In The Shadow Of Giants

The doctor

Gloria Jones played in the background at a dusty bar out on Alpha 7. One of the more obscure mining outposts, where a man sat with the same augmentations that Gabe Johnson himself had. He was slumped over a red plastic counter, drinking a soda while his comrades drank liquids with slightly higher amounts of alcohol. He stared down the liquor cabinet and licked his lips, but he pulled away and we began his interview.

He inspected me with his cold dead eyes and huffed. "You sure as hell came a long way just to find me."

Finding people is a specialty in my line of work

"Well then what do you want to know, since I really can't turn away someone who goes this far out to find me." He sipped at a black liquid that sizzled and popped while the white foam slowly died leaving only black.

Tell me about The Trenches

"Well at least it's a question that still has some trace of originality." he rolled his neck and his neck popped on the second revolution. "Where do you want me start? First deployment or when they began to start dropping those bastard creatures down in with us? Or when I started to augment unconscious soldiers so that they would survive the night."

Let's go with first deployment and make sure to tell the whole thing.

"What's this interview for anyway? You vultures always come to ask about my past medical techniques. Not about the war."

It's a history book

"Right, so you come to a war criminal to help write the book."

You're not my first stop.

"Right...so why come to me? I'm just a criminal." he looked down onto his arm. Underneath the pinkish mesh was a mechanized reminder of his effort during the war. "Fuckers. They used me to design all of their field exo suits then threw me under the bus after this whole thing was over." He looked to me again then all of sudden a look of terror struck him. "Ok never mind you heard that...Let's get down to Harpersfield." He looked toward a poster on the wall of a women almost naked with only her breasts covered by the sides of the jacket.

We came in by HALO jump. Thirty thousand feet was the apparent height that their long range artillery stopped working, so we took our chances and began dropping down bulldozers, tanks, weapons, jeeps and MRE's. It was a realy a great example of cooperation between all of the nation states that hated each other's guts. They all came together because of panic.

How long did it take for you all to deploy?

Doctors and medical personnel were the last human cargo to do a halo drop around the DMZ thanks to a bunch of arrogant politicians wanting to keep the peace..Skewing casualty reports, making sure that press couldn't get to the scene. They were all scared of an apparent great panic. The one thing you can't hide from the public is cargo and if it's human the press had the right to report it...And use common sense.

What happened to the other doctors?

They were on the field...but they were civilians, all of them used to having the luxury of unlimited amounts of resources to get jobs done. Ineffective. They really failed when it came time to ration the meds... so much so that they had to send in real combat docs.

What the difference between combat doctors and hospital doctors?

Well Rationing was one thing, We were faster, we were better with plasma and bullet wounds, and all around we could do a job and ignore all the screaming. Unlike the hospital doctors. They were too used to quiet waiting rooms and kids who are scared of getting an itty bitty shot.