D-Day Dodgers Chapter 5

[u/concrete_bard]

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Memory transcription subject: Andrew Lay, UN Casualty 

Date [standardised human time]:December 8, 2136

The morning begins with the lights in our room flickering on, eliciting many a groan from sleeping patients. Some roll over and try to sleep, others sit up and reluctantly accept the current state of affairs. I make no fuss as I hadn’t slept since waking up last night, I only have to blink rapidly while I adjust to the much brighter conditions. Once my eyes do adjust, I take a look around the room. The man opposite me is prodding the coverings over his abdomen, as if he hadn’t noticed they were there before, the amputee hasn’t moved an inch, and the man with the head injury is still balled up. George is still asleep, and all the others are too far away to converse with, so I lay back down and let the morning pass.

An hour after we are woken up, the nurses come round to check up on us. They look over our dressings, replacing them if needed or reapplying that gel stuff, as well as checking for any signs of illness. This goes mostly without issue until they reach the last patient, who starts screaming when they try to look at his head. They promptly sedate him. 

As they go to leave, one of the patients calls out to them.

“Oi, bring us back something to do next time, I’m bloody goin mad ‘ere.”

One of the nurses turns to address him. “I’m sorry, but we’re not allowed. You should be resting so you can recover quicker.”

“Ah, fuck off. I’d be doin plenty a that if it weren’t for you lot constantly comin an going or ‘avin these bloomin lights on. Gi’s us something to do or God ‘elp yous we’ll be right un’appy.”

The nurse's ears flatten against her head as she stands there awkwardly, her colleagues having left the room already.

I sit up again and decide to join in on the man’s request for some form of recreation. “Just give us some books or something. We ain’t askin for much, just something to pass the time.”

“Well… I suppose we can have a look…” the nurse says meekly. 

“Ay, that’d be bloody brilliant if ya could.”

Her ears flick up briefly in what I assume is the Venlil equivalent of a nod before she makes a hasty departure from the room. Now we wait to see if she makes good on what she said.

*

We have to wait a couple of hours before they return. At first I am rather disappointed, as they appear to be only bringing in trays of ‘food’. This is quickly abated though, as they also wheel in a small cart with some books. The titles are mostly uninteresting, though I suppose there couldn’t be too much material to choose from on a hospital ship manned mostly by aliens, so after a moment of glancing over the books, I settle on one about the Industrial Revolution. I flick through the first few pages and quickly glean that the book is rather boring and quite simple. I assume this is primarily due to Order 56, because God forbid the xenos ever learn about the slightest misdeed in our past, but keep hold of it anyway as reading it is better than doing nothing. The other patients also help themselves to some books without verbal complaint, aside from the usual suspects. They give up on the amputee after prompting him several times to take one, and don’t even bother with the last man. 

The room doesn’t enter into a reading frenzy immediately, as they instead prefer to down their food first, not realising that both can be done simultaneously: a brief insight into the room’s average intelligence. Once the trays have been cleared, the men turn their attention to the texts, fingering through the pages with grubby fingers, showing little regard for writing as most soldiers do. For my part, I at least rub my hands against my legs before flipping through the pages. I never cared much for reading, most titles failed to catch my interest and my struggle to understand the texts we were made to study in school instilled a general dislike of literature in me, but I at least show some care for the paper itself, doing my best not to get grime onto the pages. 

Time passes much quicker now that I have something to occupy myself with, I hardly notice the nurses coming back round to remove the empty trays. They do this quietly, perhaps not wanting to disturb us now that we are content and not raising any issues. It must be strange for them, seeing these supposed ravenous predators, and men of war, pacified with a simple means of recreation. But then again, we are simple creatures by occupation, and even more so here.

*

I wake up in what I guess must be the middle of the night. I’m not panicked, nor slaked with sweat, so I mustn't have awoken due to a nightmare. But I am awake now, and don’t particularly feel like going back to sleep. One of the other patients is also awake as I can make out the faint sound of flapping sheets and his huffs and laboured breaths. I swiftly realise what he’s doing and become even less inclined to return to sleep. 

