Tarik: Entry Level Warfare (15 page)

“He is doctor; he asked the lights be turned down.” Tilla replied.

“Not that it matters much; I’m done working on him. His talking is a good sign though.” The doctor moved to the side of Tarik. “Your body has been through quite the ordeal I’m afraid, Tarik. You were struck twice during the firefight. Do not speak, just blink if you remember the fighting.”

Tarik blinked with both his eyes slowly and with purpose. He remembered the fighting but after the injection is what he wanted to know about.

“The first shot hit you in the kidney; your
armor
 stopped that shot although it did produce some internal bleeding. That shot was not the main issue however.

“The second shot to hit you in the back bruising your spine. It would have left your legs numb for the most part but that isn't the main problem. The round you were struck with was a burrowing round. Are you familiar with them? Blink if you are.”

Tarik had no idea what a burrowing round was, he could guess but wanted to have it explained to him. Tarik stared blankly at the doctor urging him to continue.

“A burrowing round is delivered by a standard projectile. After the initial impact a payload with a small batch of microbots drill through armor and into your body. When the microbots lose power they detonate and release whatever they may contain. In your case the burrowing microbots contained a blister agent. Because of where you were stuck and your
armor
 already weakened by the first round the microbots made it to your right lung.

“You should consider yourself lucky. If the shot had hit you directly in the spine or over more to the left to hit both lungs you would be very dead. The quick actions of Mrs. Daze saved your life. Had she not
recognized
 the symptoms and given you the
neutralizing
 injection the blistering agent would have spread. Do you understand what I have explained?”

Tarik blinked hard with both eyes, he felt tears starting to form.

“The chances are that you will not live long with only one functional lung. Our parent company will likely have you separated shortly since you have become combat ineffective and there are no support roles for you to fill. I will let Dav brief you further, I believe he is
dealing with them
 now.” The doctor finished.

“Give him a sedative and keep him under until Dav comes to speak to him.” He instructed Tilla. “And tighten the restrictions on his vocal implant; his talking could break the temporary airway blocker. We don’t want the damaged lung to spread any residual agent to his good lung.”

When the doctor left the room Tilla came over to stand near him. Tarik had tears streaming from his eyes. Tilla stroked his forehead then muzzled against his face with her snout. Tilla let him cry some more before she put him to sleep. Just before dozing off he came to the conclusion that the doctor had shitty bedside manner.

Tarik awakened to the voice of Dav and Daze talking amongst themselves. He did not know how much time had passed but he felt well rested which was a small joy in and of itself.

“Shh. I think he's waking.” Dav said to Daze.

“Tarik, open your eyes young man.” Dav said to him.

Tarik did as he was told. He tried to say hello but words just wouldn't seem to come out of his mouth.

“Glad your back. Daze is here with me, I will let her speak first since our matters are going to be private.”

“Hey Tarik.” Daze said in the easiest voice her high energy body could muster. “Listen, the flight crew and support teams wanted to let you know how much we appreciate what you did down there. Flight Two didn't make it but everyone else did. Even Rye wanted to say how happy she was that you were there. She is a little pissed off that you coughed blister agent on her face but the damage was only cosmetic. And really it's not like you could do much damage to that face.

“We know you military guys are supposed to be badass but that was some full on crazy shit covering us by yourself.” Daze had force herself to calm down; she sat on her hands to help rein herself in.

“You did great and you were doing it all as your first mission which you didn't even know about. That takes some real balls Tarik. You didn't even hesitate when you were walking backwards like Bang Bang Bang and then the Fighter was over top of you! Then the bike came in like Rmmmm and you threw the explosive and hit the guy in the face so he was like ahhhh” Daze lost her control and started with her sound effects and hand motions she was about to spin around with the pretend gun until Dav put a
hand on
 her shoulder.

Daze sat back down, crossing her legs and arms. “So we want you to know that we really would love it if you stayed around. Not just like don't die and all that, but like stay with us on the ship. You kicked some serious ass down there.” She leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

Tarik couldn’t speak but his hands were free again so he tried to signal to her what he wanted to say.

He pointed at her, made a motion of the blood coming out of his mouth. He made a tugging motion on his chest then an injection into his arm. He hoped he was conveying his thanks that she saved him with the injection.

“Yeah I saved you with an injection, that’s nothing compared to what you did.” She stood up and smiled at him. “I really didn't know you could have steel testicles but you dropped them right on their foreheads.”

Daze’s face turned serious, much like her father's. “Scout Three wanted to tell you that he will never forget that it’s because of you he has something left of his lover. He’s really torn up but he’s thankful that we have a body to have a service for and a face to kiss one last time.” She was starting to cry, so she turned and left.

Tarik didn't think he did all that well. His form was sloppy when the firing started. He didn't account for Rye being so slow. He could count an easy twenty mistakes without even watching the footage. More than anything he didn't ask the right questions. I guess in the eyes of the grease monkeys just firing a rifle made you a badass.

Dav made sure that Daze left before he put on his serious face.

“We have some very important decisions to make. Let me preface everything I’m going to say next with this. That was some next level courageous and brave shit down there. When the time came you saved the lives of your crewmates. You put aside personal differences with Rye and protected her when your friends were already safe. She slowed you down but you stayed with her. Half of this ship won’t
recognize
 it but that is the mark of a true warrior, your selflessness is now the quality I will remember most about you. It was also pretty damn stupid. Lamb is furious with me for sending you down there and not redirecting the combat team to assist but there wasn’t time. I let the contract get the better of me. Then I encouraged you to ignore his second rule putting yourself in danger to protect my daughter. It was foolish of me and I hope that you can forgive me.”

