Chapter 3Before The Stars Forgot Your Name

After that, things moved quickly.

Gideon was conscripted during the border mobilization. I followed him from the scrap wastes to the Coalition's forward military perimeter.

He was born for war. Taking apart enemy squads came as naturally to him as stripping starship carburetors. Within two years, he rose from an infantry private to a major.

I was registered as his dependent, working twelve-hour shifts in the field hospital changing bandages for the wounded. It wasn't an easy life, but at least we weren't eating hard biscuits in the dust anymore.

Sometimes I felt a pang of regret about my abandoned medical degree. But then I looked at the triage ward and thought: wasn't the point of studying medicine to keep people alive?

It felt like enough.