As I lay motionless in my bunk, I considered the past several weeks.
I didn't entirely keep my head down in training. I just couldn't help myself, but the Drill Sergeants kept punishing us as a group for anything that I did myself, which I didn't feel was very fair until I thought about why they were doing it and got a seriously large dump of information from the psychological portion of my medical sense. That made everything make sense, finally, and probably would have been obvious, but I had never been involved in anything like this, not even the Girl Scouts.
After that, I just sighed and buckled down. It grated on me a little, which I realised meant my mentality had changed quite a bit. I used to be very used to keeping my head down and trying to hide, not just from the Trio, but I felt the entire school was either out to get me or just didn't care.
Now my first instinct was to push back when I felt someone was being unfair to me. That was different, and the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was not necessarily a change for the better. I didn't think the world I was living in was one where fairness was a really important part of how anyone interacted with anyone else, especially those with authority interacting with those who did not have any.
It was depressing to think about, but I might not live to a ripe old age if I let this new instinct go wild in my everyday interactions with people, so I decided to reign myself in and "cooperate and graduate." I also felt like it wasn't a great idea to give the corporation I now worked for an accurate idea of my psychological profile, either.
As such, my fellows in my platoon were much less pissed off with me once I stopped mouthing off and attempting malicious compliance with the Drill Sergeants, and I think they just took it as me being a typical teenager. They didn't particularly mind too much because other than that, I was one of the best performing of us two dozen or so people in most of the physical parts of the course.
I was surprised, thinking that the two-month course would be full of paramedics, but it turned out that most Trauma Team employees would take it eventually if they did not have recent past military experience. The actual security and military guys took different and more strenuous courses, but half of the people in my platoon were regular office employees, including a couple of entry-level supervisors. Clearing the course was a prerequisite to reaching middle management, apparently, with the exception of certain staff positions that weren't considered line managers, like attorneys.
That was somewhat similar to the way Militech ran things from my memories, where all line managers had a reserve commission in their armed forces and occasionally a duplicate reserve commission in the NUSA armed forces as well. My Alt-Dad had been an active duty Major in the Militech armed forces and held a reserve commission as a Captain in the NUSA military as well.
It took me forever to fall asleep, which was a real problem. I was so used to just putting a hat on my head and pressing a button that I thought I had developed a mild case of insomnia when I wasn't utilising my sleep inducer, which I couldn't bring with me. I sighed, rolled over and closed my eyes. If I remained very still, I would fall asleep eventually.
I waited at the entryway to the course, double-checking the M-10 Lexington pistol and the extra magazines before sliding the weapon back into the holster at my thigh.
This was the qualification course for pistol. It was a realistic scenario in a special building that could be set up to any kind of interior design the instructors wanted through a computer. You couldn't just test on the course to know where all the bad guys and good guys would pop up. Bad guys would randomly pop up, and you were scored on not only the position of shots but speed, with speed being more important on this course.
Hearing a large buzzer, I grabbed my pistol out of my holster and started walking, using my full speed. The first part of the course usually simulated clearing a building. Nobody did that by themselves, the Drill Sergeants said, so it was really just testing quick-reflex shots and judgement.
A humanoid robot with a gun appeared, and my pistol came up, and I squeezed a quick three-round burst into its centre mass. The bullets I was using were real, but they were all frangible rounds, kind of similar to gritty sand once they struck something, so they wouldn't really damage the robots.
I continued along the path, shooting each robot two or three times as they popped up. They had laser guns that would trip a harness I was wearing, causing quite painful but harmless electrical shocks, simulating getting shot. I didn't want that to happen.
A robot came out, holding a non-combatant up as a human shield. I was expected to take these shots, and I only got points deducted for obviously lethal hits on the non-combatant. Instead, though, I used my full speed to carefully line up a headshot of the robot terrorist, putting it down.
Yelling at the robot non-combatant, I aimed my pistol in its general direction. In one of the training runs, I had seen one of the other women in my platoon be taken by a fake non-combatant that had a simulated suicide bomb. The poor woman was wriggling on the ground as the entire harness she was wearing shocked her silly.
