by Jay Allan
I was still awake, at least I thought so, but I couldn't see or even feel anything. I couldn't move at all; my armor's power plant must have gotten scragged. Battery power could run trauma and life support systems, but it couldn't move several tons of high density iridium-steel-polymer hybrid buried under more tons of shattered rock.
Code Orange. Nuclear attack. Everything was hazy, but I knew it had been an atomic explosion. The colonel had tried to warn me, but we both realized too late. This was a huge escalation. Neither side had used nukes yet, not even during Achilles.
None of it mattered. I felt the darkness start to take me. At least I was spared the slow agony the rest of our forces were facing. I slipped away, choking on the bitter taste of defeat.
Chapter Six
Armstrong Medical Center
Armstrong Colony
Gamma Pavonis III
I woke up in a hospital bed. That was the first surprise. Not the bed, the waking up. Somehow I had survived, and to this day I'm not entirely sure how. Part of it was luck, and even more the amazing technology of my armor, which managed to stop my bleeding and inject me with enough meds to keep me alive, despite catastrophic damage to my body and a dose of radiation that could have fried a kitchen full of eggs.
Years later I found out that another big factor, maybe the most crucial in my survival, was Colonel Holm. Somehow my brutalized armor maintained its link with the command net, and the colonel could tell I was still alive on his readouts. He personally led a search team into the apocalyptic red zone to find me and pull me out.
I braced for the pain, but there was none. Of course, I thought. I must be up to my eyeballs in happy juice. Probably best that way for all concerned. I had no complaints about it. I lay there groggy and incoherent for a few minutes, maybe for a few hours. Or days for that matter; I was completely out of it. Finally I decided to take a look around, so I lifted my head. Well, I thought "lift," but my head didn't do anything. It wasn't until I tried to raise my arm, but only managed to turn my hand a little with intense effort, that I realized I was so astonishingly weak I could hardly move.
Of course, I thought. The radiation. It was a miracle I was alive at all, but I was clearly much worse for wear. I looked around as much as I could manage with the little I could move my head. The room was fairly large, with high ceilings - over 3 meters. I was definitely planetside someplace; no spaceship wastes this much volume. The walls and pretty much everything else were spotless white. There were various machines lined up next to the bed, and they were all connected to me by some type of tube, wire, or other conduit.
I tried to yell for someone, but my voice was as weak as my body, and all I could manage was a barely audible whisper. I croaked it out from what almost certainly would have been a very sore throat if I hadn't been so medicated. I didn't expect an answer, but I got one.
"Good morning, Sergeant Cain. I am Florence, your medical AI. Your condition is stable, but I must ask that you refrain from trying to speak or move. You are still very weak. I have notified Doctor Linden that you have awakened."
The AI's voice was female, soothing, and probably exactly what I would have designed for the purpose. My first impulse was to start asking questions, but I was so exhausted it just seemed easier to wait for the doctor.
I didn't have to wait very long. It couldn't have been more than a minute before the door slid open and in walked a doctor followed by two medtechs. "Hello, Sergeant Cain. I'm Doctor Sarah Linden, and I'm very happy to finally have the chance to meet you. We've spent a lot of time together, but so far I'm afraid the relationship has been pretty one-sided."
I managed to turn my head to get a better look, and when my teary eyes managed to focus, I was looking at a woman. A very beautiful woman. She was wearing a wrinkled light blue surgical uniform, but she still looked incredible. She had a very pretty face with blue eyes and the sweetest smile I'd ever seen. There were a just a few wisps of strawberry blond hair protruding from the baggy cap that covered her head, but my mind filled in the blanks, and I saw it cascading around her shoulders.
I tried to manage my own smile, and I rasped out the very best greeting I could manage. "Hello, doctor. It's nice to meet you. I'd shake your hand, but I'm afraid I can't lift my arm."
She smiled again. "I'm glad to see you've still got a sense of humor. That's a good sign. Don't worry, you'll be able to lift your arms soon enough. In fact, you'll be able to do everything you could before. You may find it hard to believe right now, but you'll make a full recovery."
