The pilot-in-command said, "Agreed," and just a short time later, I saw the three little specks that had been the missiles we fired radically climb into the air and then fall down almost vertically, each one striking the top of one of the armoured vehicles. The explosion was fairly subdued, but almost immediately, fires started on all of the vehicles, billowing out of the hole the missile had made. The missiles didn't strike them soon enough to save one of the SUVs, which was demolished by the thin cannon each of the armoured vehicles had just before the missile impacted, but six survivors kept fleeing to the south.
The engines were pulled back to almost idle, and we were pushed into our seats by positive G-forces as well as centrifugal force as I saw us circle the downed infantry fighting vehicles at high speed. Sure enough, one of the large doors opened, and I was aghast as the pilots just sprayed the miniguns into the crew compartment of the vehicle. I mean, that was certainly... effective, if a bit ghastly. I didn't think those guys were really a threat anymore, but I supposed the guys up front didn't want to be surprised while we were working on the patients after we caught up with the fleeing Biotechnica vehicles. We were the first AV on the scene, but I assumed there were multiple subscribers on the ground, even if only one of them was a Platinum member.
One other vehicle got the same treatment, but when we dipped to the south and the engines spooled up to their max power again, I stopped monitoring their feed and started getting ready to get out. Mr Mercy had us double-check our weapons, and then we sat down, in front of a group of about six SUVs, with Biotechnica security forces spilling out with guns pointed in every direction except ours.
Mr Mercy guided the Senior and me over to the vehicle that had our subscriber in it, and we stopped just short of it. I tilted my armoured helmet to the side, and Mr Mercy said over the intercom, "Well, that's your problem right there..."
Our client was missing his head and most of his upper torso. He must have gotten shot by one of those autocannons on those wheeled armoured vehicles. I assumed while he had disembarked from his convoy, and I couldn't help but be impressed by the marksmanship with the autocannon by the crews of those armoured vehicles we had just killed.
I was surprised that they had brought his body with them, but then I realised they probably knew we were responding, and if they had left it on the ground where he got hit, we would have just gone there. By taking it with them, they, in a way, forced us to defend them in their escape. Smart.
Still, I tried hard not to snicker at Mr Mercy's quip and instead stared disapprovingly at the giant of a man, who shrugged and said, "Alright. The client is DoA, and if the clinicians pronounce him, we will shift to secondary clients. We have two gold and three silvers. Other AVs are five mikes out."
I glanced at the Senior, as it was technically his job to pronounce death in a client; he sighed and said, "Time of death was... a lot sooner than now, but let's say 2315 Zulu."
Our systems were monitored for phrases like that, and the beacon we were tracking automatically shifted to the gold subscriber with the most acute injuries, and I turned to look at a man in a nice suit that was missing his left arm from the elbow down. You'd think that he or someone else would have applied a tourniquet or something and not just stood there bleeding to death. Well, that was why we were here, I supposed. This was going to be a milk run from here on out, at least. Small mercies.
Anytime a client died on a run, especially when it was a Platinum subscriber, there was automatically a peer review by other Med Techies chaired by one of our local medical directors. It was clear that this time was pro forma, as the medical director asked on the conference call wryly, "So there's nothing you could have done?"
The Senior I was working with, who was a doctor in his own right, just flipped the woman off, which got everyone chuckling. She said, "We'll record that down as a no, then. Well, as long as we're here, let's pull up the gentleman you did transport. Now, Clincian Hebert, if you could, why don't you walk us through your thoughts when you made initial patient contact..."
Internally, I groaned but went along with it. I hated, absolutely despised, being the focus on peer reviews because some of what I occasionally did to save a patient's life was outside the official Trauma Team Patient Care Guidelines, which got me dinged in the peer review — however, nobody could really argue with my results. I hadn't had one patient die that wasn't, basically, dead already.
