The Subsector Project

Caomer Subsector – Placid – 789.M41

  “Attending.” The surgeon rose from his cot. Ninety seconds. He strode to the basin, splashing disinfectant over his arms up to his elbows.

“Shrapnel encroachment, poly-cussion, severe hemorrhage, severe nervous system trauma.” Sixty seconds. The surgeon stuck his hands towards the servitor, watching its cold mechanical detachment as it rolled his surgical gauntlets up his arms, continuing to recite its grim list of damages.

“Prior history of fungal infection-” The servitor began.
“Skip history of previous afflictions.” He snapped at the machine, flexing his fingers as it finished its task of encasing his fingers in flexible, sterile plastek. Thirty seconds.

The surgeon allowed the servitor to part the thin sheet separating his personal quarters from the operating theater. Before him, a half dozen servitors surrounded the slab, each standing silently, sleeplessly, heedless of their eternal observance. Ten seconds.

“Hands.” His word was a command, a dozen metallic implements attached to a dozen arms raised simultaneously as he took his place behind the surgical lectern. The surgeon donned his neurotek unit, muttering a blessing to the machine spirit, and causing every servitor to moan and shudder as their neural impulses were subsumed by his own. A cacophony heralding the arrival of his patient. Zero seconds.

He smiled with seven mouths; the performance was about to begin.

  Fourteen eyes rose to watch as the double doors of the theater slammed open, a gurney rushed in, a guardsman deposited on the slab. A pair of chirurgeons accompanying the fresh casualty began to spew a series of numbers and statistics, names and data half-acknowledged by a single ear as the man was helped into place by the servitors.

“That will suffice.” The surgeon’s seven voices droned in unison. The information the chirurgeon brought with him was already out of date. The front lines were nearly a half hour away by Valkyrie, the triage intake a full two minutes, and all else at least a set of doors from his domain. The only blood pressure which mattered would be measured by him- the only investigation into the soldier’s injuries which mattered would be undertaken by him.

The guardsman’s eyelids flickered fitfully. His abdomen was shredded, guts leaking digestive fluids and putrid vitae into the cavity. One lung collapsed, ribs shattered into a hundred shards causing a dozen secondary impalements, and a savage concussion spiraling through his sluggish pupils from the explosive impulse.

The surgeon already knew the opinion of any other trained medicae on this battlefront without having to be told: the man was a hopeless case best left to bleed his lifeblood into the mud of the trenches. The chirurgeons had only brought the soldier to his table because they lacked the common sense to understand the evidence before them.

For the oft-vaunted hospitallers of the Adepta Sororitas: the man was an opportunity to practice their death liturgies. His writhing would be stilled by a few confident words about the God-Emperor, and his name would be inscribed unto the honor rolls of their order.

Even for the angels of death, the space marine apothecaries with all their technology and blessed ability: The man was a despondent lesson in human fragility. He was too far gone to be interred within their war machines, totally lost as a soldier of the Imperium, another light snuffed out in front of their ageless eyes, too weak to survive the rigors of battle.

“You’re going to be all right.” The surgeon’s own voice rang flat in his ears, before he realized he had spoken with one of the servitors. He flexed a dozen manipulating appendages, giving another respectful prayer to the machine spirits of his tools, and sprang into action. Suction and intravenous lines entered, a uniform cut away to reveal secondary damage and a myriad of burst capillaries. The man was practically bleeding out through his pores, but a medical officer of his caliber found this a minor annoyance.

“How are you going to save him?” The surgeon hadn’t expected either chirurgeon to remain with his patient, they usually didn’t. He spared the man a glance with a set of servitor eyes, observing his bloodsoaked uniform and unfamiliar face. Not one of his regulars, an interloper fresh from the front line meat grinder that Placid had become.

A comrade in arms, perhaps? He was almost touched.

