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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 5191873" data-attributes="member: 143">Trust me, nobody mistook mutons for clowns in this campaign. Green-skinned bastards could absorb punishment and dish it out.Today we meet a new player-character, run by the husband of Jane's player. * * * * * Session 22 (September 22, 2008)Chapter 87Mehwash Ranma stared down at the yellow piece of paper in her hand, the one that had changed her life.  YOU ARE ORDERED AT ONCE TO REPORT TO REPORT TO X-COM, CURRENTLY LOCATED IN THE U.S. THERE YOU WILL SERVE ON A TEAM OF MULTI-NATIONAL OPERATIVES. REPORT TO BASE CHIEF HALLORAND UPON ARRIVAL. There hadn’t been a chance for discussion, or compromise.  No opportunity to complain, or even get more information.  She had returned to her dormitory after a night out with her friends in Pune.  Some men from the army had been waiting for her.  Her things had been packed in a duffel.  Her orders had been shoved into her hand.  An hour later, she’d been on a plane to America. Mehwash wondered what her parents had been told.  Her father would hate her even more, probably.  How angry he had been, when in the middle of her medical studies, she’d run off to join the IMS.  At the time she’d thought it was a good idea.  It was either that, or she be pressured to marry Vikram Singh.  A fat bore of a man.  It did not matter to her traditional parents that Mehwash was considered one of the highest scorers in the national Medical Aptitude exams.  If she hadn't joined the army, her budding medical career would have quickly been over. At 24, she had seen much suffering.  Several years in the UN had taken her around the world.  She wasn't yet a doctor, but she had treated many patients.  Nothing like the injuries and pain she had heard about from The War though.  She remembered being afraid. But that had been before Miami.  Before her life had changed.She looked down at the equipment case they’d given her, the suit of armor.  They had sat there on the locker since they’d come back.  Jane had had to help her out of the armor; her hands had fumbled clumsily on the straps, slick with blood.  Alien blood.  Catalina’s blood.  While getting out of the armor she’d dropped her gun, the alien plasma weapon she’d been given to defend herself.  It had slipped from its holster, the butt caught on a strap.  The gun had bounced twice, then landed near the wall.  It did not fire.  She had picked it up by the hilt with two fingers, laid it on the table, and quickly backed away.  When she had joined the Indian Army's medical service to escape a marriage she wanted no part of, she had been required to do some basic firearms training, like any other soldier.  But that didn’t change the fact that she had been a woman in an army still segregated by sex.  No one had expected her to see any real combat. She did her training, and got her patch.  That was years ago, and she hadn't touched a weapon since. Until Miami.  The day Mary Ranma had become a soldier in every sense of the word.The room was little more than a cell, a fold-down cot, tiny table and chair, a locker and a sink so small that she could barely wash both hands in it at once.  But she was grateful for the privacy.  She couldn’t bear being in the barracks with the others right now, even if being apart from them left her an outsider.  She hadn’t looked at her communicator, sitting on the table next to the gun.  It no doubt contained a schedule of things that she was supposed to be doing.  She’d expected someone to come for her when she didn’t appear, but no one had.  Maybe they had figured out that this was all some big mistake. She laid down on the cot, and closed her eyes.  The memories came, she couldn’t escape them, but she refused to get up, just laid there, thinking back on the events that had brought her to this place. * * * They had been polite enough when she’d arrived, if a bit rushed.  They told her that things would seem strange at first, but that it would get easier with time.  They told her a lot of things, but none of it answered any of her questions.  She’d really wanted some time and quiet to get her bearings, catch up on the rest she’d lost since she’d been yanked out of her life back in Pune.  But it had only just begun.“You not come to us at good time,” the Russian had said to her.  In hindsight, that had been the only thing she’d understood in that initial whirlwind of activity.  Jane had offered to show her around the facility, and had helped her get her few possessions settled in the tiny room she’d been assigned.  At first the place had seemed outrageously spartan, but since then she’d learned that the private room had been quite a boon in the crowded base.  She’d wanted time to get adjusted, but time was not something that X-COM had in quantities.  She’d barely woken from a troubled sleep, her body still adjusting to the craziness of relocating halfway around the world, when Jane had reappeared to escort her to a fitting of her Personal Armor.  She met at least a dozen people, names and faces blurring together in her mind.  That had been followed by tests, the issuance of her ID and communicator, then more tests, an hour in a laboratory like something out of a movie, medical gear the likes of which she’d never seen in her life, and finally a trip to the armory, and her last acquisition, the weapon that now sat on her table, fat and ugly and deadly.  There had only been one chance for her to take charge of her own fate on that second day.  She’d found the Director in the briefing room, talking with two women, whose names she couldn’t remember.  The one in the suit smirked as she’d come in, and she’d almost turned around and left, but Garret had smiled and gestured for her to come in. “I’m sorry for the abrupt start to your tour here,” Garret had said.  “As you can see, things are a bit chaotic here.”“Listen,” she had told him.  “There is something you should know.”“Yes?”“This is all a mistake.  I do not belong here.”Garret’s expression had been… sympathetic?  Resigned?  Grim?  “The decision was made by those with authority.  None of us chose this, Doctor.”  “I've been in the Army for years.  Trained.  But... I've never been in an active unit. I'm a woman.”  The woman in the suit snorted.  “I'd noticed.  And you're not the only one here.”Garret was more understanding, but there was no yield in his eyes.  “You're a doctor, and a human being.  We are at war, doctor.  You’ve seen what they did to London.  We have to stop these creatures before they do the same to New Delhi.”She had opened her mouth to protest, to offer one last argument, but what could be said to that?“The members of your team will bring you up to date.  Stay alert and learn.  I've read your file.  You're no stranger to tough situations.”Stay alert, and learn.  Good advice, perhaps, but there had been no more time; the alert had sounded a little less than one hour later.  At the time, she hadn’t understood what it meant.  Now she knew.</blockquote>

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