It wasn't long until he reached his men. Two of them were checking for
other survivors while Boris and Sergeant Vincent knelt over the inert
form that had to be Joan Cortin. Vincent was giving her Last Rites
while Boris tended to her physical needs, his posture evidence of his
intense concentration, and Odeon thanked God again that the St. Dmitri
exchange troop he'd drawn for his team was so damn competent. He'd
love to take his whole team to that world for a bit, he thought
irrelevantly. He'd worked with a Dmitrian team once, here on St.
Thomas, and thought everyone in SO should have that experience.

"How is she?" he asked, joining the medic. If the ID said "Joan
Cortin," he'd have to accept that evidence; he certainly couldn't
identify the woman he knew so well in this bloody, mangled body.

"Not good, Captain." Boris' English had a heavy Dmitrian accent, but
Odeon had no trouble understanding him. "Badly beaten, raped--more
than once, I believe--and she appears to have a spinal injury. The
Brothers of course burned their mark into her hands, but that is
minor." He looked up with a frown. "I regret having to tell you,
Captain. She was your protego, was she not?"

"Yes, and she's still my friend." Odeon stood, making way for the
other medics who promptly began working on the unconscious woman. So
the Brothers had burned their circled-triangle mark into Joanie's
hands, had they? That didn't happen often, but he was no more
surprised than Boris had been that they'd given her that distinction.
Not even all Special Ops officers rated that mark of the Brothers'
special hatred, and why Joanie did was something he couldn't
guess--she'd never been on an anti-Brotherhood operation, that he knew
of--but they'd taken a special dislike to her for some reason none had
divulged even under third-stage interrogation, calling her "the damned
Enforcement bitch" in a tone Odeon himself reserved for those who had
begun the Final War. Maybe they hated her just because she was the
only active-duty female Enforcement officer. At any rate, they had
marked her--and she was the first he knew about to survive the torture
that accompanied the mark's infliction.

He watched the medics work, his thoughts going back. It'd started
. . . what, twelve years ago? Yes, that sounded about right. A small
town here in New Pennsylvania--and not too far away, if he remembered
clearly. He'd been on light duty, wounded in his first fig