Jogging over to the hospital tent, Raul slowed only once as he passed the blackened and severed arm of a BattleMech. It was from Tassa’s Ryoken. He had already seen the laser-blasted wreckage hauled back by a recovery crew, missing its arm and showing a tangle of twisted scrap where its gyroscope stabilizer had once been housed. He mentally tagged the severed limb to be recovered. With some hard work, it might be reconditioned and reattached.
There would certainly be no ordering a new one up from stores. Not for a Ryoken.
There would be no ordering up a new MechWarrior, either, which was why Colonel Blaire had dispatched Raul first thing this morning. With Charal DePriest dead, the closest thing that the militia had to another back-up was Captain Norgales—Legate Stempres’s man. Any others were barely capable of handling a Legionnaire. Raul might be able to handle the powerful Ryoken II design, leaving his ’Mech to a lesser pilot, but he didn’t want it.
He wanted Tassa Kay back.
The hospital tent smelled of old canvas and the strong disinfectants used to keep wounds clean. Several dozen men and women still waited for evac back to River’s End. Blood-soaked bandages and elevated casts gave Raul a close-up look at the cost of this ongoing struggle. He caught whiff of a septic wound—a latrine scent at which he wrinkled his nose—and stood aside as two bulky civilians who looked more like construction workers than corpsmen helped a nurse hustle one of their patients from this tent and likely back to field surgery.
Raul waited for the door to swing shut, then began walking the long rows again, studying faces—when he could—and reading names from charts clipped to the end of the cots. Near the end of the first row he glanced ahead, saw Tassa lying back on white sheets with an IV stuck into her arm and a compress taped to the side of her head. A physician bent over her. A civilian physician, checking vitals and then straightening up to stare down in question. Raul’s breath hitched.
It was Jessica.
Raul had already been feeling at odds with what had happened the other night with Tassa Kay. His conversation with Janella Lakewood was forcing him to reevaluate many things, in fact. His liaison with Tassa had been all passion and need and proximity. Not solid emotion and certainly not love. In the holovids, the ones Raul had loved so much while dreaming of a post within Achernar’s militia, romantic trysts were part of a Mech Warrior’s due. “Because tomorrow we may die,” and other such trite excuses. But this was real life, and real people got hurt both on and off the battlefield. Any decision, or lack thereof, could cost lives, ruin equipment, and shatter relationships.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, not really meaning to speak out loud. He wasn’t even certain to whom he was apologizing just then. Charal, for failing to protect her. Jessica, for how things had turned out. Or Tassa, who had fought and bled for a world that wasn’t even hers to defend.
Jessica was the one to hear him. She glanced up with a guilty start, then quickly darkened to a brooding hostility when she saw who stood nearby. “Well,” she said, and a lot of judgment weighted down her words. “We’ve been here before.”
It was a lot like their first meeting—over the bed of a military patient. Raul could even feel the old arguments warming up in the mental bay where he stored those weapons. Raul swallowed dryly, fighting the tightness in his throat. “What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m being a doctor, Raul.” She stood slowly, showing fatigue and stiff joints, then walked over to the foot of Tassa’s bed where they could talk more quietly. “Between Brightwater and San Marino yesterday, apparently you swamped the militia’s medical capability and they called in several civilian auxiliaries to help out here, where the fighting was over and danger was low.”
Raul saw the dark circles under her eyes, and could only imagine how little sleep she had gotten since the previous day. Or the previous week. “I’m glad. These are good people, and they needed your help.”
“What they need is transport back to River’s End. We’ve ferried them out two at a time all night, and at this rate we won’t have everyone back until late tomorrow.”
“I came in a Trooper.” Raul saw her frown of concentration, guessed at her question. “Infantry carrier. Seats twenty-eight. You could lay half a dozen out in stretchers and take any of the wounded who can ride in a sitting position.”
“Only right, I guess, considering that the military put them here.”
“I didn’t come out here to fight with you, Jess.”
“Why not? Fighting is what’s caused all of this, isn’t it? More battle and bloodshed. The natural order of things. Right?”
“That’s not what I believe, and you know it.” Raul stepped up closer, lowering his voice into a harsh whisper only for Jessica. “Though maybe you’d rather we just hand over Achernar to the first tyrant to challenge our Exarch.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” she said with a violent stomp of one foot.
She looked as if she wanted to slap him again. Or maybe deliver a good sharp kick to the shins. Raul had never seen Jessica looking so completely angry and yet at a loss for a target: her short, pounding breaths, the way she bit down hard enough into her lower lip that she’d leave marks, the little shake of her head. It had only started to occur to him that she was actually angry about the situation, and herself, before she admitted it openly.
“You don’t know how difficult it is to accept that one of the core beliefs you’ve held for so long doesn’t measure up when challenged, Raul. I watch the news footage, I go out to the sites on civilian volunteer parties. Then I hear the pundits spouting knee-jerk opinions and going on about how they’d run things if they were in charge—and you know what? I find myself arguing your side of the discussion.”
He started to say something, thought to comfort her, but she held up a hand. “Let me finish.” She glanced around at the wounded. At Tassa. “I believe that war is evil. I have to, Raul. But in the last few weeks, I have also forced myself to realize that you—and the Republic Guard—did not bring war to Achernar. The Steel Wolves did that. The Swordsworn did that. And we can’t simply sit back and allow one military action after another to roll over our world unchecked. So we need soldiers. And we need citizens with a vested interest in The Republic, who can hopefully affect non-violent changes to prevent this from ever happening again.”
Raul had never heard such capitulation in Jessica’s voice. Raising the white flag. And right when he was about to tell her… “Ah, hell, Jess. You lay all that out, and here I was ready to concede the entire argument to you. I don’t know that I ever wanted this for the right reasons. So maybe we were both wrong.”
Her eyes held enough anguish for them both. Still, she offered bravely, “Or maybe we were both right. A little.” Then she glanced between Raul and Tassa, her professional demeanor taking charge and erecting a shield over the breach she had allowed in her defenses. “She’s going to be all right. Mild concussion and hairline collarbone fracture. I have her resting on a sedative just now.” She swept her gaze over nearby patients. “Most of them are resting, with the really critical cases already flown down to River’s End. Your helicopter will help move the rest out today.”
Which was a decision Raul needed her help in making. “I’d like to talk to you about where you’ll take them.”
Jessica frowned. “If your militia hospital can’t handle the load, I’ll take them back to R.E.G.” River’s End General.
“I’m not certain that’s such a safe place for them anymore. Erik Sandoval has men keeping tabs on the hospital now, and with the Steel Wolves in control of the San Marino, it’s only a matter of time before they push for the city itself.”