“Very carefully.” He replied, internally congratulating himself. Curt, but exactly what a legendary surgeon would say. It was a response carefully crafted to build his mythology amongst the enlisted. It never hurt to be a little theatrical, but he had a reputation as one who didn’t mince words, and his was a reputation worth upholding.

A plinking sound, like rain on a tin dugout roof began to patter through the theater as hands and manipulators picked through his patient’s organs for foreign objects. Each flick of his wrists carefully considered, particular and discerning. All part of the symphony he continued with the life of this patient. His was the performance of a director, a conductor, a work of beautiful art in the motions of healing.

Blood splattered across one of his implaccable faces as an artery’s flow was restored from the pinning fragment of spalled metal. Clipped, crimped, seared. The smell of burning flesh and blood filled the room. He inhaled it into several nostrils like perfume. A muscular spasm thwacked one of the patient’s arms into a manipulator, almost knocking him asunder, necessitating another paralytic injection. A brief burr in the music, swiftly addressed.

An hour passed, then two, then three. The surgeon stood as a statue, arms flashing in and out of the patient’s abdominal cavity- swabbing, packing, cauterizing- and then, suddenly, a flash of needles.

Stitch. Stitch. Stitch.

A man laid naked on the slab. A long row of tiny, tight sutures covered his abdomen, his upper arms, and parts of his chest. The neat red lines were coated in a layer of medicinal lacquer, sealing them to prevent infection and secure the stitches. A pile of shrapnel and spall sat at his side, removed, and carefully categorized by size. The symphony was complete, a perfect performance, as always. Six pairs of hands raised, ready for the next patient.

“By the Golden Throne.” The chirurgeon’s voice was shaking. “Master Arason, you’ve saved him, a miracle-” His voice choked away in astonishment.

“Hmm?” The surgeon fumbled with the neurotek, causing a series of shudders and moans through the servitors as he stepped away from the console. “Oh, I suppose he was rather far gone, but that’s why they keep me around. Your colonel will be fine.” He fixed the blood-splattered guardsman with what he hoped was a modest smile.

“The Colonel was two feet in the grave when we got him in the air, I thought he was a ‘goner for sure.” The man’s voice was gravel, as though he were attempting not to cry. Arason’s eyes narrowed for the space of an instant, and he gestured towards the door as a pair of more familiar medicae arrived to collect his finished masterwork.

“We all have our role to play in the Emperor’s design.” He bowed his head, a smooth dismissal, but before he could turn away, the man grasped his plastek-gloved hand.

“You- you performed a miracle of the Emperor.” The man’s eyes were bloodshot, red and wild. “The stars spoke of death, yet you forestalled it.” Arason pulled his hand away, feeling the grime and blood on the soldier’s hand now coating the plastek. He shivered in disgust at the sight.

He opened his fingers, realizing the guardsman had pressed something into his palm. A trio of stars astride a pair of crossed swords, wrought in metal, small enough to be affixed to a lapel. A regimental insignia pin. An award for his actions in saving his patient. Despite himself, he felt a flush rise in his neck.

“T-the life of a patient is its own reward.” Arason stammered, beating a hasty retreat away from the wild-eyed man who now bent into a supplication towards his perceived majesty.

He retreated from the guardsman, as a nobleman would from a leper, seeking the sanctity of his chambers. He was shaken by the man’s lurid reaction, by the lack of sterility his person had represented in the sterile surgical suite, by the raw emotion of his words.

It was only once the servitor sealed the plastek behind him that Arason realized he was still holding the pin. He’d meant to drop it into the pile of shrapnel, but there it was, splattered in dirt and gore- ironically the first that had touched him over the entire course of the surgery. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he dropped it into the sanitizer, stripping off his gloves as it hissed with chemical reactions.

He scrubbed the metal as he sanitized his hands. Medicae of his stature rarely interacted with the comrades of his patients-

He hissed in pain, cursing the sharp edges of the pin as he pricked his finger and the disinfectant immediately found the wound. Expletives spit from his tongue as he cursed the man who had given him the gift, the colonel who he had brought, everyone up to the Emperor for allowing him to be so wounded.

