor, or nurse was ever without one or more of the pen-sized ‘bot injectors. With enough ‘bots in the system, even death was only a ‘temporary inconvenience.’
Martin stayed low—crawling to the remains of the door to look outside and check the conditions. He ignored the stinging sensation coming from his own wounds. The rooks would be targeting vehicles next. The troops loading trucks were in the open and would be unprotected, body armor either packed or left in the barracks until time to leave. He noted soldiers sheltering behind the trucks and wanted to yell at them to get clear, but wouldn’t be heard over the electrical crackle of the beams and the chattering of counter-fire from the perimeter defense guns.
His attention was drawn to a vehicle looking like an armored motor home with too many wheels. The wide, bus-length vehicle was the Mobile Surgical Contingency Vehicle—the CASH operated around the clock, there would be procedures ongoing, despite the bug-out. The RV interior was isolated with a separate stabilization system to allow surgery to continue without interruption even on the move. They might not even know there was an attack in process.
Martin reached down and lifted the captain in a fireman’s carry. Damn, he wasn’t very big, but he was solid. Shouldering the weight, he quickly made his way to the MSCV. The keypad on the door was a problem, he had to release the captain, then manage to enter the code, pull the door open, then pick the burden back up, enter the van, and place him on the litter outside the panel isolating the OR from the entrance.
Looking through the heavy glass, he could see the OR was indeed occupied; it looked like two patients on the tables, plus a doc and two nurses. Martin punched the intercom attention button, and the nurses looked up. “We’re under attack, we’ve gotta move!” He could see the surgeon speak to one of the nurses, never looking up from his patient; the nurse looked at him and made the thumbs’ up gesture. Good. He checked the captain again—pupils okay, breathing shallow, not bleeding too much except for a gash in the scalp. Head injury, probable concussion, but he’d keep.
Martin stepped up, and into the driver compartment. Fortunately, the designers had decided that anyone making it into the mobile OR would have reason to be there; thus, there were no keys, just a red button to start the engine. The OR was heavy, it required a gas turbine engine similar to the one in modern tanks; it was right underneath the driver compartment. No amount of insulation could disguise that fact. The driver’s seat was mounted forward and center, with a nearly 270-degree view. He could see bishops and rooks off to the left. They didn’t seem to be advancing, but there looked to be rocks moving behind them. If a queen was moving up, this location was blown. Time to boogie.
Martin grabbed the controls and set the vehicle in motion, south for now. Since Roanoke, the Army had kept the Shenandoah and New River valleys pretty clean. I-81 corridor was safe enough for armored convoys, but it was 50 klicks west, with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the way. This raid was probably coming out of The Swamp, but if a queen moved in here, they’d lose everything east of the Blue Ridge—probably all the way down to North Carolina. He keyed the nav system display. Autodrive systems worked extremely well when ninety-nine percent of the vehicles were off of the roads. With a good nav signal, the mobile OR could drive itself back to Texas.
The signal was good, but limited coverage—he had a good enough lock to get the vehicle through the gap to the Valley, from there it could probably at least find Knoxville, providing the ‘sats didn’t get knocked out. Mojave kept launching navsats, and the Rockers kept hitting them with—well, rocks. Ever since the Roanoke landing, they’d launched kinetic weapons at anything that approached the orbital vessel presumed to hold their ‘King.’ No one had figured out whether the occasional rock dropped from orbit was targeting—or delivering more troops.
Martin set the navigation waypoint and looked around. Most of the permanent buildings were gone—that was a given, but the prefab treatment areas were still standing, and probably still occupied. No matter what the captain thought of him, he still understood his responsibility. He arose from the driver position and made his way back to the door. He got the captain secured and prepped for either the surgeon in the back, or the recovery team that would be attracted to the driverless vehicle.
Time to jump. The vehicle was picking up speed, it was now or never.
Oh, this was truly going to suck.
* * *
“Dammit, Vinnie, he’s waking up again! Dr. Gautam, I don’t care what you have to do, hit him on the head if you have to! Get him back to sleep!”
“Doctor, he has more nanobots in him than any patient we’ve ever seen; they are scavenging up the anesthetics, and resetting his EEG rhythms, even the delta-wave induction is not having much effect.” The voice paused, then continued. “At this point, we may have to EMP the whole lot just to get them to stop.”
“No, absolutely not. That would just wipe my ‘bots, too. Given that they’re scavenging shrapnel from around his heart, that’s just not happening.”
“Normally, I’d send a reset and reprogramming signal to the old ‘bots, but the monitor is picking up at least six different generations—some of them don’t even have address codes for reprogramming!”
“Six? That’s odd...BAILEY, patient record...Nurse, patient ID?”
“MXM1066A1732. Martin X. Martin, Doctor.”
