While I have killed main characters before, this is not one of those times. Graf, unconscious and very shocky, and his team make it back to a medical facility just in time. I think the doc liked Pai’s unconventional idea: “You tied a tournequet around his neck?”

These seven parts will form the prologue of my second book of the Civil Wars. I expect it to be unpleasant and yes, there will be deaths of people some of y’all may have been reading about for years. A real civil war – think Whites and Reds; Serbs and Croats; for example – is a house to house, mind by mind affair. Nothing at all like the US War of Northern Aggression.

Thanks for reading. My next installment shall also be a short story, roughly contemporanious with this one, but set in Nazca, Peru.

Decanus…?  Decanus?  “Decanus Winstead!  Wake up!”

Not sure who was yelling at him, Graf Winstead tried to look around while flat on his back.  He could not move his left arm, but, raising his right, saw it was in some fluffy white glove.  More importantly, just beyond it…

“Welcome back, Dearest Husband,” Pai gently smiled, though her gold eyes shimmered with tears.  Her white hair with a hint of purple was pulled back from her face with a headband.  A headband, he knew, amplified her access to signal; to information.  She had unzipped her suit to her belly, splitting the image of the Polar Alliance star.  The alliance that had kept the peace for over a hundred years.  Until a year ago.

When he tried to speak, there was just more gurgling.  Someone touched his left shoulder.  Looking that way was a man in his mid-thirties with small, wire-frame glasses.  He wore an off-white skinsuit with a red caduceus printed on the front.

“I’m Doctor Breem,” he said.  “You took a shot to your throat in the engagement in Mine 173.  Do you remember?”

Remember?  Oh, their team had been responding to a mayday call.  It turned out to be a Separatist ambush, one that even Pai’s Machine mind did not know of.  Graf recalled getting ready to leave quickly while calling in support…and now he was.  Here.  Wherever here was.

“You are in the hospital section of Moonbase Hood,” Pai said, able even now to essentially read his thoughts from the faint motions of his eyes and face.  “Doctor Breem and his team did quick work with an emergency tracheotomy, once I got you and the rest back here.  You were bleeding out badly, so I had a tourniquet around your neck.”

Even Breem had to chuckle at that one.  “Not standard practice, but it did save your life.  Now that you’re conscious, you will be transported back to earth in thirty hours, if stable enough, and I think you will be.  Some of my colleagues in Houston are already 3D printing a new trach for you, given the details supplied by your wife, Mrs. Winstead, here.  Uh…”

He seemed at a loss about something.

“I’ll tell him everything else, Doctor,” Pai said in what he knew was her “careful” voice.  Graf wondered what that meant.  When he’d left, Pai came closer, leaned down, and kissed him, her right hand touching the short, light brown hair on his scalp and beard. “You want to know about our team.  No KIA; Williamson had his lower left arm blown off.  He’ll get a new one, too.  Once clear of the crater, I used a small atomic to seal it.”

She blinked.  “I mean what I just said, Beloved.  The time for restraint ended when they hurt you.  Now, you will rest even if I have to push a narcotic into your line.  After six or eight hours, we can free your right hand to write questions.  There’s no reason for the complication of a speaking valve for such a short time.”

Another kiss, longer.  “And, I do not think your new throat will adversely impact your gift.  It’s more psychic than physical.  We need to forge a peace once the killing is stopped.”

Pai gently put her head on his chest.  “Rest.”