Protocol

by WCLaine
Tags   drama   hurtcomfort   action   relationships   war   gallowshumour   foundfamily   | Report Content

A A A A



 



Chapter II
Protocol







Monday, 10th December 2040
En Route - West Ward
Border between the Eastern Czechian States & The New Prussian Empire



Four days later, Prussian military forces from Dresden had passed through the Deadlands on their scheduled patrol for marauders. They found lumps of flesh wearing tatters that had once matched their dull brown-green camo uniform. By a charred patch on what was once presumably a jacket, it was found to be Bloodhound Squad - ‘Rota A’,  which had been deployed to retrieve the defecting Russian Chief of Staff from Jihlava after he had fled his homeland with a price on his head. He had made a deal with Herman Schröder, one of the New Prussian Empire’s most affluential Generals to exchange State secrets in order for asylum. However, he hadn’t been as lucky as to be Private Petra Adler or the man she nursed during their frozen Hell. Nobody ever seemed to be as lucky as an Adler when catastrophe hit. That, taxes, and death, were all undeniable consistencies.

Six of their comrades had been killed after their departure from Hamburg in the early morning of the following day. The Russian Chief of Staff, his political party of three, and two personal guards, plus fourteen from the other side were all consumed by the fight in the early winter morning. That made twenty-six – Dead. Twenty-six people died that day for one man's petty greed. As far as anybody knew, nobody from the other side survived. Four of which were found to be kids below the age of sixteen when the Dresden patrol did a full inspection of the location. There were only two survivors. One of which was Sergeant Stephen Weber, the man who had ragged Adler out of the way of the initial explosion caused by the mortar trap which blew their tank over. He had suffered serious shrapnel wounds to the back of his left knee, and his upper back where his lung was pierced in a secondary assault during their second day out in the wilderness, as well as a handful of cuts and bruises due to impact wounds. Adler herself – already called a demon for her lineage, her family’s apparent luck with avoiding direct misfortune, and her own ruthless skill which went way past competence was found bloodied head to toe. Enemy bodies made up a sandbag fort around the ditch they had used as a camp on the third day of radio silence. She was lacking any serious injuries bar a dislocated shoulder, but was battling hypothermia and sheer willpower to stay constantly alert for over seventy-two hours had taken its toll on the already ill-tempered woman.

It took over three hours to pry the bayonet from Adler’s hands. The refusal was solidified when one of the reinforcements mentioned that the girl would have to see a doctor herself when they returned to Hanover. Not many things threatened Adler’s intrepidity but apparently, medical care did. The squad medic guessed she had injured her left shoulder and went to check her over en-route when the blonde lashed out with the same weapon she’d used to gut their shared enemy. A scuffle erupted in the canvassed bed of the battered hummer truck and the exhausted girl gave one final last-ditch attempt at telling her comrades to piss in the wind. Weber was gurgling in and out of consciousness on the floor and Adler’s left shoulder was indeed of little use to her. However, the limb was promptly popped back into its joint when two Privates found a little too much joy in slamming her into the metal frame of their transport for the trouble she was causing. Repaying the closest of the pair with a punch to the face with a fist full of nylon strap she'd been holding onto which had snapped off in her grasp to stay upright, his nose crunched upon the direct contact. While his friend toppled, the other knocked her out with a smack to the back of her head with the butt of his rifle.

Arms pulled back and her face was shoved into cold corrugated metal, the grit and dirt from previous rounds of confrontation irritated her scraped skin. Grip on the truck frame slackening, Adler’s vision spun and her legs gave way.  “Motherfucke-”

The five Dresden soldiers situated in the bed of the truck watched as the wily girl hit the deck like a sack of shit thrown off a cliff. The first Private held his nose as he bent forward. “I’m gonna kill that bitch when she wakes up.”

The medic tending to Weber glanced up only to scoff. Fiddling with the hazardous first aid surrounding his patient’s upper back, he pressed his fingers against the raw flesh. “Do you even realise what she has done?”

“She broke my fucken nose is what she did, Fischer!”

“She performed surgery in the wilderness. Given, it is gruesome and she made a mess of it, but she saved him.” He looked down at the body by his knees. “If she can do that and stop a USSR ambush crew by herself, what makes you think you’re going to get the upper hand when shes in her right mind?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“It took two of you to restrain her, and she had a dislocated shoulder.” The medic in his late twenties grunted and went back to his job of trying to save a man half-dead whilst in the constant jittering of the truck about to give out at any moment. “What the fuck do you think you’re going to be able to do when she wakes up and realises that you’re the one who tried to pull a rapist-hold on her?”

