Impossible Situations

You did your job.


Right, left, right-right, the heavy dummy jerking and rocking with each blow despite the weights at its base.

You were in an impossible situation.


Elbow, knee, fist. Left hook, right jab, right again and a kick.  Sweat burned her eyes, her breath coming short and fast as she pushed past her implants' ability to compensate, a blur of movement an untrained eye would have trouble tracking.  Hell, even a trained, unaugmented one.


Helmi is very well trained and she's packed full up to her back teeth with some of the best wiring money can buy.

All of it so there'll never be a situation that's impossible when it comes to Pilot's safety.

No matter what Pilot's sister says.


There's good enough, and not good enough, and a gap in between wide as the space between the stars, but no situation is impossible, if you're good enough, if you train hard enough, if you get it right.

Helmi got it wrong, there's no question of that.

Got herself good and dead, for one thing. Clear sign of a fuck-up.

Let Pilot get hurt. A little, Invelen had said. Before I realized.


The dummy jerks and dances, the casing beginning to split. Helmi hits it again, and again, leaving smears of blood despite the wraps over her knuckles. Her arms ache, her vision blurs, the bruises on her elbows and forearms and knees and shins are bad enough now for their dull warning ache to get past the pain suppression implant with each impact.

There's a limit, that's what Pilot's sister had said, making excuses Helmi didn't need made, offering forgiveness she hadn't asked for. There wasn't anything else you could have done.


But Helmi's not interested in forgiveness, and she's never been any better with limits than she is with excuses.  Not as a cadet, not in basic, not when Pilot's people hauled her off her crippled transport and the first face she saw as the marines snapped open their helmets was Sarge's.


You again, he'd said, even though they'd only met the once.

Me again.

Home Guard and Peace and Order, court-martial offence for either of them. Sergeant and Private on the same crew, same result. Lines that don't get crossed.

But Helmi and Sarge cross a lot of lines these days. After all, they live in a world where you come back to work two days after a bullet shatters your skull or a steel hand snaps your neck.  That's a pretty big fucking line, right there. 


Death used to be a limit.


Not any more.

Sarge forgave her for killing him. Helmi's still working on forgiving him for his forgiveness.

Not your fault, Alpassi, he'd said. Nothing you could have done.

But Helmi's not interested in excuses.

There's always something you can do.

If you try hard enough, work long enough. 


No situation is impossible.

Not even mine.