"You okay, kid?" Brian's voice asked in his earpiece.
"Yeah," he mumbled automatically. "I just need some rest is all."
They had been circling fifty kilometers north of the battlefield for the past two hours, on standby in case there was a break in the cease-fire. So far, there hadn't been one. Matt had actually dozed off at his control panel several times. Once he had gone so far asleep he had started dreaming.
"Coming up on the airlock," Brian told him.
"Static," Matt said, hardly comprehending him.
"Get ready for heavying."
"Yeah," he said.
He came fully awake when the artificial gravity field was turned on, suddenly making him weigh three times as much as he had the moment before. A wave of nausea and sickness suddenly washed over him, bringing with it a searing pain in his chest. He found it hard to breathe, as if every inhalation was against an elephant sitting on his chest.
"Boss," he said, his voice barely audible.
"Yeah?" Brian asked.
"I think... I think you'd better get some medics over here for me."
Brian turned around to look at him, gazing on his face for the first time in hours. Even in the dim lighting, even through the helmet, he could see that Matt's face had gone beyond pale and into the land of ashen. "Jesus fucking Christ, kid," he said. "What happened?"
"I don't know," he said. "I'm just really... weak and it's hard to breathe."
Brian immediately got on the communications link and told them he had an injured sis. They vectored him toward the far section of he aircraft hanger where a transportation point had been set up to transfer the wounded marines from the hovers and the Hummingbirds to the dip-hoe carts. He brought the plane to a halt and opened the hatch, waving frantically at two dip-hoes who were manning this area.
They came over just as he pulled his helmet off. "My sis is not looking good," he told them. "Get a ladder set and help me get him down from here."
They immediately ran and got one of the wheeled ladders and brought it over. By the time they got Matt pulled from his harness and down to the ground he was only semi-conscious. He woke up a little bit when they laid him flat.
"Did he get hit?" one of the dip-hoes asked.
"He got hit yesterday," Brian replied. "During the air-strike. We got shot down and he took some shrapnel in his ass. Nothing today though."
The two medics looked at each other. "Was the wound fused shut?" one of them asked.
"They couldn't fuse it because of the way it was," Brian said. "He left the hospital and came back to fly with me. He's been hurting the whole time we've been up there but he's hung in there."
"His biosuit doesn't fit right," the other medic said. "It's really loose right on his ass."
"It's not the one they fitted for him," Brian said. "That one got shredded when he was hit."
"You let him go up with an uncleared injury and wearing a biosuit that doesn't fit?" the first medic asked angrily. "Why didn't you just take him out behind the building and shoot him?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Brian asked.
"What do you guys pull up there? Two Gs? Three Gs?"
"Yeah, about that," Brian said.
"All of that weight pushes down on your ass, doesn't it?"
"Well... yeah."
"I hope I'm not right," the medic said. "Lets get the suit off of him."
They did, pulling off the helmet and then unzipping the suit itself. When they pulled it off of his body a large glut of congealed blood spilled out of the aft portion onto the ground.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Brian exclaimed, shocked at the sheer amount of it. Matt's entire leg was drenched in it and there was even more still inside the suit.
"He must've lost two liters," the medic said incredulously. "If he wouldn't have been in reduced gravity all this time he'd be dead."
"All from a little skin off his ass?" Brian asked.
"Every time you pulled Gs up there it was forcing the wound back open and making blood pour out of it. How long were you up there?"
"Almost eighteen hours," Brian said.
"I'm surprised he was able to stay conscious that long. Let's get an IV line in him and put in some synthetic blood."
"Is he gonna make it?" Brian asked.
"He'll make it," the medic said, running a scanner over him. "I wish I could say the same for his kidneys though. They're completely shut down from the blood loss."
"My kidneys?" Matt mumbled. "I can't afford no new kidneys." Organ cloning was something that had been available since World War III, but only to those with the money to pay for it.
"Don't worry, kid," Brian said. "We'll get you some new kidneys if I have to fuckin' pay for them myself."
Main anti-tank trench, Eden
September 15, 2146, 0224 hours
Captain Callahan was not as exhausted as Matt Mendez, but he was close. For the past six hours he and the remains of his company (they had re-grouped after the cease-fire but only forty-eight of his men were still alive and unwounded) had been down in the anti-tank trench, sorting through the dead, through the body parts, through the absolute horror of the aftermath of the battle, trying to find men who were still alive and salvageable. Upon finding such men they would pull them out and lift them to the west side of the trench where other marines would carry them to one of the waiting APCs that had survived. When the APCs filled with wounded as many men as could climb onto the outside would do so and they would head back towards the LZ.
Callahan had been offered rides back on several occasions but he had refused, wanting to stay and coordinate the rescue effort for his section. And now that six hours had passed and all of the spare air tanks had been given out, it was no longer possible for him to go back. He, like many of his compatriots, only had about an hour's worth of air left.
"What are you gonna do?" asked Captain Jacobs, who had been in charge of Delta Company from his battalion. He, like Callahan, had tried to evacuate the lower ranks first.
"I don't know," Callahan replied. "I've got about fifty-five minutes left at the rate I'm sucking it up. I guess it's about time to shit or get off the pot."
Jacobs looked at him. "I'm not gonna be a Martian prisoner," he said. "I made up my mind about an hour ago but I've been trying not to think about it."
Callahan did not question his decision. He was thinking of making the same one himself. Ever since the Martians had first taken control of Mars all those long months ago they had been told, sometimes in graphic detail, what the greenies did to captured prisoners. It was said that they had lined most of the Fast Reaction Division from EMB up against walls and gut-shot them, letting them die slowly. Others, it was said, had been tortured for hours before being burned alive, or killed with electricity, or allowed to succumb to radiation sickness. Though there was no independent verification of these atrocity reports other than mysterious statements attributed to "WestHem loyalists caught on the planet", neither man had any trouble believing them. After all, not a single marine or a single sailor that had been captured with the planet had been heard from since.
"How you gonna do it?" Callahan asked him. "Just let your air run out or are you gonna take the easy way?"
"The easy way," Jacobs said. "I don't see any sense in suffocating. Not when there's a way to make it quick."
Callahan nodded. "It's a little more courageous that way, isn't it?"
"Yeah," Jacobs agreed. "Any chance I can get you to do it for me? It's not a mortal sin that way."