Koda opens her eyes again, emotions trapped behind the stony mask she now wears. “My brother?”
“Is fine. Manny snapped his collarbone and cracked a couple of ribs, but he’s doing okay also. Andrews earned himself a broken ankle and a trip to the OR. Can’t stand his crutches, but he’s gonna have to learn to deal.”
“Alright.” Dakota nods once, an almost savage gesture that flicks the heavy bangs from her forehead and resettles them, haphazard, against her face. Though her palms are still heavily bandaged, her fingers are free, and those fingers reach for the IV tubing at her wrist.
“Dakota, don’t….do that,” Maggie finishes with a sigh as the woman in question sits up and efficiently removes the IV catheter from her arm, pressing down to stop the minute flow of blood dotting the wound.
“I’m fine,” Koda remarks, swinging long legs over the side of the bed and steadying herself for a moment before she plants her feet and stands. There is a brief instant of dizziness as her body once again becomes accustomed to being vertical after three days horizontal.
Once the dizziness abates, she strides around the bed with sure steps, reaching the bureau and pulling out a tattered sweatshirt and jeans with holes in the knees. Dressed, she runs negligent fingers through her thick hair, settling it somewhat as she turns to Maggie. “The bodies. Where are they being kept?”
“They’ve set up a second morgue in one of the hangar bays. You’ll see the honor guard outside. The payloaders are getting ready to dig in a few hours.”
Nodding, Koda circles the bed and stops before Maggie, who is still sitting. Her eyes are somber, set, serious. “Thank you. For keeping watch.”
Maggie’s smile is small, but it’s there. “It was no hardship, believe me.” She pauses, the smile slipping from her face. “Thank you.”
A brow raises.
“For saving our lives. And, very likely, the lives of everyone here.”
The Colonel feels only a brief touch to her shoulder before Koda turns to leave. “I didn’t do it alone,” Dakota replies softly as she exits the room.
“No,” Maggie murmurs to the empty air, “but if you hadn’t started it, it wouldn’t have been done at all.”
*
With the temperature hovering in the lower 50s, Dakota slips out into the fresh air without a coat for the first time in over half a year. For a brief moment, she turns her face up toward the sun, accepting its warmth. Such welcome heat, however, does little to banish the chill she feels in her soul; a chill compounded by each of the lives lost in the battle of the Cheyenne.
As she lowers her chin, her eyes catch the sunlight winking off the top of a hulking aircraft hanger in the near distance, visible over the top of the young pines dotting Maggie’s small lawn. She sets her feet in that direction and begins to walk.
As her long legs take her effortlessly from the tree-lined residential district and into the base proper, she takes in the sights, which include many faces she doesn’t recognize.
Which, she realizes, isn’t all that unusual, given the size of the base and the fact that she’s only explored small parts of it during her short stay here. Still, it’s almost as if with the winning of this latest battle, survivors have started crawling out of the woodwork, feeling just now safe enough to approach and be welcomed into what is swiftly becoming a teeming community.
As she watches, two groups of fifty or more lumber through the massive gates, some walking, some riding in decrepit vehicles, all with possessions strapped to their backs and the same look of hollow-eyed dread and merciless hope coloring their features.
The scene brings to her mind something she’d seen in history class once, a picture of destitute farmers fleeing the dust bowl, all of their worldly possessions strapped to backs, horses and trucks that looked like they would go another mile before quitting completely.
“’Give me your tired, your poor,’” she whispers, watching them stream onto the base, “’your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’”
A passing man hears her whisper and gives her a strange look. She returns it with a steely glare, complete with raised eyebrow. He quickly finds something else to capture his attention, scurrying away like a rat after cheese.
As she continues on her way, she begins to notice things that raise the hackles on the back of her neck. Ahead, two middle-aged women argue over what looks to be a basket of half-rotten fruit. Their arms swing in wild gesticulations, and Dakota knows it’s only a matter of time before one of those wild swings catches, starting an all-out scrap.
Off to her left, in the middle of the street, two men are brawling like a couple of overweight, over-the-hill boxers. They’re quite obviously drunk as skunks. One man’s nose is a bloody mess. The other has one eye puffed up to the size of a cue ball. A full bottle of cheap booze lies shattered on the ground between them, the glass shards shining like trumpery diamonds.
A uniformed MP stands to one side, her face a mask of indecision. Koda can almost read her thoughts.
These are civilians.
Who has jurisdiction over them?
Should she intervene?
Or should she simply stand by and let them decide the outcome?
“Great,” Dakota mutters, half under her breath. “Looks like the honeymoon is over.”
Just as she’s about to head in that direction, both men go down, either too drunk or too injured to continue. The MP stares dumbly down at them before raising her head and shooting Koda a pleading look. Dakota shrugs in reply, as unsure of the current legal situation as the MP. A uniformed man bearing the rank of Major runs toward the scene, and Dakota moves on, content for the moment to let events play out as they will without her direct intervention.
She knows, however, that changes are going to need to be made. And soon.
*
“Doctor Rivers!” the young man calls out, snapping to full attention so quickly that his spine fairly creaks with the effort.
Koda looks over the young private, remembering him as one of Tacoma’s advance machine gunners who had charged a group of retreating droids, disabling several and getting winged in the neck for his troubles. “Private Holloway. How’s the neck?”
A rosy flush spreads over the Private’s fair features at the realization that this beautiful woman—who he had seen doing things on the battlefield that even the most courageous of his buddies would never even attempt—knows his name.
“Ma’am!” he shouts, straightening even further. “Just fine, Ma’am!”
Biting her cheeks to keep a smile from coming to her lips at the young man’s earnestness, she settles instead for a brisk nod. “Good to hear, Private. Permission to enter?”
“Ma’am, yes, Ma’am!”
“Thank you, Private.”
“Ma’am?”
Dakota turns, leveling her gaze at him and causing his blush to deepen. He holds an arm out, a facemask dangling from his hand. “You…um…might want to use this, Ma’am.”
Koda smiles. “Thanks, but…I’ll be okay.”
With a final nod, she leaves him standing at his post, and enters the cavernous hanger. The interior is dim, cool, and ripe with the high, sickly sweet stench of death and decay. It’s a scene she’s known most of her life, and while it will never replace a fine cologne, her stomach no longer folds in upon itself when she detects it.
Standing at the entrance, she lets her gaze glide over the neat rows of corpses wrapped in sheets—the supply of bodybags having been decimated after the first conflict—and covered by American flags.
So many rows. So many bodies. So much courage, and honor, and loyalty left to rot beneath a flag whose meaning has been forever changed. So much blood. So much grief. So much loss.
Silent as a shadow, she glides between the rows, reading each name and committing it to memory. Here and there she stops to touch a marble hard wrist, a frozen cheek, a statue’s foot, honoring these brave men and women as best she can and thanking them for their sacrifice.