16.Sept.06
The past won't stop haunting his future.
The
Only Choice
Or maybe even ‘nightmare’ is misleading. Memories, perhaps. I recognize many of the screams, after all. Not all, thank Primus, but many of them. Even the memory capacity of a regular computer fails to record every pleading for help or shriek of agony. For that I am glad. There are too many already lodged in my mind. The other Predacons sometimes call me a slow thinker, but I didn’t used to be. Not very smart, or just unable to concentrate around the din of screaming? Give me enough time, and I can invent things Tarantulas marvels over and Blackarachnia envies. For that, though, I need undisturbed time to think and work, and I have a tendency to avoid that when I can. The screams become clearer.
There are times that I can’t remember if I’ve ever left the battlefield at all, the screams are so dense inside my mind. I look down expecting to see another victim of an electronic discharge field on the table, or maybe this time someone who had lost limbs to shrapnel. We won’t be able to save the limb, of course. Not enough supplies for that, and there’s only enough CR Tanks for the wounded officers. Of those we have too many, but no one grudges them the life-saving machines. Unlike the Maximals, our commanders lead us into battle and are the last ones off the field of war when we’re forced to retreat. That’s how it used to be, at least. The higher the rank, the less likely they are to actually do that anymore. It’s okay, though; out here on the front there aren’t many of the highest rank. Medical aides are assigned to dealing with the CR Tanks and their occupants whenever they can be spared, but usually anyone with the briefest medical training is needed for the flood of wounded who don’t have the chance at being saved by the machines. Standing orders are to have our recovering patients who haven’t been discharged from Emergency yet care for the officers who limp, drag, or are carried in. The medics can’t be spared for them. Our patients are just plain warriors.
I slap a sealant patch over the worst of the rips in this one’s armor, trying to stop the flow of mech-fluid through the gash. Two of my aides are struggling to hold him down while he shrieks with pain. His optics flare, and I reach up from securing the patch to catch his face and force him to look at me.
"Stay with me," I order urgently, but he jerks again from the pain, his face pulling away as his back arches. Helpless to stop his agony, I turn back to the shrapnel tracks scarring his torso. "Cauterize!" I yell at the last member of my surgical team as the patient convulses again and one of the scraps of metal imbedded in his upper thigh pierces a major fluid line. She pounces on the gushing wound immediately with a welding torch, and there is no hesitation as she prevents his life from bleeding out while condemning the entire limb to amputation. Once the fluid line was burned shut, the patient’s leg would lose most of the mech-fluid supply and also cut off the normal flow of mech-fluid to the fluid pump. It wasn’t fatal right away, but another surgical team further back in the Predacon lines would have to lop off the leg and reroute the major line to another connection to restore the flow. We hope limbs lost like this could be rebuilt later, but this is Emergency—we try to save life, even at the cost of limb.
"INCOMING!" someone shouts over the intercom, and my team reacts instinctively: two of the aides grab the supply carts standing on either side of the surgery table, and the last aide and I hunch over the now-offline patient defensively. A sound like the air itself is shrieking angrily, and then the ground rocks like it wants to throw us from our feet. Despite bracing ourselves, the aide who had dropped the welding torch to grab a cart lost control of it and the patient slides from underneath me. The cart tips over with a crash, but the aide abandons it to dive for the wounded warrior as he falls to the floor.
"They’re getting closer," the aide who still has a cart says shakily as he steadies it before ducking down to pick up as many of the spilled supplies from the other cart as he can. "That was right on top of us." Those supplies were his responsibility, more so than the patient now on the other side of the table from him; I know because I had specifically ordered him to be in charge of the carts. The supplies would save many more patients than the one we labor over desperately at the moment.
In vain.
