Nine

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Note: This is not a lighthearted underdog or feel-good comeback story.

Content warning: violence, dehumanization, and self-destructive themes.

***

Medi-infantry, I had been assigned to Medi-infantry. Assignment happens on your fifth birthday; school happens shortly thereafter. You walk into a room, sit for a few minutes and then are excused and given your results via digi-message two hours later. I had hoped for engineer, or even some sort of position in the command pathway. At five years old, your understanding of the future was limited to your parents, my father was an engineer, my mother was an air-colonel. Instead I was assigned to the medi-infantry, the second ones to every battle. At five, your response is mostly based on your parents' reactions, and mine were disappointed.

I spent the next ten years studying to be medi-infantry. Trauma response, stemming, patching, stimming. I learned how to fix a broken soldier in a hundred different ways. I learned that too much tranq would lower your treatment score, because the soldiers may be nonresponsive when the mobi-drones arrive. If I scored a soldier as ready to fight, and the drone found an unconscious lump, my score would go down. The lower my score, the closer to discharge duty.

Discharge duty was not good. Discharge duty meant slave labor until retirement. Retirement meant death.

I guess medi-infantry was better than infantry-1, whose motto was first in-last out. Most of the infantry-1 members I met had resigned themselves to short life, and lived accordingly. They partied and rarely worried about their scores. Their scores wouldn't accumulate until they went into battle, all that mattered was their kill/casualty ratio. How many enemy could they kill/maim before suffering a casualty. Medi-infantry (Patch. Tag. Advance.) came between the regular infantry waves, we patched up whatever casualties we could and sent them onward, tagged the ones we couldn’t fix and kept pushing forward. Forward, always forward.

Once in battle, often we (medi-infantry) became the front line as the successive infantry lines fell and we kept advancing. We would patch up what we could, send them forward, but inevitably catch up with them shortly as their injuries got worse and worse. The ones we couldn’t send forward got tagged. In our wake we would leave a trail of blinking blue tags, signals for the retrieval drones later, each tag had a rating of the casualty, casualty 1 meant deceased, these were the lowest priority pickups. The ratings went all the way up to casualty 10. 1’s were easy and quick. Each soldier's suits would transmit their vitals, it was our job to verify it was not a suit error, tag the deceased and move on.

I remember the 5 I'd given the soldier a few days prior (maybe it was yesterday?), my lung patch had failed and the soldier had died before reaching surgery. The blinking red on my HUD reminded me for hours (days?) that I was 3 points closer to retirement. The numbers would dictate which surgical-stations got which soldiers, so they could be treated and released as soon as possible. Our scores were based on our accuracy, send too many abdominal lacerations to lower extremity, and your score would fall, tag a soldier for surgery and they died before getting there, your score would fall. Casualties 9 and 10 indicated that the soldier was physically able to fight, but either unwilling, or unable in some other way. Anyone marked 9 when the drones arrived was instantly terminated for cowardice. We still hadn't developed mechanical eyes, a blind soldier would be marked a 10, unable. The harvester drones would make a decision based on organ need on whether to transport the soldier or terminate on the spot.

The medi-infantry did not give out a lot of 9’s and 10’s. The drones were ruthlessly efficient. I had given out two during our advance, one screamed for his mother and refused to hold still for treatment, the other just stared blankly at his hands, even though my scans found no injuries.

The blast tore through the building above us, we had passed the front line once again and were ordered to rest for ten minutes while infantry-17 caught up. The blast took several medi-infantry soldiers on the left side of the line and knocked me to the ground. I immediately rose and started tagging my colleagues mostly fives and sixes – dysfunctional limbs, insufficient blood, easy to fix, but not with the basic kit we were equipped with. Blood generators and micro-welders were the tools of surgeons. It was our job to stop the bleeding and cut off power to the limbs to reduce nerve damage. Sometimes we just cut off and cauterized limbs, mechanical replacements were easy and cheap.

My training drove me, I started tagging. Claudine was a 4 (upper torso, stable), James was a 6 (he’d probably be back with a mechanical leg), Lionel was a 1. When I finished my tagging, I returned to my position and looked around. I could see the dust from the next line of infantry advancing behind us as they moved through a sea of blinking blue lights. My HUD told me it was infantry-17.

I took my helmet off. It wasn't hot or uncomfortable; I just wanted to feel the wind through my hair and see the world for once without the deluge of info the HUD fed to me. The obstacles through which my HUD traced the most efficient path had been a neighborhood. The bars, a swing set, the pond, a pool. I’d grown up in a neighborhood like this, all of us had.

My hair was too greasy and matted from the helmet to move in the light breeze. Inside the shell, still hanging at my side, every blue light was tagged and scored, injuries detailed, projected recovery times scrolling in soft, clinical fonts.

I could see the drones rushing soldiers back into the distance, little gray pods flitting across the ruins of what must have once been a neighborhood. Infantry-17 meant we would probably start seeing the soldiers from infantry-1 showing up again along with the new recruits. I picked up my helmet and stared at the visor. Blood had splattered onto it, a remnant of the blitz of tags I'd done over the past few days. The fresh blood was dark, the old blood had dried into a brown haze that didn't stick to the visor.

I looked forward. Somewhere out there the enemy was retreating, I could see their drones flitting around. I couldn't see any of their soldiers, I just figured if we were advancing, they were retreating. Sometimes we came across their wounded on our advance, we were trained to disarm them (literally, remove their arms so they could not fire a weapon at our backs), mark them 10 and move on. It was not our job to kill, just tag and advance. If an infantry line came across them before the drones, they were killed on sight.

I looked back again. Infantry‑17 was still just a cloud, but it was getting closer. I ran my hand through my greasy hair, and my fingers came back crimson. It was a minor cut; a single dab of glue and some numbing agent and I’d be fine.

I’d spent most of my life fighting someone’s numbers’ war. Forward, always forward.

I did a self‑assessment.

The wind had died down.

I tagged myself a 9 and sat down in the rubble of someone’s neighborhood.