The security for the Trauma Team tower was the strictest I have ever seen thus far in the world, although a fair bit of it was unobtrusive. There was a small antechamber when you entered that I thought looked old-fashioned until I realised it was full of scanning devices when two security guards in full combat armour and automatic weapon met me at the end.
I introduced myself, "Hello. I'm Taylor Hebert; I'm a prospective new hire here for a base visit."
One of the guards looked at the other one, who glanced down at a tablet and said, his voice slightly distorted by his helmet's speakers, "E-mag pistol, knife, kerenzikov, cyberdeck and monowire on the left side."
The first guard seemed surprised if I was reading his emotions through his armour correctly but nodded and said, "Ma'am, you'll have to leave your pistol and knife with us down here."
I had expected that, and I complied but what surprised me was when the guard said, "If you'd roll up your sleeve on your left hand, ma'am?" I blinked and did so, and he placed a small bracelet right over my monowire's output slot. It kind of reminded me of one of those slap bracelets Emma and I used to play with back in the mid to late 1990s, except this one looked much more substantial now that it was deployed on my wrist. I touched it testingly, and it refused to budge from its location, and I got a light static shock, which jolted me, almost causing me to jump into the air.
I got the impression the guards were both amused at my antics, "Accessing the private subnet on the premesis is prohibited. Also, do not attempt to take that bracelet off while in the building; it has countermeasures which range from painful to lethal." I gawked at him, my concern obvious as it had been set off by me barely touching it. A soft, muted chuckle from him, and he continued, "Don't worry; everyone always tries fucking with it, so the first time, it is really easy to set off. It won't shock you again unless you really try to take it off. You could do full contact sparring wearing it."
That was unusually specific. Did prospective new hires often do full contact sparring, I wondered? They gave me a visitor's pass and told me that I was only cleared to go up to one place, one of the bases near the middle of the building with an attached helipad, and any divergences would be investigated. I was honestly surprised I wasn't met down here and escorted up, but perhaps that was a sort of a test in itself.
I thanked them and started to walk away, overhearing, "... don't often see a girl that young with a monowire... say nothing about the booster, some kind of child ninja program ya think?"
Followed by a slightly distorted "... pah, you never know what age someone is these days. She might be a baba, older than both of us..."
Baba?! I knew enough Japanese from living in my building to know that meant old hag or something like that. Whatever it meant, it definitely wasn't complimentary. Eyes narrowing, I ignored what I overheard and continued on the bank of elevators. Entering one, I glanced around, not seeing buttons.
I tried the obvious solution, "Floor 32, please." That caused the elevator to start moving, and I nodded, pleased with myself. As it got off, I consulted the floor map next to the bank of elevators and made a soft humming sound, considering which direction I should go. It looked like this floor had mainly six quick-reaction bases in it, along with some administrative offices. We were about halfway up the side of the building, with the Trauma Team tower reaching 70 stories, and I did notice on the drive here that there were helipads on the side of the building about halfway up.
I was visiting base Bravo today, and I tested the unfamiliar phonetic on my tongue briefly, "Brah-voh." Although I had a fair number of memories from Alt-Taylor, and this phonetic alphabet wasn't completely unfamiliar, especially after working over ten months in a ground ambulance where it was occasionally used on the radio, I still had to curtail my first reaction to say Bet.
Glancing around, I found the correct path to take and moseyed my way over to the entrance of the base; the door had a giant B on it, and someone had taped a small piece of paper under the letter that said, "At least we're better than fucking Delta."
Amused, I checked the time. I was instructed to get here at the shift change time, but I was quite a bit early. There was a doorbell, but having worked in EMS for close to a year now, I wouldn't particularly want to be woken up if I had managed to get some sleep, so I was cautious about pressing it. They might all still be asleep. When I was working, I would only set the alarm to wake me fifteen minutes before shift change, and it was still forty-five minutes till right now.
I decided to just put my visitor's pass over the electronic lock's sensor, testingly. A brief green light and a clunking sound indicated it allowed me entry. Smiling, I stepped in without announcing myself. I had some idea of how the base was going to be set up from what I looked at online, and the first room was set up in a sort of living room style.
