A Brave New World

I feel something hot and sticky slide down my right eye, with a groan I slowly open my eye quickly noticing I can only see through my left eye. “Shit….” I breathe as what I assume is blood continues trickling down my forehead. I slowly move my head in the dimly lit cockpit, the cock pit seems to be buried under a mound of dirt and the only light I can see is from the various warning lights and buttons along the damaged control board.

Suddenly I feel an intense pain in my leg and look down to see that a large piece of metal has sliced into my left calf. “Fuck!” I reach to my harness and unbuckle my self ignoring the pain in my leg and lean over to Lax.

“Get up damnit” I growl shoving her roughly. She lays there unmoving still so I shove her again even hard and her eyes quickly snap open.

“You basterd!” she yells before punching me in the nose, I cry out as I hear the snap of my nose breaking.

“Ah Fuck”

“Oh god, I’m sorry Noll” She says quickly unbuckling herself and moving over to me.

She seems to fair the crash much better then me, a small cut on her right cheek and other then that she is in preteen condition. Here eyes move to my leg and the metal sticking into it and she gasps.

“One sec Noll… I’ll get that out and fix you up” She says before running behind my seat before I can tell her to wait.

“Well Fuck. my leg is fucked, we crash landed and we lost radio contact with the fleet several hours ago” I think to myself as I hear Lax rummage behind me looking for what I can only think to be the first aid kit.

“Got it!” Lax yells in triumph and returns to me “Alright Noll, I got to remove the metal and you have to keep still an-”

“I know what to do Lax” I say cutting her off “Now give me something to wrap around the top of the wound so I can slow down the bleeding”

“Alright… No need to be mean” she mutters handing me a clean cloth.

I take the cloth and wrap it above the wound and tie it into a tight not, I grit my teeth in pain and nod my head to her. “Hurry up and do it”

She nods and firmly grips my leg and the metal. “1…..2…..3!” she yells as she rips the metal from my leg causing blood to gush out and a quick rate.

“Fucking stitch it!” I yell through clench teeth.

“There to much blood! I can’t see it” Lax yells, panic in her voice.

“Just clean it off!”

She takes another clean cloth and begins brushing all the blood away, but it returns just as soon as she removes it, quickly turning the once white cloth red. “There’s to much..”

I grit my teeth and pull tighter on my cloth tell I can no longer feel the pain in my leg. “Do it now” I breathe feeling light headed.

She grabs a new cloth and clears the blood, then she begins stitching the wound close, i feel tears come to my eyes from the pain of the stitches and slowly the world around me dims.

I slowly open my eye and find myself laying on my back and a green roof over my head, I slowly lean forward but gasp in pain and fall back to my back. I look over and see an IV bag and the tube going into me and right next to it I see a blood bag. I immediately put two and two together and figure that I’m in a medical tent.

So I yell “Someone fucking help me!”

Someone who I don’t recognize comes into my field of vision, I can see the medic symbol etched into there sleeve and I relax slightly. “How bad am I medic?”

“You’ll live Captain, but you need to stay down for a few more hours before you can get up and moving. Your luckily that the metal missed your arties and bone”

“And my eye?”

“It’ll be good in a day or so sir”

“How many wounded?”

“Twelve wounded and twenty five dead”

“And how many is that alive?”

“We haven’t finished the full head count but its roughly forty seven alive”

“And how is our equipment?”

“Sir I don’t know, but all your questions will be answered when I clear you to leave. Now I’m going to administer this pain killer. And by the time you wake up you should be in the clear to leave”

“Wait hold on a moment I’m not hav-“ I begin to say as he takes my arm and places the needle into place and pumping the clear liquid into the blood stream.

“Sorry sir, but this is for your own good”

I attempt to speak but I suddenly feel to tired to utter a word and again my vision dims “Fuck this shit” I think to myself as the world once again goes dark.

When I wake up for the second time, the blood bag has been removed and the IV bag is still slowly dripping. I slowly sit up and look around the tent. Theirs five other green cots much like my own and two of them are occupied by patients.

One looks like a pilot, he is missing his arm from the elbow down from the looks of it and has a large bandage around his head. The other cot is occupied by a solider that has a large bandage across his chest, to me it looks like he was shot.

I slowly move my legs to hang off the cot and I look around for the ass of a medic who knocked me out. I spot him off in the corner of the tent cleaning some cloths from the look of it.

“Oi, Medic” I call

He turns towards me and smirks “Did you have a nice nap sir?” he asks sarcastically

“I did for the matter, now where are my boots and combat gear. I need to get out of here”

“Of in the corner sir, jut let me get you some crutches, we can’t have you put any stress on your leg but since you’re the highest ranking officer. I need to let you out early”

“Praise the lord” I mutter hating everything about doctors and medics.

The Medic picks up my equipment and boots before moving over to me, he places them next to me on the cot then walks out of my sight as I place my boots back on with some difficulty due to the giant cast on my leg. I then strap my tactical belt and turn just in time to see the ass of a medic returning with two metal crutches.

“Here you go sir. They are tuned to your height and weight. Also do you need the course on how to use them?” he asks a little to innocently.

“No I’ve used these enough times” I respond while taking the crutches from his hands and placing them just under my arm pits so they rest against my sides before standing with a grunt.

I quickly begin hobbling out of the medical tent, before leaving I flip the medic the bird and continue out the flaps and into the open. The area all around me is filled with various tents and crates. I turn left not knowing where to go and pass several soldiers playing cards.

