Chapter 3: Bad Medicine

It took a few days for life aboard the Heracles to settle down. Paul and Chelsea spent every night together, reaffirming their new-found love and lust for each other. They also spent all of Chelsea’s off duty time together. Chelsea liked to people watch, so the pair always took their meals together in the mess hall as she called the ship’s galley.

One day during lunch, they were interrupted while kissing.

“Do you mind if we join you degenerates?” a voice asked.

“Joe!” Paul exclaimed happily, “I didn’t know you were here. Nancy, Mary, good to see you both as well.”

“Hello again,” Joe said to the woman he knew as Sergeant Harris. “Thanks again for getting us out of there.”

Paul looked at Chelsea, “You know Joe?”

“Yeah, he was in the supermarket, hiding in the meat department walk-in, armed only with a butcher’s knife, guarding a group of people. Fucking brave ass thing to do,” she commented, shaking her head in awe of his balls for doing that.

Joe blushed, while Nancy playfully whacked him on the shoulder. “He promised to stay safe, that does not sound like him trying to stay safe!” she said. But her proud smile at her man gave lie to her words. A sharp glance from the Marine reminded Nancy to be very careful about physical contact. While she had only been playing when she hit Joe, a serious attempt to injure or kill him would have been a death sentence for her. It was a sober reminder of her new reality.

“Guys, this is Chelsea Morris. She’s a Marine sergeant and someone very special to me,” Paul said with a loving smile. “So are you all a family now?”

“Yup,” Joe said, “these two beauties happily joined me.”

The five were happily catching up and getting to know one another when a woman asked, “Sergeant Morris, do you mind if we join you?”

“Corporal, please have a seat. Who’s your friend?” she asked.

The mind often plays tricks of perspective. Despite being named as a Marine, the woman appeared to be normal sized, standing next to a Marine. Of course that was impossible, since all Marines go through augmentation to be two meters tall. When the couple sat down, it became obvious she was in fact an augmented Marine, like Chelsea, and her companion was HUGE!

“This is Titan, an apt name if ever there was one. He is unaugmented, believe it or not. We met at a pick up and it was instant lust.”

“Rana and I can’t seem to get enough of one another. I finally found a hot woman that doesn’t look like a kid’s doll compared to me, and she even likes me,” he said with a laugh.

“I know Chelsea here was added to the Heracles compliment for security purposes, were you stationed here already?” Joe asked.

With a sigh, Rana confessed, “I made some bad choices with concubines and was looking to start over somewhere new. I got a message from a Dux Hansen that Char was looking for me for her new colony. I had no idea what the hell a Dux even was until I found out it was the Civil Service equivalent of a general. That will get your attention, let me tell you!” she quipped, getting a laugh from the table.

As she was about to continue, the ship’s captain, who had been walking by, asked “You know Governor Char?”

“Yup, I met her last year,” Rana replied. “I helped her through a rough patch. I guess asking me to get stationed on her world was her way of saying thanks.”

“I see, thanks for that,” the captain said, continuing on.

Frowning, Rana said, “That was strange. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, needless to say, when someone that high ranking makes a request, it’s considered an order. So here I am.”

“I got triply lucky when I went for a drink at the bar that night,” Titan reminisced. “I got picked up, I met the girl of my dreams, and she agreed to form a joint household with me.”

“What’s a joint household?” Joe asked.

“Its the closest thing the Confederacy has to marriage between sponsors,” Rana replied. “Basically, two sponsors inform the AI they want to create a joint household. The sponsors share a pod and jointly assume control of, and responsibility for, all the concubines of both sponsors.”

Paul and Chelsea shared a long look. They silently agreed they would have a chat with the AI very soon, even though neither had any concubines yet. If nothing else, it would get her moved into his pod, instead of living in the Marine’s cramped, improvised barracks pod.

“A transfer to Frigia is sounding better and better,” Chelsea whispered to Paul.

While they continued chatting, Chelsea resumed people watching. She noticed a very tough looking concubine apparently heading their way. Chelsea watch her a bit warily, but the woman veered off at the last minute and sat with a sponsor at the next table. The two appeared to be having a spirited conversation.

Melinda, one of the former paramedics who decided to join the Confederacy as a sponsor, was just sitting down for lunch. The whole choosing concubines thing was weighing heavily on her mind. She knew she needed to choose two more, and under normal circumstances would have chosen them during a chaotic pickup before being rushed off Earth. Her pickup however, was far from normal. It was too bad the hunky SWAT captain was a sponsor, she would have grabbed him immediately. Heck, she was tempted to grab him anyway just to see what he was packing.