It made me spend hours and hours every week devouring medical journal articles, using my Trauma Team credentials to get free access to most of them, just so that I could have ammunition to explain why I occasionally went outside the PCGs. I even got a couple of the PCGs changed as a result of what I have done since what I had done had such superior outcomes for the patients in those particular situations. It wasn't that I was learning new things, although occasionally I did, which always caused me to feel a flush of pleasure; the primary reason I was doing it was to understand what was considered acceptable medical practice in this world.
My medical encyclopaedia was, I thought, far broader than state of the art in Brockton Bay, as I found a bunch of things that were considered state of the art here to be considered by my medical sense as the equivalent of using leeches, however randomly I would find something new that delighted it. So I constantly had to hold back, utilising less effective medicine for conditions simply because it wasn't discovered yet. If I just went with what was natural to me, I would have been discovered a year ago or more; I had to constrain my patient care to at least what was known to science here if it couldn't be obfuscated somehow.
As such, despite my distaste for the peer review process everything went smoothly.
On my next day off, I had a contract that was going to take most of the first part of the day, so I invited Gloria to work in my clinic for the whole day, and since our days off, for once, aligned, she happily agreed. Plus, I got to see David, who was shooting up like a weed.
"How is kindergarten, David?" I asked the boy, who scowled.
He shook his head, "It be stupid, Auntie Taylor. The games are kind of fun, but the other kids don't even know their letters yet." He had the voice of a child who had a very hard life, according to him. I kind of liked that he called me Auntie, and he had been managing to say my full name for a while now, although I kind of missed the days he called me "Tayr." That had been adorable while it lasted.
"It is stupid. The present subjunctive is not the correct tense for that verb," I corrected him automatically, as I generally did whenever he said something that used incorrect grammar.
The little shit rolled his eyes, I saw him do it right in front of me, then he ran off to watch television or play video games in my private area, and I let him go.
Thinking about what he said, I wasn't entirely sure they would teach them their letters at all.
The current state of pedagogy seemed to indicate that reading was an arcane skill with universal optical character recognition, plus with most optics providing universal speech-to-text providing subtitles caused motivated people to teach themselves to read basically by the time they were fifteen. So, only ten years past when they normally should have learned that skill. As a child of an English Professor who was reading, even if they were simple, books before I ever went to Kindergarten, this was unacceptable.
Language was the kernel of sapience, I thought. It was only by developing language that children developed consciousness. Both my own opinion and my medical sense agreed with this assesment. Language was what separated a human from, say, a clever orangutan or dolphin. Literacy wasn't as huge a developmental milestone as verbal language skills in children were, but still, postponing literacy in children would only stunt their cognitive development, I felt.
It wasn't a good idea unless your goal was to have the average person end up maybe five per cent dumber than rich children who got an actual education. Five per cent didn't sound like a lot, but on the tail ends of a standard distribution, it would tend to make most real world-changing geniuses be from a certain and similar social stratum. Perhaps I was a conspiracy theorist, but I thought that this might be intentional. It wasn't like people didn't know the same things I did. The science of cognitive development in children was pretty well studied in this world.
Gloria was humming as she set up the clinic to her personal preferences. She had bought all of my old equipment, but for some reason, she couldn't find an affordable commercial property in her Megabuilding, but she was still making a fair bit of money as a Med Techie that would make house calls. She, like me, didn't really discriminate and would treat most sane gang members so long as she had an agreement with that particular gang that she wouldn't be stiffed or turned into a stiff for her trouble. Mostly it was 6th Street and the Valetino's that were near enough distance that she occasionally got called by them.
A call-out med techie was a pretty interesting niche, I thought. Still, she tended to make more money when she worked here in Japantown. Her idea had the potential to make much, much more than even I did, but it would only be possible if she got additional training and the rich people started hiring her.
"So, you're sure you're not interested in buying my car?" I asked her. I had offered it to her when she took me out into the wastes to pick it up in her dinky little Galena. Honestly, I would have felt a little nervous about driving very far in the desert in that thing, and I carefully followed her back to the town instead of going on ahead, just in case.
