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reddus-sideblog · 2 years

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M.E.R.C.s - Aftermath

8-27-890 AR

Duncan readjusted the Triage cap he was wearing and fiddled with his identification tag. The brown-haired young man wasn’t worried about looking fashionable, he was far more concerned with looking the part of a Triage M.E.R.C.. Being in an active warzone was at least mildly safer if either side could identify you as an unaffiliated medic, after all.

Redton Corporate Electronics and Surrmond Software LLC had started up a proper corporate war across the face of Jeffria, but the good news was that the conflict between the two technology companies was finally dying down. After a number of large engagements between corporate battalions and about a straight week of conflict it seemed like Redton was going to beat out Surrmond LLC in their naked bid for dominance in the Jeffria electronics market. The destruction of the fighting had left almost half of the Bellingford Sector-Cluster as a ruined warzone, with little intervention from corporations other than Triage. The NCSDF’s forces in Jeffria were sitting on the sidelines, practically daring either of the corporate armies to take a step out of their controlled sectors. Neither had made that mistake yet.

The burned out hulk of a large stand tank with the scorched blue and green colors of Surrmond Software LLC greeted Duncan as he passed the archway into the Fernon Sector. The main strip looked almost inaccessible by road from the debris lying around, and the concrete barriers painted with the Peace Corps’ initials ensured that it would stay that way. He was weighed down by a backpack filled with medical supplies, along with a large duffel bag filled with yet more goods for the hospital he was going to. The M.E.R.C. sat on a barrier as he got a better look at the main street. It looked like a lot of the storefronts here had been hit pretty hard by the fighting between the corporate armies. It was probably a nice area before all of the gunfire and explosions blew apart the buildings and blasted the tiling in the main square apart. There were a few people around, but far fewer than he had expected from a sector this size, though he saw at least two patrols of Peace Corps officers while he sat idle. Even among all the craters, bullet holes, and wrecked buildings Duncan finally saw what he was looking for, a green tri-cross, indicating that a medical facility could be found up ahead and down one of the side streets on the left.

Picking up his duffel bag and heaving himself up from his seat, the mercenary struck out in the indicated direction. Away from the main street and the main square the sector certainly looked nicer, though there was still significant damage to be seen here and there. A few couples and individuals were quickly making their way through the street, but much more concerningly a pair of Peace Corps goons were making a beeline right for Duncan.

It was far too late to run, and if he bolted the Peace officers were likely to open fire first and report his death later. He just continued forwards, trying to look nonchalant as he followed the next sign that indicated the clinic being just down the next street on his right. Unfortunately the two officers caught up with him before he could duck down the street, out of their view.

“Alright, stop right there,” came the modulated voice of the shorter Peace officer, hand on his holstered pistol, “you’ve been selected for a random search.”

Duncan turned to face the white and gray clad corpsecs. The outfit of the Peace Corps was sterile and clean, just like their mission statement of “peace at the right price”. They wore bulky light gray riot armor overtop of their white coveralls, along with gloves and a full respirator that concealed their hands and faces. On top of this, each Peace officer had a voice modulator and a codename to further obscure their identity.

While extreme, Duncan understood very well how much Peace Corps officers needed to hide their identities to avoid catching a faceful of lead when they were off the job. The Fernon Sector, and the Kentley Sector he’d visited yesterday, were currently very good examples as to exactly why Peace officers were reviled enough to hide their faces, voices, and names. Lining up all of the suspects of a crime against a wall and executing them one after the other tended to make you a lot of enemies, really fast.

“Put down the bags, Triage boy. We’re just going to make sure you’re not smuggling anything,” said the taller Peace officer wielding an assault rifle.

The urge to groan was resisted as Duncan braced for the mockery of justice that was about to be unloaded on him. He’d seen “random searches” escalate to full on arrests for something as small as a boxcutter or a pistol, much less a backpack full of pain killers, a duffel filled with surgical tools, and his self-defense auto-revolver.

He started putting down the medical supplies, and soon thereafter one of the officers began frisking him. It lasted a moment before a voice of a woman carried down the street.

“Hey! Hey, he’s with my clinic!”

The officers and the Triage M.E.R.C. turned to look down the side street, seeing a blonde woman in doctor’s clothing, followed closely by a shorter, intense looking woman with long, messy black hair, a bulky nondescript coat, and a medical eyepatch over one eye. The pair approached, slowing from a jog to a calm walk.

“You’re uh… Duncan, right?” said the doctor, looking the Triage medic up and down.

“I’m Doctor Anders. I’ve been waiting for you, have you been held up for long?”

“Oh, no, I just got here. There was some wreckage on the inter-sector roads, so I had to walk here, and the front of the sector’s been blocked off too, so the supply truck wouldn’t have been able to get in anyways,” replied Duncan.

“So he’s with you?” questioned the shorter Peace officer.

“That’s right. I need him and his supplies now, a patient is waiting on them who is in critical care. If you have any problems take it up with Triage,” said Doctor Anders, blustering her way through the corpsec’s response.