Sighing, she looked around the dining room, although since they were on a ship, it was called the galley. She noticed a hard-looking woman approaching who had obviously seen more than her fair share of gore. Although she was wearing the gray shift of a concubine, she had an air of competence and decisiveness about her.

“May I join you?” she asked. After a confused Melinda nodded her permission, the woman sat down and continued, “My name’s Samantha Redding. I have a proposal for a new type of battlefield trauma class. Since you’re a sponsor and have practical experience, I’d like your help and input with it. You were an EMT on Earth according to the AI, and I’ve heard stories about what you went through after the shopping center massacre.”

‘Just what the doctor called for,’ Melinda thought with a mental giggle, glad for a distraction from her thoughts about concubines and sexy policemen. However, she wanted to be sure this offer was on the up and up. The sponsor classes she had sat through made it very clear that doing things with someone else’s concubines without permission was not allowed.

“Why me? Don’t you have a sponsor who can help you?” Even as she asked, Melinda wished she had kept her mouth shut. Many of the concubines on the ship did not have a sponsor yet, despite efforts by the AI and crew to get people paired up. She should have silently asked the AI instead.

“I do have a sponsor,” Samantha replied calmly, “but he has no practical medical background. He has some advanced first aid training, but no on-the-job experience, so to speak, treating injured patients.”

“I see. So what exactly did you have in mind?” she asked.

With a crooked smile, Samantha replied, “my sponsor recently found out one of the more unusual capabilities of replicators. In the early days, before pickups, the Confederacy used to help volunteers vanish, sometimes even leaving bodies behind to fool investigators. It turns out that replicators can make perfect copies of the human body if they scan a person first. While the bodies are perfect replicas, they are completely inert, just flesh and tissue, with no possibility of life. Essentially, they are organic dummies. We can damage them in any way to simulate different types of injuries.”

“Um,” she responded, stalling for time while her thoughts spun out of control. Was Samantha’s idea brilliant or sadistic? Either way, could she handle it? Would she be able to look at a perfect copy of a human body, then methodically twist, cut, break or burn it, inflicting severe damage to it? On the flip side, it would be grossly unfair of her not to at least try.

Melinda swallowed a few times, trying to get herself under control. On one hand, it was a brilliant idea and would make for the best training ever. On the other hand, it was so wrong and horrifying. She could barely stomach the idea of creating human corpses and desecrating them. Of course, the knowledge that they were not actually human remains, just machine made copies, was hard to process. She would have to do a little research.

<AI, is what she said about making copies of humans true? And is it true they are just nonliving tissue that can’t feel pain or be brought to life?> Melinda silently asked, feeling conflicted by the proposal.

<Everything concubine Samantha said is true, and her sponsor has given her permission to recruit people to teach the classes. We have concluded that this training may be beneficial and will allow it as a test. If successful, we will encourage it to become standard medical training, > the AI replied, reassuring her.

Training people by giving them actual injured human bodies to treat, instead of just lecturing them and giving them pictures and plastic mannequins to work on would be immensely more useful. The super realistic training would probably save many lives and help emergency responder trainees to treat traumatic injuries faster, increasing the likelihood of the patient surviving. After a few moments of thought, it was an easy decision, saving lives trumps everything else.

Holding out her hand, Melinda said, “I’m in. Tell me what you need and I’ll make it happen.”

After a pause, a somewhat funny thought popped into her head. “You realize that using replicas of yourself means just about everybody aboard this ship will see you naked and get their hands on your body, right? Even worse, I can imagine some nicknames once the shock wears off. I can just imagine the Palin, Fonda and Hillary jokes that are going to come out also,” Melinda joked.

Giving her a lethal look, Samantha replied, “Anyone with enough time to make jokes isn’t paying enough attention to me!”

Barely fazed by the look, Melinda replied, “More like paying too much attention to you.”

“Come on, let me introduce you to my sponsor. He’ll like your attitude,” Samantha said.

After spending a week planning out the course, Samantha, her sponsor Kyle, and Melinda decided it was time to sell the plan to the Captain and then any of the crew or passengers who were interested. Kyle went to talk to Captain Holzetti, while Melinda went to talk to the ship’s medical staff. Samantha and several of the planned instructors went with her. Kyle’s talk with the captain went very well, and he was in favor of the training once he got over the nature of the training aids. However, the head medical officer was a completely different story.

It was a typical day in medbay, with more whiny sponsors doing unspeakable things to their new human toys. God he hated it! He should have been on a warship, where he was appreciated. Still, this was his personal fiefdom, and he controlled access to the amazing healing technology the medtubes represented. When he was informed there were several people who wished to talk to him, he stalled for a few minutes, just to impress on them how important he was.

‘Look what the cat dragged in,’ he thought to himself snidely when he saw them.