“Martin X...who does that to a child? Never mind. BAILEY, patient record, MXM1066A1732...”
A synthetic voice said: “Martin X. Martin, First Sergeant, Two Hundred Sixty-Fourth Medical Battalion, attached to Charlie Company, Training, Thirty-Second Medical Brigade...”
The first doctor’s voice interrupted: “BAILEY. Advance to surgical record, summarize, detail level one.”
The synthetic voice resumed, “Patient Martin, electrical shock while at F
orty-First Medical Battalion; received undocumented Greene Mark I nanobots, record manually corrected at a later date. Hit by Rocker ‘totung’ Beam on convoy duty west of Las Cruces, major tissue disruption, perforation, and inflammation; received Greene Mark II surgical nanobots. Gunshot wound while escorting the Galveston refugee flotilla; field administration of RKHMedical Mark II trauma’bots, surgical follow-up with RKHMedical Mark III surgical nanobots. Prophylactic treatment with Greene Mark III preventa’bots prior to Operation Reclamation. Shrapnel injury, skin abrasions, road rash, retreat phase of Operation Reclamation; peri-operative treatment with SAMedical Mark IV surgical nanobots. Prophylactic treatment with Geisszler-Greene Mark IV trauma’bots prior to Operation Enduring Homeland. Traumatic amputation, Operation Alamo; administered SAMedical Mark VIII trauma’bots for stabilization and transport; surgical support includes...”
“BAILEY. Cancel. Well, there’s your answer, Vinnie. He’s got more ‘bots than an internet porn site. You’re right; we might have to EMP him, just to get some semblance of control.”
“I’ll have to put him on dialysis if we do. Inert ‘bots are a pain to flush otherwise. I can’t guarantee he’ll make it if we slow them down, though.”
“Slow them down...Yeah, that’s it! Vinnie, put him on heart-lung bypass, volume expand with the fluoro solution and chill him to six-cee. That should slow them and him down enough...”
* * *
Martin came to attention as the officer entered the small room. “Sir.” When he saw stars on the uniform, he started to salute, but caught himself—given his current circumstances, it would be inappropriate. Martin’s own clothing was a dull gray jumpsuit.
“Master Sergeant Martin.” They moved to the table, took the chair and sat. He did not release the NCO to ‘at ease’ nor invite him to sit, so Martin stayed at attention, looking straight ahead. “You have a problem, Martin. Captain Hamm wants you court-martialed for dereliction of duty, drunkenness, conduct unbecoming, disobeying orders, assaulting an officer, abandoning your post, desertion, theft of Army property, reckless endangerment, and improper operation of a motor vehicle. Major Jackson—the surgeon you saved? He put you in for a Distinguished Service Cross.” The general stopped for a moment. “Well, we can’t have it both ways. Award is downgraded to a Silver Star; charges are dropped except for improper operation of a motor vehicle. For that offense, you are relieved of the position of First Sergeant, Charlie Company, 264th Medical Battalion.” He gave a snort, almost a laugh. “And you’re ‘busted’ to Master Sergeant.”
As if just noticing that Martin was still at attention, the general grunted. “Hmph. At ease, Sergeant. Sit.” Once Martin was seated, the general looked him in the eyes. “Son, what the hell were you thinking? First you knock out your commander, dump him in the MSCV, and send it off to Knoxville, then abandon the vehicle once it left the CASH!” There was silence for a moment. “You may answer, soldier.”
“No excuse, sir.” Despite being seated, Martin was still basically sitting at attention. He kept his eyes focused at a point over the general’s head.
“So, you do not deny striking Captain Hamm?”
“No sir, I do not dispute the record.”
The general snorted. “That’s interesting, Major Jackson certainly did! His report says that the captain suffered concussive blast trauma, and there is no evidence of being struck. One of the MSCV nurses found the captain, still unconscious, strapped to a litter, hooked to an IV and already treated with trauma’bots. The ident code on the ‘bots track back to injectors issued to you—not the CASH, not the Company, but to you, personally. Level with me, Marty. Did you strike Hamm?”
“No sir, I did not knock him unconscious.”
“You didn’t say you didn’t strike him.”
“No sir, I cannot guarantee that he was not harmed on the way to the MSCV.”
“Uh huh. You had to drop him at the vehicle door.”
“Sir?”
“Then you tripped over him.”
“Sir? How?”
“There’s a camera, did you not know that? Inside and out. Microphones, too. You talked to Wohlrab the whole time, even though he couldn’t hear you. Now you got the whole headquarters company calling him ‘Captain Hamster!’ It’s fortunate he’ll be on convalescent leave for a while. Not his fault; really, he remembers nothing except dressing you down, and then he wakes up in hospital, is told he’d suffered a concussion and was found unconscious in a driverless vehicle. You were right, what you mumbled on the MSCV—he’s not a bad officer, he just drew the wrong conclusions. He’s seen the recording, too. It’s a good thing you treated him when you did, that was a bad concussion; he almost didn’t make it. The vehicle was intercepted by airmobile out of Radford; the same team picked your sorry ass off the ground, too. You were right about the attack, too, by the way...”
