Requiem

[Jane Hartman]

Requiem

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L'état, C'est Moi. (I am the State.)
- Louis XIV

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Summary

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The war had come home. Representing the might of more than a dozen star systems, the combined fleets of Bretonia and Liberty launched the first serious challenge to the Gallic Royal Navy’s ownership of Leeds, dozens of battleships setting the skies over the planet afire as machines and men alike died by droves.

That was five months ago.

Jane Hartman’s war was over. Crippled by an enigmatic enemy, her flagship little more than a few thousand tonnes of dead steel etching a long scar on an occupied world, she found herself fighting a very different sort of war in the wards of a naval hospital on Los Angeles. Assailed by smiling doctors, grim-faced psychologists, and a profound absence of actual duties, Hartman found solace in the presence of old memories and an old friend.

Reginald Lewis stood silent vigil over his superior and friend. The final conversation they’d had before marching to the war effort kept echoing in his mind, and seeing her broken like this evoked old, dark thoughts. Alternating between rage, tired resignation and weariness, he’d spent most of his time in the same Hospital as Hartman, recuperating from his own injuries which were not insignificant.

All wars left scars. Scars on worlds, scars on flesh, and scars on souls. Time would repair the first, medicine the second, but for Hartman and Lewis the key to the last lay buried five months in the past.

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