Battlestations

by S. M. Stirling

  She closed her eyes and bent her head over her pseudo-eggs as the memory overwhelmed her.

  She’d been asleep, off-shift. The ship rocked; that woke her up. She grabbed for the light switch; her overhead died, and emergency services went on-line, the red lights, the wheeze of the ventilators. She didn’t even remember dressing or running down the corridor to the surgery. Just being there, as body after body came under her hands. Waiting for Janet to come pounding in from her room.

  The last person she expected to see come in on a stretcher was Janet.

  And she was the last person Celia expected to see die.

  Curdled, blackened burns covered her body, and Janet’s screams still haunted her sleep. Her best friend was so racked with pain that she didn’t even recognize Celia.

  Celia had not lost control of her emotions, at least not during the procedure. She had calmly and coolly applied the plastic flesh that would hold Janet together until a burn specialist could see her, until someone from Rad could see how much of a dose she had gotten.

  Triage; minor, major, grave. Janet got the red band—grave—but there were lots of red bands. Too many; the ship had taken a major hit to the crew quarters. She had learned later that Janet had been with that young ensign she’d met in the mess. The young ensign’s body had shielded hers from the worst of the blast.

  Too many red bands, and not enough doctors to see to them. Celia had lacerated spines to put back together; heads with the brain laid bare. Everyone was busy, there were too many bodies, too many seriously injured.

  The red band wasn’t enough. She had wanted to shout, to drag the burn man over to Janet, to point out that this was another doctor, one of the fraternity. But her professional etiquette prevented her.

  Janet’s screams had stopped suddenly.

  Even in the tumult of the overfilled trauma ward, the other moans of agony, the shouts of doctors and nurses, the wheeze of machines, Celia heard that horrible silence.

  She had whirled, staring across the room, patient forgotten. Janet gazed upward, eyes open, mouth frozen forever in a silent scream.

  Dead. In a room full of doctors and nurses, of lifesaving machinery, she was dead. Even after the training, the years of schooling, Celia still hadn’t a clear idea back then of how fragile life really was.

  We had breakfast together. She was laughing, talking about her new boyfriend, about how wonderful working in a war zone was. Why were we hit? We were a hospital ship, damn it! Where were the people who were supposed to be protecting us?

  To this day, a million questions hammered at her. They had then, and none of them had ever been answered. The answers, she knew deep down inside, wouldn’t bring Janet back.

  Nothing would; not technology, equipment, or training. Janet would not come back.

  The rest was a blur. She had a dim recollection of turning back to the table, of turning back to her work, with tears streaming down her face; more burn victims, some worse than Janet was, some not as bad. Not for her; hers were the shrapnel recipients, the fractured skulls and broken bones. Somewhere in there was the first time she had seen the results of decompression, though why anyone had thought the ER could actually do anything with the mess on the gurney escaped her.

  She went to bed; when she woke, there was nothing inside.

  When Janet died, Celia decided later, her emotions died with her friend. A hidden gear, a thrown switch, put her in a detached, unfeeling, mechanical mode.

  She remembered the next few weeks, the vague sense of moving with a purpose, with no real sense of joy or pain. No sense, really, of anything. Nothing. She got through each day, just barely. When she went to her room to cry, nothing happened. The tears wouldn’t come.

  And they never did, Celia thought. Will they ever? She shook her head. Probably not. After fourteen years, what would be left?

  She had requested an immediate transfer then. She wasn’t sure why, not at the time. All she knew was that like a wounded creature crawling away to lick its injuries in private, she needed off that ship, since leaving her profession altogether was out of the question.

  But when she made the request, they had denied it!

  Only then did some kind of emotion wake; rage. She barely restrained her anger when she had her conference with the Chief of Surgery, a large, aggressive bitch of an old woman who refused to listen to her.

  Her supervisor informed her in no uncertain terms that she was needed on that particular ship in that particular slot. She had no experience in combat medicine, and she was lucky to have a chance to gain some of it where she was.

  The CoS made working in that nightmare that had killed Janet sound like a privilege.

  And one more thing; regs. She didn’t really have a choice. She wouldn’t be allowed a transfer for another year. Only senior staff were allowed transfers.

  Celia could have strangled her then.

  She returned to her cabin in a state of barely controlled rage. But somehow, in the interval between the end of the interview and the beginning of her shift, she came to the startling realization that she was only a working part of a larger machine, the workings of which were decided by other, more important people.

  What, Celia had asked, would I have to do to get transferred?

  Become the best damned medic we have, the supervisor informed her with a self-serving sneer. That is your only ticket out of here.

  Then I had better get back to work, Celia replied, and proceeded to become the best damned doctor, the best damned surgeon, the Fleet had ever seen.

  Then she went a step further; she went back to the books for further surgery specialization. She surprised everybody by picking up the old manual skills, the kind used in the most primitive of field conditions; old-fashioned surgery with scalpel and sutures. Except for a few who kept their hands in because they were assigned to ground-based MASH units, most surgeons didn’t even bother picking up a metal scalpel once during their whole careers.