Martin realized that his standard response was getting worn out. “In what way, sir?”
“You said it looked like a queen moving in. You were right. We lost the CASH, but were able to push back and stop the queen from settling in. That at least allowed us to get in and extract the survivors. Between that beacon you set off on the MCV, and the aid you rendered on the ground, you saved a lot of people, Marty. You just need to stop getting banged up! I don’t know how many times we can piece you back together.”
“Perhaps that would be for the best, sir.”
“No, Marty, it wouldn’t—and if you talk like that, I will relieve you! We need you, and men like you who run toward danger, and not away from it.” The general stood up, and Martin popped back to attention. “Get out of the prison grays and get back into ACUs. The captain doesn’t want you anywhere near Charlie Company or any forward CASH. Not that he’s still mad at you; in fact, he’s pretty worried about you. He thinks you need time to get your head straight. I agree. You’re going back to Brigade—Headquarters Company, not Training. But not for six weeks. You are on convalescent leave and referred to mandatory counseling.” The general handed him a card with the Chaplain Support number on it. “Go see your family and talk to the padre. It’s more than most of these boys will get.”
* * *
“Martin. How do you feel?” The chaplain had been a Pastoral Care minister working out of one of the civilian hospitals before the conflict. Before that he’d been a Methodist minister, and before that an enlisted grunt in conflicts remembered only by their nicknames: the Litterbox, the Sandbox, the Rockpile, the Jungle, the Mohingga!, Skeeter Farm, the Pits, and many other combinations of grunt humor and disgust. He was familiar with the blank stare and the unwillingness to open up to anyone.
The silence dragged on. For a first session, this was pretty normal, but that was okay.
He could wait.
* * *
Martin barely recognized his parents’ house. The master bedroom had been subdivided into rooms not much wider than a single bed. The smaller bedrooms now held multiple bunks. The common living areas were now smaller, partly given over to cubicle desks to allow the children to do schoolwork, while the kitchen had been enlarged—pushed out into what had been a covered patio but was now an enclosed communal dining room. Claire led him out the back to what used to be a detached garage. “We were storing the old furniture in here and got the idea to turn it into a ‘guest bedroom’ so that we could get the occasional private night when the spouses are on leave.” There were portions of four families here: three adults, seven children, and an eighth girl with both parents on active duty. A night alone—or with a much-absent spouse—would seem like a luxury despite the lack of central heating and cooling. “We can have this for the weekend, but then I have to give it back.”
He’d been able to spend time with his wife and daughter most weekends, as long as he was stationed in San Antonio, but this would be his first night out of a barracks in over two years. Sally was already eight, growing fast. His biggest fear had been that he would miss watching her grow up. He missed weeks at a time, but he had been here e
nough that visits were both comfortable and special occasions. The ‘guest room’ had a sofa, chairs, a small table, TV, and a movie player to facilitate ‘family time’ in every sense (particularly considering the selection of movies from family cartoons to more adult selections).
Right now, Sally was cuddled in Martin’s arms on the old sofa, while Claire leaned against him. They were watching a cartoon from a few years back. It had been new, and Sally’s favorite, when he’d been called to San Antonio. Was it four years already? Now she was asleep and growing heavier by the minute. He’d take her back to her bedroom, except she’d wake up the moment he moved. On the other hand, there was a very small room, not much larger than a closet, with a cot and portable crib for couples with infants and toddlers. As long as Sally had Bun-Bun, she’d be okay.
Frankly, Martin didn’t mind if they all fell asleep right here. He was overwhelmed by the warmth and scents of his wife and daughter. Sally was soap and lavender, probably something in the shampoo. Claire’s scent was much richer, flowers and a hint of musk. The child was warm and soft, but his wife seemed burning hot where they touched skin to skin. Claire turned and gave him that look. He’d need to put Sally to bed soon, so that Claire could do the same for him. It had been far too long...
* * *
He was jolted awake by the ground vibrations. The alarm sounded over his and Claire’s cell phones, the house phone, and the TV. He could also hear the message repeated over loudspeakers mounted outside so that everyone in the city would hear:
“Attention, Crystal Dome has been activated. Please stay indoors. All civilians should seek shelter immediately and avoid the outdoors. All military personnel, do not return to duty stations; shelter in place. Do not go outside, seek overhead cover, do not look at the sky! Attention, Crystal Dome has been activated...”
We Dare Page 40