Each base was set up as a small house with five bedrooms, a kitchen, two bathrooms, a supply room, an armoury, a small conference room and a living room. The living room was sort of big with multiple couches and chairs, and at the far end, I could see a tunnel leading past a glass set of sliding doors to a helipad where an AV was sitting. How cool! I wanted to go inspect it, but I highly doubted my visitor's pass would let me onto what was probably a more highly secured area, namely their air operations area.
These off-going workers weren't really even supposed to deal with me, I was supposed to meet and greet with the people starting work today, so I just sat in one of the cushy chairs in the living room, out of the way, and waited.
About twenty minutes later, activity began to happen in the base. Two people arrived simultaneously; they looked like pilots and didn't pay me any mind, and they went together into the small conference room. They were joined by the two pilots that were still on duty, and I eavesdropped on their conversation, very interested.
One of them began speaking, "We only had three calls last shift; the AV is flying well, no squawks at all, except the co-pilot's side attitude indicator that you told me about last night. That's still MEL'd, but the techs tell me they will swap it out this morning..."
"Good... fuel and ammo status?" asked one of the oncoming ones.
The second of the off-coming pilots speaks up, "You got seven-seven-five kilos on the fuel and four-zero-zero each on AP and FMJ on the Goncz. Not sure what the door gunners are at. And, of course, we haven't used an AGM in weeks , sadly, so your heavy ordinance is just how you left it yesterday."
The oncoming pilot nodded and said, "Nice. That's the ground pounders job to keep the SAWs loaded. But I'll check when they come in, anyway."
I was interrupted in my droppings of eaves by a man looking quizzically at me; he was in pyjamas of all things, "... wait... who are you?"
I pop to my feet and smile, "Hi! I'm Taylor Hebert. I'm here for a base visit. I got here a little early, so I decided to just sit and wait until the oncoming crew came to relieve you, out of the way here."
He gaped, shocked, "You mean... you didn't ring that ghastly doorbell and wake us all up?! Hahaha... preem, you must be a paramedic." He stepped forward and offered his hand to shake.
I shook his hand in a friendly manner and nodded, "That I am. How'd you guess?"
"Because every pilot and grunt always rings the bell on their base visits. Only people who have suffered the slings and arrows of emergency medicine know not to disturb the poor fools if they might be asleep. You get my vote just on that basis alone," he said, but then he glanced at me up and down. "You look a bit young, though."
"I'll have been working 911 calls here in lovely Night City for a year now in a couple of months. The hiring manager was impressed with my grades and test scores in the Paramedic program at the NCU Health Science Centre," I told him, but letting him assume what he wanted about my age. I wasn't even seventeen yet. The hiring managers didn't seem to care about my age at all, but it was a bit of a tender spot for me. Was I too young to be doing all this? Maybe, if I didn't have superpowers.
He nodded, "That's my alma mater, as well. I got my medical degree there." Ah, so he must be one of the Senior Med-Techs. They weren't always full doctors, but it wasn't that uncommon, either. The assistants were universally paramedics.
I asked him, curious, "Did the company pay for your tuition?"
He nodded, "Yeah. Worked here for two years, and then they offered. Had to sign a twenty-year contract, though, but it's not that bad. Definitely worth it. My pay is way more than double, and I can always pick up shifts in any hospital in town as a contractor on my days off, five hundred eddies a day doing that, minimum. Sometimes double that if they're really hard up."
I wasn't sure why I was so opposed to that, although twenty years was a lot better than Kang Tao's offer of thirty. It was an option, though, and probably the safest of all of the options. I would keep it in mind.
He motioned to me, "Come stand by me; when the two come in to relieve us, I'll introduce you. I'll also get your paperwork for the liability waiver and see if there's a spare MCU in your size you can use today."
Huh? What? "Liability waiver, for what? And what's an MCU?" I asked him, curious.
"It basically says that if you die today it ain't the company's fault, even if it really is the company's fault. Anyone that isn't a patient that flies on one of our AVs has to sign one," he said simply, "And MCU is a Medical Combat Uniform... I'm sure you've seen us responding to calls if you worked 911; it's the armoured flight suit us Med Techs wear. Completely different from the ACU!" The last had the feeling of an inside joke.