She sighed, "I'd like to, but I'm saving up to pay for my Paramedic license. NC Med will pay half the costs if I give them a two-year work-commitment, but that is still about twenty-five grand I have to put up myself. My little car is already paid off. I'm halfway there now. Plus, I want to get David into a better school. I'll have to drive my pile of junks till the wheels fall off."
I nodded. That made sense. I was actually a little surprised that my old workplace was willing to pay twenty-five grand for only a two-year commitment. I think they probably had trouble finding actual National Registry licensed paramedics at the salary that they paid. Still, Gloria had been looking a lot better recently, like she wasn't on edge any more. I suspected that she had been living close to pay-check to pay-check before. Even when we were partners, just giving her one of my sleep inducers had helped wonders, although I had to provide a little bit of maintenance every six months.
I had a new version now after researching a bunch into the way BDs affected the brain, and I thought the new version I was going to build might only require maintenance from me annually or perhaps even less often.
Gloria hadn't changed her mind about wanting to get David into corporate schools, despite me explaining bluntly the challenges he might face as a first-generation corporate employee after graduation. I would try to prepare him, but educating him on what he could expect would essentially end his childhood. I didn't want to teach him too early to expect betrayal by those who claimed to be his friends and peers just yet. I didn't even trust my teammates at Trauma Team, and they had one of the best reputations there was.
The part of me that encompassed Alt-Taylor's memories suggested I wait until he got a schoolyard enemy, especially if such an enemy got the better of him first. It would also teach him that there was a huge difference between intelligence and cunning and that he shouldn't underestimate anyone, even those he was sure he was more intelligent than. He would need both traits to survive what his mom seemed to want from him, but perhaps he would follow her footsteps into the medical field — things were a little less cut-throat in that sector, mostly because doctors, despite their expertise, were simply highly-paid servants to those who were really in power. It was only really if you wanted to rise on the ladder beyond a simple highly-paid servant that the knives would come for you.
For example, I knew for a fact that Dr Anno wanted to become our next Medical Director. Right now, he didn't see me as a threat, but if I was a medical doctor with similar ambitions, well, it might get messy. He was a nice enough man, but by my Corporate background, he would see me as a threat if we were really peers.
I didn't think Gloria was making a wrong choice, particularly because I didn't know any better options that he could have. It was similar to a boy wanting to be a soldier or police officer, you didn't want to shatter the delusions about what exactly such a life would consist of when they were just five years old, but it still had to be done eventually.
"I've had a number of requests that your pharmacy stock certain chemicals that are mostly recreational in nature," Gloria mentioned absently as I gathered my own supplies.
I shook my head, "No, definitely not. I appreciate that our clients would trust us to ensure the purity of such a product, but I am not doing anything to step on the toes of the Tyger Claws. Recreational drugs are one of their largest profit-centres."
Still, I hummed, tilting my head to the side, "I know a few of the Tyger Claw dealers that sell exactly what they say on the tin; I'll leave you a couple of names that you could forward anyone who is insistent, but definitely try to discourage people from recreational drug use, and absolutely refuse to continue discussing it if they mention they want something like Lace or Glitter. There is no way to use those substances in anything that even resembles a healthy way."
Before I came to this world, I would never, not in my wildest dreams, ever think the words, "Have you considered something more healthy, like methamphetamine?" would come out of my mouth, but average everyday stimulants like most types of synthetic cocaine and amphetamines were nothing compared to some of the purpose designed recreational drugs in this world. Selling things like Glitter or Black Lace to the downtrodden occasionally had me fantasising about setting fire to the Tyger Claws and all gangs like them.
That said, Tyger Claws sold drugs across all demographics, and they had a lot of dealers that were more or less honest in what they sold, as they targeted a higher demographic. Still, they'd sell to anyone; it was just they were the type you had to have a referral to. You wouldn't come across them attempting to ply their wares on the street.
