09:45 AM September 3rd
Just outside sub-Center Camp 4, Braxis

Demeter sucked in a tentative breath and tried to winch the knot out of her shoulders. Presently, she was at attention with her new Snapdragon Zipper 12 rifle clutched to her chest, ready to be picked up by the assigned dropship; she could see the red dome of the operations bay—her back was facing the west side of the starport deploy station—but it was quickly fading in the fog. The rest of her squadron was coming into the hangar now, all of them filing silently into rows. They were opening their stim packs as they lined up; her fire team was just assembling behind her, all of the men chattering casually to try to banish the tension.

The UED was holding a blockade over the planet Braxis in efforts to isolate this world for excavation and consolidation of the outlying Dominion colonies. The blockade was loosely held and poorly supplied: this starport was weak and outdated—none of the battlecruisers had Yamato turrets—in addition to supply lines being spotty at best. Not every soldier was guaranteed a meal. Demeter was, but that was because she was the highest ranked medic in the entire battalion…and it helped to be a little more than personal with the Vice-Admiral.

The field commander marched through the blast doors of the west wing, startling the high-strung men nearby. His boot had barely hit the ground before an order undulated from his lips. "Alright, girl scouts, it's that time already! Lock and load!"

She popped the tail out and back in to her rifle and heard the satisfying click and hum that said it was fully charged. The men around her skinned their sleeves up and began to tear at the medical packets, slapping patches on their arms and thrusting needles into their shoulders. Demeter watched the man on her left as his patch glowed briefly before returning to its fabric texture; the adjacent veins had lifted to the surface in a throbbing spider web pulsating with a rush of blood. A bruise began to spread there, and the man sighed, his eyes rolling back into his head contentedly.

"God, that is so bad for you," she murmured. She said it quiet enough for it not to be heard, but secretly intended for him to catch wind…which he did.

"Honey, I ain't gonna be around much longer the way this blockade's going," he said with a wicked grin as he smacked a second and third patch on. "Even for you, sugar."

"If you're so opposed to the malaise of nitrus patches, then try this." The commander hulked over her and thrust a tube of glowing blue fluid under her nose. "Know what this is?"

She knew very well what it was: cabersol. Cabersol had no long-term effects and it could work wonders on the human corpus in seconds. She'd observed muscles cell reactions to mere molecules of the stuff and seriously believed she had witnessed miracles. It was quite literally liquid energy.

"Please, Commander," she sighed, winking. "Besides, I'm a medic."

"It'll keep you on your toes, Captain. I need you running hot so you can save my boys."

The man to his left suddenly popped to his feet with an insulted grimace. "Commander, that's Captain Demeter Starling there. She ain't lost more n' seventeen men in one of her missions. People signed up for this just 'cuz of her." He nodded respectfully in her direction.

"Boy, I'm her Commander! I know damn well who she is! You just sit down and shut up 'till I make you move your ass out into the flames, okay?"

He backed away meekly. Demeter took the cabersol syringe and put it in her left thigh pouch. "I'm running hot already. I'll save it for later so I can 'save your boys', Commander."

"Adrenaline ain't got nothing on cabersol, hon. But that's all I'm going to say." The commander blew his whistle once and began to belt out instructions to the rest of the soldiers. "Alright! Here we go! Your objective, as you know, is to hold the blockade. We have several bunkers out for Marines and Firebats. We have two medics that will be with the spare troops at one of the energy couplings. Your incentive to fight is to not die."

They all laughed, save Demeter. Of course, they were all high, save Demeter.

"Toes, boys!"

Everyone cheered loudly. "Hoo-rah!"

She ushered her team of spare men to a dropship marked 'UED TRANSPORT 2556-532-01' and clipped her wrist into the strap near the cockpit. The woman at the throttle smiled weakly. "Let's get this show on the road, boys!"

As the dropship lifted off, she surveyed her team. She had about eighteen men to keep track of, all of which were Marines. They were reapplying their armor over their glowing stim patches. They flew over yards and yards of missile turrets and watched as other shuttles unloaded their stash of soldiers, who then scrambled into bunkers. Demeter couldn't feel an ounce of adrenaline in her blood when the transport circled low, and released the exit plane.

