Is it over? The raging burst of gunfire stopped suddenly, replaced by nothing but the cold morning breeze and the sound of birds, beautiful and deeply at odds with everything that had just happened.
Were they all dead? If there was no sound of life left right after the chaos that had just occurred, then the picture should have been clear enough. I could have just checked for myself instead of turning the question over and over in my head, but my hands were trembling too hard to pull away from where they were wrapped around me.
All of it in the end was flooding my head with a torrent of wild assumptions I had not asked for. I tried to stay positive and push myself to be stronger, but for some reason it felt impossibly difficult to look at what had happened and accept the reality of it.
"Argggh....erggggh..."
The sound of groaning pain began haunting my eardrums. As a medic I needed to find the source of that sound. But even so, my subconscious was forcing me to stay as small as possible, as though shrinking would keep me alive.
The sound of movement followed, and that terrified me half to death because what if the ones still standing were the enemy? I held my position, doing my best to play dead.
One of those sounds of movement felt like it was getting closer and closer, my panic climbing with every second and then---
"Hey! Ginger!" That familiar voice wiped away every trace of fear in an instant, and I loosened slightly from my curl to find Ashton crouching over me, shaking my shoulder. "Come on, get up! Everything's alright!"
That pulled me back to reality, and from there everything became clearer. Somehow, miraculously, every member of the unit was still alive, all of them standing in stunned silence or having dropped to the ground, staring in shock at the cluster of enemy soldiers in front of them who had collapsed and piled on top of one another. It was strange because the muzzles of our own weapons showed no sign of having been fired.
Lieutenant Bulgers and the Staff Sergeant were half prone on the ground, weapons still trained in a somewhat scattered way toward the enemies who were now down. At this point everyone was more or less in the same position.
"W-what hap-happened?" I asked Ashton as he helped me to my feet, my eyes still on the enemy bodies.
Ashton shook his head, just as confused as everyone else around him. "We don't know, all of a sudden--"
"You guys okay?"
As we were still trying to recover and piece together what had just happened, several figures emerged from behind the thick apple trees, one of them carrying a machine gun that I could already tell was responsible for tearing apart the enemy soldiers now lying in a heap over there.
But what stood out more was one figure stepping out among them carrying a Sekhen Gun, its muzzle still pouring thick smoke from the barrel, a clear sign that he and the people around him had just put it to use.
That figure, though his head was wrapped in bandaging, carried none of the helplessness you might expect from it. He still held himself upright like the ideal soldier, his build average for an Arkenian, but the sharpness of his face and the coldness in his eyes made his presence feel like something beyond even Scarface.
In fact, I knew that man. He was--
"Lieutenant Sterling!" Lieutenant Bulgers was the first to greet him, moving straight toward Lieutenant Sterling. "You really saved us, Lieutenant. You came at exactly the right moment."
"We heard the ruckus from a distance, then saw you all playing around with each other." Lieutenant Sterling explained. "Sorry for crashing the party."
Lieutenant Sterling was an influential officer in our F Company unit. In fact he served as our company's executive officer while also leading the First Platoon, where Raylan had originally been assigned.
Around him, the dozens of figures joining our group were familiar faces as well, all of them members of our company mixed together, some of whom I knew by name even if we were not particularly close.
"Is the CO with you?" Lieutenant Sterling asked.
"No, Lieutenant, we haven't crossed paths with his people either," Lieutenant Bulgers explained, signaling the rest of us to get ready to move again. Unlike with the others, Lieutenant Bulgers looked directly at me. "Lise, come here."
Hearing the call directed at me, I moved a little closer, though honestly I could feel my steps coming slower than usual. No, I already knew exactly where that slowness was coming from.
"Still creeped out about me, I see," Lieutenant Sterling noticed and commented on my attitude, the back of my neck going cold the moment he curved his lips. "Bulgers, any idea why she always acts like I'm about to drain her blood?"
"She must know you might actually be a blood-sucking creature, Lieutenant," Lieutenant Bulgers joined in with a chuckle.
