Medivac

The medivac, officially designated the G-226 medical transport, was a terran aerospace transport that combined troop and vehicle ferrying with frontline medical support. Built on the frame of the older Quantradyne dropship, it carried an advanced medical bay that allowed it to seal wounds and keep soldiers fighting in the field, while still moving personnel and even the massive thor into and out of combat zones. Ordered into production by Emperor Arcturus Mengsk, the medivac became a mainstay of the Terran Dominion and was adopted by other terran powers.

Design#

The medivac was outfitted with a medical bay reputed to be the most advanced in the Koprulu sector, paired with a triage station that used auto-sutures and laser scalpels to seal wounds and repair tissue almost as fast as it could be inflicted, although marines questioned the precision of the tools. Wounded soldiers were administered growth stimulators, nanomachines and pain suppressants to keep them in the field, and the machines bonded with damaged tissue to boost its natural regenerative properties.

Because it carried this medical bay along with an array of stabilizers and gyroscopes to hold the vessel level under heavy cargo, the medivac was larger and heavier than the Quantradyne it was based on, yet it was actually faster than its predecessor. It retained the older ship's rotatable engines but moved its boarding ramp to the front, and it was fitted with a gravity tube for rapid loading and unloading of single units along with an installed spotlight. The ship was designed to ferry personnel and vehicles, including the thor, with minimal fuss, and could be flown by one or two pilots. Heavy losses led engineering crews to perform unsanctioned upgrades that injected oxygen-rich fuel into the exhaust stream to boost engine output; early attempts succeeded at pulling ships out of fire zones but caused stress damage to the turbines and airframes.

Origins and adoption#

Dropships filling a medical evacuation role and called medivacs predated the Great War and were used by the Terran Confederacy. The modern medivac concept, however, arose as an improvised solution devised by the Dominion's 19th Marine Division while operating in the acid storms of Thalon VII, where modifying a Quantradyne for remote control extended the combat life of medics.

Official adoption followed a Dominion analysis that found a startling thirty-seven percent of field-deployed troops became casualties requiring evacuation. In response, Emperor Arcturus Mengsk personally ordered Quantradynes redesigned into the medivac transport, creating a forward triage station that kept units in the field regardless of injury. The deployment cost was enormous, equivalent to the expenditure of a small colony town, so the Dominion continued to train traditional field medics alongside it. As part of the redesign, budget constraints led engineers to settle on a single gravity tube that cut loading and unloading to a tenth of a second but could only deploy soldiers or machines one at a time. By the Second Great War a healing AI allowed the medivac to acquire and treat two targets at once.

Service across the sector#

The medivac's success led the Umojan Protectorate and the Kel-Morian Combine to adopt the design as well. The extensive medical training of Umojan medivac pilots was credited with the longer than average soldier lifespan in the Protectorate. During the Second Great War, when the zerg attacked the main research campus of the Moebius Foundation on Tyrador VIII, Doctor Emil Narud gave Commander Jim Raynor control of the Foundation's medivacs so he could transport his men around the city and avoid most of the swarm.

Mercenaries occasionally used customized medivacs for high-value missions, and private militias such as the Knights of Tyrador employed well-trained medivac pilots, mostly to rescue wealthy tourists from yacht crashes. After a covert operation cost the Dominion Special Forces heavy casualties, that branch was authorized to make greater use of medivacs for its specialists. Named vessels of the type included the KTO 08 and the Rescue One, and a specialized variant, the imperial intercessor, served Dominion forces under Valerian Mengsk.