Trauma Team: The Cyberpunk Medevac Corp and Its Comic

What Trauma Team does#

Trauma Team sells a subscription that gets a medic crew to you fast, heavily armed and with a bill attached. The 2077 database entry quotes the guarantee as seven minutes or a refund, and says the crews arrive in an armored aerodyne with turrets that clear the area first. The ambulance comes with gunships. That is the pitch.

The company bills the patient from the moment the order goes out. It also partners with other megacorps, so an Arasaka white-collar employee gets a Trauma Team card as a staff benefit. That is a 2020-edition detail: Arasaka employees were required to carry it.

Tabletop origin#

Trauma Team started in Mike Pondsmith's tabletop game. It appears from the first edition, Cyberpunk 2013, through Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk RED, and in the sourcebooks around them.

In the 2020 material the company has about 17,000 members and a dozen-plus teams on call in any major city, flying a heavily armored AV-4 with a mobile cryotank. In 2077 it has reorganized, raised its prices and re-equipped with Zetatech-made aerodynes and Kang Tao weapons.

Trauma Team in Cyberpunk 2077#

In the game you mostly see Trauma Team as a presence in the world, a shadow of an aerodyne overhead. Its database entry sells the product, and in 2077 it has a partnership with Delamain Corp.

The same database entry describes a Corporate plan at $1,500 per month, or $16,500 on a yearly plan, and a Corporate Executive plan at $12,000 per month. The plans promise a seven-minute response. Do the math on what a street kid can afford. Our read: that is the point.

Trauma Team in Edgerunners#

Trauma Team also turns up in Edgerunners. In the episode "⁠Girl on Fire⁠" (episode 6), Dorio tells Maine that the jammer meant to suppress a Trauma Team notification has stopped working, and the crew has to run. In that scene Trauma Team is the clock on the job, and nobody on the crew has a card.

The comic#

Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team is a four-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics, written by Cullen Bunn and drawn by Miguel Valderrama. The first issue came out in September 2020 and cites a collected edition dated March 2021.

It follows Nadia, an assistant EMT and the only survivor of a failed rescue that turned into a shootout. Her next extraction job is a criminal client named Apex, the man responsible for her old team's deaths, and the job takes her down a skyscraper full of gang members who want him.

Fixer's notes#

Our read: the comic is the better way into the corp if you've only seen it as a siren in the background. It shows what the guarantee costs the people on the aerodyne.

At the table, the Trauma Team card is a usable plot hook: a subscriber who is shot on a job brings a rescue crew down on everyone, and the crew does not care whose side you are on. Related reading: Max-Tac, cyberpsychosis.