The inside of the field hospital's canvas tent was unpleasantly bright.
There were no shadows, and that fact scraped at my nerves. On the defensive line in Sector 3, darkness and fog had been the only cover. Here, however, dazzling lumen globes hanging from the ceiling erased every blind spot.
I mechanically chewed the issued synthetic protein block. It tasted like wet cardboard mixed with mud, but it was nothing more or less than fuel to replenish calories. Fifteen chews, then swallow.
My gaze kept moving restlessly beyond my tray.
The paths taken by the wounded entering and leaving the tent. The height and thickness of the supply crates piled near the serving station. If the enemy burst through that entrance, how long would it take to overturn the table to block their view, then use the metal crates stacked on the left as cover and secure a firing angle? Approximately 1.5 seconds.
"You planning to slit somebody's throat while you eat?"
My gaze stopped at the hoarse voice from across the table.
It was Talia, her shoulder wrapped thickly in bandages. She was struggling to hold a spoon in one hand as she stirred her watery soup.
"I am eating."
When I answered indifferently, Talia gave a hollow laugh.
"Looks more like you're loading ammunition than eating. Your eyes keep going back and forth between the entrance and the supply crates. And the hand holding that spoon is stiff like you're about to pull a trigger."
Talia's observation was accurate. My right index finger rested on the spoon's handle, but it was shaped exactly as though it were curled around a lasgun's trigger guard. Only after realizing that did I slowly straighten my finger and lay it along the edge of the tray.
"I merely need time to adjust."
"Adjust? The problem is that you adjusted to the trenches too perfectly, you mad bastard."
As Talia frowned while trying to swallow a spoonful of soup, a loud metallic clatter erupted from the maintenance table near the tent entrance.
"Give me a working one, not this heap of scrap!"
It was Brix. His huge body was bound in bandages and casts from head to toe, but his voice still boomed like heavy artillery. Brix roughly threw down the barrel of the heavy lasgun they had barely dragged out of the trench.
"This isn't a weapon. It's just a bent length of rebar! We might be sent back in the day after tomorrow, and you're telling me to go out carrying this piece of shit?"
The quartermaster assigned to the maintenance unit glanced at the scrap Brix had thrown with a tired face, then answered coldly.
"It was buried under a mound of mud when Sector 4 collapsed. The internal focusing lenses are completely shattered, and the cooling unit has burst. This isn't fit for repair. It is designated for disposal."
"Then give me a new one!"
"There are none in stock. Do you know how many heavy lasguns are being expended at the front right now?"
The quartermaster cut him off in a flat tone.
"Dozens of heavy weapons are getting blown apart on the frontline every day. We do not even have enough standard lasguns to put in the hands of new recruits. Wait for rear-echelon supplies to arrive, or take one of those standard lasguns over there."
At the suggestion that he hold a lasgun small enough to fit in one hand, Brix looked ready to seize the quartermaster by the collar. But he knew as well that the lack of supplies was not the maintenance unit's fault.
Still unable to contain his anger, Brix stormed over, kicked the empty metal chair beside us, and dropped heavily into it.
"Fuck. What am I supposed to do without a gun? Smash their heads in with my bare fists?"
Brix irritably tore open his ration and began chewing. Talia snorted as she watched him.
Talia, Brix, and me.
The three survivors of Second Squad from Sector 3 sat facing one another for the first time amid the murmur of people rather than artillery fire. An ill-fitting peace settled awkwardly between us.
Brix's grumbling gradually faded. An uncomfortable silence once more filled the table.
In place of enemy shellfire, the empty space left by someone slipped into that gap.
"Still, consider yourself lucky, you bastard who's all bulk and no use."
Talia bluntly remarked as she pushed away the rest of her soup.
"Lazar doesn't even have a mouth left to complain about a scrap lasgun."
Brix stopped chewing. A momentary gloom crossed his rough face.
"Damn bastard... Guess I'm never getting back the cigarette he borrowed."
Their eyes naturally settled on me. Probably because I was the only one who had witnessed Lazar's final moments. After swallowing the synthetic protein I had been chewing, I spoke dryly.
"Before loading a power cell, Lazar always tapped the bottom of the cell against the lasgun's receiver twice."
Talia and Brix watched me without a word.
"It was an unscientific superstition that it aligned the charge in defective cells and stabilized their output. According to the manual, its effect on power efficiency approaches zero percent. It was merely a statistically meaningless action."
I speared the remaining protein block with my fork and added,
"But that meaningless habit made his reload speed 0.5 seconds slower than average, and because of that margin, he missed firing windows in the trench several times."
My voice was as matter-of-fact as an operational report. There was not a trace of sorrow or mourning in it. Yet at the very fact that Lazar's petty, useless habit had come out of my mouth, Talia wore a strange expression. As though she had found the faintest trace of a human being in a machine part she had thought completely broken.
"You."
Talia braced her uninjured left arm against the table and leaned forward.
"You're still human, right?"
I did not answer. I just chewed the piece stuck on my fork and silently counted the pattern of the night patrol's footsteps as they passed the tent entrance.
Night deepened.
The field hospital's lighting was lowered to its minimum, and all around us there were only the groans and shallow breaths of the wounded.
I opened my eyes wide on the narrow field cot.
It was quiet.
There were no dull vibrations shaking the earth, no artillery blasts tearing at my eardrums. No dust fell from the ceiling, and no acrid acid fog stabbed into my lungs. It was a perfect safe zone, far from the front.
But my heart was beating abnormally fast. My breathing grew ragged, while a sharp ringing buzzed in my ears like an auditory hallucination.
The fact that nothing was happening. The fact that silence hung at a moment when something should have exploded. It drove me into an unfamiliar anxiety and fear.
Reflexively, I reached into the darkness.
My fingertips touched the cold metal standing beside my cot.
It was my lasgun.
Only after the familiar weapon was firmly gripped in my hand, and the feel of its cooled power cell reached me through my glove, did my frantic breathing gradually calm.
No shells fell.
Yet I spent the entire night in the darkness holding the lasgun against my chest, my gaze fixed on the tent entrance. I had escaped the battlefield, but the battlefield inside me had not retreated even a single step. It remained there, tightening around my throat.
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