I had to swallow hard to try and keep speaking. My throat was parched and it was hard to get any sound to come out. She saw that I was struggling trying to say something, and she walked over and put her hand softly on my shoulder and said, "Don't strain yourself trying to speak. You got quite a heavy dose of radiation, I'm afraid, and it caused a lot of damage to your digestive system. We can't even let you take water orally until we can get in there and fix you up, so your throat is likely to be pretty dry as well." She started to turn to leave and continued, "Try to get some more rest now, and we'll talk more later."
"Wait." I croaked like a frog, but at least I got it out. "There aren't any mirrors in here, at least none I can see."
She turned her head to look back at me. "Why don't we worry about that after you rest a bit?"
"That bad, is it? It's ok, I can take it. Really."
She didn't answer right away, and I could see that her expression was troubled. After a few seconds she tried once more. "I really think we should wait until you are stronger."
I pushed hard and actually managed to completely turn my head to face her. "Don't worry about me, doc. I'll be fine. No matter how bad it is."
She paused but didn't answer.
"Please."
She finally relented and ordered one of the medtechs to do as I asked. He headed out into the corridor and returned a minute later carrying a large, circular mirror.
Doctor Linden made a gesture and the tech stopped. "Before you look, I want you to understand that you are going to be as good as new before I let you out of here. It won't look like it, and it certainly won't feel like it, but you've been through the worst. It's just a matter of time now. Time for us to work through the procedures that need to be done to fix the damage."
I nodded, or as close as I could come to nodding. "I understand." I had to try 3 or 4 times to force the words out audibly. I couldn't move; I couldn't talk. This was starting to piss me off.
She motioned to the tech, and he moved over to the edge of the bed and held the mirror over me so I could look without having to move.
My height is 1.9 meters. In fighting shape I weigh about 95 kilos. But the shriveled, hairless thing staring back at me would have weighed 50kg at most. If it had legs. Which it didn't.
The memories rushed back. The debris landing on me, the sharp pain as several tons of rock crushed my legs, the rush of outside air as my suit was breached, searing pain as my armor's trauma control system cauterized the stumps. That's how I remembered I had lost my legs. And while I found the whole thing interesting, I didn't really care. I suspect I owed that welcome apathy to the same cocktail of meds keeping what was no doubt agonizing pain at bay.
"Don't worry," the doctor said. "Believe it or not, I was telling you the truth. You're through the worst of it. Or at least the most dangerous. You're going to make it, sergeant, and when I'm done you're going to be tearing down the walls to get out of here."
She looked right into my eyes. I wasn't sure whether she was trying to show me she was telling the truth or just making eye contact so I would stop trying to move my head around, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. "I can't promise it will be fun. In fact, I'm fairly certain you will have some pretty uncharitable things to say about your poor doctor before we're done. But you will walk out of this hospital and return to duty. I promise. But now I'm going to put my foot down with you and insist you get some more rest. We'll talk again later, after you get some sleep."
She and the techs turned and walked toward the door. The doc turned and gave me another incredible smile. "Florence, 30 ml Arthramine. Barring any change in condition, Sergeant Cain is to sleep for ten hours."
The AI responded softly. "Yes, Dr. Linden." I could feel the wave of sleep coming over me as the AI injected the drug into my intravenous feed. I wanted to say goodbye to the doctor, but I don't think I got it out in time.
She was true to her word, and as soon as I woke up we talked a bit more. We discussed my injuries and the rather daunting series of treatments I had ahead of me. It took us several sessions to cover it all, particularly since I spent half the time flirting with her. Or doing the best imitation of flirting a half-man who couldn't lift his head off the pillow could manage. I was still extremely weak, and I couldn't really talk for more than a few minutes. I couldn't even stay awake for more than 30 minutes or so.
