Akwete

The first one vaulted her barricade only to catch fourteen inches of heavily blued steel in the solar plexus. The blade slid upwards into his heart, and Akwete moved with him; using his momentum to throw him backwards over her head and slide him off the blade, all in one smooth motion. As she pulled the weapon back, the moving rifle-butt caught the next one round the face: there was a splintering crack and he fell back, being brushed aside by the third: a great brute with a crude mace. He swung it overhand at her, but at the last minute changed direction to avoid her block.

Her bayonet, already in motion through a perfect riposte, opened his throat; his mace slammed into her leg. She felt skin tear and bone fracture and her leg suddenly stopped taking her weight. The brute fell beside her, head resting on her legs and blood dripping into the seams. She felt at peace, somewhat - three enemy dead by her hand, and more by her gun, was a worthy last act.

She would much rather have lived, though; lived and maybe started a farm. Siti had been nice - they could have been neighbours. She could almost see her now, kneeling over her, firing her lasrifle to drive off the last few enemies, a guardian angel…

There was the strange, discordant sound of an arc gun, and the sting of a needle, and Akwete's world went dark.

When she woke, everything was grey, which she supposed was an improvement. Her ears were buzzing, and her leg was numb, and her mind was swallowed up in valley-mist. She could feel herself floating on clouds of morphine.

Slowly, carefully, she reached up and found the morphine handle. She turned her head, ever so slowly, and saw that clockwise was more. Very slowly, she turned it counterclockwise. As the drugs began to pass out of her system, more and more of her perception returned. She was in a bed, with a thick blanket and sheets, and an IV drip pumping the drugs into her.

She turned the dial a little further counterclockwise, and pain began to return: hunger, bruising, and a horrible sense of emptiness where the mace had struck her. She lifted the sheets up slowly, and grunted in pain as the cold air bit into her wound; she took a look.

An entire segment of skin had been removed, and then replaced: stitching surrounded a patch of tissue bigger than her hand, and then there was the bizarre sense of nothingness underneath it. She could feel the pressure of something hard and cold beneath the skin. She pressed on it, expecting pain, but there was just absolute unyielding resistance: not even the softness of subcutaneous fat.

Taking her mind away from the hip for a moment, she looked around the room. The rest of the beds were filled with augmetic surgery patients: limbs and eyes gleamed with chrome. That probably explained the scarring and hardness - they'd had to replace her hip. She looked further round; there were more beds, some of them empty, some of them full, and then there were a few sofas.

Siti was asleep on one of them. Her eyelashes were stuck together with sleep-dust, and her mouth hung slightly open. She had clearly been waiting a while - her jacket was slung over the back of the chair, still coated in dust and sweat, and her beret sat perched beside it. Two empty coffee cups had been knocked over by an arm draped on the floor; it had slipped out of her sleeping bag. Akwete - slowly, carefully, and trying not to put weight on her injured leg - levered herself up and began to work her way over to the girl. She looped her arm round the IV drip and took it with her. About halfway there, she changed her mind and headed for the door.

Private Siti Imari

Siti woke to the smell of hot coffee. Akwete was sat on a battered old armchair by the sofa, holding a cup; she offered it. Siti began to get up. "I'll get my own, it's no -" Akwete shook her head.

"Can't have it. Drugs. It's good stuff, I got it from some Ottmyns on patrol." She extended her arm; Siti propped herself up and hesitantly accepted the drink. She took a sip, and felt a happy little grin spreading across her face. "Good?" Siti nodded quickly, and took another sip. Akwete, infected with the grin, said that Ottmyns always had the best coffee rations. Something about it being religiously significant and the Emperor not allowing them alcohol. There was a brief moment's silence, then Akwete spoke. "So, you were in the sabotage team." Siti placed her coffee, carefully, on the table.

"They drilled us all on explosives, remember? I think it was done by lottery."

"Probably. Are you alright? Your whole section…" Siti felt a pang of loss.

"Sergeant Chike told us that we were her rearguard. None of us questioned why she was leaving the rookies as a rearguard, we should have -" Her voice cracked. "She knew that she wouldn't be coming back. She knew it, and she wanted to make it count, and she -" She suddenly found herself supported by a pair of arms. She pressed her head into Akwete's shoulder and started to cry.

"She wanted to save as many of her section as she could. She chose the rookies, because she knew that taking her veterans would give her the best chance of success." Siti kept crying, but she nodded and mumbled something in the affirmative. "She was brave. I knew her." Siti pulled herself up a bit.

"She was brave," she affirmed.