by Korza, Jay
Bryce saw the marine on rear security was facing the rest of the team with his weapon pointed at them, firing. His brain couldn’t figure out what was going on. He looked in the direction the marine was firing, thinking that the enemy must be ahead of them as well and that’s what he was shooting at. But as the marine fired again, Bryce followed the shot and saw that it was heading directly towards another one of the marines on his team.
Bryce didn’t hesitate any longer. He brought his weapon up and put three rounds into the rogue marine’s chest. At this close distance, the training rounds still had a lot of kinetic energy so the marine not only got three uniform shocks, he had three distinct thuds in his chest as well. The shooter went down and Bryce followed the target with his weapon to make sure that the threat was truly gone. Bryce had to clear his head as he kept repeating to himself that this was only training; he hadn’t really killed a marine from his own team.
The team leader came to Bryce and put a hand on his rifle, helping Bryce to lower it to the ready position. “Why did you shoot Marcus?”
Bryce looked at the man whose name tag read O’Connor. “I, uh, he was shooting our own guys.”
O’Connor looked at him. “And? Do you know why he was doing that? Did you stop to think about what was going on before you just lit him up?”
Bryce felt as if his feet were starting to get back under his body again so he spoke with a little more confidence this time. “Once I realized it was him shooting at us, I thought to myself ‘WHY?!’ But then as I looked back towards him, I realized that it didn’t matter why, he just was, and he had to be stopped. The why was irrelevant at that point.” An old memory came back to Bryce and he added, “Sometimes, we have to be the Reaper. We have to collect the souls of those who are broken, who can’t be a part of society no matter how much we want them to be. I’m a corpsman, and this was preventive medicine. I kept him from hurting any more of my men.”
O’Connor smiled at Bryce. “Reaper, huh? That’s your new name, kid.” The marine who Bryce had shot was starting to get up and Bryce brought his rifle back up but O’Connor stopped him. “Easy, Reaper, all part of the game today.”
The marine got up fully. “Nice shooting, killer.” He dusted himself off a bit. “Sorry, Gunny, you know how it goes, orders and all that.”
Bryce looked around with confusion so the marine filled him in. “Sometimes in these scenarios they give a soldier secret orders to attack their own unit. It simulates the real possibility that one of your own guys goes nuts in a firefight or maybe you have a double-crosser in your unit. There’s plenty of reasons for that shit to happen in real life and it HAS happened. That’s why they throw it in every now and then.” He looked back at O’Connor with a huge smile. “Honestly, though, I was pretty excited they picked me. I couldn’t wait to nail some of you turds.”
O’Connor patted his buddy on the shoulder. “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Everyone who’s still alive, rally up and get ready to move out. We still have a mission to complete. Those of you who are dead, make your way back to staging and get something to eat, clean your weapons and get some rest—in that order.”
As the rest of the team moved out, O’Connor could see that Bryce was still conflicted with what just happened. “Look, son, you did the right thing. I know that even in a training scenario doing something like can rattle your cage, but let it go. I have a fourteen-year-old son at home, Mike Junior, and I always want to make it home to him and his mother. So I don’t care who’s shooting at us, bad guys, good guys, it doesn’t matter; shoot everyone who is shooting in your direction. You got that, Reaper? Everyone.”
“Copy that, Gunny.” Reaper moved out with the rest of his unit and eventually caught up with the larger force that had been through the area first.
Two days later, Reaper finally got to shower and sleep in a real rack and not on the ground. After the graduation ceremony, O’Connor found Reaper and introduced him to his wife and son. Then O’Connor took him to a major who was talking with a bunch of new marine graduates.
“This is the major.” O’Connor introduced Reaper to the officer.
Reaper came to attention and saluted. “Good to meet you, sir.”
The major returned the salute. “Reaper, huh? I like it. The irony of a corpsman being called that makes me smile.” The major put a friendly hand on Reaper’s shoulder as they spoke.
“This is the kid who saw through your mind-fuck, sir. Shot Jinx without a second thought. Well, maybe without a third thought.” O’Connor was obviously proud of him.
“Good going, kid. I love that old gag. I got to do it when I was a young lieutenant and it made my day. Not to mention that after you get shot, you get to go back to staging for some rest.” The major waved at some unseen person in the crowd. “I’ve got to go talk to an old friend. I’ll see you two later. And Reaper, I know you want to be a doctor but if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll be sure to get you a great assignment right out of the gate if you’re interested. And even if you do become a doctor, make sure you look me up. I’ve got some pretty good assignments for officers, too. A lot of fun, I tell ya.” The last words he said with an eerily excited tone in his voice.
Reaper looked at O’Connor. “How do I look him up? I don’t even know his name.” Reaper realized that the major was the only uniformed person he had ever seen without a nametag on his chest.
“You don’t really look him up; he looks you up.” O’Connor was leading them towards the food tent where his wife and kid were waiting for them. “Trust me, you’ll hear from the major again someday, regardless of what path you choose.”