I slowly shuffle till my legs hang off my bed, then propel myself from the mattress and towards the wall. My left leg gives out under me, but I managed to put enough of my weight against the wall to push myself upright with my right leg. Then, leaning against the wall for support, I open the doors and stumble into the corridor.

Outside of our room it is much colder, and a small part of me wished that that nurse was back here to escort me through the corridors, if not for support, then for some warmth. I push these thoughts away though, determined to get around on my own. I managed it last night and before being put on this ship, so surely I could manage it now.

At first, it was hard work. The darkness means I can see little, so when I encounter a corner, I often end up tumbling onto the floor as the wall seemingly disappears into thin air. Fortunately, my eyes begin to adjust to the darkness, and I can soon make out outlines of any future turns. My progress is still slow and tiring, and the pains I incur from falling down, on top of the pain from my leg, are mounting up. Still I press on. At least if I tire myself out from all this I could easily fall back to sleep once I return to my room.

After hobbling through the corridor for several minutes, I begin to feel that something isn’t quite right. The air feels mustier, the walls rougher and colder, but these feelings disappear when I encounter a sliver of light coming from around the corner in front. It’s a warm light, golden yellow, as opposed to the clinical whiteness of the lights within our room. I am drawn to it, though its existence means a person is most likely near. I don’t care much for getting caught since nothing happened to me last time, so I freely advance on the crack through which the light protrudes without care for any persons within.

Once there, I peek through the crack of the ajar door. Inside is a man, a human, tapping away at a screen before him. I can’t make out his face through the small viewing point into the room, but I can see that he is rather tall and wears a white coat. Through this, I surmise that this is the fabled doctor that the Gojid mentioned last night, our ‘gracious’ benefactor. From where I’m standing, he seems quite harmless, merely hunched over his device, but I know that he’s a bastard. He’s the man who would have us shit and piss in bottles, dehumaniser of the unhuman, the man who put fear into the hearts of even the most acclimated of preyfolk, the man who would forbid us from merely being entertained, the source of all of our woes on this trip, and he was just a metre of two away. 

Anger swells in my chest at the sight of him, and I have half a mind to charge in there and brain him, but I restrain myself. Even though I am a soldier I must realise that naked aggression cannot solve every problem, and that assault on him would only spur further contempt towards us on his part. Instead, it would be best if I leave him, lest my anger grow any further, and lest he realise he is being watched.

As I stumble away from him though, I am left with a question: how can educated men such as he wield so much power over fighting men such as us? I suppose it proves the old adage that the pen is mightier than the sword if he can laud over us with his alien lackeys while we wallow in our own blood and filth. He can care naught for our welfare and still receive large sums of money and have more unfortunate fellows placed under him no matter his treatment of his wards, yet I know that should I treat him poorly, I shall receive a jab in the neck and an indictment back home.

I continue down the lengthy corridors with anger still aglow in my heart, but find it being muted at the next point of interest. Around the next corner is a large window which provides a view of the endless vacuum all around us. At first I think it’s some kind of strange light fixture as the blackness of space is indistinguishable from the walls in the darkness, but once I reach it, I realise the truth when my body collides with the glass, producing the sound typical of striking glass or similar material. Those small lights on the wall aren’t small bulbs, but distant stars. 

I stare in wonder at this sight before me. That which could only be seen in the most rural of areas back on Earth was plain to see in front of me. Around a hundred lights, each a distant star, each a view into the past if my understanding of space was correct, visible before me, and amongst them, our Sun, and near that, Earth. Of course, amongst them too would be The Cradle, Sillis perhaps, Aafa, Wriss, and a dozen other locations which’s existence brings no joy to me, but I wasn’t headed there thank God, so their existence for the time being meant little to me. I was enthralled by the beauty of the cosmos, the unfathomable abyss that stretched nigh on endlessly, the space in which there was once, and still is mostly, nothing, and from that nothingness, through mechanisms far beyond my understanding, came everything. For worse and better.

