On an alien planet, a Marine medic experiences his first combat. CAUTION:  Gore content higher than typical content.
 

  "Repairman!"

  The first call came over my radio, spoken gruffly by a man who retained his wits.

  "Repairman!"

  The second vocalization screeched.  A man wailed in panic and pain and wanted nothing but his mother and a syringe full of escape. He screamed so loud I heard it over the din of battle as surely as I heard it in my ear--receiver speaker rattling with distortion, trembling my eardrum like a wayward bug crawling in my ear canal.

  I scrambled over the top.  No powered armor suit.  No gyros and rocket boots for a quick leap to action.  Just light body armor and two kits thumping on either hip; tool kit and medical kit.  I ran to aid the fallen man like a squire of old, sprinting to assist his knight.  Unlike the squire, though, my charter covers multiple knights.  One medic per fifteen Republican Marines--that's the current ratio.

  The vista before me opened a window on Hell.  What had once been a paradise of alien flora and fauna was a churned wasteland.  Uprooted trees, trenches clawed through the soil, craters everywhere; missile, bomb, shell, mega-grenade.  I followed the trail of dead and shattered unprotected bodies to my destination.  One power-suited Marine stood on the edge of a crater.  He said nothing and pointed into the hole with one hand, firing in the opposite direction with the weapon in his other hand.

  I stood on the edge of the shallow crater as though it were a daunting precipice.  My mouth gaped open.  No amount of training could have steeled me against that moment.  The blood drained from my face and my knees shook.

  It was my first time in combat.

  I must have been very good target, standing there idiotically, silhouetted for any enemy to pick me off.  A helping hand from the firing Marine shoved hard against my back and I tumbled down into the crater unceremoniously.

  "Repairman!"  Came that blood-curdling scream again, this time from right next to me.  My finger instinctively went to my ear and pushed the mute on my ear receiver.

  "I'm here, Marine," I said as I recovered and gazed at my patient.  I let out a shaky breath, but I looked him right is his remaining eye.  "I'm here."

  He screamed in reaction to his fear more than his agony.  I reminded him he was a Marine.  He bit down hard and willed himself to scream no more.  My presence sedated his panic.

  The right half of his bowl helmet had come off.  When it went it took most of his scalp, a third of his face, and his eyeball with it.  The right arm of his power-suit had breached.  Shattered dirty-white bone protruded from the burn-blackened flesh.  Steam rose from various other micro-breaches.  We were on a warm planet, during a warm day.  The steam indicated a major problem worse than I could see.

  The Marine lay flat on his back, the suit's mobility compromised.  Something burned underneath that armored tomb--a residual chemical cocktail of phosphorous and who-knew-what the enemy put in their shells.  Exposed to air it cooked the armored man alive like a turkey in an oven.  The skin on his back must have been frying like an egg on a greasy skillet.

  My finger hurriedly poked under the armor plates on his chest.  I found the release and pressed the button.  Hydraulics hissed, strained and sputtered--bleeding fluid as surely as the Marine leaked blood.  The right half of the suit disengaged, moving forward and away.  The left half did not move.

  I couldn't very well pull him out by grabbing hold of his ruined right half.  I wanted to swear.  I wanted to kick the armor.  But I learned right there, and right then, with his ruined face looking to me as its savior, that a medic does not have the luxury of cussing when the patient is conscious.  You swear when things go wrong.  If the patient knows things are going wrong, the panic and screaming start all over.

  "All right, Marine."  I said, lifting the tool kit strap up and over my head.  "Let's get you out of that can."

  I had to do it the old-fashioned way.  The armor was too heavy for me to move alone, never mind the added weight of a man inside.  I pulled the flat non-government-issue trowel from the tool kit--a trick from the experienced medics who taught us more than our training did.  If I didn't have the trowel, my hands would be bloodied raw from digging in dirt like a frantic dog.  Instead, I dug the trowel furiously under the armor, flinging dirt like a kid at the beach making a moat for his sandcastle.  I quickly reached the white-hot burn.  Next from the tool kit came the micro-extinguisher.  Handheld but effective, I sprayed the entire canister down the hole.  My luck held.  The foam spread and covered the entire entity of searing chaos.  It suffocated the glowing white blaze, though the armor retained its deadly heat and would for a while.

  I pulled the third little miracle from the tool kit; micro-mesh tape.  I stuck a piece over the fracture line in the hydraulic, cracked the nut, poured in spare fluid, and resealed the nut.  I ratcheted the stubborn left side of the power-suit with a hand-crank.  The suit yielded and finally opened wide.  The Marine's eye stared up at the grim sky, ignoring me.

  I gave the man no warning--the anticipation would only have made it worse.  I grabbed him under the shoulders, and as evenly as I could manage, I pulled hard.  I lost my balance; he was bigger than he looked.  His ruined body flopped out of his deadly metal womb and onto the dirty ground.  A lot of the skin from his back stayed in the armor.

  The screaming started again.    

  I lost track of everything.  Time, sounds, movements.  I concentrated completely on keeping the ruined Marine alive.  Clamps, stitches, injections, coagulation powders and sterilization sprays.  Bloody fingers, bloody hands, blood smeared across my forehead as I wiped away sweat.
  
  An armored power glove grabbed my collar, lifted me bodily and tossed me against the other side of the crater.  I thought the enemy had breached the line.  A Marine in a power suit with stripes on his arms glared at me through the glass dome protecting his head.

  "What in the hell do you think you're doing?" hollered the sergeant.

  I opened my mouth and then snapped it shut.  One does not talk back to higher rank.  I wanted to scream.  I wanted to save the dying man.  I wanted to crush that sergeant into the torn earth of that crater.

  Then I came to my senses.  I had crossed my priorities.  I had saved the man and neglected to get the armor operational for the next in line.

  It's called the Stalingrad Scenario.  On Earth, during World War II, the Soviets sent masses of men, ten to a rifle, against the Germans.  If the rifleman fell the next man picked up the gun.  Some military concepts never go out of style even after centuries have passed.  And we--the human race--have been forced to play that scenario again.  We are losing the war--have been for years.  On a galactic scale the timeframes become as huge as the manpower and materiel involved in the campaigns.  Resources dwindle; armor is precious.  Flesh is cheap.  Current estimates put the ratio of men to armored suits as thirty-two to one.

  Priorities change.  The medics are now the repairmen. Republican Marine falls, medic repairs the armor for the next unprotected Marine before he is weapon fodder.  We repair the armor during combat, and repair the soldiers on down cycles.  Most of them don’t survive long enough to reach the downtime.  No matter--flesh is cheap.

  "My service to the Corps; my life for the Republic."  I told to the sergeant.  I curled my hand into a bloody fist and saluted across my chest.

  Armor before body.  Metal before flesh.  I went to my next patient, and the next and the next.  I've never made that mistake again.  I've salvaged a few men along the way.  But I've saved more armored power-suits than lives.  And that's my job.

  I am a Repairman of the Republican Marines.