The Vanguard Emerges (Maraukian War Book 2)

by Michael Chatfield

  “Ava?” Mark asked. She was the one with the most medical knowledge. Since she had become a merger, the amount of information within her mind on medical matters far surpassed the others.

  “Yes, though, unlike us, he won’t be able to do it himself. I’ll need him in a nanite vat and then I can start working on him. I can heal the damage but to become a full merger in mind and body—that will be up to him,” Ava said.

  It was an unspoken rule among mergers: only turn someone into a merger if they want to spend the rest of their life that way. It wasn’t reversible and one lost the ability to have children or be regarded as anything but a war machine for the rest of their lives.

  “Liang, we might have a way to save Captain Chen. Tell the people in the medical bay to place him into a nanite vat and stock it with materials. Ava will be using a remote connection,” Mark said.

  Liang hesitated for just a moment. “Yes, sir!”

  Mark left Ava to coordinate with the medicos aboard the ship.

  There was nothing that Mark could do. He thought about if he had left mergers on board to protect Chen, but that was a dumb idea. They were needed on the battlefield and how was he to know that Admiral Hesra would label him a mutineer and someone would hold Chen hostage?

  Still, Mark thought there might have been a way to prevent this all.

  Instead of focusing on the what-ifs and maybes, Mark continued working on the different traps that were laid down across Edani.

  The occasional M20 would fire, as the overwatch stopped any Maraukian from crossing the dead ground that was now littered with explosives, pits, and other various traps.

  ***

  Dodger took over the command of Ava’s forces while she was preoccupied in helping to save Chen’s life. Without Chen, the Moby wouldn’t be coming in right now with the supplies they drastically needed. As the ship hovered in on his HUD, he listened in and waited for its exact drop location. Almost near them, but then seemingly too far away.

  “Looks like a bit of a hike, guys. Get ready. As soon as she drops, we haul ass, or those darned Maraukians will try to get our haul.”

  Dodger quickly relayed orders through to the others, hanging back for covering fire. If they didn’t get this drop, they were done for. That meant being overrun with Maraukians, and also the retreating shuttle coming in behind the city lines would fall. All those innocent people.

  No, there was no failure here.

  Captain Chen had risked all to get them these rounds; they would damned well pick them up.

  “On my mark.” Dodger waited as the Moby drew in closer.

  The herd commander spotted the ship and started to turn their attentions toward it.

  “Not on my fucking watch!” Dodger swung his M20 around and, with the help of his men, split them apart.

  “Ready!” he called out. As the Moby drew in, Dodger could just make out its hangar doors opening. It was ready to let loose their cargo.

  “Defense positions, ready?”

  “Ready, sir.” Ava’s team second came over the net for him.

  He turned to his own. “Get in there, get loaded and out, ASAP.”

  Dodger wasn’t joining them on the run. His job now was to make sure he gave them as much of a fighting chance to get to the crate.

  The Moby hovered in as low as it possibly could. Dodger could almost see the crew inside as they shoved their precious parcel out into the air.

  “Go. Go. Go!” Dodger yelled.

  As both teams launched forward toward the crate, so did the Maraukians. It was going to be close. The Maraukians could run much faster than they could, yet they were farther away.

  “If I were a praying man, now would be the time,” Dodger uttered out to the world as his defense fire lay into the Maraukian horde headed their way.

  Dodger noticed it was Chyna who made it to the crate first, with three other mergers beside him. They started in with retaliating fire as the men behind opened the crate and started to load up as quickly as possible. When they had finished, their expert synchronization skills had them swap out in sections so that every man was now fully laden down.

  Chyna’s calm voice came back across the net. “Crate empty.”

  “Fall back positions.”

  Dodger swore the Maraukians were making a specific run for the crate, full pelt now. Even the herd commander was headed in. This seemed really off. What the fuck is that thing doing?

  But the closer he watched it, the weirder it behaved. Chyna and the mergers were almost back to their positions, handing out ammo packs to the others.

  “Make sure this is sparked off to Mark and Charles. I’ve never seen one so indecisive.”

  “Agreed. Vid is uploading now to Sarah.”

  With the mergers back behind their lines, the Maraukians halted, digging in where they’d managed to run to, and started up their regular fire once more.

  Dodger glanced behind him, thoughts of those refugees flitting through his mind. He opened his comms to Legate Quina. Then he saw something from the back flank.

  Maraukians were breaching through one of the felled city buildings. They’d overrun the city and them from behind in minutes.

  How the fuck did they manage that?

  There was no time to question. “Maraukians pushing through! ETA four minutes!”

  There was no way they could stop them. Dodger sent the report off to Mark, bypassing Ava, knowing how much she needed her wits about her to save Chen.

  Dodger glanced back. He knew her NIAI would be able to move her physical body along with the rest of the mergers as they moved, but he wondered how much so.

  With the Maraukians in front of him and that damned herd commander also making a break for it, Dodger was out of options. If he had to haul her ass over his shoulder to get her to safety, he would. The pain of losing Jarek was still fresh in his mind. He wasn’t losing another, not today.

