Not as much written tonight as I’d like. Computer debugging continues.
I won’t lie to you: it got weird when I rejoined my squad. But only for a little while, because I wasn’t so much going back to them as I had to take the war to enemy somewhere, so I might as well start among people who I was already familiar with. It seemed reasonable.
And my old unit was a good choice, anyway. They definitely were going to need the help; they were regrouping for an assault on the fortress we had been assaulting when I got my First Death wound. It was a tough bastard of a place, all concrete and rebar, and as long as it held out we wouldn’t be able to put enough pressure on Fort Collins. Not that I thought about it that way when I was alive. Back then I just knew that my buddies needed me; and I was still in the habit of thinking that way. Not that it was wrong to think that way, either. Really, they would need me more than ever. Also, I owed some of them money, and promised some the others that they’d get first crack at my gear if I ever got killed. It was time to settle accounts.
My squad handled it well; it helped that my face looked all right, but it helped more that I was volunteering to take point on the assault. Because that was why I was there. There was a gate that needed taking, and by God but I was going to make the enemy regret killing me and taking away the next fifty years of my life. I was ready, and I was determined, and of course I was already and literally a dead man walking.