“Good morning, my name is Melinda Smith. My colleagues and I have a training proposal for you,” the sponsor said politely.

“I’m Lieutenant Dufresne, what can I do for you?” he demanded, irritated by the unannounced interruption.

“Sir, what training does the medical staff get?” she asked. “We want to teach a combat medicine class,” she continued, gesturing for Samantha to come forward and explain the class.

When Melinda gestured for a concubine to speak to him, he was insulted. What could a concubine possibly know that was worth his time? As the conversation progressed, he got more and more insulted.

‘How dare they question my training and professionalism?’ he fumed. When they pointed out the mass casualty situation aboard the Mannerheim, that was the final straw!

Angered, Lieutenant Dufresne snapped, “That was a unique situation and you know it! It may happen on a Navy vessel in combat, but this is a Fleet Auxiliary transport. There is no way an MCI can happen on board!”

Melinda’s infuriating response was, “For your sake, and the sake of any wounded, I hope you are correct. Maybe the training I’m offering will never be needed, and I hope it isn’t, but I firmly believe being overprepared beats the hell out of being caught unprepared.”

<AI, I need to speak to Captain Holzetti immediately, > he demanded sub-vocally.

<Lieutenant Dufresne, what can I do for you today?> Captain Holzetti asked with resignation. He was really tired of the arrogant idiot. Whenever he talked to Dufresne he wondered if the village that lost their idiot even bother to look for him or just cheered his departure.

After briefly repeating the insulting conversation he just had, he said, <Captain, I strongly object to this nonsense, it’s pointless and will be nothing but traumatizing. I don’t care what these sadistic freaks want to do to themselves, but there is no way anyone on my staff is going to be subjected to it. I’m asking you to come to your senses and stop this!>

<Lieutenant, you forget who you are speaking to! Request denied, > Captain Holzetti replied curtly, annoyed by his attitude. <Attending this training is strictly voluntary, but it is going to be offered. Both the AI and I agree on that.>

<Understood, Sir, > he replied sullenly. <But none of my people are going to be there, they will be far too busy with their assigned duties to waste time with this.> The clearly implied word ‘crap’ went unsaid at the end of the sentence.

“I know the captain and the AI authorized this training,” he told the annoying group in front of him, “but I’ll be damned if I’m going to excuse my people from their duties for unnecessary and unnecessarily traumatic training that will never be needed! Now be a good little girl and get these concubines out of here. Stop upsetting and scaring my staff and making them feel inadequate. They are fully able to do their damn jobs.”

Melinda was a little stunned at his flat-out refusal to even consider participating in her training classes or allow any of his staff to join them. With a sudden insight, she realized by Earth standards he was nothing more than a lab tech and probably felt threatened by real medical professionals. Infuriated and shaking her head in disgust, she wheeled around and angrily led Samantha and the rest of the group out.

“Well that went well,” Samantha griped as they left sickbay.

“Those medtube technicians have no medical training beyond shoving someone in a tube and pushing the ON button,” Melinda said contemptuously. “I really hope that moron is right and his people will never need the emergency training they are missing out on,” she added, not really believing it. With a wry smile, she joked, “he seems like the kind officer that his men would follow anywhere ... but only out of morbid curiosity.”

The group’s mocking laughter echoed down the corridor. Sadly, within weeks, it was graphically proven how wrong Lieutenant Dufresne was.

The hardest part of preparing for class each day was taking the replicated versions of Samantha and deliberately damaging them. She had said she would put her body where her mouth was, and she did every day. Samantha had freely admitted to Melinda the scariest thing for her had been getting into the replicator to be scanned, knowing what it normally did to anything put in it. Luckily for her, the AI had been truthful when it said it could copy things without damaging them. The class teachers had to be the ones to do it, because they had the medical knowledge to properly create the injuries needed for the class they were teaching that day. Every day, there were buckets lining the walls for those whose stomachs could not handle the carnage. Bottles of water were placed next to them.

Despite the entire “medical” crew of the Heracles skipping the classes, and Lieutenant Dufresne poo-pooing them, the classes were jammed. Far too many of the participants had just experienced a mass casualty incident and knew how critical this knowledge was. For those who did attend the combat medicine classes, they were an eye-opening, and stomach-emptying experience. However, when trainees finished losing their last meal and rinsing their mouth out, they were right back to the body they were assigned. As the class progressed, the buckets were used less and less often. The students would never forget what they learned though. The intense classes had tested them, but what the trainees learned would be invaluable if ever needed. Even the instructors learned a great deal from each other.