They would be occupying a makeshift no-man's land. A jagged trench was cut into the tiling of the paved floor; the rest of the space was cluttered with crunched up metal and deactivated floor guns. The wiring systems had either shorted out or been ripped in places from previous warfare so that the wires stuck out like fried grass. It was damp from a brief acidic rainstorm earlier, leaving the area coated in a limp, retreating fog.

The men were almost lackadaisical as they plopped into position. They waited in tentative silence for a long while. She patrolled the trench and tried to memorize it, yet she was too hung up on listening to the buzzing line between her and HQ. Suddenly, she felt the itching need to sneeze when the order came: "Captain Starling! Mobilize! Four zealot squads and twelve dragoons plus a team of Protoss scouts attacking your sector! The turrets won't hold against the ground troops!"

'Another successful mission. Come on, Demeter. You got this.'

"Hoo-rah!" she yelled loudly, and the men snapped upright excitedly, echoing her cry with their own.

"Zealots and Protoss dragoons are attacking the turrets up ahead! Move out and take them down! Go!"

Men, exhaling vile oaths in clouds of condensation, began shambling over the trench wall. She heard them cheer to themselves as the low rumble of the dropship sounded in the distance. She could hear the unfamiliar sounds of alien fire as well as the battle cries of her company calling to her like—

Her instincts kicked in. She vaulted over the side of trench in silence, just as her comrades had done. There was too much visual euphoria to be filling it with screams. The rotating towers of missile turrets turned eerily on the horizon line and a mist was rising from the camp as the earth gave way to marines' burrowing holes. This was only her second Braxis mission, and it was just as exhilarating as the first. She found herself sprinting, running aimlessly after the men in front of her—who were a good fifty yards ahead—with her gun plugged into her shoulder. The rifle was one of the bigger side-arms assigned to medics, and now, as she ran behind her squad as was protocol for the support units, she realized exactly how badly they needed her. Her sprint was softening into a jog as she came within twenty yards.

The lines began to separate as the soldiers who had squandered their ammo pulled out knives and stim-patches and surged forward. The sharpshooters, who had taken only enough steroids to sustain them through the full sprint from the trench, had dropped to one-knee and starting picking off the clumps of marines that were rising from bunkers in the ground. No one was down yet. She looked for UED goliaths, but there were none in sight. Maybe that's how the Protoss got through.

A few of the men's armor had let a few shots through, and she quickly repaired to their side to treat the wounds. After a quick wave from her glowing arm attachment and a handful of metal putty to patch the holes, they were back in action, surging forth with the rest of their brethren towards the center of the clouds.

Then she did something unexpected for a medic. She plugged the butt of her Snapdragon into her shoulder and screwed the scope into her eye. She waited for her vision to adjust to the macro-focus, and then pointed the crosshair on a freshly shielded dragoon. Her tongue curled around her lip as she moved the nose over the slightest bit after feeling the direction of the wind. She squeezed.

The tip of her rifle gave birth to a smooth column of laser-blue light. The gun kicked lightly against her shoulder, and she watched the shield sizzle away though her scope. The men nearby were in such a fury that they barely noticed. Wiping the blood and guts from their face, they tore into the metallic side of another wounded dragoon.

The first lines began dissolving into the first layer of cloud falling past the tiling. She watched as spire from an old tower gun fell out of the shroud and burst open on the ground. The snipers were mobilizing and started towards the mist. She followed suit.

The fog embraced her in obscurity. She fired a shot into the distance. She heard the crack as it was refracted into the ground, and the noise sculpted out her environment for her echolocation senor in her helmet; she was entering newly created no-man's land. She could hear the eerie crashes of dragoon fire in the distance, hear the grinding sound of mineral harvesting not to far away, hear the soft curls of smoke drifting away in the breeze. Everything was immensely clear to her. She trotted on through the fog, at last emerging from the ring and stepping into Protoss fire.

She winced as the zealot blade buried itself in her stomach. The thing's emotionless face glittered blankly as its arm pulled back to stab her again. Before she could register the pain, it was tackled and brutally ripped to shred by a pair of Marines in a cabersol-induced frenzy. Her healer's arm was already working on her wound, knitting the flesh and tissue back together, as she clutched her gut, the pain winking away in stars at the corners of her eyes.

