Jim Baen's Universe

Introducing: Stories by new authors

Medic!

Written by William Ledbetter

Illustrated by Laura Givens

Sam gripped the cargo locks on the floor as tightly as he could, but still swayed back and forth each time the Osprey zigged or zagged along its radar-avoiding slalom course. A frustrated Ernie Ochoa tried to mount a defensive pod on one of Sam's three attachment points.

"Hold still, Sam. This is hard enough without you doing the hula."

Sam tried to cinch himself tighter.

The plane jerked again and one of the troopers in the back vomited. Dozens of lasers felt out the terrain, keeping the blind aircraft from clipping trees, power lines and radio towers as it flew under radar. The computer-controlled plane did its job well, but the flight equations cared little about passenger comfort or last minute additions to robots like Sam.

"You scare me, Ochoa," Clef yelled from the other side of the plane. "You talk to that damned thing like it's your bedroom buddy."

Several people snickered as Ochoa made the connection and locked the defensive pod into place.

Sam started diagnostics. Servos whirred as he cycled through launchers for taser darts, fire pellets, tear gas canisters and wire netting. Then he armed the targeting system and observed as the pod's sensors locked onto and identified every movement in the cabin.

Ochoa grinned. "Hey, Sam! Do you think Clef is jealous of your equipment?"

A direct question. Sam searched forand found a tag attached to Clifford Harmon's data. The squad called him Clef because he played classical violin. Sam searched his response tree.

"He probably has good reason," Sikes said from her seat next to Ochoa. "I doubt that his equipment measures up to Sam's."

Everyone close enough to hear the exchange laughed.

Sam adjusted the weighting of his responses.

"Well, my dear, you sure didn't complain the last time you invited me in for some mattress poundin'," Clef said with a grin.

Whoops and whistles filled the dark cabin.

"Your right arm was the only thing poundin'," she said amid more laughter.

Sam flagged Clef as being Harmon's preferred name, then scanned the soldier's weapons and gear. All standard combat issue. After searching the tree of possible responses again, Sam selected the best one. He knew the answer would be irrelevant, but he had to respond because Ochoa had directly addressed him.

"I have an automated defensive pod," Sam said. "Clef could have the same equipment, but would have to carry a separate battery pack."

"What is this shit?" Clef said. "I wish you wouldn't let that thing talk, Ochoa. It creeps me out. And don't call me Clef, you tin can, only soldiers can call me Clef!"

Sam changed Harmon's tag again. He kept thetag but would only address him as Harmon. He then locked into the comm-net and cycled through the soldiers' bio-monitors. Other than elevated pre-battle stress levels and some nausea, all the troopers reported normal.

"You'll see," Ochoa said. "Sam has some slick moves. He can do a lot that I can't."

"Well, if I get hit, just send me to the field hospital," Clef said with a snort. "I don't want a mechanical crab poking around inside me."

Lieutenant Wei came back from the cockpit and rapped the floor with his rifle butt. "Listen up troopers! We've just crossed the border and have about three minutes. Armor and equipment checks. Remember this is a politically sensitive mission, non-lethal rounds only."

After the lieutenant went forward again, Clef slammed the bench with a clenched fist. "This is a bunch of shit! Non-lethal rounds? Who the hell are these turds anyway?"

Ochoa shrugged.

The red lights flashed, the lieutenant returned and the rear ramp started to open slowly.

"This is it, people! The whole place has been dusted with fire-pellets, so if we're real lucky, there'll be very little resistance. Let's make it quick, get in, grab that hostage and get out."

Before the ramp even touched ground, troopers began leaping out into the ankle-deep snow. Sam set his defensive pod to auto-response and followed Ochoa as weapons fire started sizzling against the Osprey's slough armor.

" 'Little resistance,' my ass!" Ochoa said and darted for cover as the Osprey poured on full power and raced out of range.

Sam's night vision filters revealed incapacitated defenders writhing on the ground all around them. The fire-pellets delivered by drone only minutes before had burrowed through clothing, then initiated hundreds of electric nerve stimulations that made human skin feel like it was on fire. The combatants would be unhurt once the pellets were deactivated, but until then they wouldn't be a threat.

Sam scanned the walled compound and compared it to the mission map they had uploaded during prep. A central courtyard, a parade field and fourteen single-story, stone and wood structures. It matched. Flashing icons appeared on his tactical display, one for each soldier of the twenty member team. He also had two yellows for the surveillance drones and four green lights for the LAMEs (Lifter, Armored, Medical Evacuation) that were still deploying from two other Ospreys a mile away. In the center of one building a red X flashed. It was the GPS locator implant in the missing envoy. She had been moved to a building on the north end of the compound, nearly 200 meters from their landing zone.

"Holy, shit!" Clef yelled. "Take cover, they have ComBots!"