Tarik blinked, he would have gone willingly no apologies were needed.

“Now for the business side of this. Lamb and I sent the footage to our parent company and TRDR along with our notes. TRDR said that your part had nothing to do with their contract and did not have any further comments on the matter. Black and Cook Protection Services, our parent company, admitted that you had done very well for a new hire. They agreed that you should stay on but that you need to pull all of your scores up to a seventy average before they can sign off on you. This means you’re on probation and out of the active contract pool.

“They will give you a severance package and give you a basic lung replacement. If that is the route you want to take nobody here will blame you.”

Tarik stared at Dav, They wanted him to quit?

“I pushed for them to give you a middle management level lung replacement which would get you back on your feet soon. They denied that but did say they would pay for twenty percent on an executive level lung replacement. Executive lungs cost around one point one million points, which I seriously doubt you have.”

Tarik was in shock, he didn’t know anyone who was that rich.

“I didn’t think so, so Daze took it upon herself to run a collection drive for you. Everyone on the ship
passed on
 their bonus for the last contract. That got us to two hundred seventy thousand points. Scout Three is giving you all of the inheritance he received from Fighter Two and everything he had saved up; minus two thousand points he is using for Fighter Two’s funeral services. That brings us up to five hundred ninety thousand; I assumed I could count you in for sixty thousand points. Still well short of our goal but close enough.”

Tarik stared at him questioning what he meant by ‘close enough’. These types of operations didn’t offer payment plans for insufficient funds. Executive implants were reserved for the people who could afford them.

“Tarik if you would agree to a two year exclusive contract with me I will pay for the remainder.” Dav stood up. “I want you to think about it; Doc won’t put you under again. Think about it and I will be back tomorrow.”

Tarik didn’t want to think about it, he already knew he would stay. If everyone on the ship was willing to help him out he knew he could trust them more than any rig crew he’d find next. He felt at home here, he wouldn’t run out on them.

Tarik had been sleeping for far too long and needed to get back to work. He was still restrained in his chair, with only his hands free. That didn’t mean his mind was locked in place.

Tarik pulled up the videos from the contract. He poured through each video feed of the combat team. He took notes as he saw fit and came to the conclusion that if they had executed perfectly they could have completed the operation forty five seconds faster. It wasn’t that they had done badly; he just wanted to know how much better they could have been.

His next video feeds were from the flight teams; their movements didn’t make any sense to him so he just moved on.

Finally, he pulled up the rescue team footage. He didn’t want to relive his own mistakes just yet so he went through Rye’s footage first. There really wasn’t much to say; Rye was slow, her movements were cumbersome, she had no training for battlefield situations and it showed. It would have been fair to say that they would have been
better off
 without her there. Daze however performed like a complete professional. She knew her choices and executed properly. She could have been faster back to the drop ship but she also hadn’t done any combat training he was aware of. Overall with some help daze would do well as a battlefield medic or something similar.

Tarik pulled up his own footage last. He was not pleased with himself. He did have a few good moments. He managed some really terrific shots and he could not have thrown that hand explosive any better. On the bad side some of his other shots went too wide to even say he was aiming in the right direction and his footwork could have been better. The group on the mountainside who shot his kidney were obviously untrained forces; it was honestly a lucky shot. The round that hit Rye was just a ricochet from that same group. He got to the point where he turned to get to the door and he couldn’t find the shooter who hit him with the burrowing round. He replayed that scene seven times and none of the known forces fired that shot and there was no muzzle flash to indicate where it had originated from. It was perfectly timed, if it weren’t for the small shake of the drop ship ramp it would have been a kill shot.

He sent the file to Lamb to get his opinion. Maybe he could point out his mistake and shooter. Lamb had years of experience and could read this battle much better than he could.

Tarik grew bored quickly. He pulled up his log to see if anything was scheduled for him over the next few days. His log read that his schedule was free and there was an optional meeting for Fighter Two’s funeral service.

Tarik really wanted to be there for Scout Three, he sent a message to Tilla asking for her to help him there. Tilla replied shortly thereafter stating that he was restricted to the chair until the doctor cleared him. In other words, he was going to be stuck there for a long time.

Tarik wanted to send a message to Scout Three
apologizing
 for his absence but he wasn’t really sure what the proper etiquette is for this situation. Tarik had never lost anyone that close so the idea of it was too foreign for him to relate to. After mulling it over he decided just to send a short message since Scout Three probably had his hands full and wouldn’t have time to read some long winded message.

Tarik didn’t have anything left to do he just looked to the ceiling and thought “So now what?”

Tarik spent the night watching entertainment videos. He normally didn’t watch those types of things but he really had no other options. It was either watch video or go to sleep and according to the ship timer he’d been asleep for three days.

He'd managed to get another hour of sleep in before he woke again. It was just in time because he had a visit from Tilla.

She played it off as a health check but she could have done that from remote by just getting the read outs from the pod. She told him about her studies to become an actual doctor and how she thought about going back home. She told him about her abuse as a pup which is one of the reasons she acts the way she does. She had been disregarded in her own culture because of things
out of her
 control. It seemed very cruel to Tarik but again this is an alien culture so he could not project his morals on them. She told him about her want to go back and show them how well she had done in spite of them.