As the marines moved on, she looked down at the fallen Protoss laying at her feet. She heard it whimper faintly before it stilled permanently. A sickness pervaded her as a tingling energy flowed passed her, the zealot's psi mixing lightly with her mind as it floated away into the black. She sneezed roughly, and then collected her wits.

Terran no-man's land was the cradle of chaos. Dirt was exploding around her, the spray of water and blood sizzling away in the laser shots riddling the earth, making a cruel harmony to the screams of the frenzied men. Soldiers with needles jutting out of their arms were careening about the air, calling down curses in wordless roars of agony. The Protoss dragoons and zealots were moving about, but luckily their numbers were dwindling.

She flipped her med visor down on her helmet. All men were reporting strong heartbeats and active battle status. She checked armor levels. Several were less than full, but not because they'd been injured, but probably because they needed more skin to apply those devilish stimulant patches. In that case, she could carry on fighting.

She stopped where she was and dropped to her knees. She loaded a Snapdragon charge to her rifle and, aiming at the exhaust vent of a dragoon station about 200 yards off to the left, let out a roiling black charge of negative energy. It entered the pipe with a clanging snarl before detonating inside, spraying acid and used materials all over the probes rushing to repair it. A wave of sizzling fluid crashed over the turret belching missiles like bubbles and the thing exploded loudly. The supply depots were disintegrating rapidly; black smoke burst forth from the ground, smoking corpses tumbling out of the pit like leaves off a tree.

She snapped another Snapdragon charge in place before shuffling over a rock to aim for the shuttle just behind the depots. She released the charge and the ship evaporated in a firestorm of shrapnel melted fluid. Three men then overcame the zealots with hand knives, a fresh set of steroids funneling drugs into their shoulders.

She was suddenly thrown from the rock as shrapnel collided with her lower jaw from the other side of the rock. Demeter was barely conscious; her instinct was acting instead of her waking self, and her instinct had no sense of direction. She stalled only for a second, then vaulted over a pile of rusted metal as an alert showed up on her med visor. She disarmed her Snapdragon and turned on the laser fire function before starting in the direction of alarm.

She turned left at a crossroads and found herself in a metal forest of wind turbines. It was significantly darker under here, but she could see the group of five soldiers to the northeast as they waved enthusiastically. She popped her healing function on with a flick of her wrist. Instantly, her hand warmed in the healing light and she felt the muscles in her hand relax. The corporal in charge, a marine with bad five o'clock shadow, saluted her as she skidded to her knees next to the wounded marine. She smiled brightly. "Where does it hurt?"

This soldier was pretty well shot up. With her other hand, she snapped a magnet into her palm and waved it over the wounds. It immediately stuck to his armor and made a series of clicking noises as bullets raced out of their sockets. She turned off the electricity and tore the plate away, scattering bullets across the ground, before playing the curative light of her medical accessory over the holes. His heart rate slowly rose to normal, and, though his armor index was still low, his medical computer signed him on as 'Active'. She smeared the metal putty over the holes and it sank in with a sizzle. Fresh armor rose from the holes, and she wiped off the excess. "Might not match the rest of your getup, but it should keep you safe."

"Thank you!" they all uttered graciously.

"No problem, boys," she said with a flirty wink. "Now, no slacking off! Stay frosty and keep up the good work!"

"You got it!"

Before she had time to wave them goodbye, a second alert flickered up on her visor. She took off in the direction of a group of injured troops. They were somewhere in the fog; four of them were within twelve feet of each other according to her readings. When she reached the fog's perimeter, she stopped for a second. If there was group of them down, it was probably because they were overtaken. If four marines couldn't take out whatever it was that stopped them, a lone medic wouldn't be able to do it either. She pulled up her comlink and scanned for her closest ally, who happened to be fellow medic, 2nd Lieutenant Alexandra Holcomb.

"Lieutenant, this is your Captain. I'm sending you my coordinates. Please come find me."

"Roger."