~
Gradually the food tent faded from Reaper’s mind and he could hear a beeping near his left ear. He was acutely aware of a dripping sound coming from somewhere in the…room? Was he in a room? A bed? He had no idea of where he was or what was happening. Reaper’s mind was foggy even though every sound he heard was crystal clear and almost too loud for him to think it was a comfortable level.
He started to talk, to yell, to something, anything to find out whether there were other people around him. He felt his mouth was unnaturally closed, something holding it shut. As he worked his mouth, he felt a plastic tube between his teeth. His senses were coming back to him now, and he could also feel something pushing air into his lungs, lungs that hurt with each breath, lungs that were being used by both him and some unseen force trying to make them move at a rhythm different than his own.
In his cloudy mind, he started to put the pieces together. He was on a ventilator; a tube was in his trachea and the machine was breathing for him, or at least trying to. He couldn’t see and everything was blurry because he still had the surgical tape over his eyelids to keep them closed so his eyeballs wouldn’t dry out. He tried to move his hand to his face to remove the tape so he could see. Damn, his arms were restrained—standard practice for a sedated and tubed patient in the ICU.
He could feel his breathing changing even more, still fighting the machine that was trying its best to keep up with the parameters someone had given it to fulfill. Then the machine to his left started beeping more and he realized it was his ventilator, telling the nurse the patient was starting to buck the machine, starting to wake up.
He heard footsteps near his bed and a soft feminine voice. “Hey kiddo, just relax, you’re safe now. You’re okay.”
He reached again for the tape covering his eyes, already forgetting that he was tied to the railing.
“No, no, dear, don’t pull, that’s bad. We can’t have you taking your tube out yet; you’ll hurt yourself. Just hold on for a few more minutes and we’ll have it out of your throat.” He felt her hands covering his and holding them down.
I know! He screamed in his head. I’m not trying to pull my own tube. I’m not an idiot. I just want this damn tape off my eyes. Please!
Reaper heard another set of footsteps and then felt gentle fingers pulling the tape off his eyes and another hand shielding the harsh light ab
ove from entering his likely over-dilated pupils. He blinked a few times, his eyelids now free from their unjust imprisonment. When he was able to focus, he saw his dad standing over him. A tear escaped Reaper’s eyes and even more came from his father.
Reaper’s dad leaned down and kissed his son on the forehead and then hugged him as best he could given the circumstances. Reaper tried to nuzzle him back with his face but the equipment holding his breathing tube in place didn’t allow his head to travel far enough.
His dad looked him in the eyes. “Hey son. I’m going to untie your hands but you can’t reach for your tube, all right?” Reaper nodded his agreement. “I’m not your doctor, so I can’t take it out for you but I’ll unhook the ventilator so you can breathe on your own. My buddy Hal is on his way up, should be here any second to get this out of you. He did a great job on your surgery. You’re going to be just fine.”
Reaper saw his medical chart sitting on his legs; his dad must have set it down there. He pointed at it and made a “give me” motion with his hand. His dad just chuckled at his son wanting to read his own medical chart while he was still intubated.
Reaper took the chart that was handed to him, found the writing stylus at the top of the tablet and then flipped through his chart until he got to a blank screen that was for doctors to free-hand patient notes that didn’t fit any of the pre-made forms in the electronic chart. He scribbled, “Did the man live?”
His father looked at the chart. “Yes, he did, thanks to you. They brought you two in with your hand still in his chest. I have no idea how that worked for the entire transport but it did. They separated you two in the ER. Tim took over for you and Hal took you straight to the OR. Not a single trauma surgeon here could’ve done better. I’m very proud of you, son.”
Reaper scribbled a few more words. ‘Good. I’m glad. Dad. I think I want to do something different, not be a doctor.’
Trevor cringed at the thought that the trauma his son had gone through had just turned him away from medicine forever. “Okay, son, whatever you want, you know that your mother and I will support you. We can talk about it later, when you can actually talk again, that is.”
More writing. “I still want to be in medicine, but I want to be in the field, with the marines. I want to do more of what I did today.“
And then he wrote, “Except the getting shot part. That sucked. Horribly.”
Chapter 46
The Warrior Interrogation Planet – Knock Knock
The warrior sat at his post, never wavering and always diligent in his duties. He had never been in battle and always feared he would die without ever being in one. Among his brothers, dying old was not considered a bad thing unless the years you lived weren't earned and fought for in battle. Now that his base was being used to interrogate the prisoners from the other side of the galaxy, he was hopeful for the first time in his life that his days of not being battle-tested would soon end.
His warrior brothers weren't prone to discussing rumors so the information he had heard passed along in the corridors must be true. The War Council was close to giving the order to invade the quarantined section of the galaxy. Once they were done processing the prisoners at this base, they would make their move.
The Council had all of the information they needed to attack but they had learned long ago not to take anything for granted. Victory is won using all of your resources and abilities to their fullest extent and not relying on just the warriors' seemingly inexhaustible brute strength and numbers.
Ever since the quarantine, the warriors couldn't rely on inexhaustible numbers because they lost access to their birthing planet a short time after the disaster began. Luckily for them, the member of the royal family who was assigned to the birthing planet, Royal Cousin G'Pleh, saw what was happening and took actions to mitigate the damage from the epidemic. He launched fifty million stasis birthing pods from the planet and sent them to a warrior-controlled training planet.
