MATERIAL ADJUSTMENTS

Rain pounded relentlessly against the scrap-iron roof of the shack as Sister Darexha worked with sharp precision to prepare for the incoming CDF prisoner transport. Using a pair of pliers, she bent pieces of wire into position, attaching a blasting cap to a heavy block of packed explosive. It wasn’t the first bomb she had made, and she thought it unlikely that it would be her last.

For weeks, she had been moving incognito through enemy territory. She most commonly made bombs to be attached to flagpoles, posters, and other things that her targets would tear down only to inadvertently trigger their own deaths. They would never see her and she would never see them. Today though, the enemy would be getting closer than usual. It demanded full presence.

On a metal table next to Darexha’s, one of her comrades was also preparing an improvised explosive. She wasn’t as composed as Darexha was. Her hands were trembling and Darexha could hear her quietly muttering reassurances to herself.

“Come on, it’ll all be over soon. It’s always worked out this far. I’ve got good luck. I always make it through. I’m a survivor,” she was saying as she finished up.

“To work in the material world is to obey its weight,” Darexha said, quoting a well-known Ascendency religious text. “If your work is that which is in front of you, you must therefore focus only on that which is in front of you.”

“Yeah, but it’s terrifying! These aren’t toys that we’re putting together. I’ve been with the cause for a while now, but I’ve not been on the front lines like this before,” replied the other insurgent.

“You can rule all that your eyes behold, mastering your world, but only so long as you remain present in it. Lose your thoughts in abstractions and you will lose everything else along with them.”

“Look,” she said, annoyed with Darexha’s preaching, “I just don’t like this. I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

“We do whatever we must in order to liberate the holy land,” Darexha said, matter-of-factly.

“I know. I mean, the fuckers destroyed my village and my parents are stuck in some camp somewhere being tortured by foreign mercenaries. I get it. I want to fight. I just don’t know how you stay so calm when you could be blown to shreds at any moment.”

“When has that not been true? Life is dangerous. Our vessels are fragile and impermanent. To accept this is to overcome it. To overcome that is to overcome everything.”

A third person came over to the tables from the other side of the dimly-lit room, checked that the bomb-makers were done, and then picked up the finished explosives. He carried them outside where they were concealed among the debris and loose tires that spilled out onto the sides of the muddy road. The three fighters then picked up their rifles and crouched near the windows of the shack. The trap was set, ready to be sprung into violent motion with the press of one red button.

On the other side of the road, set against the backdrop of silvery gray light of the early evening, were more, equally run-down, shacks. Rust and sodden filth crept up their walls while their roofs were unlikely to be keeping out all of the rain hammering down on them. The civilian population of this village was now closer to zero than to its height from six months ago. It wouldn’t be long before the last of them were out of here and scavengers would be in their place, stripping out everything anyone left behind. But for today, at least, these buildings were hosting several teams of KA fighters.

Her companions next to her were gripping their weapons so tightly that Darexha could see their white knuckle bones pushing against the rough skin of their hands. It wasn’t just nerves affecting them, it was hate. The DNA-CDF coalition had taken so much from everybody. Darexha hated them too, but she could suppress its action on her body. It wasn’t useful for the fight. Staying calm was always the right thing to do.

Rumbling engines heralded the arrival of the enemy much sooner than she expected, but it wouldn’t change how things went. Everything and everyone were in their right place. That was all that mattered. Tension was an illusion of the mind.

When the armored jeep at the front of the convoy rolled close enough, the fighter who had hidden the bombs pressed the button on their detonator. They exploded, throwing up mud and debris as they appeared to fuse into one massive fireball. It engulfed the vehicle, roasting an exposed soldier who was manning its .50 cal gun turret, and rattled the walls of the shack.

In synchronized motion with the other teams, Darexha and her comrades stood up and opened fire on the startled convoy. They shot through the glass windshield of the truck behind the burning jeep, killing the two soldiers in the driver and passenger seats with a furious hail of bullets. They then quickly picked off a survivor from the jeep explosion who was still struggling to pull his pistol from its holster as he crawled across the road with bloodied stumps for legs.

A wasteful amount of ammunition, Darexha thought.

Behind the truck was another armored jeep, but the insurgents in their shack weren’t in the best position to target it. The soldier on its gun turret was still alive, and he was panicking. He sprayed bullets in a wild arc at the shacks on their side of the road. Darexha tried to duck and make herself small as the bullets easily punched through the rusty walls and zipped past her, bringing rain and slivers of metal with them.

The jeep was reversing, trying to turn around and flee the ambush, but it wouldn’t get far. Someone in a building on the opposite side of the street fired an MVM that punched right through the vehicle’s armor and quickly annihilated it. A few seconds later, the gunfire stopped and shouts of celebration replaced it as KA fighters swarmed into the street to rescue the prisoners in the back of the transport truck.

Sister Darexha did not cheer, although she allowed herself to feel elated. There was nothing indulgent or distracting about that feeling. It was an honest, and earned, reaction. Muscles in her shoulders, which she didn’t realise she had been keeping stiff, finally relaxed.

She then turned to one of the insurgents next to her, the woman with whom she had prepared the bombs. She hadn’t been so lucky when the gun turret had fired on their position. Red blood was gushing all over her ragged uniform and across the floor, illuminated by light shafts spilling in through the bullet holes in the wall.

“Shit, shit, fuck, oh fuck, shit, I don’t want to–” the injured woman was saying, her shivering hands smearing her own blood across her body.

Darexha moved the woman’s arms to the side and began applying pressure to what appeared to be the worst-hit area, but it very quickly became clear that it wasn’t going to help her.

The other soldier in the room did a double-take while clutching the back of his head in an act of disbelief. He froze there for a moment, then paced over to the door and shouted for a medic.

The woman looked at Darexha, eyes full of sadness and fear, and Darexha spoke to her in the only way she knew how.

“You are the sole master of your world,” she said, quoting one of the Five Great Truths, and the dying woman’s lips began to move with hers. “All change in your world must come from you as only you can interpret your world.”.

The insurgent was clearly still suffering, both physically and emotionally, but she was doing her best to control her situation. To remember The Words.

“Your work here is finished,” continued Darexha.

“End… end your reliance on the material… surpass your reliance on the world,” replied the insurgent, through pained gasps, this time quoting one of the Five Righteous Actions.

The dying woman’s expression changed as if becoming suddenly very focused. She stopped shivering entirely. She was trying to master and move beyond herself, trying to ascend.

Her breathing slowed. Her pulse slowed. Her face softened into a neutral position. Eyes watching nothing. And she went pale.

Darexha stopped applying pressure to the fighter’s wounds. It was time to prepare for her exit. She grabbed a rucksack and began filling it up with the remaining bomb-making equipment, her hands still slick with the other woman’s blood. They would need to abandon this position before the DNA or CDF sent more soldiers.

Some of her compatriots would escort the prisoners and the injured or dead into safe territory, but for others the front line always held more work. Sister Darexha accepted this dutifully, and sank back into the shadows to await her next assignment.