The Avenue | 2011 The chatter on comm had picked up. No one knew what we were supposed to do. The dropship would touch down any second. Everyone went silent as Sarge stood straight and raised his cannon arm, pointing the weapon directly at Baumgartner’s head. “I’m done with you Baumgartner! No court-martial. You obey my orders or so help me God I will blast your brains out right fucking here!” Someone gasped. I wanted to shout at Baumgartner to power up. My mouth opened, but I couldn’t get any words out. He probably wouldn’t have heard me anyway. For his part, Baumgartner didn’t react at all to staring down the barrel of a huge cannon. There was a loud clang as Sarge’s cannon chambered a round. “This is your last chance, you fucking coward! POWER UP NOW!” We all knew this had to be a mistake. Some glitch, a technical fault. Baumgartner would power up his armor any second. He was the best of us. With him on our team we’d stomp the planet flat. Instead, he yawned. “Don’t see why I sh . . .” The crack-hiss of the shot was deafening in close quarters, even through my helmet. Sarge had set the cannon to low-velocity so as not to blast a hole in the hull. The white-hot spike had apparently cauterized everything on its way into the aft bulkhead. There wasn’t a drop of blood. Baumgartner’s power armor just stood there ludicrously, a toy soldier without a head. I heard someone retching on comm. All I could think to do was read and reread the status flash on my tactical display: “Baumgartner, R. 547-889746. NULL COMBAT FUNCTION.” I found out later that NULL COMBAT FUNCTION only referred to the armor. Someone could be slowly bleeding to
death inside a disabled suit and the tactical display would never tell us. I wonder how many wounded men we left behind before we realized that. I know how many it was afterwards. Lots. Sarge seemed frozen, ready to fire but now lacking a target. “Anyone else got a problem—” His voice croaked. The red light came on as the bay doors flew open. The pilot’s voice echoed over the comm, “Go! Go! Go!” “Fuck!” shouted Sarge. “Form up!” His helmet sealed as he pushed his way to the front of the company. His growling bluster seemed restored, “Into the fire Wardogs! Let’s do this!” We were four seconds late making it out of the drop ship and landed in the middle of a goddamn minefield instead of our landing zone. Sarge went NULL COMBAT FUNCTION immediately. He must’ve landed on one. We started taking fire as soon as the last man hit the deck. Being trapped in the open in the middle of a minefield while taking fire from multiple elevated positions doesn’t help much with unit discipline. We took something like 60% casualties in the two minutes it took for an evac drop ship to get to us. The whole thing was a disaster. As it happened, the only KIA we brought back with us was Baumgartner. What was that? Oh, you meant how did I get here in the immediate sense, like how’d I get wounded. That’s not much of a story. I slipped in the goddamn shower. That must go to show something, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is.
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