Bad Day Here

When Machete arrived at Ryu Base, they'd been ushered off the helipad while doctors hurried Amber's stretcher off the Falcon, keeping rain off the biofoam plugs filling the holes an Energy Sword had burned through her abdomen. Kodiak and his team were told the surgery would take hours, and they should rest. So naturally, they'd loitered in the hall outside her surgical suite.
Hours bled from night to morning, and none of the doctors who came or went deigned to update the four faceless suits of battle armor lurking outside their workspace. Just when Kodiak started thinking their presence might be unsettling and he should order Machete to at least get showers, the chief surgeon, his brow shiny with sweat, allowed them in.
Computers hummed in shadows piled around the suite's walls, swept there by the glow of a cylindrical tank in the center. The neutral-bouyancy gel within turned light from inward-facing spotlights aquatic blue and suspended the figure inside as weightlessly as if she'd gone spacewalking without a suit. Frosted glass around the lower half of the tank preserved her modesty—and doubtlessly the scars her operation left behind.
"I'd never seen anyone in her condition maintain a pulse," the surgeon remarked. Amber seemed able to hear him, as her face—partly obscured by a breathing mask and floating strands of her black hair—turned their way. "Intestines severed, organs partly disintegrated, everything cauterized. Account for systemic shock alone, and she should’ve died. But, someone prioritized our use of the flash cloning facilities, so as long as brain activity continued, we kept working."
She should've died. Kodiak felt like he'd been the one impaled. But with Amber floating in a gel tank, how he felt didn't matter. Since he couldn't bring his lips to smile, he swiped two fingers along the rim of his SPI helmet's fishbowl visor in Spartan shorthand for one.
"Hey Amber." Dyne said casually, finding his voice where Kody couldn't. "How's life in a people jar?"
"Well," Amber's jaw worked behind the mask, the sound feeding through a speaker, "they floated my intestines outside of me when they stitched them back together, so I know the nutrient paste they feed me doesn't look any better mid-digestion."
Dyne laughed, "Gross."
The door behind them slid open again, and Erin Coney's slender figure pushed past the armored forms, head down over a tablet as she approached the tank. The veil of her dark hair drew back when she reached it and looked up at last.
"Amber. How are you feeling?"
"Like I know how a pickle feels." Amber shrugged, careful not to agitate the staples in her belly. "I'm fine, as long as I don't look down."
She threw in a laugh, but the nervous tremble underneath made Kody wince. Erin nodded slowly, sympathetically, despite the grave purse frozen on her pale lips. "Doctor Kiku's report says you'll recover, but even with Spartan regenerative abilities, it'll be a week before you're out of the tank. Sleep will help."
The pull of Amber's muscles around the mask told them she was making a face. "I can't sleep. There's too much noise."
"Noise?"
"All the grinding. You don't hear that?"
Erin raised an eyebrow, but before she could speak, Kodiak's green gauntlet appeared in her peripheral vision, index finger raised. A Spartan signal to wait. She turned to find Kodiak with his helmet tilted, turning slowly as if looking for sound waves. The others had frozen, too. He hadn't noticed anything either, but when a teammate told him something, Kody listened. After a moment, however, he glanced at both of them and shook his head.
Furrows in her brow creased Erin's all-business mask, eyes narrowing in concern. She nodded at the surgeon, then looked back to Amber in the tank. "This will help you rest. Your only job right now is to get better, okay? You won't be in fighting shape until then."
"I... " Amber started to protest, but realized Erin had undercut any argument she could make. "Okay."
"Wait, can't we..." Kodiak found his voice, but Amber's eyelids fluttered already.
“I’m sorry, Kody.” Erin said. “But there’s a war on. We need your team ready for its next op, and handholding’s not going to heal Amber any faster. You’ll be briefed at fifteen-hundred, I’ve sent bunk numbers to your HUDs.”
As usual, Erin left little point in arguing with her. She’d taken care of everything but packing their lunches. Morgan, Tara, and Dyne filed out behind him, as did Doctor Kiku, but Kody couldn’t help lingering a moment longer.
Erin continued staring up at the tank. With her back to him, she asked once the others were out of earshot, “You think it was your fault, don’t you?”
Kodiak tried to think of an answer she wouldn’t immediately shut down, but all he managed was to clench his teeth. He hadn’t been much good with words today.
Erin sighed. “Of course you do. You’re a thirteen-year-old put in charge of your best friends and Stacker taught you responsibility, damn him. You’re a pretty responsible kid for your age, not that you’d admit it.”
He felt his cheeks flush at being called a kid. “I was team leader, ma’am. I was supposed to look out for them.”
“Yeah, you were. But you were also supposed to have superiors looking out for you by assigning you targets that weren’t impossible.” Erin crossed her arms, the data pad sticking out under her right shoulder. Her voice turned low. “They gave you little-to-no intel, no resources but what you had on you, and expected a team with no field experience to eliminate an airfield’s worth of Covenant troops. Just saw SPARTAN on paper and expected miracles. It’s a miracle any of you made it off that island. I will find out whose big idea that all was, and when I do…”
“It was our mission to complete, though.” Kodiak said stubbornly. He didn’t want an excuse, and he didn’t want to feel fine with the way things were. Amber floated in a medical vat. Sure she was asleep, he whispered, “The doctor said she should’ve died. And nothing I did stopped it. Just… dumb luck.”
“Yeah… she should have. I read the report. There’s something I need to find out about that, too.”
Startled, Kodiak tried to make out her expression. Distorted in the tank’s curved glass, however, all he could see were her narrowed, suspicious eyes. When she finally turned to look at him, however, all he could see in her face was pity.
“I can’t tell you it’ll be alright, Kody. No matter how much I wish I could. We’ve been losing this war for twenty-six years and we’re out of places to run. Even if you do everything right, you might still lose teammates by the time this is over. What I do know is if you break down now, your team won’t have a leader, and that can only hurt their chances. Don’t forget your mistakes. Just don’t make letting them stop you be another.”
Kody gaped at Erin for a moment. She was absolutely right. He wouldn’t shift blame, but giving up was a luxury he didn’t have, so moving forward was his only option. That made him sure it was the right thing to do. “I… think that was exactly what I needed to hear, ma’am.”
“Good.” Erin squeezed her tired eyes shut. “See if you can pass it on, because I haven’t had any coffee this morning. I can’t do that three more times.”
“That’s what a team leader’s for.” He said, turning to leave. “And thanks, Erin.”
“Thank me after the briefing.” Erin muttered, turning back to the tank. “I just hope you’re ready for what’s next.”
Category:The Weekly