“Marie, grab his backpack, he’s carried it far enough,” she ordered, pointing at the heavy load that Duncan had been carrying.

Wordlessly the black-haired woman lifted the weighty backpack and shouldered it.

“And who is she?” asked the Peace officer holding the rifle. He wasn’t threatening anyone with the weapon, yet.

“She is another patient of mine, can’t you tell by the eyepatch?” said the doctor as she began storming away, with Marie in tow. “Now let’s go Duncan, we’ve got people to save.”

Without looking at the Peace Corps officers Duncan grabbed the duffel and followed the two women, wiping his brow clean of the sweat that had accumulated during the standoff.

***

The cyber-clinic come field hospital was less busy than the doctor had let on in front of the corpsecs. There were a good number of patients that needed checking up on, but she took a moment to familiarize herself with Duncan while they unpacked the supplies he had brought with him. Away from the imminent threat of the Peace Corps, the doctor seemed like she was running on fumes.

“So. My name is Jess. I’m the main doctor here at the… uh… Fernon Cyber-Clinic. I usually do cybernetic installations, but I have a full doctorate in medicine, so I’ve been helping out around here while all of this,” she gestured vaguely around her.

“-has been going on.“

Jess pointed at the other, more intense-looking woman who had escorted her and helped them carry the supplies into the hospital, who was currently leaning against the wall next to Jess. The one-eyed woman waved with two fingers and nodded at Duncan.

“Oh. And that’s Marie. She’s my partner, and she’s helping me… around the uh, clinic.”

Duncan flashed a smile back at Marie. Another pair of hands were always welcome around a hospital like this, even if the person attached to them was practically mute.

After they put away the fresh supplies Duncan followed Jess as she did her rounds. Marie shadowed the two of them as well, keeping out of the way but always being in the same room. There were a dozen patients throughout the clinic, and while the establishment had been relatively untouched by the fighting, the injured here were obviously casualties of the conflict:

A Redton soldier who had lost a couple of fingers and an eye. A local who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had a monumental number of lacerations from a fragmentation grenade. A Surrmond tank pilot with second and third degree burns from his tank going up, along with two of his fellow crewmen. An M-CA M.E.R.C. who had been contracted to sabotage Surrmond assets, but had been shot six times. An android who worked in logistics for Redton that had stepped on an anti-personnel landmine. A local chimera dogwoman with a fever and an infected wound from rubble that had fallen on her. Three more civilians with gunshot wounds, two of them having been injured by Peace Corps officers, and one having been hit when the corporate armies were trading shots. Lastly, a devilkin girl who had been concussed by a mortar shell that had landed in her house a few sectors over. A passerby had come across the poor girl in the rubble, and was still looking after her, as they had yet to find her family.

Duncan had seen corporate wars before, but he prayed to the Machina that this would be the last one that would happen. Besides the twelve in the clinic, Jess said that there were five more that she could do nothing for when they were brought to her. She obviously felt disgusted with herself when Jess said that she had “wasted” supplies on those hopeless cases. The medic could tell that the doctor hated the concept of grading her patient’s rate of survival like that. As tears welled up in Jess’ eyes Marie appeared behind her, wrapping her arms around the overworked doctor.

Thankfully Duncan’s radio set buzzed, letting him leave the two be for a few moments. He walked out into the hallway and answered the handset. On the other side was the low-fidelity voice of his partner, Liam.

“Hey Duncy, sorry that I left you hanging, I’m on my way to that clinic with some hurt people. Someone left a back door open to the sector so I’ll be there in a few minutes!”

Duncan had known Liam Graves since high school, and he didn’t think a single day had ever passed where the golden blonde dog chimera hadn’t been full of energy and pep. It did grate on Duncan when he was having a bad day, but his eternally sunny attitude did help brighten up the darker times. In their field of work it helped a lot.

After informing Jess and Marie about the incoming ambulance the three of them quickly got some more cots ready and prepared the operating room of the clinic. All the tools of the trade were lined up, and the hospital was ready for more patients. Duncan caught up with the other two outside after doing a quick double check around the hospital to make sure that everything was ready. Liam’s Triage ambulance was backing up, and by the time it had parked Jess was opening the back doors to pull the patients out.

“You’re Doctor Anders right?” asked Liam, looking at the human lady intently.

“Yeah, uhuh. Who needs attention the most here?”

Liam informed Jess that two of the patients had gunshot wounds, each being a corporate soldier from a different side of the conflict, in addition to a woman with a broken arm and some broken ribs from a car crash on the inter-sector road. The chimera medic had stabilized them, but the gunshot victims would need attention to stop their bleeding wholly and have the lead removed from them. Marie nudged Duncan with her elbow and directed his sight at the corner of the building, where a Peace Corps arrest wagon was pulling up.

Four Peace Corps officers approached the Triage ambulance quickly, all of them were armed, two with SMGs, two with shock staves. The leader of the little group stepped ahead of his men as they stopped, readying plastic ties to make arrests.