“We’re getting off one stop before Hanover infirmary anyway.” The Private kept his eyes on the dancing flap of the felt covering the back of the hummer.

“Getting off a stop early seems all too appropriate for you, Bartel.”

“Are you trying to say something, Corporal?”

The addressed medic snorted a brief chuckle at the man easy to goad and went back to tending to Weber.


 




Wednesday, 13th December 2040
Hanover Military Hospital, Germany



The oddity of escaping such a situation unscathed was unheard of in most cases. But there she sat, on the crusty tiled floor of one of the military infirmary wings. She had been sat there for three whole days until Weber regained consciousness. The first thing she said was, “I can’t stand you, either,” her voice low, crackling in her dry throat as she spoke. It was the rebuttal to what he had said not long before he lost consciousness amongst the mess which blind-sided them just over twenty-four hours into their mission.

Her pale hair was scraped up with rust coloured patches here and there from being unable to remove the dried blood properly in the hand sink she had tried to use on her initial bathroom break. Her face was clean but marbled purple and green. The trademark eyeliner she wore faithfully heavy, encircling the eyes that were cast blankly on him the bed-ridden Sergeant.

“’Making me wait ‘round like this.” A lung full of breath, something long and unsuspecting from the chain-smoker rumbled lowly through the cool air. “Do I look like I don’t have shit to do to you? Just what kind of superior are you supposed to be?” The second verbal assault was a rushed, “I really need to pee.” After returning from grabbing the bedpan of the empty cot to Weber’s right, the tall female unbuckled her uniform belt. “You put me in a really fuckin’ bad spot here, y’know?”  The last remark was told as she stared at him from a couple of feet away, half-squat over the metal dish while relieving herself. Without even blinking, she began to relieve her bladder in some poor soul's bedpan.

Weber – like any other person coming out of surgical anaesthesia – had no idea if he was hallucinating, or if he’d died and been placed in some other dimensional wacko-world to repent for his past sins. It was too strange.

Finishing her business, the woman dipped her hips twice in quick succession and pulled her regulation pants up to her waist. “Let’s hurry this up; I’ve not showered in ten days – I’m pretty much a new form of bacteria. I feel like a ball of gritty grime, and I’m pretty sure my kidneys are eating themselves because I’ve deprived them of alcohol since the day I patched you up.”

Weber nodded once to show he was listening, not sure what else he could do at this point.

The blonde mirrored the action, but it didn’t seem to register as an actual action to her. It was just the same as when she had cut the shit when the worst had set in back in the Deadlands. The sharp expression on her round features constricted. She leaned a certain way when she was serious. Weber found this out in their short but eventful time together in a ditch surrounded by enemy corpses. From what he’d seen, the girl was right-handed, but she often passed her tasks back and forth between both regardless, and whatever was at paramount meant the forearm of that side would lay across her thigh and the elbow would point inwards towards her groin. It was an odd tick and as a recorder of hundreds, thousands, he couldn’t help but wonder where and how it had come about. There was certainly no physical aid which came from it. If anything, it made her taught posture look twisted and in turn, weaker. However, it didn't seem to cut her electric reaction time. Weber read her notes before the Balakin mission, and he had now seen her work in the field. When she talked casually, honestly, she made that weird shape with her body. As sharp as she was with her words, or her gun, or the blades, she seemed to have an odd way about her when that posture intervened.

Wriggling her fingers into a fist, outwards, and then back again, the blonde took in the nuances of the medical room as her joints cracked. “I’m telling you now before the Brass sends some pompous arse to sell you a spiel about ‘new opportunities’ or whatever the fuck they say to guys made cripples on jobs like that one,” she tossed her head to the side with a grunt. Heaving a breath and clearing her throat with a hack of her gut, she grimaced at the hospital smell; the spilt blood and guts, the gangrene and cries for their mothers they’d tried to bleach away, she pointed down at the man casually, like he wasn’t her superior. “You ain’t ever going out into the field again, Weber.”

