novelzi Chapter 27 – Doctor Seraphine and the Nightmare Nurses
Chapter 27 – Doctor Seraphine and the Nightmare Nurses
Chapter 27 – Doctor Seraphine and the Nightmare Nurses
“Thanks to Protector technology we have made incredible leaps in medical sciences. Illnesses that only thirty years ago were known as untreatable are almost trivial to deal with these days. Not long and we might finally be able to find a breakthrough on our quest for immortality!”
- Prof. Dr. Dr. Chantalle Zelus, Medical Professional, 2054
While my body self was busy walking around and getting to the next location that needed help, my virtual self was in a separate private room with Kaysa, a couple of new Hexclaw drones projected in the middle of it.
To begin with the Mark VI Hexclaw Field Medic, which is a pretty standard drone meant to work in conjunction with a specific variant of the Mark V Carrion Juggernaut, which works as a transport for patients and the medical staff across the battlefield.
While you do have access to the Class I Medical Utilities, it would help to either upgrade that catalogue, or unlock an additional one for use by your medical drones to treat more severe injuries. By default they can treat most minor injuries, but are pretty limited.
“Huh... That... doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. Even if we won’t use it too much now, it will definitely be useful later. Makes me question how I’m going to store and transport my army though.”
The Mark V Carrion Juggernaut is part of the Carrion Lineage, which is meant to function as troop transports. Even with the medical variant, it would still have enough room to transport a full contingent of medical staff.
“How much would that cost if I got one of the Carrion things fully staffed?”
A total of 6570 points.
“Damn, that’s quite expensive.”
Most of that are the Field Medics, I’m afraid. They are quite specialised, even if their overall combat power is rather low.
“Fair enough I suppose... If I go ahead and grab more medical stuff for them to use, how much would it be then? Like, my goal would be to properly equip it to handle basically whatever we could run into.”
If you want to prepare for any eventually you could reasonably encounter, the point cost would go up to 9545 points. Short of esoteric diseases and specially designed biological weaponry it would be able to deal with pretty much whatever the antithesis could throw at you at the moment. It would also help with most injuries that could be inflicted by humans and their weapons and machinery. Although please understand that while it is quite state of the art medical equipment, even it has its limits. It is advisable to upgrade their equipment further in the future.
“Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t expect you to raise the dead or anything. And honestly my plan would be for them to work in conjunction with the White Doves if and when. I might have the medical equipment, but considering it’ll basically be me controlling them, I am missing a whole lot of experience in the field. Of course that can come later, but it would be outright idiotic to ignore the experts already present.”
A sensible decision.
I took a quick glance at my point counter, sitting at 14657 points at the moment, steadily if slowly rising. I had the points to spend on it.
“Bundle it all up and get it. Medical shit is the kind of stuff I rather have and not need than the converse.”
Understood.
Class II Medical Utilities unlocked!
Points reduced to: 14364
Tokens reduced to: 0
New purchase: Mark V Carrion Juggernaut (Variant M)!
Points reduced to: 11794
New purchase: Mark VI Hexclaw Field Medic x16!
Points reduced to: 7794
New purchase: Various Items!
Points reduced to: 4819
Seventeen eggs appeared behind me, sixteen smaller ones, plus one really big one. It didn’t take long for my drones to untangle themselves from their shells and start moving over to the big pile of boxes that had appeared not far from them.
The Medics quickly started to unpack the contents, while the Juggernaut got closer so it could be loaded.
Much to my surprise the Field Medics looked a lot different from the other Hatchlings. Instead of the weird alien anatomy they looked like pretty normal human women, even if a bit on the curvy side, just with an additional arm on their left shoulder blade and a long tail.
Their body was covered in chitin and fur that made them look like they were dressed in some fantasy offshoot of nurse uniforms, with a slightly more provocative cut. Any of them could probably pass as a heavily modified Samurai without too much problem, if you excluded the eyes since they still very much looked like the rest of my drones. Well, hopefully this would be enough for my patients to not run screaming from the room.
The Juggernaut was also a lot different from what I expected. Probably also a lot different than what it would normally look. To put it simply it looked like a massive armored combat walker from a really old LEGO Bionicles movie, just with a more insectoid body structure. The insides were quite roomy and similarly designed to look more like human construction than the insides of a weird alien species.