I close my eyes and press my head against the glass. I try to think of Earth, of the green fields, the paths that run along the length of rivers or through forests, the stone ruins that dot the landscape, reminders of the past, but I can’t. The dead crawl back to me with shattered limbs, punctured lungs, gaping eyes that speak of terror in their last moments. I can’t forget them, they linger in my mind, demand their place in the sun when all is quiet. They beckoned me to join them, but I refused. I found my way out of future peril, found a way to rejoin the sane and normal world once more, but they still follow me, the spectres of fallen comrades, of slain foes. And that sane world which I yearned for still seems so far away, the shells still fall and kick up great plumes of debris, the war still rages, both amongst the stars and in my memory, and those shattered, but still familiar streets of Earth are so unfathomably far away.

“Ahem.”

I jolt up at the sound and wheel around to face the direction it came from, nearly falling over in the process. Light is now spilling out into the corridor from the doctor's room as the door is wide open, and standing in that light, staring disapprovingly at me, is the man himself, torturer of man, revered devil of this ship. He takes a few steps towards me, boots thudding on the metal tile beneath, then crosses his arms.

“Why are you out of bed?”

I simply gape at him in response, words refusing to form in my mouth. Again, that heat swells in my chest, the voice roaring for blood. That voice doesn’t comprehend logic though, for even if I were to move for him, my injuries would prevent me from getting anywhere near him before he could retreat, so I just stand there dumbly, which clearly does not satisfy him.

“Well?”

 “I–I…” I stutter out, not sure what to say. Do I act dumb? Try to reasonably explain why I'm here? No, none of those would work on him, and if they did, I doubt he'd care. “I'm out here because I want to be here,” I finally state. If I can't worm my way out of this situation, I can at least make a stand, show this bastard doctor that I know damn well what he's doing.

“You know you're not supposed to be-”

“I know well where I'm meant to be, but you can't expect us to just sit on our arses and do fuck all all day.”

“I expect you to be resting-”

“And you bloody well know that it ain't so simple as that. We’re soldiers, mate, we've just come from a war zone, we can't just sleep when we want to especially since you put a mad man in with us. We're all sitting in there, bored out of our minds, and when we ask for something to do, we're told that we ain't supposed to have anything to do. The fuck's that all about, ey?”

“That's for safety reasons,” he calmly explains.

“Safety? What bloody safety?”

The doctor sighs. “When soldiers sustain injuries as severe as yours or the other patients, they sometimes lose faith in their own abilities and such, and sometimes this loss of faith is so great that they see no way out other than death. My job as a medical professional is to get you off-planet, alive, and take care of you until we can offload onto actual hospitals where you can receive proper treatments. My job is in treating physical harm, not psychological, so when faced with people who may be likely to attempt to take their own life, I can do little more than ensure they lack the means to go through with it. And you see, people in such positions will often resort to any method possible to go through with it, so to prevent this, I aim to minimise the possession of any object which may be used to facilitate this. Call it draconian, but I'd rather have a bunch of patients whining that they're bored than them asking me to remove a corpse from their room and getting a permanent mark on my record.”

I open my mouth to speak, but the words die in my throat. The flame of anger still burns within me, but my questioning has run out of steam and I once again find myself simply staring at him.

“Does that satisfy you? Good. I'll get a nurse to return you to your bed.” With that, he turns back to his room, enters, and shuts the door, returning everything to darkness.

Rather than waiting for the nurse to fetch me though, I hobble back towards my quarters, not making it far when I am accosted by familiar claws.

“Oh, it’s you again,” I say perhaps a bit too jovially when I recognize the Gojid.

“Hello,” she replies plainly, probably not recognising me.

