Dark brown hair pulled back in a bun, Dr. Rocinolle stared at the courier, who was leaning against the wall, gasping for breath. "Slow down now, it's not necessarily a good idea to flood your system with oxygen," she found herself saying automatically. Oh dear, they weren't pushing the couriers too hard, were they? She hoped someone was keeping an eye on them. The professionals would know their limits, but… No, surely the situation wasn't serious enough to make a human push themselves hard past their limits, using emergency capabilities to deliver their message and then die.
Of course, the runner who had named what Neo Arcadia called 'Marathon Syndrome' forced himself that hard to bring home news not of an emergency but of victory in battle.
So, she told her to, "Drink some of that water," the couriers always carried water mixed with sugar and salt, to replace the amount used up by their cooling system, "And then could you repeat that?"
Rocinolle's build was more than a little plump, since that was the best way to fit in the extra supplies and systems a medic could need at any moment. She'd noticed humans considered the shape motherly, since having too much body fat was criticized and considered wasteful for everyone except expectant and nursing mothers, and it really had made humans even more willing to listen to her, except when their territorial instincts were flaring up. Although she'd rather have a human patient than a reploid patient any day: reploids might have the mental capacity of an adult human, but they rarely had the life experience. Humans might forget instructions since their memories weren't searchable, but generally even the ones, like this one, who supposedly weren't even up to a newbuilt reploid's maturity level yet had seen enough to know that yes, a doctors' orders were important.
As expected the courier nodded an obedient 'of course,' switching to deep breaths for a few seconds before taking a drink, looking at Rocinolle apologetically. Garbling a message was embarrassing even for someone who had only signed up with Serpent (Serpent Couriers: As swift and accurate as our namesake!) a couple months ago. "The wounded and as much equipment as possible to be prepped for transport. Signal use is authorized to coordinate transport and determine what will be sent where. Limited teleport use is authorized, but keep it down," she recited, holding up one of the stamped and dated papers departments sent with messengers to authenticate them. "Sending medical staff and rare equipment takes priority over the common equipment they'll have there already. Move the most severely wounded last."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply you weren't delivering your message clearly. I just hoped I hadn't heard you right." Did Judge Biblio even have the authority to order something like this? No, he wouldn't have if it wasn't what needed to be done, not at a time like this, but…
They couldn't send the worst cases last: they'd have to be sent with the machines that were keeping them stable.
"I'll switch on our com station," Dr. Doight said as Dr. Rocinolle wished there was someone she could ask what on earth the Judge was thinking. Well, he was considered one of the wisest in Neo Arcadia for a reason, and she'd often talked with him about new treatments, or rather old ones he'd dug up in the archives. Still!
If their medical equipment was being sent to the front to shorten the turn-around-time of wounded soldiers and support the assault, shouldn't they have been notified earlier?
Couldn't someone have told them before she let them get drunk?
"-there are no fighter pilots down in hell: Oh, the place is full of wets, ground-pounders and cadets, but there are no fighter pilots-" The ancient Rekku song proclaiming their dubious moral superiority over the Meikai marines, Jin'en infantry & stupid young officers echoed in her audio receptors as well as off the blue-and-white walls again, since it was no longer something she could filter out. Not when she'd have to get them all moved, and not in a conga line.
The mobile human members of the Meikai, Zan'ei and Jin'en scouting teams (the Tan Berets) were tracing comet-like orbits around an area of oversized berths reserved for larger reploids, using the cooling system of one berth and an obliging patient's flamethrower to store and roast a giant squid that had come in with the patients on one of the Meikai's ambulance vehicles. After all, if they'd been attacking a base that deep down anyway…
Since consuming animal protein helped humans heal faster, the hospital actually had some with every meal, although it took quite a bit of doing. Giant squid were one of the very few species left that humans could eat which were large enough to fight back. Rocinolle, as a doctor, really didn't understand the appeal of killing and consuming something that had demonstrated it wanted to live, but perhaps there was some sense of fair play involved. It wasn't as though the squid didn't win sometimes: she'd had more than one adventurous reploid half-crushed by tentacles rushed to her.
