The heart rate monitor was beeping erratically and the green line moving across it looked like a child's drawing of waves - short, even and with no discernible pattern.
The doctor was moving various scanners over the patient and kept glancing to his left to look at the readings on the automedicae.
"What the hell happened?" the doc asked.
The two Orlocks looked down at Ian, his chest torn apart. They were covered in blood themselves, most of it Ians.
"You heard how that new mining concern that is causing all the fuss just opened up a new cave with a bunch of spook growing in it?"
"Yes," said the doc.
"We just went out to harvest some spook."
"I guess someone didn't want you to do that," the doc replied looking over the results of his scans and activating a surgical automaton. Three probes simultaneously went into the craters in Ian's torsos and the doc watched the monitor as they began fishing pieces of shrapnel from inside the dying Orlock.
"Well there were some Eschers there."
"There were either a lot of them or they were pretty well armed," said the doc.
"It seemed like both at the time."
"So how did this happen," the doc said pointing to the red ruin before him.
"Ian thought he would catch the girls out. I heard him tittering to himself as he ran up on our left flank."
"He did pretty well, actually. He was being shot at by one of the girls on a catwalk above as he advanced but that didn't slow him down much. I saw two of them hugging cover off of a pylon just behind a patch of spook."
"Thing is, Ian didn't care too much that they were hiding. He saw them and that was all he needed. He primed one of his charges and chucked it at them. I could hear his laughter as I saw the package flying through the air."
"It landed and I heard one of the Escher say, 'oh, fu-' before there was a terrific explosion. As the sound stopped echoing you could hear Ian giggling. Some shooting went his way but he managed to get off another charge and again there was a massive explosion followed by more laughter."
"You know those sounds that you can place any time, distinct, not mistakable for anything else?"
"Yes?" said the doctor.
"A bolter makes a sound like that, the staccato sound of it firing following by a roar of the jets and then the resultant explosion."
"I heard that sound and then I heard Ian stop laughing. The girls were all over us after that. The boss went down, his servo arm managed to absorb a good bit of the plasma burst that hit him, but he didn't get up after that."
"We found Ian like this . . ."
The monitor suddenly sounded a single tone, the beeping had stopped being replaced by a single beeeeeeeeeeepppppp.
The doc moved pretty quickly, he started flooding Ian with chemicals, epistim, levostart and dobugo. He pushed a button and the surgical automaton retracted its probes and a compressor automaton moved into placed and started pushing on Ian's chest.
"Jeez, doc, is he going to make it?"
"I don't think so," the doc said.
There were two little blips on the heart monitor before the line went flat again. Blood was gushing out of Ian before the doc flipped the switch and the compressor stopped. He looked at his chronometer and noted the time on a parchment.
He handed the parchment to the Orlocks looking on.
The briefly looked it over, nodded solemnly and handed over the amount of credits listed on the bottom.
"Sorry I couldn't do more," said the doc.
"That is life in the big city," said one of the gangers, "Ian knew the risks."
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April 19, 2024, 09:24:23 PM
