Corpsman (23 page)

Chapter 40

“That’s about all I can do for you here,” Sub-lieutenant Frencle di Murray said as he cut the loose end of the bandage off.  “You’re going to need surgery soon.”

“I need a Series 4,” Liege said, then added, “I’m not blaming you for that, though.”

Contrary to the Retained Persons Convention, Liege’s med kit had been confiscated.  That bothered her more than was logical.  They’d been a gnat’s hair away from being executed, and they would have been had the good doctor not intervened, so why was she still bitching about the kit?

She looked over to where Warden was laid out beside Moose.  Moose’s ziplock indicator panel still showed a steady green.  Warden, despite the fact that Moose had been much worse hurt, was in more danger.  Liege would have put him in stasis had she still had the ziplocks, but that was now out of the question.  With an interested di Murray assisting, Liege had field-dressed Warden’s face, stabilizing his shattered jaw, and inserting a tube scavenged from a destroyed vehicle to keep his airway clear.  The airway was vital.  He was swelling up, and without the tube, Liege knew he’d already be dead.

She wasn’t doing well herself, either.  Before she’d let di Murray work on her, she’d put seven of the PIP soldiers into stasis, even “Suffy,” with the soldier who’d been about to kill her watching her every move.  The young soldier had hugged her when the lights on the ziploc went green, and apologized for well, wanting to zero her.  She’d helped treat five other soldiers before a truck picked up the PIP WIA and evacuated them.

Di Murray had examined her, cleaned the entry wound on her side and the gash along the side of her ear where a round had creased her skull, and gave her a broad-spectrum antibiotic.  Liege knew she needed more.  She was pretty sure she had a concussion, but she was positive that she had internal bleeding.  Her belly was distended, and she was running a fever that her native nanos could not contain.  Without a simple Series 4, she doubted she had ten hours left, even if di Murray kept promising to get the three recon team members back to a hospital. 

He kept telling her that even as a vet, if he just had access to proper equipment, he could treat both Warden and her, but he’d been scooped up in the flash draft, given a uniform, and sent out to war without much in the way of real equipment. 

As a Marine, Liege’s sworn mission was to escape if captured.  Both PIP divisions had filed through the pass and were advancing on the capital.  While supply vehicles were rushing back and forth between the staging area some 100 meters north and the main body, there were fewer than 10 soldiers, one being a veterinarian, at Licorice itself.  If she’d been even at 50%, she was pretty sure she could escape.  But with her fading condition, and with Warden and Moose there, she didn’t think that was going to happen.

She took a seat, then slowly leaned back to relieve pressure on her belly.  Di Murray nattered on about his practice, how he’d enjoyed working from his specially-outfitted hover, and how he loved cows.  Yes, cows.

Liege didn’t give a flying hoot about cows.  It had only been recently that she could bear the idea of eating real beef, and that was only from cloned tissue, not living, walking, farting animals.  His van sounded interesting, though.  She wondered why the PIP Army hadn’t just had him bring that along with him.  It would have been far better than what he had now.

Liege’s mind started to wander, her thoughts fading.  She realized she was about to slip past consciousness.  This was the third time in 10 hours she thought that she was going to die, and three times was too many.  Her emotions couldn’t take the stress.

A crack of a rifle sounded from over by the old TravelMart. 

Stupid soldiers,
she thought. 
No weapons discipline
.

When a burst of rounds reached her, she sat up.  She recognized the reports.

Frencle di Murray stopped his story, looking confused.  He stood up, looked about, then dove for his UKI.

“No, Frencle!” Liege shouted, somehow getting to her feet and diving at the doctor, taking him to the ground.  “Stop!  Stop!”

“Doc, break free!  I’ve got him,” Pierce Blumenthal shouted from behind her.

“No, he’s OK!” she shouted as di Murray suddenly stopped struggling.  “He saved us!”

She slowly turned around.  Pierce was lowering his weapon.  Behind him, three more very familiar faces appeared.

“You want to blow this joint, Doc?” the skipper asked.

Liege stood up, still blocking their line of fire to the sub-lieutenant.

And for the second time in seven hours, everything went dark around her.

TARAWA

Chapter 41

“I swear, Liege, I’m about go crazy!”

“Sorry, Warden, but that was our agreement.  I get
Cloud Nine
, and you get
Rassiter
.”

Liege smiled as she turned up the volume.  The two had requested to be roommates, and their daily bickering about the channel on the wall screen had become part of the norm.  Each could watch something else on their PAs, but it was more fun to bug each other.

Sometimes, it was hard to believe how close it had been.  Moose had never been in any real danger.  Being in stasis had worked as it was designed.  He hadn’t even gone through full regen.  The cardiobots had worked on his neck and lungs, inserting a mesh around his carotid.  He had received only a regimen of local regen, and he returned to full status only five weeks later. 

