Chapter 4
I sat beside the hospital bed, staring idly at the heart rate monitor.
It beeped and beeped and beeped with a gentle and stable pulse, while my brother rested in a hospital gown, covered in an octopus of feeding tubes and vital monitors.
An induced coma would keep him alive until he was healed and stable.
He would be getting a cybernetic prosthetic, so long as there was enough supply, but the impact and shrapnel had damaged more than just his leg, and they needed him unconscious to heal.
The Video Sphere in the hospital room was permanently tuned to the news and played images of the attack on endless loop.
We’d been in peace time up until yesterday.
This aggression was completely unprompted.
The reporters were going back and forth on speculation, trying to determine whether the target had been Medella U or Sebastian Takeyama’s state-of-the-art Shinka Unit.
It would make sense to attack our primary and most prestigious medic training facility to acquire it for themselves, but then, it would also make sense to try to destroy one of the most powerful weapons Mictlan had ever built, with an up and coming pilot who could be their biggest threat one day.
Being the son of someone important, there were plenty of potential motivations in either direction.
Though that was only half of the drama of the whole thing.
Setting aside the extremity of breaking the peace treaty by attacking civilian protectorates, the other half pertained to the fact that the Empire had shown up with their own new-tech that had potential to overpower most of our ordinary units.
It was both an act of aggression and an announcement of a new weapon, and I didn’t know how the Democratic Territories would survive if Gehenna used their far greater resources with their planetary mines to match and surpass our technology.
The Empire owned Earth and Mars, after all.
The only planetary base that the Democratic Territories had left was the Saturn colony.
They’d given up any claim to Mars and Earth in the treaty, and bases like Uranus had long since been abandoned or destroyed without the resources to upkeep them.
On top of that, Saturn wasn’t exactly a useful environment, and was essentially little more than a space station itself.
In essence, our nation was comprised entirely of scattered, allied space stations, half of which were civilian Protectorate states like we were at 005, and the other half of which were launched by Mictlan after they gave up access to Earth.
Would we be able to stand up to a threat like that?
I kept staring straight ahead, looking at nothing, while vacant thoughts crowded my mind. The news continued on to an official statement by President Sterling.
“Make no mistake: An attack on our protectorates is an attack on all of us, and this offense shall not be taken as any less than a declaration of war.” He began with some generic drivel.
The implication that, despite changing our name and flooding us with their people, we weren’t technically a part of Mictlan would have been funny if it wasn’t so offensive.
Maybe I was just being bitter, since they did technically save us in the end, but to act as though we were still a separate entity simply with their support was a stretch.
“We will stand up to the Empire and assure our people are safe.” Clearly you did a great job of that already.
“We need everyone in the Protectorates to band together, so we can put a stop to this evil that threatens our future, our way of life, and our wellbeing. I’m calling on all able bodied patriots to go to your local recruiting office and fight for the nation we all love. ”
I shut off the broadcast, not wanting to give my brother any additional stressors while he was trying to rest, then I squeezed Vann’s hand one last time before I headed home to the dorms for the night.
I was emotionally and mentally drained, and I needed to get some rest if I was going to be of any use to anyone.
Plus, I wanted to get a change of clothes and charge Vann’s CHRONO for whenever he woke up.
All of his favorite audiobooks were on there, and it might be good to play something that made him happy while he rested.
I’d always been told coma patients could still hear sometimes, and the nonstop news and day-time drama reruns would be enough to make him want to pull the plug himself.
It would be a mercy to let him listen to some high fantasy or mystery novels or his usual rotation of medical nonfiction and spoken text books while he rested.
He could catch up on his reading and stay sharp. That’s what Vann would care about.
I’d have plenty of time to catch up on my lessons too though, since school would be cancelled for a while as they rebuilt the facilities, hired new teachers, and assessed the full extent of the damage. One less stress for him. He would sooner risk death then miss an entire semester.
