Free Broken Wings by Viola Grace Page A

hadn’t done it, being out in this vehicle would not have been possible.
    She crossed her world with long strides, destroying all mining company vehicles in the way. Silence began to fall in her wake.
    On the third day, she faced the main camp for the invading forces. Fire took care of their dwellings, and as the ground forces fired rocket after rocket at her, she waited them out. Ammunition did not last forever when you were blindly aggressive.
    Minerva took careful aim with the last of her rockets, and she destroyed the attack vehicles, the power systems and the water supply.
    After she had expended everything the suit had to give, she waited for them to find a way to destroy her.
    Welders climbed the suit and she brushed them off.
    Imagine her surprise when Sector Guard ships began to arrive and they requested that she leave her bot.
    She croaked in the com, “I would love to, by my blood has firmly grafted me to my harness. I would be amenable to medical assistance.”
    “Then you shall have it.” There was a pause. “How old are you?”
    “Twenty-three.”
    “You are an Enjel?”
    “I was. I don’t think I qualify anymore.” She was tired, exhausted, but for her, there was literally no way out of this on her own.
    “We will clean this up here, and when they are gone, we will have a full medical team standing by. Can you last an hour?”
    “I can last. I made it this far.”
     
    It took four medics to ease her out of the mech. Her graft had grown exponentially and was incorporating the mech into her body.
    “A twenty-three-year-old Enjel woman isn’t usually left to enter combat.”
    “The women had to, all the men were dead. They went out to negotiate with the mining consortium, and none of them came back.” She was being carried on a gurney, face down.
    “What happened?”
    “The bombs started falling, people started dying, so the mechs were called into action. They got most of the aircraft out of the sky and drove the assault vehicles back from the city gates, but they don’t work if their pilot is shot, and the transparent heart of those models made the Enjel inside a perfect target. The Arcit 2 is a much better design, but it isn’t built for wings.”
    “What happened to your wings?”
    “My mother and I were evacuating a building that had been previously hit, and it was hit while we were inside. She is still trapped under that wall, but I was pinned by my wings. They had been smashed to pulp, so I had them cut them off. If I ever get the money, I will consider regeneration.”
    She heard voices muttering around her and a cooling pressure covered the wounds in her back.
    “Rest easy, miss. We have you now.”
    She felt a hand on her head so much like her mother’s touch that tears dripped from her eyes and soaked the gurney beneath her. The hand stroked her hair and sobs broke free.
    They sedated her and her grief got some rest.
     
    Minerva woke, floating in a tank in what felt like a spacecraft. She was breathing oxygenated liquid and her hair wasn’t floating around her in its normal halo. She tried to move her shoulders, but they were stiff.
    A medic must have been watching her closely, because he came running to the side of the tank the moment that she woke.
    He touched the tank. “You are recovering, but your body defies our healing. All we can do is seal you up and hope for the best.”
    “My people?” She mouthed the words, but he nodded as if he could hear her.
    “Jela has sent a crew of colonists and an armed detachment to assist the survivors. There were many that were hidden or trapped in the city, and many more in the care of your able doctors.”
    She closed her eyes and sank to the bottom of the tank.
    “I am sorry, miss. Your hair was grafted into your flesh in places. We had to crop it.”
    Minerva blinked and her eyes burned briefly before the soothing solution she was in whisked her tears away.
    She nodded and swallowed, working out one more question. “Where are you