"Slag! Vital signs fading—gone!" His head pillowed in her lap, the aide had her hands pressed to the warrior’s chest, blocking wounds and monitoring his fluid pump at the same time. It’s useless and I know it, but I start resuscitation anyway only to be interrupted:
"Direct hit on Level 3! I repeat, direct hit on Emergency Level 3!" the intercom screeches, and we all freeze in horror. Level Three is small, made up entirely of surgery rooms for cerebral cases. Only ‘bots with serious head injuries dealing with reconstructing the delicate circuitry are sent there, but Emergency has so many cerebral cases that every surgery room on that Level is packed with patients. A direct hit there would have—! "All available medics to Level Three! The Maximals have broken through the front ranks--all personnel: BEGIN EVACUATION OF EMERGENCY!"
I flinch, then look away from the dead patient before me. It’s useless to try and bring him back to life when we couldn’t afford to move him with the evacuation, and the Maximals, despite claiming to be more merciful than the Predacons, wouldn’t hesitate to slaughter any patient left behind in the medical facility. It had happened before. "We’re available," I say grimly, and the aides nod. The one who had cauterized his wound only moments ago puts the warrior’s head down gently and rises to jot down his time of death as the others load the supply carts and I sterilize the table automatically for the next surgeon who might have time to use it before we evacuated. "You," I point to one of the aides standing behind a cart. He’s the one in charge of the supplies; I have no idea what his name is. All I know is that he’s good with organization, and we need as many of those kind of ‘bots as we can get where it counts. "I want you to help with the evacuation. You," I point at the aide writing down the time of death, and she stares back with wide optics, "take his place. I’ll make do with only two aides. MOVE, people!" I bark as I run out the door, and the two aides rush after me wheeling their carts. We join other medics and their aides heading for Level Three, still spattered with mech-fluid from their last patients but still trying to save lives. That’s what we do, here in Emergency.
The Maximals will never understand that. They say we Predacons are merciless killers who only want to conquer the universe. They say they’re the brave protectors of Cybertron. They say a lot, but I’ve learned not to listen to propaganda. My faction says a lot about us, too, and I KNOW some of the slag they spout isn’t true. It helps inspire fear and inspire loyalty, but it’s not necessarily true. One of the things our leaders say about us is that we kill prisoners; from personal experience, I know that’s pure propaganda to inspire fear in our opponents. In Emergency, our orders are to help anyone who’s brought to us. We’ve gotten groups of prisoners before, and I’ll admit that it shakes my faith in my faction when the Maximals see medics and beg us not to kill them. It always helps that we never do.
...except when we have to. We’re front-line medics. We’re the Emergency medics. We’re not supposed to kill; we’re supposed to save lives. But I remember one time a Maximal posing as a wounded prisoner of war took out his guard and started to slaughter the nearest patients. He managed to kill 13 patients, damage 6 more, and was finally brought down by 3 aides. Four of the damaged patients died later from their injuries along with all three of the aides. Maximals? Are they not merciless killers, too? Those three aides were studying to become medics because they have the same problem I do: we’re pacifist Predacons. We can’t approve of the war, yet we believe in the Predacon cause…so we do what we can to help the victims of the war stay alive. We’re a small fraction of the Predacons, but our faction DOES acknowledge that we exist and are a vital part of the war. That’s how we get permission to treat Maximal prisoners. We’d do it anyway if it wasn’t included in our orders.
Maybe the Maximals treat Predacon prisoners the same way, but I’m really not sure. Emergency moves with the front line, and when it advances we see what the Maximals leave behind. Our medical facilities that the Maximals had taken just days before are still full of the patients we didn’t dare move. The difference is that they’re dead, now. Shot, blasted, bombed, stabbed—maybe it’s just front-line scare tactics, but I’ve never heard of Maximal propaganda including THAT.
It’s war, though. We all do things we regret later by the time it finishes. The Predacons and Maximals eventually came to an uneasy peace, and I remember than the peace treaty included surrendering certain hot spots to the other faction’s justice. One of those spots was part of the front lines…which included Emergency. I stood with my fellow medics, our aides assembled behind us, and we were judged by a panel of Maximals for ‘war crimes.’ War crimes? In Emergency!