This was not funny. Both of them seemed to be enjoying watching me shrink from the aura radiating off Lieutenant Sterling. From the very first time I had met him, I had always felt uncomfortable around him, and the problem was I could not quite pin down why. There were some subjective assumptions, but unlike Scarface who was at least straightforward about things, this man felt like he had something concealed beneath the surface.
"What's wrong, Elise?" Lieutenant Sterling tilted his head with a smile, though his eyes were not quite following what his lips were doing. "You're looking at me like I'm a walking corpse about to pounce on you."
On reflex I took a step back as he leaned slightly toward me. He was genuinely unsettling.
Lieutenant Bulgers stopped him with a nudge of his elbow. "Knock it off, Lieutenant, you're scaring her. Honestly, it is a little strange that you're the only one she reacts to like this."
Don't get me wrong, I respected him as our company's assistant commander. He was someone who had always kept the discipline of our unit during bootcamp, but within reasonable limits that kept us from resenting him for it. Morally he was genuinely one of the foundations of this company. Maybe this was just my feelings being too subjective, making assumptions that were not fair to him.
"Anyway, Elise," Lieutenant Bulgers put a hand on my shoulder, snapping me back. "Please help treat the Lieutenant's wound."
Since that was already my job, I had no choice but to accept it. The bandaging around Lieutenant Sterling's forehead was indeed very noticeable, wrapping around and slightly covering one of his eyebrows.
But before I could get to it, Lieutenant Sterling raised his hand. "Don't worry about this, the person who put it on just used too much, it looks worse than it actually is. We've already wasted too much time, the beach landing is only a matter of time now, better we focus on that."
Though initially hesitant, Lieutenant Bulgers and I eventually stopped trying to push him after a few attempts at persuading him that kept getting turned down, partly because he had a fair point that we were running short on time.
The two of them left me and went to find Colonel Dinks to discuss something more pressing, and I felt a small wave of relief wash over me because--- ugh!
"Hey, Redwave Queen," the person who had just tugged my braid smiled gently at me. "Did last night's jump give you amnesia? You don't recognize me anymore?"
"....geez, it's you Julian," I muttered, straightening my helmet back into place. "Please don't do that again."
"Hahaha, I'm sorry. I'm just glad you're alright."
"That goes for you too," I replied, managing a small smile in his direction.
Julian Grant Sinclair. From his name alone people would immediately wonder why someone from the upper middle class was serving as a low ranking enlisted soldier, the kind of rank mostly filled by working class men.
Not just his name either. Even his physical features carried the typical marks of a wealthy family, like his blonde hair kept noticeably neater than anyone else in the unit, and eyes as blue as diamonds, making him look like a young nobleman who had decided to come out and play soldier.
That was actually what most of the other members thought of him, treating Julian as a bored rich boy who had voluntarily signed up for the Airborne on a whim, which made him somewhat unpopular among us. Unlike the others, I actually liked him, because someone as educated as he was could easily have chosen a rear echelon position, yet he had chosen this because he wanted to live the experience and tell the story of it to the public afterward.
The fact that he called me Redwave Queen, a historical figure from Ulvrike, was a sign that he came to the unit with a genuine depth of historical knowledge behind him.
"So what's going on with you and the officers earlier?" Julian asked while snapping off a piece of ration chocolate he had just unwrapped, offering me the small piece.
I shook my head at the offer. "Nothing, just Lieutenant Sterling refusing to be treated."
"Ahhhh, Sterling," Julian chewed the chocolate with a mildly pained expression, probably from the taste. "Still unsettled around him, I presume."
"Come on, isn't he a little off? And 'a little' is still an understatement...." My eyes drifted toward Lieutenant Sterling who was in discussion with the other officers.
"He seems normal enough to me, capable leader, not sure why you're so spooked by him," Julian said with indifference. "Well, except for earlier..."
"Earlier what?" I asked with curiosity, quietly hoping the officers would not signal us to move before I could hear what Julian had to say. "Come on, tell me! While there's still time!"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, patience," while settling me down, Julian swallowed the last of the chocolate from his mouth. "Our plane came down near a Dretonian barracks on the center line. A lot of people weren't as lucky as me, I landed a bit further out away from the barracks itself and managed to find some of our own."
