“We must believe in the service we provide mankind. Otherwise we will come to faulter. We might come to doubt ourselves, and doubt was ever the enemy of strength.” - quote attributed to Aamod Gharsanja, Defender of Ambarsar, founder of the Steel Kipran.

2085, Central Sweden, Northern Quadrant

“Want one?”

Abban stared down at the offered cigar. His Chassis immediately classified it and a series of notes came into being next to the brown cylinder. They’d be visible to him, and him alone. Narcotics. Grade 4.

“No thanks.”

Analee shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’ll ask you once again when we’re done.”

“My religion doesn’t permit me-“

Their transport swung in a wide arc then and Abban began to chant to himself. Don’t let my stomach erupt. Don’t let my stomach erupt. Don’t let my stomach erupt.

“I was nervous my first time, too. Then, that was Second Paris whereas this is just some minor camp.”

Abban opened his eyes, staring at the green-tinted cowl of Analee’s Chassis. It had wide sleeves, pants that flared out and a hood. It made her look like a magician, albeit a hippy one.

“You were at Second Paris?”

“Sure was.” She exhaled a circle of smoke, dragging one finger through it. “I saw those high and low. Serena Smiler, the Steel Kipran and even Sage herself. Too bad about that pretty tower though.” She puffed a series of smoke funnels.

Abban snapped back to something she had said, a piece of information that had penetrated the nausea. “A camp? We’re going to one of the provincial camps?”

Analee’s grey eyes met his and he gulped. “I suggest you never refer to the camps as ‘provincial’ anywhere they can hear. That way you won’t have stress-test your new Chassis.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

A loud bang echoed through the gravitronic copter’s armor, prompting Analee to get up. “That’s our cue. Now, repeat to me, what’s your callsign?”

The formality of the question jostled Abban a little, probably as intended. He glanced down at his Chassis, matte-black, with great wings. The mouthguard of his helmet was shaped like that of a great bird’s beak. “Nevermore.”

Analee rolled her eyes. “Nevermore it is.”

A section of the floor began to glow in the semblance of an iris and wind soon filled the hull of their transport.

“Can you hear me?”

Abban nodded. The voice-links were something they had tested and tried a great deal in practice. In the field, a Proxy might encounter wide-spectrum jamming, but this was a civilian site. He repeated that to himself. A civilian site, with no active combatants.

“On my mark.”

“Copy.”

“1.”

“2.”

“…3.”

Analee walked up to the glowing iris and disappeared. Abban followed-

-and the air was rushing all around him-

-his wings unfolded, the clear gravitronic blades blurring-

-and his descent stopped.

Analee drifted by, exhaust trailing her form, and she gave him a look. “Atleast you didn’t disgrace yourself.”

She made a gesture, and a series of sharp pings chimed in his ears. Superimposed on the vision of his Chassis, and thus his own sight, a series of forms and shapes grew near. They looked like the cigar his mentor had smoked, though grey rather than brown. Some were stacked on top of each others, whereas others stood alone. Uneven terrain gave the picture a sense of rising and rolling ground. An anthill.

“This is Camp Redsjö. As of this morning, 10.05, a non-active combat zone. A series of senior Proxies were nearby and managed to stop the attack and kill the Host, a deviathan.”

Abban winced. Those centipedes were quick and agile.

“We will proceed to the triage tents, where the survivors have been gathered. Expect the worst and do your best.”

“Will do!”

“Iniating teleport.”

The distance between their position in the air, point A, and the intended position on the ground, point B, elongated and shorted.

Reality itself snapped like a rubber ban and though Abban’s instructors argued that such a sensation existed only in the mind, it felt physical.

Vector. Arcs. They filled his blanked visor. One vector in the form of red footmarks spun to the right, inside a white tent marked with a snake encircling a staff.

Another vector in the form of white stars led up and through torn metal modules, torn earth and viscera. The red substance, and the darker strains…Abban glanced away. “How long…” he trailed off.

“Ten, maybe fifteen seconds.”

Abban had seen casts and videos of attacks before in his training, but reality differed. His Chassis was already filtering away the smell, but if he wanted to, it told him, he could have smell of deep copper and the burnt metal.

A series of cries echoed from the adjacent tent and he shook himself. Analee nodded, this time with something close to approval.

They entered the tent-

-and Abban’s Chassis immediately removed the sounds. A diffuse sense of cold spread through his chest and he recognised the mild sedatives and tranquillisers that kept his heart rate from speeding away. Nothing to affect his judgement, only to ensure that he actually had one.

Cots. Three rows. Men and women walking by them. They wore white. The cots themselves… Analee went up to one and looked. Not scanning, for that might might upset the injuries, but peering down with intent.

The absence of sound made him feel as if he were underwater, that he might breach the surface at any time.

His Chassis had the same basic predicative software, though hers was more practised, and soon followed suit as seconds passed. Her - and it was a she - had no arm below the right elbow. A series of fractures had spread like an earthquake through the ribs on the same side.

Analee pointed at him. “Triage!”

That word that haunted him through instructionals, exams, workshops and other accreditations focused him like nothing other. The arm was fixed; someone had applied a smart-tourniquet which had numbed the pain and clogged the wound. That Proxy might not have cared, or perhaps more charitably considering the sheer number of cots, hadn’t noticed the fracture.

Abban extend both arms, hands up, and a cast of lesser ceramacrete appeared from his hyperstorage. His Chassis would ensure that the measurements were a fit, and now…

“Scan?”

Analee nodded. Mathematics beyond the human realm spun before before his eyes and the cast reappeared around the girl’s torso.

Analee was already at another cot, so Abban attached a note to the girl’s profile. A calcium-serium would remedy the bones.

The next patient… the point of triage protocols was to rapidly assess which cases required care directly and which did not. But what did you do when one person was about to die?

Analee had opened the patient, a man in his late thirties who looked as if he were asleep. A previous Proxy had used a deep sedative, the so called Sandman Solution to put the man into a state of medical coma. It had probably been meant to ensure that the man had time until care could be brought properly.

Like the patient before, that Proxy hadn’t considered the ramifications. The man’s heart…had been cut in two.

Abban stared as Analee put multiple stasis and preservation fields over the man’s body. She grabbed the folds of flesh and widened the wound, uncaring if blood sprayed across her Chassis. Without pausing she shoved something down in the man’s cavity and manifested a yarn of thinkstring.

With her left hand she sewed the skin, while with her right hand she used a telekinetic field to reorder his ribs. He had heard about such techniques, but the skill involved boggled his mind. He couldn’t do that, not even with ten years of practise. As her stitching began to overlap with the bone-manipulation, she pulled her right hand up and began to stitch the skin from the above, the two hands meeting in the middle.

She manifested a deep green nanocloud of anti-infectants, vitamins and immune-system enhancers and wiped her brow. One hand patted the man’s chest.

The other she pointed at the cots. “Are you waiting for an invitation? Go!”

The speed of her operation must have been counted in seconds, but to Abban, subjective hours had passed.

He went up to a third patient, a woman without legs and began to assess. Not enough blood…a genetic marker that forbade rapid regeneration… As he began to create a mirror protocol that would save as much sensation as possible, he wondered at what a crisis could do to a person. He no longer felt upset, but weary, with a dose of shock. It would be a long day, and he considered taking Analee up on her offer. Something told him he would need a smoke before the end of the day.