  With every patient that came past her, she remembered Janet, and put as much energy into saving that person as she would her best friend.

  It became a challenge, to be the best so that she could have the most freedom.

  In the end, she had the freedom of the Fleet. Not only did she have a ticket off that particular ship, she discovered that she could write her ticket to wherever she wanted.

  And she discovered something else. There would never be another Janet. There had been too much pain in losing the first one. So she started running away, whenever people began coming too close.

  For a while each change of location helped keep her isolated, but inevitably she began forming acquaintances. Acquaintances had the potential to become friends.

  There must never be friends.

  She was never sure what criteria she went by, or if there was anything specific that went on in her head. But at some point in every assignment, she realized that her time was up.

  Time for a transfer. Before I get too close to these people.

  She sensed something distantly wrong with her attitude, as well as her lack of feelings, and like a good little professional, she sought confidential help from a psychiatrist. She was a little hesitant about seeing a man, but she didn’t have a lot to pick from. Dr. Reynolds was the only shrink on the ship. It was him or the chaplain, and she had long ago lost any faith in a higher power of any kind.

  Dr. Reynolds soon became “Walter,” then “Walt.” With each session, some grueling, she relived Janet’s death, and bit by bit Walt peeled away the layers of her psyche, like the skin of an onion. She didn’t like what she found there, but Walt didn’t give her a choice. He forced her to face herself, and learn to deal with what was there.

  Slowly, the feelings began to return. But not the kind of feelings she expected, or even wanted.

  Textbook case, Celia. Like so many fools before her, she was falling in love with her shrink. And he was happily married.

  She never told him why she stopped seeing him, but she somehow
never had time to schedule another session, and after a while, the comp stopped reminding her. Celia avoided him fairly easily; her schedule and his didn’t exactly mesh. She went back to repressing her feelings, which she did with relative ease. She was pretty good at it by now.

  Then the mine struck the ship. Weeks later, the technicians couldn’t quite figure out what race had made the bomb, but whoever made it knew what they were doing.

  It might even have been from a race centuries extinct, made for a conflict that someone had won or lost when man was still fumbling about in his own solar system with sublight spacecraft. It might have been something from their current enemy. Wherever it came from, the device had drifted through several layers of security, deftly evading them all before it impacted on the hull.

  Celia was on duty when it happened this time. A quarter of the ship had decompressed, killing large numbers of crew before automatic doors sealed off the damaged sector. Those who weren’t killed probably wished they had been, in the few minutes that were left to them.

  Decompression is such a nasty business, Celia remembered thinking. Of the thirty patients brought in, they lost twenty. Before she went off duty, they brought in one last survivor.

  Walt Reynolds. He was gasping for air with ruined lungs when the stretcher floated past. Celia stood there, frozen, for several moments, before she realized she was the only surgeon who wasn’t busy with someone right then.

  He looked at her with frightened, bloodshot eyes as she put the oxygen mask over his face, checking his skin for the instant frostbite that often accompanied decompression and vacuum exposure. She looked in those ruined eyes, laced with scarlet ruptures, remembering how reassuring they had once been, after gently exposing her mental wounds.

  Triage. Minor, major, grave.

  She knew before she got started that Walt was going to die, but her training stepped in, seized control of her body.

  I’m the best damned doctor on this ship, she thought, wondering why that was important then.

  But even the best damned doctor in the universe couldn’t save someone with no lung tissue left to breathe with. Not when all the mech-lungs they had were plugged into other people.

  When Walt died, she felt nothing, nothing at all.

  After that, her career became a series of transfers, initiated whenever she thought she was getting too close to someone. There were many ships in the Fleet, but not all of them had—or were—medic units.

  Then there was only one option left open to her. The Stephen Hawking. Heading out near the Core, facing yet another brand-new enemy, where the fighting was the heaviest.

  The Stephen Hawking was a huge ship—but not big enough. Only too soon, she had to run again.

  They were losing more ships than ever now, and even medical craft like the Blackwell weren’t immune to fire, friendly or otherwise.

  As she knew.

  The Ichtons didn’t care what they destroyed. To transfer would mean suicide, sooner or later.

  Celia transferred.

  And now—now none of it mattered, really. When the huge Ichton fleet had been detected days before, she remembered thinking not so much that she was going to die, but that the running, finally, was over. Instead of the understated fear that those around her were showing, she felt calm, almost serene. In a way she was grateful for the approaching fleet; her heart welcomed them.

  The running is finally over.

  She would have gone on, wallowing in these cheery thoughts a little longer. But a sudden lull in conversation made her look up, and she noticed the staff administrator had just entered the mess ball. An older gal, she had that seasoned look of someone who had been in medicine a long, long time. What was her name? Dr. Morgan. Althea Morgan. Neurosurgery and Personnel.

  She had a searching look, a little frown on her face as she scanned the mess. Who is she looking for? Celia wondered.

  Althea’s eyes passed over everyone in the mess hall, then settled on Celia. A smile swept over the mature features, leaving no doubt that she had found who she was looking for.

