Onslaught

by Chris James

  The bright morning sun shone in through a high window, and underneath Berat the ground shuddered from a new explosion nearby, in time with the shuddering of his shoulders as the tears flowed.

  Chapter 35

  11.27 Saturday 11 February 2062

  TRAINEE NURSE SERENA Rizzi pulled another trolley full of GenoFluid packs out of the storeroom on the second floor of the Santa Maria hospital in the centre of Rome. An automaton would normally do this work, but with the Third Caliph’s announcement of violence against Europe, the Board had decided to ‘manualise’ as much as possible in the event of a software control breach.

  “Where are the packs, Serena?” a voice barked in her ear.

  “On the way, Doctor Benini,” she replied.

  “Hurry up, please.”

  She reached the lift at the end of the brightly lit corridor and pressed the call panel. Her body began to shake again. She couldn’t cope with any delay. Outside, a few minutes ago, the promised invasion had started. At least, she thought it was an invasion. So far, it seemed to be a battle among machines in the sky, with death and destruction raining down on the hapless city and its panic-stricken residents. And this is what made Serena shake: panic. As long as she had something to do, she could cope. But having to wait, even for a moment, made her aware of the pops and metallic shrieks and thumps and crashes outside the hospital in the city, where bombs detonated and missiles exploded. She glared at the reflection of her oval face and shoulder-length, brown hair in the shiny steel doors, whose unevenness distorted her image, and told herself she must keep herself together for the sake of the injured.

  The lift chimed and the doors opened. She stood to the side to allow a paramedic to push a bed out of the lift on which rested a young and very pregnant woman, gasping for air.

  Serena entered the lift, the doors closed, and she slapped the ‘0’ icon. She inhaled gradually to control her nerves as the lift descended with painful slowness, but the sounds from outside had frayed them. She recalled the previous day’s shift, and the staff meeting held by Doctor Francesco Costa, one of the hospital’s most renowned surgeons. He wanted as many of the staff to be as prepared as possible for the promised invasion. He knew most of them had never had to deal with serious burns and blunt-force trauma injuries. Serena shivered again when she remembered his descriptions of the injuries he’d treated in Chile during the Super-AI war there a few years ago. Nevertheless, Dr Costa reassured them that the military had positioned defensive weapons around all of Rome’s main hospitals, and these would therefore be some of the safest places in the whole city.

  The lift chimed, the doors opened, and with relief Serena came back to the present. She pushed the trolley into the broad space on the ground floor of the east wing and gasped at how many more injured casualties had arrived in the few moments it had taken her to fetch the GenoFluid packs. The area had nearly filled with people of all ages. Everyone was distressed; only the very badly injured or dead remained still.

  “Over here, quickly,” called Doctor Benini, a handsome young man who had flirted with her just a couple of weeks earlier. Now there was neither the time nor the inclination.

  She pushed the trolley over the little free space that remained, and frightened and anguished, pain-filled faces looked at her as she passed. She arrived at a woman lying on a bed and lifted a GenoFluid pack out of the trolley.

  “Thanks,” Doctor Benini said as he took the pack from her, which was the size and weight of a pillow. A translucent whiteness undulated inside the pack. On one side there was a small black command panel. Doctor Benini touched the panel and spoke: “Massive blunt-force trauma to right hand. Severe subcutaneous contusions across most of the body, suggesting intramuscular and periosteal contusions as well. Several lesions of varying severity, mainly on the right side of the body.”

  Serena looked down at the injured woman with sympathy. Due to the dust and debris on her face and in her hair, it was impossible to tell her age; she could’ve been twenty or forty years old. Her smashed right hand rested across her blood-stained blouse on her stomach. Doctor Benini laid the GenoFluid pack slowly on the woman’s stomach, directly over the hand.

  “Okay, right, that’s good,” he said, his eye twitching. “Are you getting this?” he asked Serena.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Good.”