Sam scanned the squad's comm-net as his defensive pod searched for nearby threats. Armor piercing rounds tore through the sides of buildings and tossed up clouds of dirt as three combat robots advanced, pinning the squad down in the south end of the compound.

"Shit! Aren't ComBots illegal," Ochoa said as he tried to burrow into the frozen ground.

A direct question. Sam scanned his general information database and formed a response. "Terrorist organizations are seldom signatories on international treaties."

The corner of a nearby building disintegrated in a cloud of stone and mortar. Clef's bio-monitor alerted Sam to an injury. Three leg wounds.

"Harmon's hit," Sam sent to Ochoa and the lieutenant, then darted across the ten meters of broken glass and swirling dust to reach the wounded soldier.

"Where are you hit, Harmon?" Sam already knew, but talking to the troopers sometimes helped calm them. His readings showed that three small bullet fragments had pierced Clef's leg and were already engaged by active medical nanos. The inner uniform layer contained a fluid that not only helped to maintain a constant body temperature, but also carried millions of medical repair nanos that automatically looked for blood loss if the layer was punctured.

"My leg. Damn!"

Sam scanned the feed from the microscopic robots in Clef's wounds. They had already stopped the bleeding and were knitting protective sleeves around the intrusive metal shards. It would keep them from doing further damage until they could be removed.

Another hail of bullets crumbled more wall onto them. Sam grabbed the loading eyelet on the back of the wounded man's armor and dragged him across the hard packed snow into a narrow alley.

The young man gritted his teeth and grunted in pain. "Leave me alone you stupid fuck! MEDIC!"

Sam determined that Clef wasn't in any immediate danger and sent that information to Ochoa. He grabbed Clef's leg and tried to seal the wounds, but each time his glue nozzle neared the holes, the man shoved it away.

Through the comm-net, Lieutenant Wei ordered everyone in the harried squad to stay under cover until the Ospreys were able to target the ComBots for a hot plasma strike.

"Medic!" Clef yelled again.

Sam tried to close the wounds one more time, but to no avail. "Harmon, your wounds aren't serious and the lieutenant ordered us to stay under cover."

"Screw off, you damn machine! How do you know they aren't serious? Shut up! I want a medic!"

"Clef, evac's on the way," Ochoa said over the comm-net. "I'm coming up."

Sam's defensive pod sent a warning as one of the ComBots stepped into the opposite end of the alley about twenty meters away and started firing. Sam crawled over a writhing, fire-pellet infested defender to shield Clef with his rear armor. He then called to Ochoa over the comm-net. "Go back!"

It was too late. A half second later the medic entered their end of the alley at a full run. Ochoa's monitor sent an alarm and Sam turned in time to see the man fall to his knees. He grabbed at a ragged hole in his upper left chest armor then fell face first into the snow.

"Shit, shit, oh shit!" Clef pounded his fist on the ground. "Ochoa!"

A level one alert from Ochoa's bio-monitor launched Sam into motion. He considered over four hundred actions in less than a micro-second, then grabbed the disabled rebel, found the implanted "friendly" transmitter, cut it out and sealed the incision. With the same glue, he attached the flea sized transmitter to the exposed skin on Clef's wounded leg just before a round hit square on Sam's armor and pushed him a half meter down the filthy alley.

"What're you doin? What'd you put in me?" Clef demanded. "Christ, that hurts! And I got the medic shot! Damn, damn, damn!"

Sam ignored Clef as he scampered the rest of the way to Ochoa, whose vitals were already dropping. Clef was half moaning, half sobbing, "I'm sorry, Ernie! Jesus, I'm sorry!"

Sam had to stabilize Ochoa and stop the bleeding before moving him. He rolled Ochoa over, injected nanos into the wound, stuffed tissue fluff into the gurgling hole and covered it with a compress.

Sam's defensive pod sent an alarm as it launched impotent taser rounds at the advancing ComBot. The spider-like robot stopped with its heavy caliber guns pointing down, inches from Clef's chest, but seemed momentarily confused. Clef's vitals spiked on the bio-monitor and then he urinated. Then the ComBot swung its guns to the right and fired three rounds into the squirming rebel, before continuing its advance toward the downed medic.

Sam turned so that his rear armor protected Ochoa's head and torso, just before a volley of close range shells slammed into him, flipped him over and left him on his back two meters away from his patient.

His rollover routine tried again and again to flip his crab-like body upright, but the piston was damaged and wouldn't fully extend. He sent a general message that he needed help, but no one answered, except Clef.

"Get up, Sam, keep trying!"

The ComBot straddled Ochoa but didn't shoot him. Targeting lasers from a nearby Osprey danced all around them, and the killer robot knew that a wounded man worked well as a shield. It instead fired at the