Author: Majoki

When you’ve seen what flashbeams can do to infantry, even with shielding, it’s easy to lose your faith in humanity. When your commander outfits one of your few remaining tactical boostsuits with a golden cape and wings, and then orders you to fly among your maimed and dying comrades trumpeting on a silver horn as if you were the Angel Gabriel, you tend to lose your faith in God, too.

That’s what I did in the final weeks of the Battle of Geryon. My commander said it could turn the tide of the fighting if our dying soldiers witnessed a clear sign of a higher purpose, that their beliefs and hopes in the divine might just help them hang on long enough.

Long enough for their suffering to be of real use. That’s what I learned posing as the Angel Gabriel. That the longer my fellow soldiers lingered, the better the chances the AMVICs could get to them. That sounds heroic. Especially if you think, like most grunts, that AMVIC stands for Advanced Medical Viability In Combat, and that AMVICs are sent out in swarms after battle to save the grievously wounded.

I’m sure if programmed to do so, the crab-like AMVICs with their ten surgically deft limbs and laser scalpels could’ve saved a whole lot of lives, a whole lot of grief. But those football-sized bots on the battlefield were not there to repair and rescue. They were there to reap. To harvest the bounty of functioning organs before soldiers perished and those valuable replacement parts spoiled. Yes, vital organs were the new spoils of war.

What I now know is that AMVIC really stands for Autonomous Mobile Vivisection In Combat. They were programmed to remove what little left the wounded and dying of the lowly infantry class had to offer. And so I was sent to play the Angel Gabriel to fortify the dying, while supposed medbots were robbing them blind. Literally. Eyeballs are near the top on Command’s list of vital organs to harvest.

Why the sacred charade? Why the divine deceit?

Would you fight for commanders that so easily wrote you off? Those commanders might have been able to save you, but they were only interested in saving your organs. Organs that could be used to keep the soldiers that really mattered going: the A-Force, the highly augmented combat warriors that Command really valued.

AMVICs could only hone in on warm bodies to harvest, so my unholy job was to keep the languishing alive and believing in redemption, in the promised land. But there is no redemption here. No promise. For I am sure someday that in the battle that takes me down, the AMVICs sent to harvest my innards will find this former faux angel, long ago, lost both his heart and soul.