The screams of dying patients still ringing in my audios, I stood before those Maximals as the senior medic and laughed bitterly. I hadn’t been the senior medic until a last missile, reclassified as ‘friendly fire’ since the treaty had gone into effect only cycles before, had scored a direct hit on Emergency’s facilities. It had taken out a meeting between most of the senior staff that I had only missed it because one of my surgery patients had developed a clot in a fuel line. I told the panel of judges that as the medical staff whispered behind me, frightened and uncertain of their fates, and then I told them who the patient had been: a Maximal I had released from Emergency right before the Maximal soldiers had come to round up all of the Predacon staff. War crimes? Yes, we were fighting a war, but our enemy was neither Maximal nor Predacon, and we would never give up our fight until we dropped on the battlefield, saving as many lives as we could on the way down.
The Maximals talked among themselves quietly for a moment, then let us go. I walked out of there still hearing screams. Even after the last patient was discharged from Emergency and the facility was shut down; even after I took up the study of science I had abandoned during the war; even as I tried to rebuild my life. The screams were waiting in the silence. They slowed my mind and dulled my reflexes. Anyone who had known me in Emergency would be shocked by the changes in me.
Especially since I’m involved in the Beast Wars, now. Combat was a reluctant last measure for me, and I think it still is. But one day I met a Predacon whose dreams were as relentless as mine, although less nightmarish. Megatron told me about them, and I listened, and the screams receded before his voice. He had a dream for the Predacons, and if I would come with him, nothing would stand in our way…he swayed me with that, but I am loyal to him for reasons different from what he believes. Slag, they’re probably different from what all the other Predacons believe!
I stand by Megatron not because I really believe in his cause anymore, or because he’s a great leader, or because I can’t stop him. There’s a little of all of that, true, but I’m loyal because it’s the only choice I have. I was an Emergency medic, and my job was to save lives. Listening to Megatron, once upon a time, I looked that responsibility straight in the optics again. The screams of my patients echo in my mind even now, but I accepted that responsibility once more because if I didn’t, who would? This Predacon trusted me, and I knew I could influence him through that. Maybe not a lot, but more than anyone else could. If he succeeded in his goal, the universe would be open to his conquest…and he is a ‘bot with no mercy. I am loyal because I wish to stand at his side, acting as his mercy. The universe is full of lives, and if there is the slightest chance of saving some of them, I will risk it. How much worse would the nightmares be if I didn’t?
The scorpion didn’t even look up from the computer screen in front of him. "Is there a CR Tank available?" he responded almost absently.
The pterodactyl frowned. "Um…no. C’mon, just guess!"
"Three severed fuel lines and at least four major surgeries. Five, if you sliced through the shoulder joint and opened up the circuitry," Scorpinok said automatically, and he didn’t appear to notice that the pterodactyl was now gaping at him. "Why?"
Terrorsaur closed his mouth and shook his head incredulously. "It’s a JOKE, shell-head. A joke!"
A puzzled look came over the second-in-command’s face, and he finally looked up at the other Predacon. "A joke? How is that funny?" he asked.
"I was gonna tell you that—oh, nevermind!" Terrorsaur threw up his hands and turned away. "You’re a slagging idiot sometimes, shell-head," he muttered just loud enough to be heard but softly enough that he could claim he was talking to himself if Scorpinok pushed the issue.
Scorpinok merely shook his head, the confused look slowly fading from his face as he went back to working on the computer.
We fight the Maximals here on this planet; I hate the necessity, but I understand it. At least there are enough CR Tanks here for all of us. If one of the Predacons dies, it won’t be on my table. I know, however, that if Megatron succeeds we’ll need another Emergency up by the front lines again. The Maximals will probably never know that it’s there then because I’m here now.
It’s not loyalty—it’s a choice. I recognize the screams in my mind, and while most of them are Predacon, some of them are Maximal. What I do now is for all of those victims of war. I will stand by Megatron so I can do what I can to save those in his way. It’s my choice.
The only choice I have.