A human whose suit was broken at that depth wouldn't live long enough to register that they were about to die, let alone stay conscious long enough to be eaten alive. The thought of it still made her shudder.
The diagnostic reason for giving them alcohol could be summed up in four words or one acronym: post-traumatic stress disorder. Humans had built-in logic holes that tried to keep their brains from processing the implications of killing other sentient beings and having other sentient beings try to kill them (the second was almost worse for a species that had first survived and then risen to the top by working together as communities and their subconscious knew it), but since it was survival-related data, their brains would start processing it anyway if the combat lasted too long, and nightmares as their brains repeatedly processed the data and flashbacks when something triggered a play-by-play replay of an especially significant situation weren't the worst that could happen.
Rumor had it that Weil was.
Adult humans, especially soldiers, always tried to hide it when something was wrong, or at least hide how badly it affected them for various reasons. It was showing weakness, after all, and according to her psychology instructor that was a very dangerous thing to do around predators, like dogs and cats. And humans. It wasn't just fear, of course: by acting as though things would be okay they reassured their comrades. Not to mention small humans and now younger reploids that would be looking to them for an example of how to behave.
Humans learned to always keep one eye on how they were acting, to think over things before they said them as they matured, which was a good idea for reploids too. That was why Rossignol hadn't blurted out her complaint at the poor courier who didn't have anything to do with it. While yes, it was deceptive not to just say what they were thinking without editing everything, it certainly was more considerate than evil. Saying things without thinking of how others would interpret them first meant she could hurt their feelings by accident, and that was the last thing she wanted.
By scrambling human brains, though, alcohol made it very hard for humans to do that. The fact they knew it had that effect meant it generally didn't even take that much, because humans didn't especially like watching all their actions all the time. It was quite a lot of work to be mature and considerate. Thus, alcohol was like a special dispensation from the Guardians to be off duty and do prettymuch anything they felt like within same limits. No wonder they liked the stuff, despite their chemical analysis systems rightly identifying it as poison and giving them an alert in the form of an unpleasant, bitter taste.
And while their defenses were down, the psychologists and chaplains had a much better chance to identify those who had started to realize the true significance of war and violence and help them find some way to understand it, a context to put it in, other than that the world was mad and Weil was right.
'Replibeer' was one of the first things invented by a third party after the development of reploids. Rossignol did have to wonder if it was just for the sake of parties or because someone had been unsure about the new race and wanted to see how they thought when their circuits were too fried to lie.
Both were technically poisons, but all medicines were and there wasn't any harm in letting soldiers celebrate a victory, especially when the endorphins plus alcohol, or the reploid equivalent helped overwrite and distract their systems from the pain. It was harder for Neo Arcadian reploids to shut down their pain receptors: Rocinolle and the other doctors could do it, but Master X had developed a pain system for a reason, after all. If something went wrong with one of their patients, they needed to know immediately. Keeping alerts from reaching their processors wouldn't help.
As for the humans, all of them were on as many painkillers as it was safe to give them, but beyond the normal 'mostly safe' kinds (everything was toxic to humans, sadly), Neo Arcadia only had one that was made from a flower, oddly enough. The trouble was that it was so effective because it mimicked one of the chemicals humans used for cost-benefit analyses (human biology allowed them to ignore pain if the gain was sufficient), meaning that all humans were born addicted to it. If exposure to it wasn't handled properly, it would trick their systems into thinking that getting more of the poppy gum was more important than anything else.
The idea of something controlling one's thoughts like that was so horrible to reploids, in the aftermath of the virus and Weil's elves, that they were always extremely reluctant to prescribe opium. Yet no doctor wanted anyone to be in pain.
The high of victory, the fog of endorphins and good fellowship that engulfed the wards produced quite a bit of the same biochemical effect, as little as Rocinolle liked the idea of humans consuming flesh that surely contained a little too much of the heavy metals & the poison that was alcohol. Dr. Doight always laughed when she winced at a human drinking: She understood why, after hearing his stories about field surgery where all they had was the alcohol that served double-duty as disinfectant and something for the human to bite down on, so they could try to focus on killing the 'attacker' before it killed them, tricking the brain into overriding the pain at least somewhat in the interest of survival. He'd been reminiscing with a Jin'en field medic before he noticed the courier's arrival.
