She looked right into my eyes. I wasn't sure whether she was trying to show me she was telling the truth or just making eye contact so I would stop trying to move my head around, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. "I can't promise it will be fun. In fact, I'm fairly certain you will have some pretty uncharitable things to say about your poor doctor before we're done. But you will walk out of this hospital and return to duty. I promise. But now I'm going to put my foot down with you and insist you get some more rest. We'll talk again later, after you get some sleep."
She and the techs turned and walked toward the door. The doc turned and gave me another incredible smile. "Florence, 30 ml Arthramine. Barring any change in condition, Sergeant Cain is to sleep for ten hours."
The AI responded softly. "Yes, Dr. Linden." I could feel the wave of sleep coming over me as the AI injected the drug into my intravenous feed. I wanted to say goodbye to the doctor, but I don't think I got it out in time.
She was true to her word, and as soon as I woke up we talked a bit more. We discussed my injuries and the rather daunting series of treatments I had ahead of me. It took us several sessions to cover it all, particularly since I spent half the time flirting with her. Or doing the best imitation of flirting a half-man who couldn't lift his head off the pillow could manage. I was still extremely weak, and I couldn't really talk for more than a few minutes. I couldn't even stay awake for more than 30 minutes or so.
I enjoyed our talks, but as I was able to more clearly assemble my recollections, I started to get depressed, wondering why I survived when all of my troopers probably died. Doctor Sarah tried to get me to focus on my treatments and not to torture myself about things I couldn't change, but I was determined to beat myself up. She tried her best, and I gave her a smile and told her I would stop, but we both knew I was lying.
My last thoughts on the battlefield before I lost consciousness had been of hopelessness. I was sure I was a dead man and just as certain that we were losing the battle. The enemy's nuclear attack had shattered my position and blown a big hole in our line. I was pretty sure my whole command had been wiped out, and it didn't seem like there was much chance that any section of the defense could stand.
Once I had recovered enough strength to stay awake for more than a few minutes, Doctor Sarah had a data unit brought in for me. She'd managed to get me access to the battle reports for the campaign. I have no idea how she did it, because they were classified, and she wasn't anywhere in the line of command for the Columbia operation. Nevertheless, she did it. So thanks to my kindly and resourceful doctor, I got a recap of the battle. I started to read it with some trepidation, but by the time I was halfway through I realized it was far better than I could have hoped.
First, over half my troopers survived. Everyone I'd put in place behind the rock outcroppings had enough shielding to survive the blast with only minor damage to their armor. Their positions were largely intact when the CAC troopers finally attacked. The radiation and EMP played havoc on the enemy's scanners, and they advanced into what they thought was a hole…only to run into the converging fields of fire I'd set up. By the time they figured out what was going on and pulled back, the Colonel had assembled a force to hit them from behind.
Jax rallied my survivors, and they hooked up with the other groups along the rock wall to sandwich the enemy strike force between them and the Colonel. Caught in a vice and ravaged by multiple fields of fire they melted away. I heard that a few tried to surrender, but it was far too late for that. No more than a handful escaped to regroup with the rest of the landing force.
From that point it was a confused, chaotic melee. Both sides had lost all semblance of order, and it broke down into shattered remnants of units fighting each other. In the end, the home field advantage told. Colonel Holm had integrated local militia scouts into our units, and as it turned out this was a brilliant move. These guys knew every boulder, every vantage point were a SAW could cover the approaches. They ran circles around the invaders, and we tore them to pieces.
When the enemy sounded the recall and pulled back to their landing ships the Colonel unleashed his coup de grace, a nuclear barrage of our own, turning the enemy's rally point into an atomic hell. Not a single ship escaped. The few survivors broke and tried to run for cover, but the colonel sent out search and destroy teams to root them all out. As far as I know, not one enemy trooper who landed on Columbia lived to tell the story.
It was a huge victory, and another heap of glory for the colonel, but was dearly bought. Our casualties were over 60% - closer to 80% if you count the lightly wounded and those with minor cases of radiation poisoning. Columbia itself was another casualty. The inhabited area of the planet was devastated. The enemy had detonated half a dozen battlefield nukes, and we'd hit their rally point with ten.
When the enemy realized what had happened to their strike force they tried to bombard the surface. But Holm had one more surprise waiting for the enemy. He'd hidden several large defensive batteries, and now he had them open up on the incoming missiles. We managed to shoot most of them down, but a big fusion warhead got through and hit one of the coastal towns, leaving nothing but a crater.
I was beyond impressed with Colonel Holm's prescience. Time and time again he'd seem to read the minds of the enemy. But withholding point defense capability while the enemy landed almost 10,000 troops in two waves virtually without opposition? I was awed at the discipline. And, of course, he was right. Those batteries could have shot down some landing craft, but the colonel knew the enemy could still bombard the surface. By keeping these weapons hidden he convinced the enemy we had no such capacity, and when they did try to blast the planet it was one big sloppy salvo, making it relatively easy for us to target and destroy the incoming ordnance. Had they planned the bombardment to counter point defense capability, there is no doubt that many more warheads would have gotten through. As it was, the enemy had expended all their ordnance, and they had no real choice but to withdraw before we were able to get fresh naval forces to the system.
So the colonel had held Columbia in the face of almost overwhelming odds. As to what that salvaged real estate was worth now, that was anyone's guess. The best estimate was that a quarter of the planet's population had been killed, and a lot more were wounded, homeless, and in desperate need of supplies. Certainly, most of the manufacturing capacity, power generation, and other infrastructure had been destroyed, or at least severely damaged.
Nevertheless, it was a victory, and a badly needed one. It was the talk of the hospital once the word got out, and we Columbia survivors were the most highly sought after conversationalists in the Armstrong Acute Care Facility.
There isn't much to do in the hospital but talk to the rest of the recovering partial-soldiers, so we anxiously traded any bit of news about the war or just about any subject other than doctors and medical procedures. Anything to get our minds off the next time some white-clad figure with a sickly, too-pleasant smile would wander in to extract blood or cell samples, particularly since this usually occurred sometime around 4am, about 20 minutes after you finally managed to fall asleep. Unless it was my doctor, of course. I always had time for Doctor Sarah.
My first thoughts of the hospital went something like, "Well, at least no one is shooting at me." In a month I was ready to trade the bad food and boredom for a little incoming fire. It's not like getting shot hurts more than growing new legs. Regeneration hurts like hell. At least for limbs. The internal organs are a lot easier, and since I got some of those too, I have a frame of reference for comparison.