Page 20 of Senseless
“Roger that, Gunner,” Lieutenant Fields replied. “Shall we drop them a present?”
I smiled before responding. “Please do.”
After the lieutenant confirmed my order, I returned my attention to the state of my surroundings. This area had been blown to bits, and from the looks of it, at least twenty people along with it. Several of my team were already tending to the injured, tying off limbs that were bleeding out or plugging up large wounds with whatever they had on them.
“Where’s the field hospital from here?” I asked my lieutenant, a guy named Davis.
“Just over that hill,” he pointed behind me. “There’s been a truck going back and forth, transporting people.”
“Good, so it’s on its way back?”
“I think so, it—“
A deafeningBOOMmade my eardrums cry out in pain, Davis and I covered our heads as we fell to the ground. Dirt and gravel rained down on us, the little stones landing hard like mini-projectiles.
“Fuck, I hope that was ours!” I lifted my head carefully to take a peek when the shower ended.
Lieutenant Fields’ voice crackled through my radio a moment later. “They were blown away by our gift, sir.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Good man. Keep your eyes peeled and I’ll let you know about more clusters when I see ‘em.”
“Roger that.”
“Sir, the truck!” Davis pointed, and I turned to see the white pickup truck coming down hard over the hill.
The driver turned, backing the vehicle up toward us with a bed covered in blood and viscera.
“Damn, wish we could spray that down,” I muttered. I wondered how Mari felt about piling people with open wounds on such an unsanitary surface. Or did she even have time to think about stuff while working in a war zone?
“No time, sir. These people are clinging to life.”
Davis and I worked quickly, lifting people in all states of consciousness as carefully as we could into the truck bed. The driver, a sergeant by his insignia, got out to help too.
“Hey, have you seen a woman with the medics?” I asked him. “Long dark hair, really pretty face? She might be the one in charge down there.”
“I dunno,” he grunted, lifting an unconscious—or dead—soldier and placing him gingerly in the truck bed. “Half of the medics down there are women. I just drop off and pick up.”
“Has the field hospital been targeted at all?”
“Nah. The action’s all up here.”
I nodded. That was a relief, at least.
The sergeant took off once the truck bed was full, and I damn near had to stop myself from jumping in his passenger seat. Even if it was through a bloody, mud-caked windshield, I wanted to see her. Just for a moment.
Two more trips later and no one remained in our area except for the ones who were unmistakably dead.
“We shouldn’t leave them here,” I said to Davis as I leaned down to close the eyelids of a soldier who looked barely eighteen. “Once this is over, we should have all the bodies recovered and ID’d.”
“They deserve a hero’s homecoming,” he agreed, his voice rough.
I patted his shoulder as I went back to lean against my bike. “Give me a moment, lieutenant.”
He stepped away, probably thinking I needed to compose myself, while I slipped into Horus again for a larger aerial view.
Our perimeter teams were doing a good job of ambushing the Blakeworth soldiers from behind. They expected us all to rush into the center, assuming they predicted we’d have backup at all. Without a doubt, the formations and weapons they used showed that they planned to massacre us. So much for this being a small skirmish. Like Reaper said, they had no qualms about fighting ugly. Unfortunately for them, neither did biker gangs.
If they wanted to fight dirty and underhanded, fuck yeah we’d give it to them.