Warden hadn’t been much worse.  He’d suffered systemic failures, and he’d spent two weeks in full regen before being assigned to inpatient rehab.  He kept insisting that this was a vacation.  He’d been in full regen twice before, so this was nothing.  He was scheduled to be released to an outpatient status in the Wounded Warrior Battalion the following week.

It was Liege, the one who’d been conscious and working on the others, who’d come close to buying the farm, and if Pierce and the rest of First team hadn’t reached her in time, she probably would have died.  Her fellow corpsman had slapped her into stasis, and she’d stayed like that until reaching Tarawa.

One kidney had been totally shredded, along with her bladder.  The bleeding and urine had cut off blood flow.  The round itself, along with what it had drawn into her, had infected her intestines, most of her liver, and her spine.  The fact that not only had she been conscious, but functional as well, was still a topic of argument among the medical staff at the hospital.

She’d been in regen for a full month getting new organs, only joining Warden in their hospital room two weeks ago.  The regen tech had assured her that she’d have a complete recovery after another five months of rehab.

She turned up the volume on the wall screen.  If Warden was going to be gone in another week, she was bound and determined to ride him hard until then.

Warden made a dramatically loud sigh and turned on his side.  Liege acted like she hadn’t noticed him still watching the screen, though, as Katie-Kath told her mother she was dropping out of the university to become a nun.

He bitches, but he loves it.

She paused the show, though, when Captain Vichet walked in.  He was attending meetings at HQ for a week and stopped by every day to check up on them.

“How are you two doing?” he asked, adding, “Oh,
Cloud Nine
,” when he saw the paused image.  “Do you want to know what Katie-Kath does?”

“No!” the two roommates shouted in unison.

Liege had thought that when the skipper disobeyed orders and came down the hill to rescue the three of them, especially after he’d been relieved of command, he’d face a court martial at a minimum.  It hadn’t quite worked out that way.  In fact, it was General Lamonica who was facing charges.  He’d probably be demoted and resign rather than face brig time, which Liege thought sucked, but that was the Corps.

Liege didn’t find any of this out until she came out of her regen coma, but it turned out there had never been four divisions approaching the capital from the south.  It had been a very elaborate and technically amazing feat of spoofing.  Approximately 200 PIP soldiers had somehow spoofed not only the loyalists, but a Marine MEB.  With the
Sunset City
out of the loop, no one seemed to realize that until the
FS Cypressville
arrived in orbit.

The two divisions Team 2 had faced were the main effort, and they’d reached the outskirts of the capital before the
Cypressville
had arrived and stopped the advance.  Another hour or two, and the forces would have been into the city, two divisions facing a single MEB, and too closely entangled for the
Big Cypress
to unleash her full capabilities.  Without Team 2, and more importantly, without one Captain Tracile Reyes, who Liege knew as Oriole-five, parts of the city could have fallen before the Navy ship arrived.  The MEB would most likely still have prevailed, but at a much, much higher cost in civilian and Marine lives.

The general was not facing charges for ordering Team 2 into a suicide mission; that happens in wartime.  But he had not only failed to realize the actual threat, he’d specifically denied the air mission that would have stopped a real, known enemy force.

The fact that the skipper had pulled a C12 on him and had him on record saved his own ass.  He’d been reinstated and was back with the platoon on Gobi.

Liege would have loved to confront the general in a court martial, but that was not going to happen.  If she couldn’t have that, though, the shit he was in was good enough for her.

And she was happy that Captain Reyes had been nominated for a Federation Nova.  Pilots didn’t get them very often in the infantry-oriented Marines, but Liege thought the award would be well deserved.

The skipper had told her that most of her team would be receiving high-level awards, too.  She was OK with that, but the Navy Cross she’d already been awarded was sometimes a little heavier than she’d like, and it was going to get worse.

A surviving drone had captured most of the
Battle of Yancy Station
, as it was now called; Yancy Station being the name of the little rest stop before it had been abandoned in the fighting.  Part of that recording had been an image of her firing her Ruger with one hand while holding Moose’s IV pack with the other.  The image had gone viral, and the Naval Hospital had been inundated with requests for interviews.  Liege was protected for the moment, but as a head-shed public affairs major told her only this morning, she’d probably have to face them sometime.

“Fox, you know Gunny Stanerov, right?” the skipper asked.

“Stanerov?  Pug?  Sure.”

“Well, he’s inbound.  Taking over Team 2.”

“Good man,” Warden said.

