Greenies

guy there.' She pointed to a supine soldier lying just behind her. 'He's a neck and chest wound, probably bleeding internally. Took shrapnel from an eighty through the gap in the sandbags. I've sedated him, patched the suit, decompressed his left lung, and gave him some synthetic blood. Hopefully that'll be enough to get him back to Eden alive. He's tagged priority so be sure to get him over to the priority section of the triage area when you're down there and be as gentle as you can with him.'

'Right,' Hicks said, squirming past her. Drogan followed him and a second later they picked him up — Drogan at the head, Hicks at the feet — utilizing the handles that had been installed in the biosuits for just that purpose. They squirmed back by in the opposite direction and began heading back the way they'd come.

'Nguyen,' the medic barked over the tac channel. 'This is doc. Get your ass over here!'

'On the way,' a voice replied.

She looked up at Jeff. 'Very nasty head wound here,' she told him. 'An eighty went off just outside his opening while he was firing on a tank. The AT blew up in his face and ripped through his face shield. As you can see...' She took a deep breath, a little of the strain she was under leaking through, 'Well... he's hit pretty bad.'

Jeff looked at the soldier's face. Her words were perhaps the worst understatement he'd ever heard. His entire face shield had been blown inwards, peppering the poor guy's face with plastic shrapnel and bits of the AT weapon body. A large shard was sticking out of his flesh just to the left of his nose. His entire left eye had been torn out of its socket and had smeared over the remains of his left cheek. The socket was slowly oozing blood down the side of his face even through the gauze the medic had stuffed in there. His teeth had all been smashed in and his tongue appeared to have been ripped in two, part of it hanging out of his mouth, part of it occluding his airway. His right eye was undamaged but obviously sightless, bulging out of its socket from the pressure change the loss of his face shield had caused. She had covered the hole with an opaque film to restore that pressure and had drilled a breathing hole in his neck and hooked an air hose connected to his auxiliary outlet to the fitting that protruded. He was gurgling and twitching, his arms and legs spasming.

'This is an intraosseous line I've just drilled into his tibia,' the medic told Jeff. 'I'm giving him a sedative/paralytic right now so he'll stop moving around.'

'Right,' Jeff said, having no idea what she was talking about, staring in horror at the man's ruined face.

She removed the drill and put an air syringe against the port that protruded from his suit. She injected something and a moment later the man stopped twitching and moving.

'There we go,' she said. 'He'll stay still for the trip now. His suit will automatically keep him ventilated, so don't worry about that. Just get him down there as fast as possible.' She looked up at him, her eyes showing sadness even in infrared. 'He's probably not gonna make it to surgery. Even if he does live... well... he'll be blind and probably brain damaged.' She shook her head. 'I have to try though.'

'Right,' Jeff said again, shuddering, picturing himself in the man's place.

Another soldier suddenly appeared, the Nguyen to whom she'd spoken apparently.

'Yeah, doc?' he asked.

'You and uh...'

'Creek,' Jeff provided.

'Right... Creek. You and Creek here get him down to the LZ. Take him to the priority area. If his light turns red on the way, well... just put him in the trenches and come back. Got it?'

Nguyen obviously knew the man they were speaking about. 'Yeah, doc,' he said. 'Does he have... I mean... is he gonna... gonna... make it?'

'It's possible,' she said. 'Unlikely, but possible. The faster you get him down there the more possible it'll be. Okay?'

'Right,' he said, leaning down and grabbing the foot handles. 'Come on, Creek. Let's get him down there.' He looked meaningfully into Jeff's eyes. 'He's a good guy, okay?'

'Right,' Jeff said. He reached down and grabbed the upper torso handles. They lifted and began working their way back through the trench. As they went they turned their com sets to the extremely short range frequency to keep their chatter from overloading the main tactical channel.

'We thought we were safe after the arty, you know?' Nguyen told him. 'They walked those 150s all over our positions and not a single one of us got so much as a scratch.'

'Yeah, us too,' Jeff said. 'A couple of them blew pretty fuckin' close too.'

'But those tanks,' Nguyen said, shaking his head. 'Goddamn, man. There were so many of them out there and their rounds came flying in from below instead of from above. The barriers absorbed most of them but some got through the holes because that's where they aim 'em. I saw Jenky get her fuckin' head blown clean off — well, not clean, it kinda exploded all over the back of the trench. You should see what happens to blood out here when it comes out. It boils, man. It boils and turns into vapor and goes drifting off into the air in this big fuckin' red cloud.'

Jeff tried not to show any reaction to this horrifying description, knowing that it would soon be his fate to see it firsthand when the infantry attacked — or perhaps he wouldn't see it. Perhaps his companions would see his head explode into pieces, his blood go boiling upward. 'You held 'em though,' he said, fighting to keep his voice even. 'You pushed their thieving asses back over the horizon.'

'Yeah, at least there's that,' Nguyen said. 'I'd hate to have gone through all that for nothing.'

They worked they way down to the bottom of the hill and exited the access point on the back side of it. Two hundred meters east of the access was a landing zone where the wounded were being triaged and flown out. Two APCs from the support battalion were parked here, their doors open. Three medivac hovers were sitting on the ground around them, their engines at idle. Two of them had the rear ramps down, the other was sealed up. As they carried their injured companion in that direction the sealed one suddenly flared bright red in the infrared and lifted in the air. It turned to the east and began heading for Eden, flying low.

The immediate triage area was the easiest to find. It contained the largest number of medics and evac soldiers. It also contained the largest number of wounded.

'Put him down over here,' a medic commanded them when they entered the area.

They did so and the medic immediately kneeled down next to him and began running a scanner device over him. They heard him sigh as he examined the findings. He shook his head and stood back up.

'What are you doing?' Nguyen demanded. 'His light didn't turn red! The doc says he needs to go out right away!'

'Sorry,' the medic said, 'but he's a goner. Brain activity almost nothing, heart rate less than thirty a minute, no voluntary respiration. He'll never make it back to Eden.'

'You gotta fuckin' try, man!' Nguyen said. 'Jesus Christ! You can't just let him lay there and die!'

'He doesn't have a chance,' the medic said. 'There's a lot of people out here who do have a chance and I'm not gonna take up space on a hover with someone who's gonna be dead before they even make it twenty klicks. I'm sorry, man. That's the way it's gotta be.'

Nguyen shook his head angrily and fingered the rifle slung over his shoulder for a moment. He took a few deep breaths, dropped his hand and turned away. 'That's fuckin' cold,' he said.

'I know,' the medic told him. 'I wish it didn't have to be this way. This section got hit hard. I gotta go check on the other guys.' With that he walked away, heading for the group of casualties closest to the front of the line.

'I'm sorry, Nguyen,' Jeff told him, patting him on the back. 'That fuckin' bites ass.'

'Yeah,' Nguyen said. 'A lot of things bitin' ass tonight, huh?'

With that he turned and walked away, heading back towards the trench entrance. Jeff watched him go, his feet seemingly unable to follow after him.

Two figures approached him from the direction of one of the hovers. As they came closer and he was able to resolve their facial features with the infrared enhancement, he recognized them as Drogan and Hicks. Both of them were looking a little shell-shocked.

'Did you get your guy down to the hovers?' Jeff asked.

'We got him down there,' Hicks said. 'He's still waiting to be loaded. The medics said there's worse people that need to go first.'

'How about yours?' Drogan asked.