Unfortunately for me, however the Matchmaker’s office survived the attack, and my dating schedule would only be pushed back until the dust settled. I probably had, at most, a week to breathe before I had to worry about my own life again. But at least a week was better than nothing.
I tapped in my key code on the entry panel to enter my dorm room, and the metal door slid open with a quiet whirr.
I had my own pod in the dorms—the first time in my life I’d ever had a space all my own—and tonight, I hated it.
I curled up on my bed, but every time I closed my eyes, all I could see were explosions, the lifeless eyes of my classmates, blood soaked grass, and that hulking, glowing Shinka locked in stalemate with what we now knew were called Ghuls.
I wished I could thank him. If Sebastian Takeyama hadn’t intervened, we’d both have our ashes floating in space right now.
I pulled my knees in tighter, wishing I could have been the knight instead of just another damsel in distress. We wouldn’t need as many medics if there were enough heroes, so no one was getting attacked in the first place.
I opened a book on my own CHRONO, and I played the sound just loud enough to try and drown out my own mind. It was the only way I could sleep lately. The idle passages were the one thing that distracted me from the ever present knowledge that my brother may never wake up.
Or that even when he did, he wouldn’t ever be the same.
I couldn’t help, I couldn’t seek revenge. All I could do was sit here and cry in my own bed, that only existed because someone else had saved me.
It took four chapters before I was finally able to lose myself to sleep. Though it wasn’t long before my dreams shifted between both new and old nightmares.
First thing in the morning, on the way to the hospital, I stopped in to the men’s dorms to get Vann’s CHRONO. I tapped in his key code, which was, predictably my birthday, and entered his dorm. To be fair, my code was his birthday, so we were both predictable.
His whole room was about as anal retentively perfect as I’d expect from my big brother, aside from the scattered medical supplies from when I’d taken care of him the other night.
His cleaning bot had already scrubbed away any traces of blood from the day, but cleaning bots only polished, they didn’t organize.
I walked into the bathroom, where Vann’s CHRONO was resting in its dock charger. I reached for the device only to realize it was flashing green with the indication of new messages.
Did he have a girlfriend? I shook my head. Vann had always said he wouldn’t even try to date until he was settled and graduated. He was such a “no distractions” kind of guy, that he barely had friends outside of me. The ones he did have…
I shook off a chill despite the perfect climate control, as I recalled the long list of the fallen.
Bart, Junior, Nate—when he woke up, he was going to have a lot to process and a lot to grieve.
I didn’t know that anyone he knew was left.
We’d lost at least six-hundred people so far, though the full death toll was still being counted, and bodies were still being found in the rubble.
Such a number may have seemed small in the grand scheme, but they were six-hundred capable medics, six-hundred potential soldiers, and six-hundred lives whose dreams would have to be realized in their next reincarnation.
But knowing that, who else would be messaging him? Just because he wasn’t dating, that didn’t mean he couldn’t have been… talking to someone. If he had anyone left who cared about him, it would only be right to tell them he was in the hospital.
My curiosity won out under the guise of doing the noble thing.
I tapped the activator on his CHRONO and scrolled through the messages on the small holographic screen that projected from the bracelet onto the back of my hand.
Something, something hot singles in your space station, a sale on genuine freeze dried earth fruit.
No potential girlfriends though. That’s disappointing.
I cleared the notifications until I came across one that was highlighted in a red light and blinking at a rate that signified urgency.
The sender? The Democratic Territories of Mictlan.
I hovered my finger over the message for several seconds before I inadvertently connected with the display and expanded the alert.
Though I read every word, my eyes jumped to some very specific highlights.
Words like “Draft,” and “report immediately,” and “call to duty,” and “Ignoring this message is a federal offense, punishable by law.” Most notable of all was the meeting place listed as “Astaroth Academy” and the line “All new recruits are expected to report to their local municipal building within forty-eight hours of receipt,” giving just enough time to say goodbye to family, wives, or girlfriends.
I stared at the note long and hard.