She switched to thermal vision, but the temperature of the fog skewed the readings. She flipped her entire set of visions up and turned her attention to the fog again. They weren't more than ten yards away, and her medic's nerves were itching to help them. She switched her morphine fingers back on and charged up restorative shots on her belt. She sent a short radio message to their base of operations for medical recovery probes so that the men could be toted back to HQ for more extensive medial treatment.

The four men in the dust were reporting 'down' as their battle status and each were below sixty-percent armor. She was able to pick up weak, erratic heartbeats from three of them; the fourth one's was not transmitting. He could either have a damaged helmet or…or…

"What's the situation?"

Alexandra Holcomb, Second Lieutenant, trotted over beside her. Demeter knew Alexandra from a few previous missions. She wasn't a bad medic, but she was certainly a better pilot. She had applied for a Valkyrie position many times, but so far, she hadn't left the medical operations division of the Epsilon Squad.

"Four men down, three registering heartbeats about twenty-five feet off. And there is a science vessel with two dugout bunkers about sixty feet away from them. It's a miracle the marines in the bunkers aren't attacking the bodies…that means they can't pick up their heat signatures. I wonder if I' getting proper readings? Our sensors are usually pretty acute."

"I'm picking up weak outlines. Can you blind the dragoons? That can send it into retreat."

"I'm not as worried about the dragoon as I am the zealots. I think if we organize this right, we can drag the bodies out of range so we can fix them up. Turn on your Neurostim Gauntlets and heal any gunshots I take."

Alexandra straightened up, aghast. "You're going to take bullets for soldiers who could be dead?"

"Nothing is going to happen to me so long as you stay behind me and keep your gauntlets glued to my torso. And we're all a team out here. The minute we leave someone behind is the minute our unity breaks. You're free to stick a monkey wrench in the works, but I'll take my chances and risk my neck for the squad."

"So are we blinding the dragoon or not?"

"No. It'll just transmit to the zealots, which could move in and attack."

She walked in front of Holcomb and poised herself to sprint. "Ready? I'm a damn good sprinter."

"Let's do it," Alexandra said, and Demeter dug her heel into the ground.

Her legs pumped endlessly. Alexandra kept up, but only that. She watched as the soles of Demeter's shoes swam up and down before her, running hopelessly in pursuit. When Demeter had gained a yard on her, she suddenly slowed, cooing in pain. The ground was sprinkled with a light crimson; Holcomb thrust her arm around Demeter's middle, and heard her take in a comforting breath before starting up vigorously.

The next time Demeter stopped, she actually sank to her knees, cradling a fountain of blood in her arms. The entire front of her armor plating was riddled with bullets, not to mention that small hills were rising along her back where bullets had completely passed through her body. Demeter was glad that this ammo didn't tumble since she had taken a good twenty rounds to the chest.

She felt warmth wash over her as Alexandra caught up. The other medic sighed in exhilaration. "Captain, you alright?"

Demeter almost didn't hear. She had found three of the men lying close to each other, completely unconscious. The ground around them was riddled with bullets and heavily spattered with blood. She checked pulses with her med visor and then stood back to survey the damage. Their lower legs were messes of blood and broken bones; the dragoon had obviously aimed well. She wasn't confident that they'd walk again, but they'd at least live.

She produced three yellow clips from her side pouch and attached them to the back of their neck armor. With a flick from the main remote clenched tightly in her fist, the bodies began to scuttle away, retreating until the enemy was out of range.

She set her hands on the closest one's knees and sank her fingers through his skin. She heard him exhale calmly. "Good boy. It shouldn't hurt anymore. Stay with me, okay?"

She patched up his leg with a specially treated strip of cotton. The liquid soaked into the poultice hissed as it began to expel the bacteria and dirt from his legs and he turned in pain. She poked him again with the morphine, and he went limp. She repeated the routine with his comrades and tagged them with a GPS transmitter so the probes could find them.

She flipped back to thermal imaging and scanned around for the fourth soldier. As she stood, she suddenly doubled over in pain. Several bullets dropped from her midsection with a sickening squish. She activated her magnet, and ripped them form he body, her vision phased by agony. "Alex…please, your Neurostim…"

The other wordlessly obeyed. Instantly, she felt herself again, her pupils eagerly refocusing in the fading light. It was changing from day to dusk. In the distance, she could hear the whir of engines as scouts in formation swept in overhead. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but now she had alerts popping up like daisies. She could never really tell how things were going since she never was a true-blue fighter, but the thought was discomforting. Half of a battle was the one fought at home in your head.

