Glory Main by Henry V. O'Neil Page A

later.
    â€œSo finally we’d recovered enough to stand up, and that’s when the loudspeaker said that they were going to drop one wall of the box and that we were supposed to get our toes on these white lines that were painted on the pavement just outside. We were all happy to do that, but then the loudspeaker said that the last guy out of the box was going to wish he’d moved a little faster.”
    The stars allowed Mortas to see the little man shudder before he continued.
    â€œSo the wall comes down with a crash, this mass of bodies goes tumbling over it, it’s daylight outside so nobody can see, everybody’s running into everybody else, ‘Where are the lines? Where are the lines?’ and then somehow we found ’em and we were all standing like statues in three long rows. Still wearing our civilian clothes, covered in filth, but we were really dedicated at that moment to standing in that formation.
    â€œAnd the armored suits came back, just took this one guy, just grabbed him at random, no way they could have known who was last out of that box, and they dragged him out in front of the others. They pinned that poor bastard to the ground, stood on him with those massive suits, and shocked him until he passed out screaming his head off.
    â€œAnd nobody in that formation made a move to help him.” He gave a short laugh. “It was a thing of genius.”
    They all waited for him to say more, but after a time it was clear that he was finished. Gorman lifted his boots off the rock where they’d been propped and curled himself up into a sitting position.
    â€œI’m not doubting you, Corporal, but how do you know they just picked that one guy? How do you know he wasn’t the last one out of the box?”
    â€œBecause I wasn’t last.”
    M ortas had the final guard shift of the night, and he leaned his chest against the hole’s dirt wall as the sky slowly began to lighten. A breeze had sprung up over time, causing the brush in front of him to sway back and forth. In the predawn darkness it reminded him of undersea grass he’d once seen while snorkeling at home, gently rocking to invisible currents.
    One of the others moved at his feet, and Mortas looked down to see Trent stretching and yawning. Cranther and Gorman were still asleep, the mapmaker with his feet elevated once again and the scout curled up into a ball. Trent stood up without disturbing the other two and joined him at the wall.
    â€œSun’s coming up.”
    â€œYeah. Seen anything out there? Animals? Birds?”
    â€œNo, but it was pitch dark during most of my shift. And the wind’s kept the brush moving, scraping against itself, making noise. Might have been something out there but I missed it.”
    â€œI could have sworn something flew over us during my shift.” She stretched again, raising her arms over her head and arching her back. “Ya know, as hungry as we all are, I can honestly say that what bugs me right now is that I haven’t had my coffee.”
    Mortas gave her a friendly smile, relieved that she’d found something to say that didn’t irritate him.
    â€œWe’d pull these long shifts when the wounded came in, and when the last ones had been sorted and handed off to the doctors I’d sit with the triage techs and drink this awful coffee and shoot the breeze. You wouldn’t believe the jokes they told, just to stay sane.”
    â€œSounds like a tough job.”
    â€œFor them it was. Not a lot of latitude. The scanners told them how bad off the patient was, and they sorted them according to Force guidance.” Trent shook her head. “They used all these codes and phrases so that anyone who was being set aside wouldn’t know what was happening.”
    â€œLike FUAD?”
    â€œYeah. I guess making an acronym out of it made it less ugly. The doctors would try to get involved with triage every now and then, so Command