“I’ll be taking these patients of yours for registry, and we’ll need to go inside to take a look at whoever else you have in there,” said the leader, gesturing with his gun in one hand.

Duncan could tell that Marie was tensing up next to him. Her hands were slowly moving behind her back, as something, or some things, were moving under her bulky coat.

Jess stood between the Peace officer and the patients.

“These people need treatment before they can go anywhere. I can only release them after I’ve treated their wounds and properly taken care of them.”

The officer hit Jess across the face and pushed her aside, yelling at the doctor to keep out of the way of his men. As Jess fell down from the force of the blow Marie jumped forwards to grab her, stopping her partner from hitting the pavement. Duncan and Liam watched, unable to aid the two of them. If they moved now the Peace Corps men would likely start shooting.

As Duncan watched, Jess reached up and planted a kiss on Marie’s cheek, before pulling off her eyepatch. Beneath the patch was not an injured eye, as Duncan expected, but rather a high-grade cyber-eye that activated and glowed crimson. He swore that he saw Jess say “go get ‘em” to Marie before the cyborg let her girlfriend go. Jess hastily stumbled behind the ambulance as the storm of violence began.

Marie leaped up, wielding two heavy pistols. She sank round after round into the Peace officers bearing guns. She split her fire between the two of them, taking advantage of their surprise to saturate them with a magazine of lead each. The Peace officers with stun staves slowly realized they were under fire, and started moving to attack the woman. Rather than reload, Marie’s coat flew open as four additional cybernetic arms emerged, each one holding an additional Heaven’s Dragon. She avoided the wild swings of the Peace officers as she blasted, ducking, twisting, and weaving as her cybernetic arms unleashed a murderous rapid fire volley on them. At the end of less than ten seconds all four of the officers were torn apart like pulled pork, their armor rent asunder by the furious fusilade of .44 magnum, leaving each one of their corpses in a puddle of their own blood and mutilated flesh.

Duncan blinked a few times, hardly believing the suddenness of the killing that had just occurred.

“What…? Who-,” he started, trying to make sense of how the quiet woman had unleashed such death.

“She’s my favorite piece of work,” said Jess, pushing past Duncan to start moving the patients into the hospital. The cybernetics doctor was almost beaming when she said that.

***

Cleaning up the bodies of the Peace Corps officers worked out pretty well. As Marie had loaded up the corpses into the ambulance and picked up most of her scattered shells, handing them in a plastic bag to Duncan. Gunshots weren’t all that uncommon in sectors protected by the Peace Corps, so the M.E.R.C.s had a large grace period to deal with the mess that the cyborg had made.

Liam and Duncan hauled the bodies to the next sector over in the ambulance, dumping them and the shells off in a random alleyway. They drove back quickly and Duncan went to help Jess treat the patients as Liam and Marie cleaned up the rest of the mess outside, sweeping the shells and blood into the storm drain and hosing off the bloodied sidewalk. As he headed into the clinic Duncan heard his dogman partner trying, in vain, to strike up conversation with Marie, who was barely replying.

Jess was relieved to have Duncan join her in the surgery room. He washed up and donned surgical gear, aiding the doctor in removing lead and stitching up the corporate soldiers. They were holding on, but two pairs of hands made their surgery light work. One had a perforated lung, along with his left shoulder artery having been nicked by a shot, while the other had to have a few fingers removed, as well as a few ligaments reattached. Jess replaced the lost fingers from her own stock of cybernetics, surprising Duncan with her generosity.

After completing the surgery Duncan saw to the third patient with a broken arm, setting the bones and applying a cast. Jess thanked him profusely as she left the woman in his care. When Duncan walked the woman out of the operating room he found the doctor resting on Marie, on a cot in the storage closet. The cyborg was holding her girlfriend with all six of her arms, cradling the exhausted doctor in a blanket as she slept. Marie gave the distinct image of a spider clinging to its silk-wrapped prey. Duncan shut the door a bit to give them peace and quiet, before going off to find Liam helping out the patients in the impromptu wards.

The M.E.R.C.s spent the next few hours preparing rations and food for the injured people in the hospital. A duo of Peace officers came by to ask if the Triage employees had heard or seen the team that had gone missing. Liam’s earnesty won over the corpsecs, who believed that while they had heard a commotion outside, they hadn’t seen any of it. Duncan kept his poker face up for the whole of Liam’s innocent routine. It was amazing how many people were willing to believe that the Triage medic was just some blonde himbo, and the Peace officers fell for it lock, stock, and barrel.

After things calmed down Duncan let his messy, shoulder-length brunette hair down and enjoyed a smoke on the back step. It had already been quite a day, and it wasn’t even quite over yet. On days like this he remembered what the head surgeon of his old team, Sienna, had told him before he was transferred upzone; “practicing medicine is easy when you get down to it, it’s all the damn complications life throws at you that make it really difficult”. Duncan was beginning to understand exactly what the old android had meant when she’d said that.

#Ashlands RPG #M.E.R.C.s

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