"There may come a time when a lass needs an evac-" The singer was human: a reploid would have said 'rebuild.' Rocinolle had heard both versions of that song quite a few too many times.
"Then busters are a girl's best friend," came the chorus, containing quite a few male voices that were singing along just because there was singing going on and were likely too young, if they didn't recognize the song, to understand the moral of the human version (fight as hard as you can while you can, so when you're too old or crippled to fight you won't have to stand there and watch the murder of innocents) or the reploid version (get those battle bonuses and save up for a rebuild while ye may, because combat's hard on the systems and for a warrior to be taken out of the fight when they, unlike our sisters-in-arms, could have prevented it is unforgiveable). As applicable to them as the second was. Neo Arcadia's citizens were given a ration with the assumption that they would use it to see to their own maintenance and ensure that they were able to do their work. If the city gave a reploid combat upgrades and that reploid lost them due to balking at pricy 'optional' maintenance and parts replacements, the city damn sure wasn't going to pay for a second set.
Well, Rocinolle thought, the city's considerable grapevine meant that quite a few family members and retired members of the armies (who were also practically family, especially for the reploids) had come by to visit and stayed here after the announcement to help out. Which really meant to party, but there wasn't anything wrong with that. Visitors helped recovery.
The trouble was that if she tried to break up the party the newbuilts, at least, would be rather upset. A rather upset person of either species and molecules that inhibited higher functions and judgment calls were not a good combination.
It was rather hard to keep enterprising humans from setting up stills, but the city did its best to keep tabs on alcohol because it intensified emotions and loosened the control the human consciousness had over other functions.
Young reploids just had poor judgment, and if they were in the armies then they'd already made the connection that problem plus a few good bolts of plasma equaled no more problem. They'd learned that killing things solved problems, and hadn't made the connection that if what one killed were people, then no, it didn't. Not when there were such things as pissed-off friends and Zan'ei officers. If anything, it tended to multiply the number of problems.
Humans were just as bad. While for reploids, based on Master X, not attacking others was the default unless it was overridden by life experience or learned behavior, humans were automatically preset to respond to obstacles either by avoidance or violence. Fight or flight. Life experience quickly taught most humans that violence wasn't the right answer in ninety-nine percent of cases, and they learned to kick their inner assault mechanaloid back into the garage so they could think up more effective tactics. After all, shooting one's supervisor rarely helped one make deadline.
Yet when their self-control had wandered off in search of a drink, military humans, who unlike civilians actually had experienced circumstances where the application of firepower was the only viable solution, would start swinging. Then the humans around them would join in. Some because they got caught in the crossfire and interpreted it as an attack, some trying to stop the fight and others because it looked like fun.
It wasn't just her wards: Rocinolle knew that humans and reploids all over the city must be breaking out the good stuff to celebrate their victory over Weil. But her wards were her problem.
"So then the human said, 'Retreat? Hell, we just got here!' We would have used the first part for our motto, but profanity gets depowered if it's overdone and that guy's unit used that for their motto, and you can't steal someone else's."
"-Oh, there are no fighter pilots in the city: We're off to foreign skies-"
Storytelling Meikai commandos and off-key Rekku alike. As Rocinolle thought that a Zan'ei barked at one of the least melodious songbirds to watch the frequencies of his vocal output, dammit, or he'd be up on charges for assaulting an officer's ears. Certain frequency combinations, especially high-pitched, bothered humans' brains. The resonance phenomenon was really fascinating, from the perspective of her research, although something like that would be a security problem for a reploid.
She sighed, rolling back the sleeves of the traditional coat. It wasn't as though 'I don't want to' or 'It's going to be hard was ever an excuse for a doctor.
Mmm, just thought I'd toss this up here. I was trying to get my brain back into the swing of things more than anything else. That, and I first encountered the song, "There are no fighter pilots down in hell," in an anthology of SF stories set in hell as sort of a shared world, with historical figures rebelling and such. It turned out the song had been set up as a prayer/chant/spell, and all those decades of pilots singing it in bars had given it considerable power…