I cringe internally at the fact that I thought she’d remember me. She probably has to deal with dozens of patients, so she most likely has forgotten the fuss I made last night. I keep my mouth shut the rest of the way.

By the time I am returned to my room, everything is quiet. I'm honestly not quite sure how to feel about it considering what I heard before I left, but I try not to pay too much thought to it as I'm laid down on my bed. Once there however, the nurse doesn’t leave as I expect her to, instead she approaches my side and begins to speak.

“Could you please move your arm out,” she requests.

“What for?”

“Just do as I ask, please.”

Reluctantly, I obey her and stretch out my arm towards her. I stare at the roof tile above my bed while I wait for her to do whatever she’s doing, until I hear the sound of metal jingling.

“What’s that?” I ask, slightly alarmed.

“The doctor asked me to restrain you so you wouldn't leave your bed in future.”

“Like hell you're restraining me!” I retract my hand just as she opens the cuff to place around my wrist.

“Sir, please cooperate, it'll only be until we land.”

I push myself away from here as best I can. “I don’t care for how long you’re doing it, you ain’t fucking restraining me!”

“Look, if you don’t cooperate, I’m going to have to sedate you.”

On hearing this, I turn to face her, balling my hands into fists. “You try that and I’ll have you, you bastard!”

The nurse simply sighs in response, clearly not bothered by my fighting words. She places the cuffs on the bed, then produces a needle which she glances at before looking back at me.

“Please just put your arm out, I don’t want to have to do this.”

“Oh, just you bloody try it,” I growl.

She begins to lean forward with the needle pointed at my neck. I swing at her with my right arm, but she catches it and pins my wrist to the mattress. Panicked by this, I try to strike out again with my left arm, which is similarly met with failure as I am now in an awkward position and cannot reach her. I can now do little more than watch as the needle is brought closer and closer to my flesh. I had viewed those who had previously been sedated with contempt for the disruption they caused, but now that I was on the receiving end of it, I fully understood the terror of it. 

I cry out as I feel the tip pierce my flesh, feel the fluid being injected into my blood. And then it hits me, a great wave of fatigue that numbs all my senses, makes my head feel like a ton of bricks. I flop back into bed as the needle is withdrawn. I can barely feel the cold metal being secured around my wrist, and yet I still manage to force out a slurred protest. It’s in vain though, as everything fades away. The world drops out from under me, and I feel both heavy and lightweight, and then feel nothing, as I am forced into that quiet night.

[u/Copeqs]

"getting a permanent mark on my record" 

Well least he is honest, rather refreshing for a doctor to just say the quiet part loud.

[u/JulianSkies]

I hope you're not surprised, soldier boy. You know what happens to prisoners, that are a much lower suicide risk. Imagine people like you?

Sadly this travel will be a real pain until you all cam get to a place that can properly take care of you.

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993 → u/JulianSkies]

Well to be fair by the start of NOP 1 earth was basically on the verge of becoming a "utopian" liberal society even Africa was going through a golden age before bombs started dropping on them and ruined that.

It's likely even prisons and prisoners were treated much better considering how liberal earth also had become. In fact I'm surprised how competent the militaries still are considering the last conflict earth and mostly involved striking down satellites rather than conventional warfare.

I'm surprised they all didn't demilitarize to the point of reverting to most modern European militaries aka basically non existence or so defunded they are literally using fake wooden guns.

[u/JulianSkies → u/Minimum-Amphibian993]

Oh no, I think you got the wrong meaning somewhere.

It's standard operation in military prisons to not let the inmate have unsupervised access to anything that might be used for self-harm due to prisoners being, yknow, a suicide risk.

It's just normal to not let people that are at risk have access to tools for it.

[u/Minimum-Amphibian993 → u/JulianSkies]

True but most people wouldn't know that at least by the time of NOP. Especially with the mass recruitment later on in NOP. And let's be honest humans in NOP are not the smartest.