Lance Corporal Jane Hartman never remembered the explosion that took her face.

It was, the doctors told her, to be expected. Traumatic events were rarely memorable directly. Even without the cocktail of drugs floating down her veins the mind had... Tricks. Twists. To keep her from damaging herself. She remembered a white-gowned man telling her that... Sometime. It felt like a millennium ago. It felt like yesterday. No matter. What concern was time to her? It was a river, and she a boat. She could float, she would endure, could endure forever. Outlast the rocks and the sky and the steel that ringed her like a cage. Time could flow and tick and trickle all it liked, for it was the concern of far more grounded creatures than she. She was something else. Something separate, something related but unfamiliar, something that drifted and floated from the touchstones of their reality, pleasantly, comfortably unfeeling.

A small, animal part of her wondered vaguely if it ought to have been it pain. It did not worry long. Not with the soothing mix of drugs trickling through the needle in her arm, coursing through her body, leaving her pleasantly warm and comfortably numb. Like a baby still on her mother's tit. As long as the needle was there, everything was alright. The course darkness pressing at her eyes when she tried to prise them open did not matter. The frantic beeping that dragged her from her sleep to the rhythm of pounding footprints was of no consequence. The voices she heard, half-remembered now, fleeting glimpses of reality in a sea of dreams – they mattered no more to her than the raindrop mattered to the thunderstorm. She was above them, soaring above them like an eagle over the plains. Her medicated subconsciousness was a little editing room, carefully snipping away anything too confronting, too painful, for her to remember.

Her own breathing was comfortably distant. A gentle hiss from somewhere far off, and her chest rose. Another hiss and it fell, though she felt no air between her lips, her mouth as still and silent as the midnight sky. Strange, how her mouth could be so dry in the absence of air. Perhaps she could ask Tancher why that was, when they were next on duty. Tancher would know. The Captain always knew, always had the answer. He had taught her how to shoot, after all. Yes. She decided, the thought meandering through the winding pathways of her mind with all the haste of a man taking an afternoon stroll. Yes, she would ask the Captain. It was a good plan. She had come up with a plan, and surely that was enough work for the day. Yes. She loosed the anchors of her mind, listened to the clockwork hiss, felt her chest rise and fall as though watching someone else.

Rise.

Fall.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Breathing was important. Good than, that she was keeping track of it. Breathing controlled the fall of shot. She remembered that, the faint pressure of foam matting beneath her, the heavy clicks of working parts sliding back in gloved hands. Thin beads of sweat on her forehead, a man's voice in her ear, low and steady and insistent. Steady. Relax. Yes, it was easy to remember.

Very easy indeed.

Ancestor's grace he needed a smoke. One smoke, that was it. Just a whiff of that sweet, bitter smoke - that glorious, despicable burn in his lungs. His hands were shaking around his pen for christ's sake, tracing meaningless gibberish across the notepad he clutched in one hand. The longing was relentless - not horribly painful at any one moment, but ceaselessly, damnably, relentless; a stream-roller of cravings slowly advancing on him as he tried to wade his way through wet concrete in a futile, doomed effort to escape.

"I'm sorry Captain Tancher, am I interrupting something?" Lieutenant Colonel Brighton scowled down at him though the comms link, beady little eyes staring out a face carrying enough lines to inform anyone who cared to look that he should have retired years ago. Normally, Tancher wouldn't have cared to meet his gaze but, like so many other things in his life lately, it was out of his control.

"No sir. You have my full attention." A smoke, a smoke, a smoke. Before the memories came back. Tancher ground his teeth and forced himself to look truly, sincerely, interested in what his bleating wreck of a battalion commander had to say. The most combat he's seen was probably the battle with his receding hairline. Tancher swallowed down a sudden, irrational, urge to laugh. It was the sort of thing he had become used to doing around Brighton.

"I'm glad to hear it." Brighton's gaze skated off somewhere to Tancher's left - to another company commander, no doubt, visible on Brighton's display but not his own. Tancher took the opportunity to pat down his creased BDUs for what must have been the sixth time that morning. No luck. His pockets were as bare of cigarettes as they were of credits to buy them.

"Then you'll be aware that Pinesdale flagged a smuggler just off L.A." Brighton continued. A wireframe cutaway of a Gull-class transport swung into view ahead of Tancher, hovering in front of him like an ethereal puppet master's favorite doll. The commander of each ship in Burbank's squadron would be seeing the exact same thing. The thought did nothing at all to make the slowly-revolving image any less headache inducing. Tancher nodded with the rest of the squadron leaders. There was a lengthy pause as they waited for Brighton to carry on. Finally, Fort Peck's lieutenant, a middle aged man bearing an expression that had more in common with granite than flesh, broke the silence.

"Do we know what he was carrying, sir?" It was amazing, really, how much one could squeeze undertones of 'you're an ass' into a sentence with 'Sir' on the end.

"No." Brighton shot a glare off to Tancher's right. "Pinesdale didn't get close enough for a detailed scan, but the ship started a burn for the field at D3 when Pinesdale hailed her. Hamilton and Ottowa haven't picked the signal up in Ontario, so it's an odds-on bet he's set a course for the New York gate. Likely a cardamine hauler. There's not much else that's worth running from one of our warships for."

No, but they'll run just for the sake of running. With the LPI in charge, inner-system law enforcement was a political joke. Even the Navy's crackdown hadn't done a damn thing to change the attitude of the average smuggler. No, they'd run because they thought they had a chance. Hell, they did have a chance. They'd slipped past Pinesdale with nothing more than a course change, and it was blindingly obvious to Tancher why. The Navy was a machine of war. They were warhorses, not hounds. Used to charging into the fray, not chasing after every little thing that ran from them. It was a doctrine change, and it wasn't one Tancher was sure he supported. His hands curled around the notepad. A smoke, a smoke, a smoke.

"I need Burbank there for boarding when he comes out the other side, Captain." Brighton continued. Tancher's head snapped up. Damn it.

"I'm not sure Burbank has the manpower for-" Tancher began.

"You've got two rifle sections on board, Captain. That will be more than adequate." Brighton raised an eyebrow. "Unless their commander is lacking. Is that the case, Captain?"

"No, sir." You daft old bat. "I'll speak to Commander Davies and get the ship on course."

"Already taken care of, Captain. I expect the Commander has you under acceleration already. I'll have details on the smuggler sent through to you. Any questions?"

"No sir." When are you taking a walk out the airlock? Tancher kept his face impartial.

"Outstanding. Dismissed."

The feed dissolved into static, leaving Tancher staring at the bare wall of his cabin.