Shrapnel sprayed through the opening and caught the shoulder and neck portion of her suit, ripping it open, shredding the flesh beneath. She made a startled squeal of pain and fear and dropped down into the trench in a heap, the SAW crashing down next to her.
'Shit!' Jeff yelled. 'Drogan's hit, sarge. We need doc over here!'
'Doc's dragging some of the other wounded down to the extraction zone,' Walker responded. 'You and Hicks see what you can do for her. If she's viable we need to get her out of here.'
Jeff put his weapon over his shoulder and ran over to Drogan's side. He looked first and foremost at the light on her suit pack. It was still green, which meant the suit was still recording a heartbeat and respiration. He rolled her onto her back and blood vapor came boiling out of the hole ripped in her suit. Her shoulder was torn to pieces, as was part of her neck. Her eyes beneath her helmet were open but dazed, uncomprehending. She was bleeding badly from her wounds and the hole in the suit was too big to seal on its own.
'Oh fuck, no!' Hicks said when he reached them and got a good look at her.
'We need to get a patch on that hole,' Jeff said, reaching into the stomach pocket of her suit where the first aid kid and the emergency patching supplies were kept. He pulled out the tube of polymer sealant and opened the top. He squirted a generous amount of it all over the holes and it slowly sank in and hardened, stopping the leak of air pressure from within and putting direct pressure on her wounds, which, unfortunately, also ground into the jagged shrapnel that had caused the wounds. Her eyes widened and she began to scream in pain.
'It's okay, Drogan,' Jeff said, unsure if she could hear him, unsure if she could comprehend even if she could.
'Vexal,' Hicks said. 'Give her some fuckin' Vexal!'
'Right,' Jeff said, reaching for the suit computer controls near the chest. Vexal was a synthetic, very potent, very fast acting form of morphine. Every model 459 military biosuit had several vials of it in the inside lining of the stomach portion and both leg portions. Jeff opened a panel on the computer face and pushed the button for the left leg vial. The suit auto-injected the drug into her thigh. Ten seconds later the screaming faded out and her eyes closed.
'That's better,' Hicks said.
'How is she?' Walker's voice asked.
'Alive,' Jeff said. 'Hit bad on the shoulder and neck. We got the suit sealed and got some Vex in her.'
'Good job,' he replied. 'Now get her downstairs. Woo, pick up the SAW and start putting some fire on those marines. They're less than forty meters out now and moving in fast.'
'Right, sarge,' Woo said.
'Everybody else, pick up as much ammo and supplies as you can carry and then follow Hicks and Creek down. We're pulling out. Woo and I will keep shooting at them until everyone is down and then we'll follow.'
Jeff and Hicks grabbed the handles on Drogan's suit and began moving toward the egress trench. They had to step over broken sandbags, empty ammunition boxes, and squeeze around the other squad members who were picking up the full ammunition boxes and putting them in their bags.
'How... how bad?' Drogan's voice asked dreamily, barely loud enough to make it over the link.
'Bad enough to get you sent back to Eden but not bad enough to kill you,' Jeff replied, although he was not completely sure of either one of these statements.
'Billion dollar wound,' she mumbled. 'Static.'
'We're switching to credits now, remember?' Jeff said. 'It's a one hundred million credit wound. Get your terminology right, Drogan.'
She smiled a little, her hand reaching up to grasp his forearm before falling back down. She soon drifted back into la-la land.
They made it to the bottom of the hill and out the back of the access trench in near record time. Spread out before them in a neat line were the APCs that had transported them to this place, their back ramps open, their gunners pointing the cannons and the lasers back towards the opening where any WestHem armor or troops would come through. Every retreating soldier was assigned to one of these APCs and his computer had already been updated to turn the one he or she was assigned to a pale blue color in the infrared spectrum. Hicks and Jeff saw their vehicle was near the center of the line. They didn't head for it. Instead they went towards the casualty collection point fifty meters to the north. There were no hovers there — which was a bit disconcerting — but they did find two support APCs with red crosses on the sides. They also found their medic.
'Doc!' Jeff hailed when they came close enough to recognize him among the chaos. 'We got Drogan here. She's hit in the shoulder and the neck.'
'Fuck my ass,' the doc replied. 'Put her down over here. Let me take a look at her.'
They did as requested and Hicks gave a quick report on the first aid they'd rendered so far.
'Good, good,' the medic said, nodding, as he did a quick scan of her and determined she was still bleeding despite their measures. 'I need to get some sealant on those wounds,' he muttered.
'Where are the hovers?' Jeff asked.
'It's not safe for them here anymore,' the doc replied. 'The WestHems have started shelling this area with their mortars.'
'Shelling an evac point?' Hicks asked angrily. 'That's a war crime!'
'So is parading our POWs in front of their cameras and charging them with terrorism, but they don't have no problem doing that.' He pulled a large syringe from his kit, attached a needle to it, and drew up some kind of milky white liquid from a vial. He pushed it into the neck/shoulder junction of her suit and into her very flesh. He injected some, moved the needle a little, and then injected some more in a different spot.
'You guys saved her ass,' he told them as they watched. 'If you wouldn't have got her suit patched and the pressure on the wounds she would have either bled to death or decompressed enough to get the bends.'
'Is she gonna make it?' he asked.
'If we can get her to surgery in the next hour or so, she'll not only make it, she'll be back out here for more fun in a couple of days.'
'Oops,' said Jeff. 'I guess it wasn't a hundred million credit wound after all.'
'Incoming,' the doc said calmly, his information received from listening in on a tactical channel on a different frequency.
Jeff and Hicks looked up and, sure enough, the streaks of eighty-millimeter mortar shells were now coming out of the sky towards them. They ducked down, terrified at being in the open.
'Don't worry too much,' the doc told them as he protectively covered Drogan's body with his own. 'They're just plastering this whole area, probably trying to hit our support teams. No one is directing their fire and it just lands all over the place.'
The barrage went on for about a minute or so, with explosions and flashes peppered all over the surrounding square kilometer. None of them even came close to an occupied position.
'Okay,' the doc said when it was over. 'Get her in that APC there.' He pointed to one of the nearer ones. 'They'll transport her to the rear of the blue line and a hover can pick her up from there.'
They hefted her motionless body up off the ground again and trotted her over to the open APC. Inside were three other wounded infantry troops in various states of distress and another medic. They set her gently down in the only open space available.
'Okay, we're gone,' the doc told them. 'Get your asses over to your own APC and I'll see you in a bit.' He patted each of them on the shoulder. 'Free Mars.'
'Free Mars,' they both replied wearily.
Meanwhile, back in the main infantry trench, Sergeant Walker and Corporal Woo were still shooting at the advancing WestHem troops. The marines were now less than twenty meters away from entering the trench network and most of them were shooting back with both small arms fire and their own grenade launchers. The barrage of tank and APC fire had stopped but this was not particularly good news. It was only because the tanks and APCs in question — realizing that their quarry was retreating — had started to move forward. They were being held somewhat in check by the continued presence of the Martian tanks down below, who were slated to be the very last to withdraw.
A grenade came flying at Walker. He had just enough time to pull his head back in before it detonated in front of his hole, sending a spray of shrapnel through. A few errant pieces dinged off his helmet but none were at the right angle to penetrate.