“Damn! I did not expect that,” I said, watching them work. “But they will do as a medical corp. I guess you stocked them with whatever they need?”NewW novels updates at novelhall.com
It did make me a teeny bit angry though.
Even from afar I could see that they had a multitude of armed people on their border, much more than I would have thought considering that their numbers weren’t infinite and they had an entire Hive to contend with. Probably some attempt to make it look like they had things well in order, and the grunts wouldn’t mind since it would mean being further away from their death sentence.
Walking up the street they had designated as their border, I could see many eyes following me, most of them a mixture of hopelessness and stubborn refusal.
Shaking my head I arrived at my side of the street and made my way over, only to be stopped by some brutish looking guy with a woman even more brutish next to him. Both of them gave me sneers, even if the common thugs behind them looked a lot less sure of themselves.
“Fuck off. This is Wasp turf and you aren’t wanted here, Samurai.” The man’s voice was gruff and raspy, probably a heavy smoker by the sound of it.
Sighing theatrically I crossed my arms, “I don’t particularly care, to be honest. You have a Hive in your territory and we need to deal with it. And before you waste your breath, we both know you aren’t able to actually deal with it yourself.”
He sneered, “Of fucking course we can. Who the fuck do you think we are?”
“Useless grunts with less than a dozen braincells shared between the lot of them, manipulated or probably blackmailed by your boss to do what he wants to make him look all tough and shit while he hides in some hole somewhere, shitting his pants, and hoping he won’t get eaten by some pissed off plant.”
“The hell do you think you are to talk like this about Boss?!” the woman asked, obviously trying to play all tough and shit, although from her expression I would almost say she was braindead enough to actually believe it.
“I’m a Samurai. A very tired Samurai who’s finally run out of patience to deal with a group of fuckwits that seem to have a death wish and willing to kill innocent people to prove it.”
The brute snorted, “Yeah, and? Samurai are useless. Just take a look at Blitzer, all he does is mouth off then fuck off when he’s threatened.”
I raised my eyebrows. Did these knobheads think that Samurai were pushovers because Blitzer so far had been spread too thin to show them otherwise?
“Are you actually stupid? Wait, no, sorry, wouldn’t want to insult stupid people like that,” I rubbed my face with my hand, “Look. Just get the fuck out of my way so that someone competent can deal with the problem. I don’t know what is going on behind this facade, but I bet my last dose of Daemon that you lot are here to uphold an image while the rest of the folk in this district get slaughtered in job lots.”
“Listen here, you little shit-” the man began, then was promptly silenced by the armada of Hexclaws forming up behind me. I didn’t have the patience to deal with this idiot, so if he wanted to play hardass I had no qualms about removing him.
“No, you listen, you brainless waste of oxygen. You get the fuck out of my way right now or I’ll send my little friends here in, to turn you and anyone trying to stop me into new little drones so that you finally have some actual fucking use.”
I wasn’t actually planning to do that, but at the same time he didn’t know that and I didn’t want to deal with this shit right now.
The two stooges in front of me eyed the growing army of alien murder machines behind me cautiously, while the rest of their friends took a couple steps back, panic clearly written all over their faces.
The woman snorted again, although from the way her heartbeat had accelerated a bit I was almost certain she too was feeling a bit panicked.
“Yeah, sure. Don’t you guys want to protect people or something? You wouldn’t dare touch us.”
I shook my head. She had a point, which meant I either had to put up or shut up. If I didn't, everyone would know that they could push me around, which just meant a whole slew of problems in the long term. So I decided on the former, rather than the later. One brainless goon less in the world wouldn’t mean much and it would bring my point across. Hopefully.
“Snuffles, fetch.”
Once I had gotten some more Reavers I had decided to name the leader of their little group in honour of their late predecessor. And so the biggest of the Reavers stepped forward, snarled, then jumped her before she could move, taking her head off with a single bite.
It was... a lot uglier than I had expected, and it took quite some willpower to not let myself show my displeasure, but I had a role to play here.
Of course the display made everyone take a couple steps back and some thugs behind the slaughter dropped their weapons and ran.
“Anyone else? Or can we finally fucking focus on the maneating aliens?”
Admittedly, I only realised after the fact how stupidly hypocritical that sounded.
Author notes:
The Carrion Juggernaut Variant M looks roughly similar to the Bionicle Transport from scene.
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