  The data running across Serena’s vision gave the patient’s name, address, age and options to view her medical history. It also told Serena that the patient was three weeks pregnant, but that the internal bruising suggested a ninety-eight percent probability that the foetus would abort.

  Serena smiled into the woman’s terrified eyes, and held her undamaged left hand, noting the pretty flower pattern on the fourth fingernail. The woman mumbled her thanks and Serena knew the GenoFluid pack had begun its work. The nano-bots moved into the patient’s bloodstream through the pack’s surface, which was solid to the touch, but allowed free passage back and forth to the nano-bots it contained. The hospital had the most modern packs which contained the broadest range of bots yet developed: anaesthetic bots to block pain; disinfecting bots to neutralise infections; bots to repair all three main types of contusion; programmable bots which assembled at a location to effect a specific repair such as closing a torn vessel or artery; ‘clone’ bots which combined to adopt the characteristics of key elements in the body, such as haemoglobin in cases of severe blood loss; ‘dumb’ bots which the super AI could program to bind together in specific ways to promote and accelerate tissue repair, so broken bones could heal in hours instead of weeks. Given the extent of the damage to her hand, Serena realised this patient would likely require some reconstructive surgery that was beyond the GenoFluid pack’s abilities.

  New lettering scrolled up in Serena’s vision as the super AI managing the GenoFluid pack told her that severe contusions around the patient’s uterus ensured the foetus could not be saved.

  The woman spoke to Serena: “The pain is easing now. Thank you so much.”

  Serena held her hand more tightly. “Try to rest, and don’t move. The GenoFluid pack works best if you keep as still as possible, okay?”

  The woman nodded and smiled.

  “I’ll come back soon,” Serena said, and returned to her trolley. Doctor Benini had moved on to the next patient and Serena noticed more injured people had arrived. She went to Doctor Benini, nodding soberly at the other doctors and nurses working among the wounded.

  Doctor Benini looked at her: “I know you care, but we really don’t have the time to give them the personal touch. Could you stop with the chit-chat, please?”

  As if to support him, a commotion broke out at the north entrance as the doors flew open and a bald man, covered from head to toe in blood and looking like he cradled something in front of his stomach, staggered in and bellowed out a loud, incomprehensible shout. Then, he fell to his knees. His arms came away from his stomach and off-white intestines spilled out from him. Two nurses and a doctor rushed to help.

  Doctor Benini muttered, “Christ, this is bad,” and he looked at Serena.

  She opened her mouth but a sudden explosion close to the hospital made her gasp.

  “They’re getting closer,” Benini said. “Come on. Pass me another pack.”

  The next bed contained an unconscious young man with crushed legs. Benini placed the GenoFluid pack over the patient’s upper thighs and both he and Serena read the data the super AI controlling the pack relayed to them about the patient. Remarkably, it detected a congenital heart defect in this man which hadn’t been noted before, but which carried a very high probability of killing him within the next ten years. The super AI confirmed that, in addition to the patient’s injuries, it would send heart-specific bots to repair the defect.

  There came another explosion outside and a wave of gasps went up from the far side of the area when two of the windows shattered. Serena’s concern grew and she wondered where this would end. Her thoughts ran to her extended fami
ly, her friends, to all of the people who meant something to her. But as she looked around this crowded, bloody space in her hospital, as she heard the whimpers and cries and pleas for help, she understood that every single person meant something to her.

  For the next hour, she and Doctor Benini and all of the other staff at the Santa Maria hospital worked tirelessly to give aid to the civilian victims of the Third Caliph’s aggression. Serena had to return to the GenoFluid storeroom on the second floor a number of times, and with each visit she looked out of the windows on the south side, down at the city, and saw the increasing smoke and fires and destruction. She forced herself to look away; she told herself she had to help the injured.