  Celia panicked. Oh, shit. She’s looking for me.

  A hunch told Althea that Celia would be hiding out in the mess hall, and as usual her hunch proved to be correct.

  There she was, huddled over her plastic tray, sitting alone, eating by herself.

  No big surprise here, after reading her file.

  When their eyes met, Althea could almost feel the panic she saw there.

  Celia’s file said she was forty-two, but she looked much, much older. Well, she has seen a lot of action—but that much action?

  Even from where she stood she could see stress lines in Celia’s face, and she wasn’t close. On the other hand—the woman wasn’t taking any pains to look attractive, either. Not even close.

  Forty-two and a veteran. Did I look like that when I was her age? she wondered. Well, it really didn’t matter, did it? What was important was what was going on inside that head, not outside it.

  She put on her friendliest smile and approached her table, hoping the woman wouldn’t flee before she got there.

  “Well, hello,” Althea said, flashing that all-important smile. “I’m Althea Morgan. You must be our new Chief of Surgery, Celia Stratford.”

  Celia stood still for a moment, then offered a weak smile. Slowly, like a caged animal reaching uncertainly for food, she extended her hand. “Very pleased to meet you,” Celia said, but Althea was far from convinced that she was. “What, ah, can I do for you this morning?”

  Althea looked down, at where Celia had put her hands after the tentative handshake. They were gripping the table sides, and the knuckles were turning white. Had she met Celia before seeing what she could do in a surgery, this tense display would have been alarming. But apparently she left the strain and discomfort behind when she went to work; her work, so far, had been exemplary.

  Good thing, Althea thought. Or this girl would never have made it past the first day!

  “Please don’t think of this as business, per se,” Althea said soothingly. Oh, it was business, all right, but not the kind Celia would think of. If there’s a neurotic working for us, it’s my business to find out. “I was just going over the new personnel files and saw yours, and realized we hadn’t actually met.”

  “I see,” Celia said.

  That fits. Monosyllables. Not unfriendly, but there’s nothing there to make anyone want to continue a conversation, Althea thought, and consciously turned off the frown that started to form on her own face. Well, let’s see if I can’t get past the first barrier and see what your next line of defense is.

  Althea chuckled, hoping it didn’t sound as artificial as it felt. “You know, in the good ole days of medicine, or anywhere else for that matter, the medical director would be the first person the new transfer would meet. But now, with all our computers . . . well, you know how it is. There’s not enough human contact, in my not-so-humble opinion. Especially in our profession. Machines do enough as it is; we shouldn’t let them take over our whole lives.”

  “My mentor made the same observation,” Celia said icily. “But at the same time he pointed out that the technical advances in our field have made it possible for the surgeon to concentrate entirely on his specialty and not on extraneous nonsense.”

  “What, like doctor-patient relations, and bedside manner?” Althea grinned. She’d gotten a response, a negative one, but a response. Let’s jab the needle in a little deeper. “Frankly, my dear, you can call me old-fashioned, but I think that kind of attitude sucks.”

  She had deliberately chosen the single most offensive way to phrase her reply, short of marine-class obscenity. She hoped fervently for anger.

  Something to show that the personality was only buried, not amputated. She had a shrewd idea, now that she’d had a look through Celia’s files, of where the problem was, and at least part of the cause. She’d left old Cyclops on a search-and-categorize mission that ought to keep him from pestering her with any foolishness
for a while. He was looking for something specific; people with whom Celia had either extended professional or social contacts who had died violently—on the same ship where she was stationed. Good chance that she would have been in the trauma center when they came in.

  Meanwhile, she was going to stick some pins in the girl and wake her up. She got her response. “Battlefield conditions are no place for bedside manner, Doctor,” Celia said with a spark of anger in her eyes.

  “Oh, I beg to differ.” Althea raised one eyebrow. “A little personal attention just before the anesthetic hits can make all the difference between someone fighting for his life and giving up. I’ve seen it happen too many times to discount. And it doesn’t take any time at all—I mean, you have to read Ar—I mean, the medicomp screen anyway. You just pay attention to what it says about that kid on the table, lean down while your nurse is spraying your hands, and say, ‘Hey, soldier, we’re gonna get you back to that pretty little bundle of fur in no time, with a fancy scar to prove you’re a hero.’ Or maybe, ‘Don’t sweat your boyfriend, honey. The Hawking crew is warming up a brand-new face for you right now. Want to pick out cheekbones when you wake up?’ Or even, ‘Show these humans what you’re made of, soldier. You’re worth a dozen puny bareskins!’ ”

  Celia’s hands were shaking as badly as Althea’s. “You’re making them into people—not patients—”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. They already are people, and their lives are mechanical enough. I just remind them that other folks know they’re people, too. Let them know that somebody cares that they were there, that they live through their injuries. I even talk to them while they’re under.”

  “You what?” Celia was properly horrified. Actually, Althea had disturbed quite a few medics with her little eccentricity before they saw the results. “That’s insane! How could—”