I didn't think they would use that trick on an actual qualifying run, but I didn't know for sure. The robot stayed away, and I continued on.
Part of the test that was for judgement was that there was usually an insurmountable obstacle, and you were expected to take cover and call in support, which would arrive briefly to help you deal with it. Calling for help would hurt your score, but the idea was to know when to call for help and do it anyway.
I was, however, trying to show off. So I turned the corner and saw three robots with rifle-style automatic-weapon-looking props; instead of taking cover, I moved with preternatural quickness, zigging and zagging while accurately putting about five rounds into each one before the first one even got the first "shot" off. They were programmed, thankfully, to operate at normal human reaction speeds.
I still had a few rounds in my magazine, but I did a quick combat reload as they had drilled us, shoving the mostly empty mag into my belt as I continued on.
As I stepped over the finish line, there was another klaxon sound, but I wasn't quite done. The next part of the qualification was a simple accuracy test against non-moving targets at ten, fifteen and twenty metres. I was handed fresh magazines and quickly knocked the last part of the test out, including firing a number of times at a kneeling position for the twenty-metre targets.
I was startled by a slap on my shoulder. It was the Drill Sergeant, he had an actual smile on his face, "Excellent work, recruit! That is your Expert badge, for sure, on the pistol. It's not a course record, but it is pretty damn good for a medic. You did a lot better with the pistol than the light assault rifle yesterday. You only got Marksman there, but that's still pretty good."
Yesterday's rifle qualification was just shooting targets at up to three hundred metres on a firing range. The targets would randomly pop up, and you had both a limited amount of time and a limited amount of ammunition. It was weird to see the Drill Sergeant's rare signs of approval, but most of my platoon didn't have any real experience with firearms, to begin with, so I supposed he was just happy I didn't have to retake the test after remedial training like a number of my cohort already had.
The rifle qualification was just an almost superfluous extra event, in any event. They were much more strenuous with this pistol qualification. Honestly, it would be weird if I didn't score well. Not only had I been firing at least a hundred rounds a week on that thing for well over a year, but Alt-Taylor was no slouch, either. The way the first half of the test leaned heavily on reflexes also made it cake for me.
"Yes, Drill Sergeant. I have been firing a Lexington since I was eight, I suppose. Honestly, Drill Sergeant, I have a lot of experience with those Ronin too, but I never did like them. Trigger always felt a bit off," I told him, taking a little risk by being a bit more verbose than I needed to be. Generally, I learned it was better to be as succinct as possible when speaking to them. Also, it had been Alt-Taylor who had experience with rifles; I had none.
He didn't give me any shit or smoke me for that; instead, he just nodded, "Yeah, they're plenty reliable, but a lot of people have the same opinion. That is a pretty common opinion with bullpup rifles, of course. The rifle course is just on the level of a weapons fam, really. That's why we use such old rifles. You're never going to carry a rifle into duty anyway; ya'll medics have too much other shit to hump into action anyway, and the rest are going to be fucking managers and shit. Basically officers."
I decided to take a risk again, "Drill Sergeant, is it true that all Security Specialists have to have a SmartLink as mandatory cyberware?"
"Ehh... yes, and no. It's mandatory for all Security Specialists on Flight Status, and it's optional but highly recommended for all others. The corp will give you one at fifty per cent off if you're a grunt, even set up an interest-free payment plan. Almost every grunt recruit takes that offer up; it really is quite a good deal," he said, and then he glared, "Forget that shit, recruit! Make safe that weapon, turn it in and go back in formation, so another one of you worthless pieces of shit gets a chance to qualify! Double time it, recruit! Move, move, move!"
I moved.
There was no .real graduation when we were done like I was expecting from all the war movies I'd seen; we simply got a firm handshake from the Drill Sergeant and were sent on our way. Now that I wasn't in the course anymore, I could access the net again. I probably could have done so while in boot camp, but it was forbidden, and they would have known since we were outside of Seattle and the only cell towers were the ones Trauma Team installed themselves.