Wait, what? "I thought that was just supposed to be a 'base visit'," I told him, using air quotes, "It didn't specify anything more than that."
He laughed, "Yeah, that figures. I mean, that's true... but we provide you the opportunity to shadow a crew for a full twenty-four shift. If you want to. " he emphasised that last point, almost blatantly indicating that it would be a good idea to do so.
I nodded, not just because it seemed like the correct thing to get hired, but because it sounded fucking nova.
"Preem. One of the oncoming pilots will do a quick fam with you on the airframe. You'll be solely an observer, mind you," he warns. That was obvious; they hadn't even hired me yet.
I was a bit curious, though, "Will the company issue me a firearm? I know you guys go to some pretty sketchy places."
He scrunched up his face and shook his head, "Nah. Hide behind the grunts if things get hairy. But they won't issue or allow you to carry weapons until you're both hired and have been qualified. Maybe they'll give you a pocket knife." That was a long shot, so I wasn't really surprised. I nodded. He glanced at me and said, "We're not supposed to say this, but they only invite people to base visits they're pretty sure they want to hire, so as long as you're not a total asshole, you pretty much got the job."
That made me feel a lot better, and it made sense, but at the same time, I didn't let it make me feel complacent. At that, people rapidly arrived in the room. I could easily tell the security guys from the medics as they looked like soldiers. Well, to be honest, all of the medics had a little bit of that look too, but nothing like the professional hard men that I had become familiar with working for my Alt-Dad.
After introductions, I sat aside as they conducted their morning briefing. They had a similar drug stocking machine as we did in NC Med Ambulance, but they didn't have to share it with twenty trucks. I watched them check in, then check back out their narcotics, do their daily cycle count, and talk a little bit about the patients they had the previous day.
The senior clinician on the oncoming crew was named Hideaki Anno, and seemed to be the clinical base lead. That made sense to schedule me on the day the line supervisor was working. He told me that I could call him Dr Anno, Hideaki, or Hey You but definitely nothing else. That must mean he had some sort of nickname that he didn't like.
He already had an MCU uniform for me, showed me how to get in it and recommended that I partially keep it on at least today whenever the light in the base indicated we were next up for a call because it took some practice to learn how to jump in it quickly, and they wouldn't wait on me if they got a call. When in the base, they were on ready-fifteen, which means they had to be wheels up within fifteen minutes, but their target was usually closer to seven.
Depending on the service level of the client, either the ready-five or ready-fifteen bird would launch, but even on the ready-fifteen calls, they averaged getting on the scene in ten minutes or less. If the ready-five bird was dispatched, the base next up to a call shifted to ready-five until they got back.
I thought the uniform was cool and was curious how they got my measurements until I remembered how many sensors I walked through downstairs. He told me not to worry about getting changed right now, that they were fifth up, so they probably wouldn't get a call for an hour or two. Apparently, there was something of an art to knowing how far away you could be from the AV based on what priority you were, as there were some facilities on our floor, like a workout room, that were available.
I sat with the two other Med Techs in the conference room, apparently, the first thing in the morning was a briefing from the day pilot, and then we would go check the supplies and equipment in the AV and test everything like I was familiar with from working in a ground ambulance.
"Yo, Savior. Whose the little girl?" asked one particularly bulky security man.
Anno growled, "I told you, I don't like that name." Oh, so that was his nickname. That would be a bit of a hard thing to live up to, but he must have done something pretty cool to get up to it. Anno glanced at me, "The pilots and security guys often give nicknames to everyone, the grunts especially. This is Mercy." He pointed to the biggest of the security guys, who didn't look like he had a merciful bone in his body.
"I-is that name... ironic?" I asked Mr Mercy, which got a huge grin and a nod. I thought so.
"Mercy, this is Taylor Hebert. She's a prospective new hire that'll be third riding with us today," Anno told him.
He gawked, "Her? I thought it was take your daughter to work day, but she doesn't look like a Jap, so I was curious." He reached out to... I'm not sure, grab my shoulder or something, but I simply reached up and grabbed his wrist, moving at about half speed.