As I continue hobbling around camp I get the eerie feeling that I’m being watched by someone or something. Turning around I see nothing but soldiers doing tasks or relaxing in the sun.

“Captain! Captain Noll!” An all to familiar voice yells form behind me. Turning around I see Lax rushing towards me a smile on her lips. She comes to a stop right in front of me and looks up at me. “Glad to see you awake!” She yells in my face excitedly

Blinking my eyes I respond “Tone it down Lieutenant. Also, where is the command tent?” I ask hoping she knows.

She stares at me blankly for a few seconds “Oh god she doesn’t know” I think to myself. She then points right next to us.

“There Captain” she says in a teasing manor

Sighing and resisting the urge to die in a hole I hobble toward the command tent and step inside all eyes suddenly on me. “Sup?” I say as calmly as possible. There was utter silence, you could have heard a pin drop it was so quite.

“Well Is anyone going to answer me?” I say hating the silence.

A large African man who looks familiar steps forward. “Well Sir. What’s up is that there’s no radio single, no satellite single and we’ve spotted movement far outside the camp”

I slowly think of the words to say while trying to remember the mans name, and decided to do the obvious thing. “Besides me, who is the highest rank in this room?”

Everyone looked between each other and two people stepped forward, a shy looking woman apart of the ground forces that had long hair hiding her eyes and sunglasses on and a beat up man who wore Special Forces urban gear and had his right arm in a sling. I quickly noticed both are seconded lieutenants.

“See something you like” The man speaks up as I stare at the two. “Yeah I already don’t like him”

“Not at all Lieutenant, just trying to understand how I’m possibly the highest rank here”

He scuffs and steps towards me as if trying to intimidate me, he easily stands a foot taller then me which is quite rare since I’m six foot three. All the while the girl tries to move back into the group.

“Well, Sir” the shit begins “The major died in the crash, three other captains died and the only two who are here are you, and the other pilot who stranded us in the middle of nowhere”

I raise an eyebrow at his antics before hobbling around him to speak to the other commanders which were made up of mostly sergeants. “While I ignore the kid. Can on of you tell me the situation we are in. With more detail”

After some awkward silence a female sergeant with bandages over her head speaks up “Well sir, we have five working vehicles, both planes are in a wreck and we have exactly forty nine troops but thirty seven are fit for combat” she finishes.

“And our supplies?” I ask

The same sergeant speaks up “We have enough food and water to last us half  a year, we have enough gas to travel from one side of the states to the other three times in each vehicle and we have enough ammunitions for a group triple our size” she finishes

I nod as I look over the crude map of the surrounding area “And what vehicles do we have”

A different voice awnsers “Two state of the art APC’s both equipped with anti personal guns, a Humvee, a M7 Bradley and a troop transport which we plan on using to carry supplies”

“And How many troops can we fit in the APC’s minus the operators?” I ask looking up from the map.

“About ten per APC, Sir”

I nod me head. “Alright. Since we do not have the slightest idea where we are at, we shall assume this is hostile territory. I three shifts of guards posted all around the base camp, and I want to have teams scavenge what ever they can from the wreckage”

I hear a scuff behind me which comes from none other then the brat “What do you think we’ve been doing while you where having your nap”

I sigh before speaking “I need to make sure that these things are done, also we all know we may run out of bullets so I want us to scavenge the metal in hopes of making some close range weapons”

Then the shy lieutenant speaks up “Um… Sir” she says unsure of herself.

I turn to face her “Yes Lieutenant”

“My squad was transporting a whole… armory of weapons like that… there’s swords, shields, spears and crossbows”

I scratch my chin wondering why command would have those sent with us, unless they knew we may need them. “But why would we need those?” I quickly push the thoughts aside and speak up “Then hand those out, I want everyone to at least have a sword or spear with them, it’ll also help to conserve ammo”

Again the brat scuffs “And why should we be stock to close range weapons rather then guns?”

“Because if we don’t need guns we have something better then a combat knife, and if you haven’t noticed guns are pretty loud”

And just like that someone yells something and we hear gun shots. “Fate must hate me” I think as I grab a random side arm from the table not caring who it belonged to and hobble out of the command tent.

Soldiers are rushing around as guns shots are continued to be heard. I clear more throat and bark a order “Prepare for Combat!” with that I quickly hobble towards the area where the shoots where fired.

As I reach the edge of camp there a large crowed gathered around something. “Alright Move it! Let me through” I bark most of the troops ignoring me. “I said Move it!”

A corporal turns as if about to say something then gawks at me and shoves the guys around him getting there attention. Within moment there’s a clear path to some kind of creature.

I slowly hobble over to it and take it in. Its something from a story book being roughly the size of a rhino but has the body of and head of a lion, a scorpion tail and two bat like wings. I stare at it for a few more second then it growls.

“Fuck this” I say as I quickly point the side arm I took at its head and let three round into its head causing brain chunks and blood to go spray all over me and several others. “Nasty, just fucking nasty”

“Alright! Who shot at it!” I call out

Slowly a private steps forward, his face is paled and I can tell he is in shock from how he jerks forward “I… I did sir..” he says

“Did you see anymore or where it came from?” I ask in a neutral tone

“I..it.. came from the west sir…”

I nod before shouting out “Some take him to the medical tent! And I want a scouting party to go out in a five kilometer radius all round camp! The rest of you burn this damn body!”

With that said I quickly hobble back to the command tent getting that funny feeling someone is watching me. I enter the tent and look at several shock faces. Before anyone could ask I raised my hand silencing them then say “Fucking monster. That’s what happened”