As the weeks passed, nerves were steadied, and relationships started to grow. Many sponsors were able to fill their harems from the large pool of unclaimed concubine candidates. There were some, however, that just did not feel ready. Melinda focused on the wrenching classes she was teaching, but depended on her sister and boyfriend to help get her through each night. The daily carnage performed to get the bodies ready for class and the intense training left little time or emotional energy for sex, but her concubines’ loving support got her through the classes.

There were also hand-to-hand combat classes offered by the militia that were just as bad, if not worse. Those classes used copies of Samantha too, and the student got to see first-hand the damage they could inflict with their martial arts skills. The hard-core members of the militia loved the gruesome training aids. Their students could be taught killing moves and were actually able to practice a move to its full extent, instead of pulling their blows like they would have to in normal training. The broken, beaten bodies were often later used in the combat medicine classes to teach splinting broken bones and other melee injuries.

When the first explosion rocked the ship, both Paul and Chelsea rolled out of bed, simultaneously groping for weapons they did not have. They were groggily trying to figure out what was going on when the Captain made an announcement.

“This is Captain Holzetti speaking. We jumped out of hyperspace right on top of a Volumina-class Sa’arm scout sphere and its Vacuna-class companion ships. We are totally outclassed and are trying to make a run for the planet. I need all pods in the Red section evacuated RIGHT NOW! In sixty seconds they will be launched as cover to try and buy us a few more seconds lead. Anyone remaining in the pods will not survive. You have sixty seconds.”

That got their pulses racing! Thankfully, they were not in the red section, but the emergency announcement got them scrambling into clothes anyway. With a quick, but loving kiss, Chelsea raced off to check on her squad. She thanked God every day that the AI had agreed when the captain decided the transport needed extra security to keep watch on the colonists, allowing her a few extra weeks with Paul. She hoped they could find a way to be stationed together some day.

Not having a duty station, Paul headed to the common area to see if he could help. It already had a number of people in it, both those who had gathered here to eat and those who had been in the initial areas that had been hit. There were some wounded mixed in, with more being brought in by the minute. Taking charge, he had the uninjured start rearranging the room. Chairs were lined against two walls for the uninjured and the barely injured. After hearing that the ship’s sickbay was already overloaded, and afraid more injured were coming, he starting directing people on how to set up a basic triage area.

While his actual medical training was very basic, his disaster preparedness training had been top-notch. He had every replicator in the room making blankets, pillows and medical supplies for the injured. He also drafted anyone with medical training to sort and care for the wounded. While he had not attended the class himself, the now legendary (or infamous) combat medicine class held by militia members had been attended by several of the people currently in the room. Watching them and comparing them to the seasoned paramedics he had worked with in the past, he was favorably impressed. Apparently, that class had been as amazing, and horrifying, as the stories had indicated. He was kicking himself for not attending. Hindsight is a bitch sometimes.

Paul had taken the hand-to-hand combat classes for the first few weeks with Chelsea instead. However, he had quit long before Frigia was reached. While he had been trained long and hard to ‘service his target’, he was also trained to subdue them for an arrest if possible. These classes had been about killing your opponent, and he had been unsure when training like that would ever be necessary.

The next ten minutes were pure white-knuckle as everyone busied themselves treating others and waiting for news about the Swarm ships they were fleeing. There was barely-contained panic on everyone’s face, and more than a few looked like they had been betrayed. They had trusted the Confederacy to keep them safe and here they were under attack by the Swarm at a supposedly safe colony.

Paul had a grim thought he kept to himself, “Blood in, blood out.” That was a gang mentality, but it sure seemed to apply here. He arrived on this ship with blood everywhere and now, as they were at the very last stage of the voyage, the decks were again covered with blood.

Suddenly, the ship was rocked by another series of explosions.

“I need a damage assessment! Talk to me,” Captain Holzetti ordered tersely, dreading the response.

<Multiple strikes down the Blue section pods. The pod AI’s have engaged emergency forcefields until damage control repairs can be completed, > the AI replied. Everyone on the bridge knew how low the odds of them surviving long enough to worry about those repairs were.

“Sir, the Swarms ships were just destroyed!” the stunned communications officer said. “I mean, my sensors showed there were explosions, and the two ships suddenly broke apart.”

<What just happened?> Captain Holzetti asked the AI in shock.

<An Africa-class destroyer, the Namibia, just destroyed the two Vacuna-class Sa’arm vessels attacking us. There is no data of them being in this system. Please wait until the download from the Namibia’s AI is completed. That will explain why the ship is in this system.>

While the bridge crew let out cheers and whoops of joy, Captain Holzetti sagged back in his chair, barely able to comprehend their reprieve. He did not even care how the miracle happened, he was just relieved it did. Thankfully, most of the people who were his responsibility had survived. Sadly, he was sure not all of them had.