When it rains, as the old saying goes, it pours.
"Pull her back to the tent!" Doc Painless roared, helping his little gang of volunteers haul a bloodied Rodian out of a circle of angry rent-a-cops. A few baton strikes crashed against his shoulders and back as he forced his way past the security officers, who evidently weren't done pummeling the near-unconscious woman, but his metal grafts took the brunt of the blows. Fortunately, the officers didn't dare follow them too far. They'd only pounced on this woman because she'd gotten isolated from the main line of protesters; numbers meant some safety.
The tent that the Doc and his volunteers headed back to, four of them holding limbs while a fifth gently cradled the Rodian's lolling head, was the same one he'd set up to treat earthquake victims; he didn't have a whole lot of spare resources, having used up most of what he'd bought on Wann Tsir in the wake of the first crisis. So he reused, recycled, and made do the same way he always had. Of course, they were seeing different injuries now; the corpos were deploying shock batons, chemical irritants, microwave rays, and more to try to disperse the crowds.
And there had been no shortage of incidents "gone hot" with lethal weapons; that was how this had all started, after all. Corporate security wasn't concerned about dropping a few bodies. They knew that all they had to say was "I feared for my life", and at most they'd be hit with a brief paid suspension. This wasn't a nice part of Denon. There was plenty of crime, the products of the poverty and desperation that corporate greed and apathy had created. But that allowed the people in the nice districts to justify the officers' excessive use of force.
After all, it was all okay as long as it was happening to those people down there.
They got the Rodian to a cot and started running medscans, looking for concussions or broken bones. The woman was seizing and shrieking in agony, and the Doc wished he had painkillers to offer her. But they'd been almost out for a while now, and he needed to save what was left for cases in which he had to operate. Standing back at the tent entrance, he leaned against one of the sturdy poles to catch his breath, squeezing his eyes shut and cutting off their synthetic feed. He couldn't remember when he'd last stopped, let alone slept. He found he could barely stand.
He would have given anything to be at the Blue Flame, drinking until this fethed-up world fell away and oblivion came.
But that was even less of an option now than it had been during the exhausting earthquake relief operation. No corporate medical care was coming, even as a publicity stunt, for those injured in this protest. If anyone who was arrested was badly injured, they probably wouldn't be treated, only left to suffer in a cell. There was only him and a handful of other street medics working the front lines, badly overstretched and utterly spent. They would keep going until they couldn't anymore, until they dropped in the streets too. These were their people. They had to help them.
Doc Painless
had coined. The graffiti made his shield a special target among all the other shields. Jerec's stun baton was almost out of charge, and he was regretting ever bringing whimsy to the table.