I enjoyed our talks, but as I was able to more clearly assemble my recollections, I started to get depressed, wondering why I survived when all of my troopers probably died. Doctor Sarah tried to get me to focus on my treatments and not to torture myself about things I couldn't change, but I was determined to beat myself up. She tried her best, and I gave her a smile and told her I would stop, but we both knew I was lying.
My last thoughts on the battlefield before I lost consciousness had been of hopelessness. I was sure I was a dead man and just as certain that we were losing the battle. The enemy's nuclear attack had shattered my position and blown a big hole in our line. I was pretty sure my whole command had been wiped out, and it didn't seem like there was much chance that any section of the defense could stand.
Once I had recovered enough strength to stay awake for more than a few minutes, Doctor Sarah had a data unit brought in for me. She'd managed to get me access to the battle reports for the campaign. I have no idea how she did it, because they were classified, and she wasn't anywhere in the line of command for the Columbia operation. Nevertheless, she did it. So thanks to my kindly and resourceful doctor, I got a recap of the battle. I started to read it with some trepidation, but by the time I was halfway through I realized it was far better than I could have hoped.
First, over half my troopers survived. Everyone I'd put in place behind the rock outcroppings had enough shielding to survive the blast with only minor damage to their armor. Their positions were largely intact when the CAC troopers finally attacked. The radiation and EMP played havoc on the enemy's scanners, and they advanced into what they thought was a hole...only to run into the converging fields of fire I'd set up. By the time they figured out what was going on and pulled back, the Colonel had assembled a force to hit them from behind.
Jax rallied my survivors, and they hooked up with the other groups along the rock wall to sandwich the enemy strike force between them and the Colonel. Caught in a vice and ravaged by multiple fields of fire they melted away. I heard that a few tried to surrender, but it was far too late for that. No more than a handful escaped to regroup with the rest of the landing force.
From that point it was a confused, chaotic melee. Both sides had lost all semblance of order, and it broke down into shattered remnants of units fighting each other. In the end, the home field advantage told. Colonel Holm had integrated local militia scouts into our units, and as it turned out this was a brilliant move. These guys knew every boulder, every vantage point were a SAW could cover the approaches. They ran circles around the invaders, and we tore them to pieces.
When the enemy sounded the recall and pulled back to their landing ships the Colonel unleashed his coup de grace, a nuclear barrage of our own, turning the enemy's rally point into an atomic hell. Not a single ship escaped. The few survivors broke and tried to run for cover, but the colonel sent out search and destroy teams to root them all out. As far as I know, not one enemy trooper who landed on Columbia lived to tell the story.
It was a huge victory, and another heap of glory for the colonel, but was dearly bought. Our casualties were over 60% - closer to 80% if you count the lightly wounded and those with minor cases of radiation poisoning. Columbia itself was another casualty. The inhabited area of the planet was devastated. The enemy had detonated half a dozen battlefield nukes, and we'd hit their rally point with ten.
When the enemy realized what had happened to their strike force they tried to bombard the surface. But Holm had one more surprise waiting for the enemy. He'd hidden several large defensive batteries, and now he had them open up on the incoming missiles. We managed to shoot most of them down, but a big fusion warhead got through and hit one of the coastal towns, leaving nothing but a crater.
I was beyond impressed with Colonel Holm's prescience. Time and time again he'd seem to read the minds of the enemy. But withholding point defense capability while the enemy landed almost 10,000 troops in two waves virtually without opposition? I was awed at the discipline. And, of course, he was right. Those batteries could have shot down some landing craft, but the colonel knew the enemy could still bombard the surface. By keeping these weapons hidden he convinced the enemy we had no such capacity, and when they did try to blast the planet it was one big sloppy salvo, making it relatively easy for us to target and destroy the incoming ordnance. Had they planned the bombardment to counter point defense capability, there is no doubt that many more warheads would have gotten through. As it was, the enemy had expended all their ordnance, and they had no real choice but to withdraw before we were able to get fresh naval forces to the system.