Weber had never aspired to be one of those guys who whizzed from place to place, chasing wars and fighting the action-filled fights. He neither aspired to become a leader, nor a mysterious Special Ops Agent. He had dreamed about it, as a fantasy, as most guys in the military do. But he had a decent head on his shoulders; he knew it was never going to happen. Not only would he be denied due to his less than exceptional physical standing, but he also lacked the skill and confidence to rein his peers into line. Or maybe that was just her. At that point, Weber wondered if anyone had ever managed to knock the blonde down a peg or two, and if so, what they had been like. All of her blood relations had died before she turned eighteen and he knew that orphaned military brats got lashed hard and they accepted it or they were dropped into the world of daycare called paper-pushing - that future was the worst kind of all, he thought. Probably, maybe. That woman who had just pissed in a cripple’s bedpan didn’t seem like she would listen to a word from the mouth of God himself, even if he threatened to smite her down right then and there.

Pulling the carton of cigarettes from her breast pocket, she stared at the sparse amount left in the narrowed, bent and broken box. “They’re probably gonna try an’ pay you off with a measly sum. If I was you, I’d milk them for all they have after what you’ve been through. Even if you don’t like the idea of it, get them to give you some cushy desk job – but not some shitty filing BS. You have the secretarial experience and now some field-work, so ask to be placed under a ranked officer.” Regardless of knowing the man didn’t smoke, she scooted closer to the low metal cot and held up the packet without looking up from lighting her vice. “You’ve got the experience and trust of all of your previous CO’s, so you could probably get a job working pretty high up the ladder.”

Weber took one of the last three white sticks in the battered box. Placing it to his lips, he straightened his head and looked forward, past his only known guest. He wasn’t looking at anything in particular, but there was a support beam directly at his eye-line which housed the patient charts. Unluckily for him, he had 20/20 vision and could read each and every line right off the bat. Compared to the codes the higher-ups used for their toys of mass destruction and clandestine rendezvous’ with their mistresses, the medical symbols and shorthand were child’s play. A black ‘O.o.C’ was beside his name. He had seen it before. He knew what it meant.

Leaning over, Adler reached over to light her superior’s cigarette when a nurse passed. She screamed bloody murder at the
sight. “He has a punctured lung!” The cry which rang in both of their ears was to last at least a week.

Stuffing the busted up petrol lighter under his pillow, Adler scrambled to her feet. "I expect that back as soon as you're on your feet." Grabbing Weber’s shoulder, she gave two firm slaps. “Remember what I said. Don’t let them take the piss outta ya again.” Standing up straight, she towered over the nurse about to make an attempt at shoving her along. Holding her hands in up in brief understanding, the blonde shooed the nurse out of the way. Stopping at the foot of the cheap metal frame of the narrow bed, she looked back to the man. “I’m sorry I can’t ever repay what you did for me.” Her expression changed into something he’d never seen.

Weber held his free hand up at chest height. “I’m glad you won’t have to,” a cough caught in his lungs and the fluid rattled like lottery balls.

“I’ll come ‘see ya over the weekend if I’m not being whipped, Sergeant Secretary.” The small hands pressing against the backs of her hips pushed her towards the exit. Looking down on the petite woman over her shoulder, the taller female glowered. “I’m injured too, y’know?”

“Remove yourself, Private Adler.”

“I get it; stop jabbing me, ya' goddamn sadist!”

Watching the woman’s back dowsed in a gammy tank top, the wounds from their previous job and surprising inkwork left uncovered, Weber scoffed at the tenacity he first thought was uncalled for. Immediately regretting it, the man thought about how about it could have ended very differently. “Take care, Adler.”

Just as his partner by default was shoved out of the medical corridor, the doors opened to reveal the faces of his mother and younger brother. He could hear his step-father ask about compensation and his stomach turned. His younger brother scowled through the glass-topped swinging doors. He was looking straight at him. Weber knew exactly what was said by the look on the face of the eleven-year-old.

Thirty seconds after the woman had been shoved out of the medical space, two men in the renown version of the military uniform walked into the space stinking of blood, antiseptic, and bleach. Stopping at the foot of his bed, the first of the pair handed him a Manila folder. “Due to the events which were unforeseeable in your last mission…” The plastic expressions burned into Weber’s mind as the words melted into reality. He recalled what the woman had said on the first day of radio silence. He got mad then, but now all he could do was laugh as much as his body would allow.

“Quoting protocol…” Amber eyes stared off out of the span of windows to his right. “It’s always the same.”

“What do you mean, Sergeant Weber?”

Bullshit.

 

 





Updated: 30th May 2021 - 22:06


 

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