The surgeon daubed his finger on a nearby towel, staring with disbelief at the droplet which welled from it. He could not remember the last time he’d seen his own blood. Cloistered on the Ring of Ypinny, he has been insulated from the rigours and inadequacies of day-to-day life.

The sphere was a rich, deep red. While quite unlike the bright crimson of arterial spray, or the flecked blacks and browns of dried blood, it was nevertheless a perfect midpoint between the two. It should have disgusted him, as all other bodily fluids did, yet instead he found it entrancing. After all, how could something from his own person be anything less than perfect?

///

  “Attending.” The surgeon groaned, tossing away the bedclothes in which he found himself tangled, and rose from his cot. Ninety seconds. He sat on the edge of the bed, feeling out of place. It was as though he had been tossed roughly onto the surface, rather than placing himself there to prepare for his next patient. Arason had to drag himself to his feet, each step like walking through knee-deep mud to make it to the basin.

Forty-five seconds. He was already behind.

“Severe chainblade trauma, severe hemorrhage, severe nervous system trauma, near-bisection.” The surgeon flicked his hands towards the servitor with annoyance. It was moving too slow to catch up to his internal stopwatch.

“Skip history of previous afflictions, skip it all, I don’t need it.” He brushed against the machine as it finished its plastek administration. Ten seconds.

Despite already being behind, the surgeon paused as the servitor parted the sheet to allow him into the theater. He watched as a dark blotch spread beneath the plastek glove, evidently he’d reopened the wound on his finger in his rush to get ready. Not a problem, but an annoyance, to be sure. Zero seconds.

He emerged in time to see the chirurgeons deposit his next patient before his servitors.

“Hands.” Arason’s voice felt hoarse, but the effect was still immediate. He didn’t bother offering an explanation to the chirurgeons as he took his place behind the surgical lectern, affixing his neurotek unit deftly, eliciting the normal chorus from his implements. They did not need to know, nor was it their place to question. They faded from his awareness as they withdrew from the operating theater.

The surgeon frowned down at the pieces of the man now occupying his slab, already disrupting the majesty of his orchestra by leaking viscera and macerated flesh, threatening to expire at any instant.

The guardsman has been nearly bisected from shoulder to hip, the chewing, pulping teeth of the chainblade had destroyed organ and bone, flesh and muscle. He was almost more wound than man.

Arason began to work, stenting, stimulating, paralyzing in equal measure. He tried to sink himself back into the flow state that he’d been experiencing before, to summon the strength and conviction of his practice. He tried to conduct the music of the surgical suite as he’d done for decades on Ypinny.

A servitor’s arm jerked, not from the patient’s intervention, but from an errant nerve impulse from the surgeon’s own cerebellum. He bit back the curse, and refocused his efforts on staunching the new flow of dark red lifeblood from somewhere he couldn’t see. For the first time in a long time, he felt a surge of doubt.

Arason was not given to doubt. He disliked the sensation. Over his years heading the Schola Medicae he’d counseled his pupils to ignore it, to ignore everything but the flow of the surgery, the survival of the patient paramount above all personal feelings roiling within.

Yet now, the surgeon found himself unable to silence the hissing voices within his mind. A scalpel misplaced, causing a spurt from an artery already closed.

He needed to focus, but the pain in his finger distracted him. Another slip, and a searing brand dropped a millimeter, missing its target and hissing against the guardsman’s gallbladder before the servitor snatched it up once more.

Arason cursed himself as he redoubled his efforts, but he could tell the patient was too far gone. His mistakes were piling up. What had seemed difficult, yet possible, at the start of the surgery, was now an utter farce. How could he stitch the two halves of this man together? What life would such a creature be forced to endure if it did survive?