So the colonel had held Columbia in the face of almost overwhelming odds. As to what that salvaged real estate was worth now, that was anyone's guess. The best estimate was that a quarter of the planet's population had been killed, and a lot more were wounded, homeless, and in desperate need of supplies. Certainly, most of the manufacturing capacity, power generation, and other infrastructure had been destroyed, or at least severely damaged.
Nevertheless, it was a victory, and a badly needed one. It was the talk of the hospital once the word got out, and we Columbia survivors were the most highly sought after conversationalists in the Armstrong Acute Care Facility.
There isn't much to do in the hospital but talk to the rest of the recovering partial-soldiers, so we anxiously traded any bit of news about the war or just about any subject other than doctors and medical procedures. Anything to get our minds off the next time some white-clad figure with a sickly, too-pleasant smile would wander in to extract blood or cell samples, particularly since this usually occurred sometime around 4am, about 20 minutes after you finally managed to fall asleep. Unless it was my doctor, of course. I always had time for Doctor Sarah.
My first thoughts of the hospital went something like, "Well, at least no one is shooting at me." In a month I was ready to trade the bad food and boredom for a little incoming fire. It's not like getting shot hurts more than growing new legs. Regeneration hurts like hell. At least for limbs. The internal organs are a lot easier, and since I got some of those too, I have a frame of reference for comparison.
They replaced virtually my entire digestive system, most of which was destroyed beyond healing by the radiation. They extracted the stem cells they needed and grew me new, perfectly compatible organs. Exact copies, in fact, of the ones I was born with, but grown to adult size. The whole thing took about a month, with another couple days to recover from the implant surgery.
Then the fun started. Digestive system regeneration requires what was gently described to me as an "adjustment period," as my brand new guts settled into my old body. There was no rejection as there is with foreign transplants like the one my sister had - these organs were mine, with the exact genetic makeup of the originals.
But they were completely new adult organs, lacking the bacteria and other bits of stuff needed for them to work properly. My system was infused with several batches of new intestinal flora, and my stomach chemistry was adjusted several times. Does any of that sound like fun? It's not.
Once I got through the gut-wr
enching sickness and started to feel at least a little human, it was time for me to grow new legs. I know it sounds counter-intuitive that growing a new leg hurts more than, say, new lungs but it's true. They can regenerate organs in the lab and transplant them, while a new leg has to grow on your body. And it hurts like a motherfucker.
You would think that attaching a new arm or leg would be relatively easy, especially since they've been able to re-attach severed limbs for a couple centuries now. But unlike organs, the process for transplanting new limbs has never been very successful. Something to do with developing the leg itself to match the stump. So instead of being cultivated in some glorified incubator, my legs would be grown in place, right on my body, which sounded simple but was in fact significantly more complicated.
One problem was that most anesthetics and pain relief drugs interfered with the growth and development of new nerves. I'd been heavily medicated with pain-killers since I got to the hospital, but that all stopped when they strapped me into the regeneration machine. I got to feel every bit of it, pure and undiluted. Mostly undiluted, to be completely accurate - they did try to mitigate the agony a bit.
They administered pain-control hypnosis and something they called "compensatory neural stimulation," but trust me, none of it did much...sort of like giving you two aspirin before setting you on fire. It hurt like hell 24/7 for the entire six weeks it took for my legs to grow.
Doctor Sarah checked on me every day, spending a few minutes examining the development of the legs, but mostly trying to distract me from the pain, I think. It was a noble effort, and if anyone could have managed it, it would have been her. But this shit really hurt. I was irritable and miserable, and I even yelled at my beautiful doctor a few times, which only made me feel worse afterward.
Florence also spoke to me in soothing tones, and she (it?) got the worst of my frustration. Actually, I found the medical AI to be quite an amazing device. A sophisticated computer system that managed my condition and drug intake 24/7, it was also programmed to help alleviate boredom and provide customized companionship to mending patients. Among other things, she beat me at chess about 30 times. She could also do things like turn what was most likely a database of past patient comments into a casual conversation. Something like, "I hear the pasta with mushroom sauce on tonight's menu is particularly good. Shall I order it for you?"