Fabienne Gschwind - The Fallen Heroine

But then something very surreal happened. Men in a kind of knight's armor with waving capes came into the lazaret tent and shooed doctors and nurses out. It was the royal bodyguard! I tried to peek through the viewing hatches. A group of people dressed in the fancy clothes of nobles entered. I had only ever seen the king on television. But I was sure it was the guy standing in the middle while everyone fawned over him.

"No sensors, no microphones, no cameras," a guardsman said, nodding at the king.

I had no idea what to do and did the only thing I could think of: I pretended to be asleep.

"The boy's name is Matthis Kembs." Someone said, and Emily and Gabin's names were also listed. But then the king's voice rang out, "I'm not interested in the low-ranking employees of ReS La Rochelle. With Tamara's sailor attrition, they'll be dead and replaced by others within a year anyway. Only the lady here interests me."

I squinted through the hole. Everyone was standing around Tamara's tank, who could do nothing but stare angrily through the peephole. "Well well well, Commander Arlette. I'm trying so hard to promote my friend LeBoeuf to commodore, and you're undoing all my efforts with your big mouth. And as revenge I send you into a dangerous hunt through white water but you survive that with flying colors. Well, the good thing is that you have again delivered spectacular shots, which fills the state coffers. Actually, you should do highly dangerous missions more often..."

I didn't understand the rest; there was mocking and laughter.

"What button do I have to push to cut off the oxygen supply in the tank? Tamara, I hope you also did apnea training with your special unit!" the king laughed and then he tapped on her tank.

"Dear Tamara you are a real pest. Believe me, within a month you'll be kneeling before me. Or I'll have you guilotinated... Oh no, your fans would rave. I'll make you my cupbearer!" General laughter followed this saying.

I pressed my ear against the wall, not wanting to believe what I was hearing. Tamara drummed on the tank wall in anger, which only made everyone laugh more.

But then the king turned and left. "Duke Timoté deMaase will be so pleased when Arlette and her sailors fall to him. That lady is nothing but trouble." The king laughed again and everyone left the tent. I squinted again at the commander - she looked distressed.

After two hours, they finally let us out. The tank hadn't been enough to complete the healing, and Tamara's shoulder would be operated on that evening. She carried her arm in a sling and I helped her slip on a jacket.

"The king..." I wanted to start my sentence. But Tamara covered my mouth and shook her head.

"I thought you were asleep and didn't notice." She let go of me and looked around. Twice she started to say something and shook her head, finally she just whispered: "The king wants to proclaim the Lex Ferrum." This was the second time I had heard this, but I didn't understand why Tamara was so afraid of it. It was just an economic program, I explained. Tamara looked at me unnerved:

"You don't understand! The king wants to go back to feudal rule ... and we are his damn pawns in the process."

She stomped angrily outside. I thought about Tartelette's words and shrugged. None of it made any sense. I decided to read into this Lex Ferrum later and study it carefully.

Finally, Gabin and Emily appeared. They looked exhausted, but were unharmed.

Then there was a rattle as the Ghosty landed back at La Malene in the marketplace.

The pilots briefly told their story with the commodore.

"Then didn't he threaten you with a war tribunal or something?" inquired Tartelette skeptically.

"Nah, we're still part of the Army, so we're not part of the ReS yet. So he had no command over us... maybe we should leave it that way, and not mutate into the Navy after all."

With that, everything was said and the boss organized a wonderful dinner. She fought her way through the feast single-handedly, only cutting the meat caused her problems.

She was taken to the hospital immediately afterwards and we packed up our things. Late in the evening we flew back. On the way we watched the many new video clips of our fights on various video portals. As usual we had broadcast live and the fight with the human repros had reached dream ratings. Many shots were from my camera and you could mostly see Tamara doing something heroic.

A few clips also showed me fighting and many fan comments admired my fighting spirit.... I was proud of myself, and vowed to myself to train even more diligently.

Then great news from ReS headquarters: for my good performance, they gave me extra two days off duty starting immediately.

I had promised my mother to visit her as soon as I had time off. Now I was able to keep that promise, and after a short chat with my family, everyone was happy that I would come.

As soon as I was in my apartment, I delved into the train schedules, because I had to leave as soon as possible. Otherwise, my days off from work would already be gone. The train connections in France were terrible and the infrastructure had been reduced to the minimum. There were only two express trains a day to Paris. The first one at eleven in the morning. That was too late, I would not arrive in Ferrette, my home village, until the evening.

I could rent a car. My brother had come with my father's autonomous vehicle. Unfortunately, the west-east axes had been minimally restored, and the trip took twelve hours, as one had to drive on small back roads all the way to Paris before getting on the highway heading east.

Flights were also abnormally expensive and there weren't many. Basically, we were still at the level of the last trireligious war. Back then, politicians had done everything they could to restrict people's ability to travel. After all, they wanted to stop terrorists from moving around Europe at will, at least that was the official reason. In reality, they wanted to control everyone. Travel was only for the rich or people in powerful positions. Ordinary citizens could hardly afford cars; they were unaffordable, the price of gasoline unaffordable. As in past centuries, people had to walk or cycle for several hours to get to work.

At three o'clock in the morning I decided not to fiddle around for long and to make use of all the money I now had. I rented a small autonomous copter. To gain time, I set the start at four o'clock in the morning, took my bag, threw in some clothes and a hygiene pack, strapped on my forearm computer and rode by bicycle to the small airfield where the copters were parked. Thanks to Adalin, it was no problem to do without sleep. I just had to be careful not to overdo it.

It was a stone's throw from the airport near Basel to my home village of Ferrette, and I took a simple rental bike for the thirty-kilometer trip.

I spent the whole morning with my parents, who had taken the day off, and I picked up my younger siblings from school to take them all to lunch at a five-star inn. Thanks to Tamara, I had now become a gourmet as well....

In the afternoon, I put my great uncle in a ladder truck and pulled him by bicycle to our carp pond while my parents went to work.

We sat down on the bank with our fishing rods. My great uncle seemed to be having a good day and was pretty clear-headed today.

"Are you enjoying your work, little repro hunter?" he asked as we speared worms onto the hooks.

"Yes, fun!", I declared. "Good, because a lot of people hate it. Or are terrified. How's your drug use?"

He laughed and explained that he had been developing combat armor for the ReS for nearly 60 years, he knew exactly what drugs the sailors would take. "Talk to the duty medic and make sure you don't overdo it," was his tip and after pulling out a fish he continued, "I've seen your movie clips, you're really good. You must have inherited Grandma Jasinthe's talent, she was one of the best repro catcher ever."