Nine Years before the Storm
Scorpia Colony
Pvt David Dedrick and PFC Mike Mitchell
When they reached the rendezvous point, they were seven days late. The desert sands were already swallowing the last signs that the Federal Army had been here, but it was still clear that they had not left without engaging in battle first. A few more days, though, and no one would ever know that man had set foot here.
In the carcass of a downed chopper, Dedrick found a wireless transmitter. Shortly after that they recovered a battery and an antenna from a jeep that was half-buried in an advancing dune. Mitchell cut away the fabric he could reach from a buried tent, and rigged it over the helicopter's single exposed rotor blade to form a shelter. With wires cut from the helicopter's avionics, Dedrick connected the wireless to the battery and antenna.
Two hours later, his call for assistance was picked up by a fixed-wing aircraft, an SFA reconnaissance flight. By late afternoon, a medevac chopper, escorted by two gunships, arrived to extract them. They were at the Federal Army Hospital in Theseopolis by nightfall.
Dedrick put up with the examinations, and questions, that followed. The doctor who checked him over was a tall, thin fellow with dark hair and an obvious city-boy manner. As he stripped out of his uniform, the doctor noticed the blood-soaked stain on the upper left chest of Dedrick's tan tee-shirt. "You are wounded?" the doctor said, in his odd accent.
"No, just made a new friend."
At the doctor's puzzled look, he continued, "Happens all the time, Doc. You make a new friend, you get fresh ink." Dedrick glanced down at the dried blood stain. "Nothing to worry about, Doc."
"Well, I am still going to have to look at it," the doctor answered.