According to the royal's personal logs, he believed a revolt was occurring and the virus wasn't a natural threat but instead an engineered part of the coup. He had had no physical contact with the expansion fleet, none of the royal family or even any other Nortes for over a month. He liked his privacy and spent most of his time in his private chambers or other private sections of the palace that no one else was allowed to enter. Dr. D’Bath had said that he was an agoraphobe but he had always dismissed that diagnosis and just believed that he liked his personal space.
Either way, when the news of the virus began to spread, he felt a certain sense of vindication for his choice of living arrangements. After all, he would now become the sole surviving member of the royal family and as such, the emperor. But then he, too, became sick.
The official reason from D’Bath was that he must have been infected by the trinkets the emperor had sent to G'Pleh from the infected region of space. G'Pleh rejected this theory because he hated the emperor for making him the caretaker of the birthing planet and had never accepted a single gift from the emperor. Every gift the emperor sent was summarily placed in the incinerator before G'Pleh even touched or looked at it.
G'Pleh knew he had been poisoned but couldn't prove it. He sent his logs, along with the warriors' stasis pods, and they contained his theories on the virus and quarantine. More than a thousand years later, his theories would prove to be very close to the actual truth of what had happened but at the time the War Council thought he was just mad from the infection. G'Pleh was always considered an odd man, as was evident by his posting as far from the empire as possible.
As for the warriors' brute strength, they found out that without the constant supply of reinforcements from the birthing planet, they couldn't just pound their way to victory.
About two hundred years after the quarantine, some of the slave races had taken the opportunity to flee the crumbling empire. None of them dared to fight the warriors or outright revolt; they just left as quickly and quietly as they could. The escaped slaves made contact with another species known as the Cherta. The Cherta were strong and advanced and although not completely peaceful, they had come to learn that sometimes negotiating was preferable to fighting.
When the Cherta learned of the collapsing empire, they took the opportunity to make contact with the warriors. The Cherta had mapped out the empire and put together a list of resources they wanted and in return they offered to help the warriors rebuild what they could of the empire and learn a new way of living.
The War Council, of course, reacted to the offer in the only way they knew how, in the way that was genetically mapped and imposed on them: they fought the Cherta. It was a long and devastating war that went on for almost ten years before the Cherta left the empire's space. Thousands of Cherta were captured and became a new category of slaves never known to the empire before: they were the advisors.
This war taught the warriors many things and proved to be the unifying event that allowed them to break some of the shackles that had been bread into them for millennia. They still needed and craved a royal family to serve but they learned how to get by without an emperor and maintain the empire until an heir to the throne could be found.
The Nortes were becoming extinct in the empire. Their DNA had been checked and rechecked since the quarantine, looking for someone with even a shred of royal blood in them. Unbeknownst to the warriors, the emperor had been very thorough in making sure that no one with royal DNA would be left behind or alive in the empire.
Shortly after the quarantine took place, almost twelve percent of the Nortes population committed suicide, knowing that their way of life was over. Those left in the military tried to take control of the empire, knowing what would happen with the warriors and no royal blood to lead them; the entire Nortes military was wiped out by the warriors because of the attempt.
The rest of the Nortes tried to make the best of the circumstances and continue with life as they knew it. There were, of course, the Nortes involved with the coup who were supposed to help
take over the new empire and free the slaves after the remaining warriors had died off. Unfortunately, G'Pleh ruined those plans when he sent out the fifty million warrior stasis pods. So the Nortes did what they could to continue planting the seeds of unity but eventually the movement all but died out. Every once in a while, the warriors would run across a small cell of Nortes trying to revive the movement or live according to their own beliefs but those Nortes were always found and brutally killed to be made an example of.
The remaining Nortes still lived far better than the majority of other races in the empire, coming in third to the warriors and Cherta. Surprisingly, the Cherta had the best life of all the races in the empire. The warriors were simple in their ways and needed very little to be happy, or at least their version of genetically programmed happiness. A place to sleep, food to hunt and eat, and someone to fight every once in a while was all they needed or wanted.
Once the warriors' needs were met, everything else went to their Cherta advisors to make sure they could keep advising. More than once some of the Cherta tried to use their advisory positions to move the empire in a new direction that gave the Cherta even more power. Those schemes were eventually discovered and abruptly ended with savage brutality.
So while the empire still existed, it had inevitably shrunk in size, power, and intellect. There had been very little advancement in any of the areas that are a part of any normal civilization. The empire's focus had shifted from advancement to maintenance and had been steadily failing on both fronts at a snail's pace for a thousand years.
~
A small shock brought the warrior's attention back to the present and he checked his personal shield. The damn thing was malfunctioning again. Most warriors in the empire didn't have personal shields; they were issued to long-range scouting parties, infiltration teams, and of course the War Council. Most bases had a limited number of shields that were passed on to whoever was on sentry duty. Those shields were constantly used and quite often constantly failing. This base only had three, two of which worked and one of those was about to fail.