  ***

  “Kela, find me a communications hub. I need to have a sustainable connection with the Moby.” A way point appeared on her display as she shot off into the air, quickly turning supersonic as she blasted for the building.

  She extended her fist, crashing through a window and then several walls before reaching the communications hub. She ripped the door off and stepped inside. Nanites shot out from her armor, creating silver lines that connected her to the computer systems.

  Passwords and firewalls were little more than paper in front of a merger and NIAI. In just a few moments, Ava had a powerful and secure connection to the Moby.

  It didn’t take her long until she was linked in to the medical bay and nanite vat.

  “We’ve got bad internal damage to the stomach area. Shit! Looks like the round hit a rib and threw bone into the upper chest!” one of the medicos yelled. They were covered in blood, Chen’s blood. They had IVs hooked up to him and bandages over the wound in his stomach.

  “Can’t get an air tube down his neck—going to need to insert it!” someone yelled as they put down the tube they were using. They moved to the crate at their side, quickly opening up Chen’s neck and inserting a breathing tube.

  “This brain bleed is getting worse. We’re going to have to open him up and try to deal with that first. If there’s too much swelling, then the original lacerations are only going to get worse.”

  “Severe shock—got low blood pressure and his heart is racing!”

  There was just too much damage to deal with easily anymore.

  “Get him into the vat!”

  The team continued to work on Chen, administering different drugs and nanites to try to stabilize him but his condition was rapidly deteriorating.

  Chen was in bad shape. He was in and out of consciousness, blood loss, multiple severe wounds and was in a state of shock that was only getting worse.

  “Rozdez, Jamia, Yena! I’m going to need your guys’ help!” Ava said.

  Green lights appeared as the three people linked directly to Ava.

  The medicos on the
Moby lifted Chen by his clothes, quickly transferring him from the grav-stretcher he had come in on to the bed.

  “Clear!” someone called out.

  Once all hands were clear of Chen, around the bed, metal walls shot up and a covering came out of the wall, converting the bed into a nanite vat as nanites came up from the bed and started to work on Chen’s wounds.

  Ava didn’t waste time and merged, all of their minds and NIAIs connected as they sat down in their different locations. Faster than human thought, they ran through simulations and ideas. It was as if there were four of the best surgeons in the world connected together, their minds as one, their actions varied but working toward a singular goal.

  “Taking command of the nanite vat.” Their electronic and mixed voices came through the speakers of the medical bay. The eerie sound made a few people move back. Others looked at the nanite vat with hope.

  Captain Chen had been their captain for a short time period, but he had worked with all of them to turn the Moby from a figurehead ship into a true battleship.

  He might not be an orthodox captain but he would be right there with the engineers helping to fix the air systems, or talking to the medical personnel about the supplies they needed. Unlike captains who would live on the bridge, Captain Chen ingrained himself with his people, coming to know not only the Moby, but the crew that ran it.

  He was a hard ass at times, but he would be right there with them, embracing the worst and pushing forward. He had their needs in mind and would give praise where it was due. Their skills might not be able to save Chen, but with the mergers, they might be freaks, but they were the Moby’s freaks.

  Ava and the others connected to the nanite vat, taking control of the nanites.

  They didn’t pause in their actions. Simultaneously they stabilized Chen, started to heal up his superficial wounds, and restored blood flow. Chen’s neck and face were healed partially. While his hair was removed and his skin dissolved, his skull was opened up; nanites flooded into Chen’s brain.

  They seeped between the neural transmitters, building from the inside out. They understood Chen’s brain on a chemical level and started building. Chen’s brain started to change form and shape as the bleeding was slowed.

  With all four of them working together, the brain developed quickly, no longer just a normal human brain but a merging capable brain. As they went, they couldn’t remove the bone fragments, but rather dissolved them in place and had to rebuild the lacerations and other wounds to his brain slowly.

  All of them waited as they checked the different readouts from Chen’s brain.

  “It looks like we’ve got good brain activity. Possibility of memory loss and motor control loss. Also could be mood changes. Adding permissions to NIAI to alter fixes to accommodate Chen’s reintegration.” The four of them talked as one, hard to separate out which one was who.

  The medicos only watched in shock as Chen’s body was regrown, layer by layer. Healing the bullet wound to his stomach wasn’t too hard; the face was harder as they needed to go through medical records and pictures to create a facial structure, then grow bone, ligaments, muscle, skin, and blood vessels into place.

  The complexity was incredible but to the mergers it was rather simple.

  On the outside, it took two hours; for the four mergers, it felt closer to two days as they’d accelerated their minds completely and given themselves into the merge.

  They never stopped once, working their hardest.

  They broke the merge, the one whole becoming four people again as they watched all of Chen’s information, relaying it through the medical bay.

  “All readings are looking good across the board. Medical team, be ready with sleeping agent in case Captain Chen has had changes to his personality,” Ava said.

  The medical staff rushed to obey.

  “All ready here,” one of the medicos said.

  “Understood. Unlocking nanite vat,” Ava said.

