Hope you enjoy the read! Thanks again to the folks who let me use refrence too their characters.
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With a sigh that spoke volumes she asked to the world at large; “What must they have been thinking?”
All around the jungle flora rises, green, lush and vibrant with life and staggering humidity. A hazy mist woven between the trunks of ancient vegetation like a rug, binding the dense creepers and ferns into one impermeable façade of life. The wall of greenery muffled almost any kind of noise, besides the infrequent and distant rumbles. Each one made her tense up, freezing for an instant, as she slowly worked her gloved hands over heavy kit back slung at her side. The muffling of the jungle only served to give the humming insects center stage in the audioscape of the small clearing, the varied tones and whines of their beating wings all competing to be their most maddening drone possible. She brushes away a clump of sweat soaked flame red hair from her face, leaving a smear of blood from her gloves along a cheek as she does so, adding to the mess of her person. Her fatigues sleeves rolled up in the humid warmth, sweat drenched nonetheless, and muted caduceus patch stitched to her shoulder as she rummages around within her bags, the largest of which bearing a huge red cross on its front flap.
Every motion she makes is calm, practiced and smooth while she talks to the prone figure laying unnaturally in the crushed remains of a large fern. The quiet rattle of equipment on her harness, the hollow thunk of pill bottles shifting as she moves the only unnatural sounds in the small clearing.
“Remember that frozen ball of rock, some misbegotten colony out in the back of beyond. Gods I hated that place, and the same knows why anyone would want to leave the core worlds and strike out there. Crazy fucking colonist.” Another rattle of gear and the snap of a case being opened, “I remember finding Jason, ya know Tik-tok, right? Afterwards though… No one should have to die like that, frozen and alone on some worthless rock, half buried in the snow. All for some worthless antenna.” As she speaks there’s a metallic click and a hiss, a quiet noise jarring the natural hum and buzz of the clearing. Its followed by the soft groaning from the man on the ground, the gentle rustle of his boots trying to find perches on the jungle floor to rise. Her hand pressing down on his chest she chides him, “No, no, you’re not fit to do anything, just lay there.” She tosses the auto injector away with another little metallic noise, “It’ll be all right in a few, the pain will go away, just lay there.”
Two loud rumbles make the leaves in the taller trees tremble and sway, a small cascade of hoots and hollering let loose from the landscapes residents, disturbed by the thundering that continues. She looks over a shoulder at the narrow path between the walls of jungle creeper and tree trunks, biting her lip as she brushes another tangled clump of red hair over a shoulder. “Then there was the cluster fuck a few months back. Wake up, no time to pack, not much more than the guns in our hands and the barest smattering of supplies in our pockets.” Wiping the sweat off her brow with one hand while the other digs into the small blue cases laying on the ground beside her she chuckles, bitter and caustic as she draws out another injector, giving it a shake before pressing it to the man’s leg. Marine issued pants, nicer than her own and markedly less dirty, twitch as the little metal tube hisses its load of drugs through the fabric and into the prone figure. “Luna lost an arm down there on those beaches, taking dune after dune. You know she writes once in a while, the prosthetic is working out. She’s a lot happier after her transfer went through. No more straight through ‘em, right up the hill, driven head first into the teeth of it, ya know?” There’s a faint ghost of a happy smile as the memories rise and drift away as there’s another slow rattle of gear. An annoyed sigh as she pulls out another long narrow blue case, thumbs the snaps off it with another quiet click. “She doesn’t laugh as much now though.” She shakes her head, causing another clump of hair to stick to her cheek again.
“It wasn’t fair when Cliff got shot,” she grits her teeth, fingers pausing mid reach for the next injector. She takes a long shuddering breath and then with enough force to make anyone watching wince, stabs it into the side of the man on the jungle floor, “Eight. God. Damned. Times.” The subsequent groans and twitching brings her back to things, “Yea, sorry,” She says with palpable bitterness, tossing the spent medical injector beside the other two. “Bad practice that… Still. He should never have been in that fucking doorway to begin with.” She sighs again, “But we got his heart started, again. At least there’s that, right?” She scrubs the heels of her palms into her eyes and finally looks down at the man she’s sitting beside. Armor looking shiny and new in contrast to her own battered and scratched chest plate, his tunic still looking fresh and despite a prominent splash of blood, almost clean sharply pressed. She could even smell the soap from here, over the dirt and the blood, and the reek of sweat everyone garnered on this tropical hellhole. Another sigh, resigned and weary, her hand sightlessly reaching back into the small blue case, fingertips blindly feeling their way over the contents until it they find what they’re looking for.
There’s a last deeply drawn in breath and something that was a cross between a cough and choked snarl, a moment of silent pause with her jaw clenched and the muscles visibly straining before she snarls out, “But you’d know all about that, Sir.” The last word caustic in her mouth and spat out, a snarl after all the calm tone as she reaches over to the prone figure, free hand waving away the feeble arm of the downed man as it gropes drunkenly in the air for her wrist. His hand is easily pushed aside by the woman as she places the head of the injector on his chest, just over the lip of his armoured throat collar. She looks down into his wide eyes and fish gaping mouth. “You got a fucking Medal for it,” the tiny hiss of the injector the only sound in the world between the two of them, his face going red and flushing deeper crimson, lips and fingertips blue as the clotting agent rushed into his system, just above his heart. “Each,” a dull click as the empty tube is triggered again, “Fucking,” another click of mechanical helplessness, small and forlorn besides the quiet choking sound from the officer on the ground, “Time.” The last word is almost a gasp in its own right, anger, shame and relief mingled into one raw sound.
"I wonder what they were thinking..."
Eventually the silence of the moment is invaded by the distant rumble again; the keening buzz of the insects that seemed to pause to watch the tableau play out rising again to a fevered pitch once the moment had passed. She tosses the fourth injector on the ground, bright purple warning bands along each of the injector’s sides glinting merrily in the light that slips in around the jungle canopy. The words ‘Clotting Agent’ stencilled in typical Marine block font along their sides as she rises to her feet with a sigh and walks a few steps away from the twitching figure prone on the ground. She picks up her helmet, pulling a radio head set out of it and tugging it onto her head before buckling the domed armour on under her chin, “Athena, online. Where is everyone?” She un-holsters the compact submachine gun from her armour and shoulders her way down the jungle path, “I was busy, I’m here now, where are you guys and which one of you knuckle draggers is hurt?” As the rumble of other muffled blast make the canopy shiver and dance she can be heard saying, “Yea, the LT didn’t make it.”
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