Chapter Thirty-Eight – Boo-Boos and Body Bags

Chapter Thirty-Eight – Boo-Boos and Body Bags

“It’s easy for the average person to forget that the idea of a dedicated emergency-response force is actually relatively new.

Which is why the Toronto Paramedic Services is now instituting obligatory firearms training into its basic paramedics training courses.”

–TPS Newsletter, 2028

***

The first thing I noticed was that my mech now had a scattering of scuffs all across its armour.

The small-arms fire hadn’t penetrated anything. At least, I didn’t think it did. There were some parts, especially on the side that wasn’t finished being repaired, that lacked the sensors that would let me know if anything was damaged.

While plugged into the mech, that entire side read as a stream of errors and unresolved issues. A few more holes poked into it would get lost with all of the other warnings.

I ran my metal hand over the surface of the mech’s ribs. A few bits of melted bullet clinked off the surface. That was going to need some looking at. I was pretty sure the stealth stuff would be mostly unaffected, but this might also mean a few tiny black spots that weren’t camouflaged when I moved.

“For fuck’s sake, I just fixed this thing,” I muttered.

Add about twenty-six hours to the repair time

“Just for these scuffs?” I asked.

And because of the damage to the not-fully-repaired leg. Some of the warnings you chose to ignore were highlighting issues within.

I cursed under my breath, but… yeah, that was par for the course. In an ideal world I would have finished everything, then ran the mech through some light testing before going back in and fixing anything that needed touch-ups. Then I’d be able to call it properly done. This was… not entirely ideal.

I turned away from the mech and took in the scene on the street. It was, in a word, bad.

When I arrived I’d initially been more focused on finding Rac and making sure she was alive. I discovered her firing blindly at a warmech designed to take on heavy riot protection duties. It had a cannon that would turn her into a smear and it was rolling right at her.

So I’d taken it out, and the other two light mecha. Ripping apart the gun emplacements on the APCs and technicals parked around here was quick and easy too, and that left nothing but some security drones and guys with small arms.

I’d made a bit of a mess cleaning up the mechs, but the place was already far past being just messy. I took in a few bodies. More injured.

A few mercs had crawled out of cover and were helping their pals. I had a lot of them giving me looks, but as long as I wasn’t aggressive, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t run just yet.

“Myalis, why aren’t emergency services here yet?” I asked.

Because there was a battle that took place which featured several large mechanised assault vehicles?

That… probably made sense, yeah. The average paramedic probably didn’t want to fuck with this entire situation, and I really couldn’t blame them. “Send them the all-clear. Let them know that there are two samurai on the scene keeping things clean.”

Sent.

“Hey!” I called out, and more than one head rose to look my way. It helped that Myalis had caught on to what I was doing and my voice was projected from the mech. “Called in paramedics. Try to keep the injured alive until they arrive. Someone check up on the dead, line them up over to the side there. And someone start clearing out the middle of the damned road. We don’t need to slow down the ambulances when they do arrive.”

There was a pause, none of the mercs moving quite yet.

“Well, get to it!” I snapped.

That actually had them jumping into action. It looked like there were maybe half a dozen merc outfits here, maybe more. Some looked like one-car teams. Just buddies that loaded up into a single van and rushed over. A few others looked like more professional outfits.

What the hell were they all here for? Fights broke out all the time. This was New Montreal, the police didn’t give a shit, and neither did anyone else. But usually that was between gangs, not mercs.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I turned towards the other side. The PMC guys were doing the same as the mercs. Moving their injured to one side. It looked like they had at least one medic in their bunch, and he was probably earning his pay right now with the number of injuries to tend to.

“This is a bit of a mess,” Gomorrah said as she came up behind me. I could feel her approaching.

My gear might have been fireproof, on account of how often I worked with her, but I still had a bit of exposed skin in this loadout, and I could feel the heat wafting off of Gomorrah’s gun still. The end was glowing, and there was a faint waver in the air above it.