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July is Flash Fiction Month! I’ll be sharing short short stories here through the month of July. Story dedicated to my friend Sam, the inspiration for Patches, and one of my oldest and best friends.
Battlefield clean-up was far from glorious. Lady Rune Lostsabre and the medic she was bound to protect, Patches, were some of the few figures standing among the dead and wounded. Rune had been prepared for gore and destruction — in the past she’d caused plenty of it herself — but you never got used to the smell. Even with the smear of ocimea oil under her nose, the reek of death still stung her nostrils.
Patches primed the scanner. A grid of blue light settled over roughly one quarter of the battlefield that was his to monitor. Rune circled him, eyes sharp, shield raised. Medics weren’t permitted to carry weapons; their protector had only shields. Rune had forgone the standard lightweight energy shields most soldiers preferred. Hers was enhanced, of course — she wasn’t stupid — but she preferred the heft of a real metal shield.
Patches’s scanner chirped, indicating that it was ready to start scanning the area. Gray light filtered over the dead bodies. Blue marked wounded allies and red marked wounded enemies. The light trickled over the area: gray, gray, gray.
Green.
Green meant alive, unhurt, and neither friend nor enemy. The rarest color in clean-up. But it was tucked underneath a pile of gray.
“Careful,” Rune warned the doc. She’d known Patches half her life now. They’d both started in Basic together. He was prone to running headlong into things without thinking of the consequences. Admittedly, Rune was similar, but it was her sworn duty to keep him alive. “Scene isn’t safe.”
“It’s never safe,” Patches said, and moved toward the green mark. Rune matched his stride, but let him roll over the dead body on top of Green.
Greens were usually civilians, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They usually were panicked or in shock, and grateful to see anyone who wasn’t pointing a weapon at them. Underneath the dead body, Green was alert. “Damn!”
He leaped to his feet. Rune had only a second to assess. Chainmail boots. Bits of armor stolen from both armies. Beads in knotted hair that were actually small explosives, and a push knife in either hand. A war scavenger. Nasty, dangerous business, but a lucrative one.
Green charged toward Patches. He thrust one of the knife points towards Patches’s neck.
Rune intercepted the scavenger in a second. Her heater shield went up, blocking Green’s first blow, then the next. Rune flicked on the dial to burn mode.
Green ran at Patches again. Rune swung her shield, bashing Green in the side of his head. He staggered, his flesh already reddening. Rune tilted the shield back and jabbed its pointed end into Green’s throat.
He fell, stunned and whimpering in pain.
Green’s color marker changed to purple. Wounded non-combatant.
“Thanks for that,” Patches said, shaking his head.
“No worries. You want me to arrest him first, or you wanna fix him up first?”
“Arrest him. Once he’s immobile we can triage the rest.”
Rune set about cuffing the scavenger, and Patches looked over the battlefield. He was duty bound to heal all he could, even the enemy. And Rune was sworn to protect him, with only a shield.
It was an ugly job. A hard one.
Rune finished with the scavenger. “You good?”
Patches sighed. “Not really.”
Rune squeezed his shoulder. “You know, when I was transferred to Med Corps. I was pissed. Then I found out you were the doc I got assigned to. And I thought, ‘Great, the trouble twins are together again.'” Patches smiled at their old nickname from Basic. “But I was glad. ‘Cause I knew you’d have my back.”
“And your blood,” Patches added with a small laugh.
Rune punched him lightly in the shoulder. She may have been a universal human donor — and living blood bag in a pinch — but that didn’t mean she had to like it.
“I was glad too,” Patches said. “Cause I’d knew you’d have my back.”
“Right. Let’s do this.”
Knight and Doc went into the battlefield, fire-forged friends.
Overlooked Books 