Liege had gotten to know Warden much better, and she knew that hurt him.  He was still the Team 2 leader, at least in his mind.  But he wouldn’t get back to full status for another four or five months, and the Marine Corps had to march on.  Warden wouldn’t be put out to pasture, though.  He’d get something else.

She rolled up the napkin still on her tray from lunch and launched it at Warden, hitting him on the head.

“Good, now you can stop calling Tal and grilling him about the training schedule.”

Staff Sergeant Xavier Story, “Tal,” had been brought over from Third Platoon to temporarily take over Team 2.  With only Moose back on full duty, though, it was an entirely new team.

Warden rolled the napkin back up and threw it back at Liege, missing her head and almost hitting the captain.

“Geeze, glad I’m not relying on you to cover me,” she said with a laugh.

And sure enough, a smile reappeared on Warden’s face.

“Hello, Dave!  Hello Lester!” a familiar voice sounded from out in the ward.

“Run, skipper, if you value your sanity!” Warden said.

“Oh, she’s not that bad,” Liege said, “especially when she’s bringing ginger bars.”

Gladiola swept into their room, a force of nature that could not be denied, Liege’s Avó swept up in her wake.

“Liegey, darling, how are you today.  And Warden, you are looking chipper,” she said, coming over to kiss Liege on the cheek.

She placed a vac-pack on the table between the two beds, which Warden immediately snatched.  He opened it, took out a ginger bar, and offered the pack to the skipper.

Liege’s Avó made his way to her and wormed himself in to give her a peck on the cheek as well.

Liege was extremely pleased to see her Avó doing so well—not just physically, but mentally as well.  He was still undergoing treatment, but his appointments were monthly now.  His mind seemed as sharp as Liege remembered it before he’d started his slide. 

As a man of a certain age, he’d been more than popular with the women of that same age—and on both sides of the scale for quite a long ways.  Once he’d started getting better, he’d taken advantage of his popularity with what was essentially serial dating, often with overlapping women.  But the effervescent Gladiola had finally nailed her Avó down—and he seemed fine with it.  More than that, he seemed happy, and that warmed Liege’s heart.

“Avó, Gladiola, this is Captain Vichet, our platoon leader.  He was the one who rescued us on new Manitoba.”

“Oh, Captain, it’s so good to meet you.  And thank you so much for what you did, giving us back our Liegey and Warden.”

She took him by the hand and physically pulled him in so she could kiss both his cheeks.

“I. . .uh, we should thank Liege and Warden for what they did, ma’am,” he said.

“Oh, don’t posh me, Captain.  I’ve been around, I have, and I know about false modesty, an affliction that I don’t have, I assure you.”

Liege had to laugh.  Gladiola had it right.  Married to a colonel that she’d buried, then a Federation administrator who she’d also buried, she was a rather well-off contractor in her own right.  Modesty was not one of her attributes.

“Our Liegey, though, we’re so proud of her.”

The skipper looked over to Warden and mouthed, “Lie-
gee
?”  Warden just laughed.

“And Warden, too.  Such a nice boy, maybe a good match for Liegey?”

Liege rolled her eyes.  Gladiola always knew best, and she was bound to let others realize that as well.  It was impossible to take offense with her, though.  And she made her Avó happy.

“Uh, Captain, I’ve got an idea that I’ve been thinking about,” her Avó said.  “I’ve been telling the gunny here about it, but I think I should talk to you.”

“Avó!  The captain doesn’t want to hear about your flying drill bit,” Liege scolded.

“Nonsense, Liege.  He’s a Marine, and this could be a great weapon,” he said, taking the now captive skipper by the arm and pulling him aside.  “And I keep telling you, it’s not a ‘flying drill bit.’”

Captain Vichet was a good sport, listening attentively for 20 minutes while her Avó went into his ideas.  He hung around for another 15 minutes before making his regrets.  Gladiola and her Avó stayed for another 45 before they left.

Liege gratefully lowered the head of her bed.  She loved the two dearly, but they could be a bit exhausting, and she wasn’t anywhere near full strength.

Warden held up the vac-pack, offering her the last ginger bar.  She flicked her hand, letting him know it was his.  He eagerly grabbed it and stuffed the entire bar into his mouth.

“Well, now that that’s over for the day, I guess we went well into your time,” she told Warden, reaching for the screen control.  “I’ll change it to
Rassiter
.”

“Uh, well,
Cloud Nine
is almost over.  If you want, you can leave it there until the end of the episode.”

“Really?” Liege asked.  “I mean, an agreement’s an agreement.  I can come back to
Cloud Nine
later, when you’re in therapy.”

“No, no.  I don’t mind. 
Cloud Nine
is fine.”

Liege tried to hide her smile as she booted
Cloud Nine
back up.  Both of them settled back into their racks to find out just what Katie-Kath was going to do about her mother.