The ride to the hospital is taken mostly in silence. Specialist Lindstrom and Sergeant Oshiro bundle themselves into the back of an Armored Personnel Carrier, along with the dead bodies of thirteen BeiTech soldiers and spanner monkeys. Aside from Oshiro notifying the hospital that they’re inbound, neither she or Lindstrom speaks much. Some of the corpses are still smoking—there weren’t enough body bags for them all. The stink in the APC must be ungodly, but the pair are sealed inside their ATLAS armor, so they’re spared the smell of freshly barbecued pounder.
“Sorry about your friends,” Lindstrom finally says.
Oshiro glances at the lumps of cooling meat that used to be her squaddies.
“Shut up, Cherry,” she sighs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, Cherry, I want you to shut up.”
A few minutes pass, no sound except for the sound of tires crunching on snow.
“Oshiro?”
“Jesus, what?”
“Why are we taking corpses to a hospital?”
The woman sighs again, the sound rasping through her suit’s vox unit.
“Morgue facilities,” she says at last. “All BeiTech personnel killed in the line of duty need to be autopsied before transport to the Churchill. The admiral’s a stickler for procedure. This place had an experimental bioweapon dropped on it in January, remember? Sūn doesn’t want trace components getting aboard the fleet. Can you imagine what it might do if it got released inside a spaceship?”
Unaware of what BeiTech’s bioweapon did evolve into when given a few months to mutate inside a floating metal can in space, Lindstrom simply shrugs. “I don’t get it. It’s not like we don’t know how they died.”
“We don’t make the rules. We follow them. They should’ve taught you that in basic.”
“I’m Science Division. They teach us to look at the world analytically. Search for more efficient ways of doing things. You know. To think and stuff.”
“Did they teach you how to shut up? Because this’ll be the third time I tell you to do it.”
The kid sighs, doesn’t say another word. The APC trundles over frozen roads, thumping into shrapnel potholes made by seven-month-old missile strikes. It’s another ten minutes before they pull to a halt—the hospital is all the way across town from the airfield. The bodies have stopped smoking by then.
As they step out into the freezing air, we get our first look at what’s left of the Kerenza colony. The place was basically a big country town, built to accommodate about eighteen thousand people. Miners and engineers, their families, and all the folks needed to run the facilities that sprang up around the WUC’s illegal hermium op. Schools and shops. Fuel stations and liquor stores. Warehouses and apartment blocks and cineplexes, oh my.
Now the place is a ghost town. Everything covered in snow. Freezing winds whipping through shattered buildings, the collapsed ruins of the spaceport. Three gaping cracks run along the glacial shelf, cutting through the center of town. The only people in sight are BeiTech troopers or colonists on special duty. The next shift of miners is being shuttled to work in a motley convoy of civilian vehicles, flanked by APCs—BeiTech missiles collapsed the subway system during the initial invasion, so roads are the only way to get to the hermium mine. The facility is just a blurred speck on the horizon. A small city of processing towers and pipes and concrete, a good twenty kilometers out of town.
It’s at minimum safe distance in case the **** hits the fan. As the near interdimensional disaster aboard Heimdall should’ve taught you, when you’re dealing with exotic ultra-heavy elements and things go bad, they go bad all the way.
Four BeiTech soldiers with VK burst rifles are waiting in the hospital parking bay, along with two colonists in orderly uniforms. Shivering in the chill, the civis begin unloading the bodies onto waiting gurneys. Lindstrom moves to help a sad-looking woman with graying hair lift the biggest corpse.
“Cherry, what are you doing?” Oshiro asks.
“Um, helping with the bodies?”
“Um, is that your ****ing job?”
“No, but—”
“Lieutenant Christie ordered you to fix the hospital enviro regulator, did he not?”
“Yeah.”
“Soooo, what usually happens next?” Oshiro snaps her fingers a few times. “Dammit, I should remember this one. Help me out, Specialist…”
“…I fix the hospital enviro regulator.”
“See, there you go. And here I was thinking all that time you spent in basic learning to ‘think and stuff’ would’ve been better spent with a skinvid and a gym sock.”
“Jesus…”
The sergeant tilts her head in the hospital’s direction.
“Get the **** inside before I freeze my Britney off.”
With an apologetic shrug, Lindstrom slings his satchel of tools onto his shoulder and leaves the civis to it. The orderlies keep loading the corpses under the watchful eyes of the four other BeiTech goons. The knowledge that the bodies are all wearing BT uniforms doesn’t seem like it’s lost on anyone.
Inside, the hospital looks like it’s seen better days. Once-white walls are now scuffed gray, the windows are cracked and the lighting is flickering intermittently. The place is medium-sized, maybe fifty beds in total.
Oshiro strides to the reception counter, removes her helmet with a whoosh of escaping air. A sharp black bob falls about sharper cheeks, dark eyes and unpainted lips. Lindstrom’s ridiculous quiff has been squashed flat beneath his headgear, but as he removes his helmet, it somehow springs back to attention in defiance of all laws of physics.
“Where is everyone?” he asks.
There’s not a soul in sight. Raised voices can be heard up the corridor, and a small blue globe is flashing above the reception area. As if in response to Lindstrom’s query, a female voice spills across the hospital PA.
“Dr. Sarah Wiesner, report to Room Twenty-Four. Dr. Wiesner, Twenty-Four.”
“What’s going on?” Lindstrom asks.
“Code blue.” Oshiro points to the flashing globe. “Someone’s dying.”
The sergeant peers down the corridor, catches sight of a disheveled nurse dashing across the hall. Glancing at Lindstrom, she holds up one armored finger.
“You wait here. I’m gonna go ask directions to the enviro controls.”