A blob of heat was situated against a rock not far away. She approached it tentatively and filtered back to her med vision. She saw a helmet laying a few feet to her left; that's why she wasn't able to get a pulse. This one would get demerits for inconveniencing the support crew.

Then her eyes fell upon the pile of soldier sprawled against the rock. He had no right foot left, just tatters of his metal boot. He was bleeding profusely from the same leg's thigh, and something had gored a smoky hole though his stomach. Demeter let out a disappointed breath as Holcomb recoiled in disgust. "Zealot, I'll warrant."

She manually checked pulse. The blood contained there was barely strong enough to put pressure on the vessel walls, but it was enough. She took his head in her hands.

"Come on, Private. We're not gonna lose you," she breathed. She injected a double dose of morphine into his temples before pulling out two poultice patches and twisting them into balls. She then plugged the hole in his stomach with them and put pressure on his jugular vein and artery. The blood once again began to navigate through the remainder of his body.

She extracted a long strip of coiled wires from her belt and tore through his armor with her knife. She flattened the strip against his chest and activated wit with a flash from her medic arm. The edges sank through the skin and shoved his chest wide open, the ribs flexing as stress trembled within them. He had shards of his own armor buried in internal tissues that she precisely removed with her magnetic plate. She stitched the holes shut and sterilized his innards with a wave of light before ordering the apparatus to close his chest. A thick purple line sprang up as the machine detached, slithering back into her belt.

Her hands went again to his wrists. Feeling a stronger pulse, her hands sank to the sides of his ribcage. "This is your last battle, kiddo. Let's get you out of here."

She inhaled sharply and pressed her mouth against his, exhaling into the bloody cavern. His lungs expanded as her hands commanded his diaphragm to contract and she forced air into him. She then sucked it back out again and held it for four counts; then back in, hold for three, back out, hold for four. She alternated between two reps of three and four and two reps of three and seven. Before long, he was breathing on his own, and the colour came back in his face.

Holcomb was immensely impressed. "Where'd you learn that?"

"It's a Hauter Breathing Technique. There are seven patterns, each that access different parts of the central nervous system; that one in particular commands the victim to respire from his spinal cord. In other words, he bypasses the orders of his panicking brain and breathes instinctively. It's something I've learned after running a few missions with Master Sergeant Scott Findlay."

"That's creepy in the coolest way possible."

She tagged him was a GPS tracker, and signed onto HQ's radio frequency.

"We have a potentially terminally injured soldier at location 12. Requesting recon orders for myself, Captain Demeter Starling."

"Roger. Watch your position, Capta—"

The order came too late. The ground behind her was suddenly shoved upwards as the nose of a Protoss scout hurdled down from the sky, smoking profusely. She only barely managed to get out of the way by sidestepping Holcomb, who took the blow at full force. Her petite frame was shattered to pieces in seconds, flying into the air alongside metal and exhaust.

As Demeter was tossed roughly backwards, one of the cabersol needles broke inside her pack. The acidic compounds began to burn through the pressure-treated leather of her side arm bag, spilling precious steroid fluid across her virgin skin. It was not directly absorbed into the bloodstream, but it made her a little crazy. Colours could be perceived by more than just her eyes; she found herself recoiling at the smell of green and the sound of marine fire thundered through her lips. The world tasted painful as she swallowed, staggering to her knees.

A spherically shaped thing before her suddenly split and a figure rose from it elegantly, alighting it until it stood before her. She could see the burns reclining on its flesh, and, impulsively, she reached out, her arm lighting up as it sprung to work. The shape sank to her level, presenting its arm to her. She activated the Neurostim and paralyzed the region before cutting it open, removing several shards of some strange crystalline substance before cauterizing the incision with another red light from her hand.

Thank you, Captain, said a voice in her head.

"Hoo-rah," she said languidly, pitching forward into a light breeze.