  The first wounded soldiers began to arrive shortly after one o’clock. The head doctor ordered Serena and Doctor Benini to the reception area in the west building. As they hurried across the courtyard full of wounded and dying, most of whom rested in relative peace with GenoFluid packs to comfort them, Benini said: “The Army have their own medical facilities. What are they doing sending their casualties here?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they have too many wounded?”

  Benini shook his head and gave a grim smile. “My girlfriend warned me not to come to work today.”

  “Really?”

  “Said she’d had a premonition. Told me to register sick or take an unplanned vacation day. Pleaded for us to go up to her parents’ place in the hills near Genoa. Never thought she’d be—”

  He broke off when shouts went up further ahead.

  “Oh, God. What now?” Serena said, while looking for the nurse or doctor in charge in this part of the hospital. She realised the medical staff were more difficult to identify because their white uniforms had turned crimson with blood, until she looked at her own and realised she looked like a butcher.

  Someone grabbed her arm. “Did Gallo send you?”

  She looked into the sweaty and urgent face of a doctor she didn’t recognise. “Er, yes.”

  “Good,” the doctor replied. “Then both of you start with the serious cases which aren’t terminal. Leave the walking wounded, no matter how much they complain. The packs are over there,” he pointed to double doors on the far side of the large and packed reception area.

  Serena nodded and she and Benini hurried around beds, stretchers on the floor and injured people.

  “I’ll grab a few packs and you get started. Look, here come more of them,” Benini said, motioning to sets of doors at the entrance as vehicles arrived outside.

  Serena looked at him. “But that’s my job,” she said.

  He smiled. “Yes, but the guy-soldiers will be cheered up if the first thing they see when they get here is a pretty trainee nurse.”

  Serena smiled back and the relentless pressure lifted for a moment. She hurried over to join another doctor and nurse at the entrance. One military orderly at the side of an ambulance looked at Serena and called: “Have you still got GenoFluid packs?”

  She nodded.

  “Good.” The side of the ambulance retracted to reveal a line of four stretchers with injured soldiers head to toe. Inside lay a further three such rows. “These on the outside are the worst cases, just about blown to pieces.”

  She went to the head of the first wounded soldier and they lifted the stretcher off. She asked the orderly: “You have so many wounded you’ve run out of packs?”

  The orderly glanced behind him as he walked backwards towards the doors, and looked at her and said: “Ran out in the first hour.”

  They went through the doors and Serena said: “It’s a slaughter out there, isn’t it?”

  The orderly gave her an ironic smile: “Not yet, but it won’t be long.”

  They lowered the stretcher down by a wall. Serena looked at the young male face of the patient and wondered how handsome he had been before shrapnel had taken off his lower jaw.

  Benini arrived, glanced at the unconscious soldier on the stretcher and said: “If he survives, he’s going to need a lot more than a GenoFluid pack.” He knelt down, placed a pack over the soldier’s chest, and described the patient’s condition, prioritising repairs to the man’s destroyed face.

  “Come on,” the orderly said to Serena. “Let’s get the next.”

  They returned to the ambulance and the orderly abruptly said: “Shit, that’s great.”

  “What?” Serena asked

  He looked at her: “You’re not getting the emergency military feed?”

  “No, why would I? I work for the hosp—”

  The orderly scoffed. “Our airborne defences are nearly finished. And we knew this would happen all week, ever since that mad bastard smashed Turkey and Israel.”

  Serena tried to compose herself; she wanted to appear confident and capable in front of this stranger, despite her own inner turmoil. She felt herself beginning to shake again. She and the orderly lifted off the next stretcher, which held another unconscious soldier covered in blood. She said: “But it can’t be so bad. I read that although we don’t have so many ACAs, they can still hold off—”

  Then the orderly laughed at her and sneered: “You shouldn’t waste your time here, lovely girl. When they run out of missiles and the tanks are finally finished, and that’s not going to be long, we’re going to get the order to evacuate and that will be the end of this lot.”

  “What?”