  “Removing sleeping agent from circulatory system,” Rozdez commented.

  “Brain function is looking good,” Yena added.

  “Body is reacting well. I can’t see any issues with the new brain so far. No signs of rejection.” Jamia’s voice followed afterward.

  The nanite vat’s top opened and then folded down to the sides, revealing a bed with Chen lying on it.

  His uniform had been eaten away by the nanites and replaced with boxers.

  There was no activity as Chen laid there. He looked perfectly fine: his face had recovered and the bullet in his side was gone.

  Nothing happened for a moment as the medical staff looked at one another and then at Chen.

  Suddenly Chen lurched upward, taking in big, exaggerated gulps of air. His whole body shook as his eyes dilated all the way open. His face paled as he continued sucking air in.

  “Captain, it’s okay! You’re okay!” a medico nearby said.

  Most called this regene shock, when one went through a near-death experience and thought that they were dying, when they were fixed up and they came back, they were hit with panic, their mind hazy and unclear, usually from their previous blood loss.

  Captain Chen had been on the wrong side of alive.

  If not for the mergers being able to see everything going on in his system, then he would have died.

  He had blood loss, and internal damage from the second round, with heavy internal bleeding.

  His airways were all messed up, with blood congealing in his lungs.

  He was suffocating on his own blood, and half his face was gone, blasted up into his brain.

  A medical patch on Chen’s arm fired a boatload of drugs into his system, fighting the reaction of the shock, bringing his heart rate down, adding in dopamine to calm his mind and increase the warmth of his body.

  Chen finally let out a shaky breath as he put his left hand down on the bed.

  “Looking good.” The mergers had left nanites within Chen’s body to monitor him and look over his vital signs. He was leveling out and from a biological standpoint, he was looking good. Mentally they didn’t know what he would be like. That part they couldn’t help with.

  “Captain Chen, it’s good to have you back,” Ava said.

  Chen nodded but he didn’t seem to have any words as the medicos looked him over and started to talk to him.

  He was still processing everything that happened.

  ***

  “Medical bay confirms, Captain Chen is stable.” Liang’s relief was clear as the tension on the bridge dulled somewhat.

  Carla was so relieved, she was close to tears. Still, she remembered Chen’s last order to her.

  She took a breath. She could smell the coppery tang of blood on her coveralls. She hadn’t taken the time to change her uniform as she and a number of the other command crew were also wearing bloodied clothing.

  Carla’s eyes met Taelyon’s and Travestki’s.

  Travestki gave her a terse nod while Taelyon looked away with a pale face. Taelyon was one of the best pilots there, but seeing people hurt around her, she still wasn’t accustomed to that.

  Travestki had been a gunner on a Bellona before it had been destroyed and he was badly injured. He’d seen death and known loss before, but today at least Chen was safe.

  Carla looked to the screen, looking at the mergers as they rushed to build defenses. They kept on talking about their retreat with the command crew, but Carla saw through them.

  This was meant as a last stand, using their deaths to gain time for the legionnaires and people of Edani to be safely behind Ducharev.

  Nerva was coming with his relief fleet, but he was still two days out from reaching the planet.

  Even when they knew that their end was coming, they didn’t shy away. They pushed onward, looking to do the best that they could, even saving a life.

  “All right everyone, keep to your stations. We’ve got one more supply drop, then we’ll need to get back in the debris field. I want everyone to get fifteen minutes of r
est. Go shower, get some food and drink into you, then be back on the bridge.” Carla knew they all needed some time to decompress, but fifteen minutes was all she could give them.

  The relief crew was called up, taking over their positions in a steady stream.

  “Carla, get some rest. I’ll watch over the Moby.” Travestki had appeared at her side, his hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m fine.” Carla sat up straighter.

  “No, you’re not. Go get a shower, first mate,” Travestki said, not giving up.

  Carla made to yell at him, but caught herself as she looked at him. He held no malice toward her; there was only an understanding light there. She swallowed her words and nodded, letting her head drop.

  He patted her back. Sometimes you just needed a friend there to understand you.

  “I’ll be back in fifteen,” she said.

  “I’ll keep the seat warm,” Travestki promised her.

  She nodded and stood. “Officer Travestki has the bridge,” she declared.

  “I have the bridge,” Travestki said, confirming the hand over.

  With that, she walked out of the bridge and to her quarters. People moved out of her way as she reached her room.

  With her rank, she thankfully got her own room, a fold-up bed, a pull-down desk, and a shower that slid out from the wall.

  The door shut behind Carla as she numbly turned on the shower. She caught her reflection in the mirror, saw the blood on her coveralls and her face.

  She moved to the sink, rubbing off the blood from her face, quickly and angrily as thoughts and doubts started to crawl into her mind.

  She had worked with Chen for some five years. It wasn’t a long time or a short time, but it was enough time to make a lasting friendship.

  They had gone from ship to ship together. They met on a massive carrier as pilot commanders before turning to commission and trying to become the officers of their own ship. They’d vowed that they would operate their ship the way that they believed, to look out for their crew instead of see them as below them.