"...Damn, that's a real nightmare."
"It was completely chaotic. We tried to save each other but a lot of them were already past the point of no return, you know," from his voice Julian was genuinely uncomfortable with it, swallowing hard several times. Watching your comrades being cut down while calling for help and being unable to do anything about it was its own kind of torment, the same as what we had felt earlier about the civilians who died because of us. "On the other side, Sterling..."
"What about him?"
"At that point there were four of us, and we heard gunfire. That's when we spotted Lieutenant Sterling holding off nearly an entire enemy platoon trying to take him down," now Julian's tone had shifted into something closer to disbelief mixed with awe. "This guy is madness. At first we weren't sure whether to go in and help or not, until we realized how Sterling was putting up resistance that was just impossible to believe. We moved in to help and the enemy ended up retreating, thinking they were surrounded. After the fight we realized Sterling had just killed 16 Dretonian soldiers single-handed!"
"Him? Single-handed? Get the fuck outta here...." I waved my hand to signal just how hard that was to swallow.
"Believe whatever you want, but that's how it happened," Julian stood by it, even as I remained a little skeptical. "Still, I don't think it's strange. Doesn't that just mean he's the ideal soldier?"
"What!?" I was caught off guard by Julian's contradictory take. "You just said he killed 16 enemies on his own! If that's the case this man is not normal!"
Julian only shrugged in response. "Yeah, but--"
"Well, well, who's this guy?" Ashton, who had slipped away earlier for a bathroom break, reappeared and made his way over to where we were sitting.
"Oh, you're back. Let me introduce you, he's--"
"Alright guys, time's up!" Before I could introduce Ashton to Julian, one of the officers cut across us.
I had no choice but to put it off. It was understandable that Ashton had not met Julian yet since he had been transferred in late, but we had something more important than introductions right now.
Those few minutes before had felt both very slow and somehow long enough, giving us just enough time to recover from the tense aftermath of the standoff and the exhausting slog through the swamp that had drained so much out of us.
"Errghggh...ᛃᛖᛏᛉᛏ...."
Just as we were about to get up and fall into formation, I noticed that one of the Dretonian soldiers piled on top of each other was still alive. He was groaning through the pain, so it was hard to call him more fortunate than his companions.
Our eyes met. It was the young Dretonian soldier from before, the one who had aimed his rifle with that nervous expression. Now he could only lie there helplessly across one of his fallen comrades. From his gaze alone I felt him reaching out to me, eyes full of desperate hope, one hand pressing against the wound in his stomach.
.....what are you hoping from me? I am your enemy.....I can't....I....
I tried to ignore it, turning my gaze away from him, and somehow that only made his whimpering louder than before. Honestly my heart was not strong enough to stay indifferent to it, even as the people around me paid him little mind.
As much as I wanted to help him, I knew I could not just act on impulse, because it would only eat into the time we had already lost, and on top of that it would drain my own energy having to perform healing magic on him.
I knew I had to be more careful about which healings I chose to do, because the catalyst potion I carried in my bag was extremely limited.
"H-h-help...me....please..."
My conscience broke the moment the young soldier spoke in Thelish with such desperate urgency. With the language barrier gone, I could not hold back any longer.
"Elise!? What are you doin'?"
Ignoring Ashton, I walked away from him and toward the young soldier. There was no way we could just leave him like that. What could he do at this point? He was already down, wasn't he? There was nothing left he could do. However you looked at it he was still a human being, and under international war convention I was obligated to treat him regardless of the uniform he was wearing.
The young soldier looked at me with mild surprise but also with something like a growing hope spreading across his expression. Hold on, because I'm about to--
"Ah!?"
Just as I was about to crouch down, my body was yanked sharply backward, stopping everything.
BAM!
Whoever had pulled me shoved into my place with force, and what shocked me more was when that figure drew a pistol and put a bullet precisely into the young Dretonian's forehead, killing him instantly.
My body went rigid and the back of my neck went cold as my hair stood on end all at once.
I already knew what was causing my body to react that way, because the figure who had done it now turned toward me with those characteristically cold eyes and a smile, raising one index finger to my face and swinging it slowly side to side.