I sat in the back of a small van that was ferrying us a few at a time back to Seattle proper while I checked my messages. Blinking at a few, I triggered a phone call to Gloria.
She answered right away, "Hello! Hey, Taylor! Did you get all of my messages? I thought you were dead!"
I grinned at her, "I told you I would be out of contact for a while. I just finished most of my training, but I still won't be back for a week and a half."
"Yeah, but there's out of contact and then dropping into a black hole!" she complained, and she wasn't entirely wrong. This was a very connected society. It was really old-fashioned that nobody was permitted to use any kind of connectivity for eight weeks.
I chuckled, "Did everything work out? I read your messages and was only surprised for a second. I did have something of an established list of clients." Her messages stated that people were asking where I was, people who wanted some medical services.
"Uhh... yeah, I hope you don't mind, but after the third day of them asking, I ended up seeing them myself. I hope you don't mind me using all of your medical equipment or selling them the pharmaceuticals from your giant stash. I found a list with prices, so I had been charging a little bit over that since I wasn't sure if those were the prices you paid or the prices you charged," she told me in a rush.
I should have expected that and prepared her. Gloria was a good enough clinician to help with the everyday maladies of the people that came to see me. She was good enough to help with much more than that, really. However, it was a bit different to treat walk-in patients than it was to treat people who called emergency services or were in accidents and similar.
I chuckled at her, "I don't mind, so long as you don't ruin my reputation. Those are the retail prices, actually. Send me a list of what you sold, and I'll charge you the same wholesale prices I have to pay, and you can keep the difference since it was your work, after all." I paused as I considered that, nodding, "Was there anything serious that showed up?"
Gloria started to complain, saying that she'd pay more until I waved her off, and then she said, "Not really. Mostly just your everyday stuff, colds, simple malfunctioning cyberware, and a few cases of people not taking care of themselves and getting surgical site infections... oh... Yeah, there was one Tyger Claw in a cowboy hat that accidentally stabbed himself with his own sword. It wasn't too serious, but it was the most serious of the bunch. I averaged maybe three or four patients every day I wasn't working. Honestly, I'm making almost as much money as my salary! I thought a cop was arresting me when he showed up, but he just wanted some boner pills. I was wondering why you bought so many of those in bulk, I mean, I wasn't about to criticise, but with the high blood pressure meds, the cholesterol meds, and the boner pills, I thought you had some old man boyfriend and was a little concerned. You're a bit too young for much of an age gap in your dates, you know!"
Ugh. Thanks for that mental image, Gloria. I had just bought the top twenty or so most highly prescribed prescription medicines from a wholesaler. At least those that didn't require a special permit to purchase, like narcotics. I told her, "That's a gross mental image, thanks. I'm pretty sure I know exactly which Tyger Claw you're talking about, too."
Shortly after buying the gun and gun belt that I sold him, Johnny had gotten a cowboy hat from somewhere and had taken to tipping it at every pretty girl he saw. He was kind of a moron, but he actually was pretty good when it came to weapon safety, so I wondered what happened. He probably tried to show off or something.
"Haha, sorry! When you come back, I want to talk to you. How did you get set up doing this? You have like a hundred thousand eddies worth of medical equipment here, but most of it is specialised for cybernetics implantation. The stuff I was using was just your standard equipment like we used in the truck. I was wondering if I could start a similar side business in my Megablock," she told me, making me raise an eyebrow. I had just sort of fallen into it, so I hadn't really thought about it, but it was a nice little extra income for me.
I didn't average as much as she had made while I was gone, but I often was gone from my apartment on my days off, too, so I had less time where I could see patients.
I nodded at her, "Sure. I never intended to be doing it, really, but I wasn't born a Corpo for nothing. I can certainly help you sketch out a business plan. One of the biggest issues is..." I paused and glanced at the other people in the van and coughed, "Well, I'll tell you when I get back to Night City."