Arason pushed the thoughts away. They were immaterial, bubbling ghoulish and effervescent from his subconscious with every misplaced cut. Yet still he cut. Again and again. He branded his way across the chainblade’s path, stitching across the organs and stripping out that which could not be saved.

It was not enough. The servitor’s hands kept sliding out of cohesion, even damaging one another with their flailing moves.

The surgeon suddenly screamed in rage, slamming his hands down onto the surgical lectern. The suite ground to a halt, servitors freezing in place as he tore away his neurotek, causing sudden groans of pain from his slaved surgical hands.

Arason slumped forward. The only noise within the suite was a steady dripping from the blood and gore coating the arms of his servitors to the elbows. He needn’t look at his patient to know that the man had expired. The crushing weight of that failure bore down on him- it was the first patient who had expired on his table in three perfect, flawless years.

It would all be stripped away from him, he could feel it, he could almost hear the chirurgeons approaching from the hallway, coming to check up on his progress. Whispers would spread through the enlisted like wildfire. No more could they rely on his ability to stitch them back together. Morale will falter, Placid will fall, and Ypinny after it.

The surgeon’s breath caught in his throat as he imagined his planet burning, the Ring cast down, exposing the smallfolk to the burning heat of the winds. Everyone he knew would be stripped to a bloodied skeleton, burned and crisped before the archenemy’s soldiers even made planetfall.

Hopeless. Hopeless. Hopeless.

Sobs wracked Arason’s body, not for the guardsman on the slab, not for himself, but for the world he held dear. Damned to perdition.

“Ma-ster.” A voice hissed from chapped, cracked lips he’d never bothered to maintain. Arason stiffened as he heard them, an impossibility, a sin before the God Emperor. It was a soft breath, a whispered choir of purpose that caused him to lift his head to the six servitors before him.

“Ma-ster.” His orchestra faced him, their hands raised to perform, eyes fixed on his personhood, following his movements as his jaw went slack with fear. Such a thing should not be possible, could not be possible.

“Who are you, what are you?” Arason couldn’t keep his voice from shaking. He scrabbled around for something, anything, a weapon to brandish before him, despite the fact that none of the six had moved towards him.

“Per-fection.” The word was a challenge and a mockery, an offer and a command. “Per-dition.” A threat, an entreaty, a future bound to occur if he did nothing.

He suddenly became aware of another sound. A buzzing from the floor beside the lectern, his neurotek hummed with energy, an inner light unlike any he’d seen before. The burning smell of ozone filled the room, as if an oxygen candle had been lit to provide supplemental oxygen.

“Per-fection. Per-dition. Per-fection. Per-dition.” The servitors before him intoned flatly, arms still raised before them, trailing viscera to the floor around them.

Arason understood, they were offering him a choice, an escape route from the future he had divined. Part of him screamed to escape, to flee the theater and summon the guards. Part of him knew this gift could only be unnatural, heretical, even.

Yet he could not look away from the neurotek. He could not stop himself from seeing the burning of Ypinny’s globe, the fires of the star finally free to scorch it to the core.

Arason was dimly aware of his hand descending to the floor, of plastek sheets whipping to and froe in a sudden gust of air. He was dimly aware of the crackling of lightning, the gnashing of fangs, and the laughter of beings beyond his comprehension.

Then, he knew no more.

///

  The chirurgeons gaped as the doors to the operating theater opened. From beyond them, a man emerged. His uniform was torn and sundered, angry red stitches covering his chest like latticework. He blinked in the sunlight before glancing backwards.

Beyond the guardsman, chirurgeons saw the surgeon disappearing back into his quarters, humble and aloof. He needn’t say anything to make his legend take root, for the man who arrived bisected now walked amongst his fellows in the triage station, marveling at the function of his body.

The medicae stared openly at the skill of the stitching, the evident mastery of the human form. They marveled, and they whispered.

Another miracle, another man lost beyond the doors of death brought back to the land of the living. Truly, no other could compare to Master Arason’s skill.

Truly, he was touched by the Emperor.