  “You think we’ll have time to get all these injured out ahead of the invaders? Forget it, lovely girl.”

  “Don’t patronise me, orderly,” she said. “The army is supposed to defend us. You do your job and I’ll do mine.”

  The orderly laughed again as they lowered the stretcher to the floor. Serena gave him a withering look and left to get another GenoFluid pack. She hurried to the supply area under an ornate stone arch, nearly tripping over other patients. She grabbed one and went to Benini. “Doctor,” she said, “Next one’s over there. I can’t tell what the major injuries are—”

  Benini looked up at her. “You’ll have to deal with it, Serena.” He lowered his voice. “I think I’m going to lose this one. I have to monitor the pack.”

  Serena nodded and returned to the patient, catching a sideways glance from the medical orderly, who was being helped by Pisano, a fellow junior nurse.

  She turned back to the wounded soldier and tried to identify the most serious injuries. The man looked quite peaceful and she wondered if he’d already died. She placed the GenoFluid pack on his chest and activated it, muttering to it about multiple, life-threatening injuries. The pack began working and details scrolled in the front of Serena’s vision. She read his name, rank and number in the Italian Army, and accessed his medical records, which showed he had been a healthy young man.

  A moment later, the pack detailed all of the pieces of shrapnel which had been blown into his body, mainly from in front and to the right of him. Hundreds of lesions ran through his legs and torso. The super AI told her the bots would not be able to remove all of the shrapnel because many pieces were too large to dissolve, and the patient would need more traditional surgery to be performed by a supervised android.

  Serena sighed and wondered how long this young man would be able to hold on. Before going to the next patient, she waited for the pack’s super AI to confirm the patient was stable when his eyes suddenly snapped open.

  She leaned towards his face, unnerved by the terror in his eyes. “It’s okay,” she said, “you’re in hospital now and you’re safe. You have a GenoFluid pack attached to you so please try to keep still.”

  The terror left his grey eyes slowly and Serena thought she saw a wave of relief cross his face. His lips moved. Serena considered he might be praying. His eyebrows came together, and she realised he wanted to tell her something.

  She leaned close to his pockmarked, bloodied face. “Run,” he whispered.

  She pulled back and looked at him with curiosity. She put her ear to his mouth again. “Run,” he repeated. Then he whispered: “The Squitch… Defences outside
overwhelmed.”

  “I won’t leave my patients,” she replied, her spirit sinking.

  “Run,” he mouthed, and then passed out. The pack’s super AI told her it had anesthetised the patient for his own safety.

  Serena looked around at everyone else. She saw Benini on the other side of the reception area, across a sea of injured people. She stood up and the hospital’s general alarm went off. She flinched, recalling the annual drill they had and the huge inconvenience it caused everyone. Now, it wasn’t a drill. The pulsing single tone increased in pitch, dropped and increased repeatedly. Serena didn’t know what to do, which struck her as ironic because they drilled what to do every year.

  Benini was suddenly in front of her, grabbing her upper arms and shouting above the alarm and above the screams: “Come on, we have to get out, now!”

  She stared at him. “No.”

  “What?” he cried. “We must evacuate!”

  She pulled his arms off her and repeated: “No! I’m not leaving them.”

  “But you can’t save—”

  An explosion erupted outside above the building, shaking it. Benini grabbed Serena as they both fell to the floor. The screaming around them grew louder. Seconds passed, and she heard Benini cry: “Oh, God, the pack’s split. The pack’s split.”

  She struggled to lift her head and then coughed on all the dust which had suddenly appeared. Benini faced her, a look of horror on his face and opaque liquid on his hands. Serena knew that the piercing of a GenoFluid pack with patients in these conditions would be fatal. She pushed herself up, knowing only that she had to get another pack. She looked down at the floor, at the dirty grey dust and bits of wood and glass, and then at her hands, which had fresh blood on them running over and dripping off her dust-covered skin.