Sabine chuckled softly, the sound little more than a huff of air. "Isn't that always the way it goes? It doesn't matter how many questions a person has, but the moment a person offers to answer them, they disappear."
She set aside the datapad and scrubbed her fingers through her hair, then over her face. She didn't want to talk about it. It had been the very worst time of her life, and she still felt as strongly about the fact that she should have died instead as she had then. It wasn't right that Miko should have died and that she should have lived, not when he had had the strength to plunge the blade into his own breast when she had not. He thought he had been saving her, but really all he had done was consign her to a life of misery and heartache at his expense. Still, perhaps she needed to talk about it.
"All men and women aboard Kurmaraja are expected to serve a stint in Kohl's fighting force. Everyone serves, everyone protects, everyone benefits. Mundane humans are expected to enlist for three years, mutated humans are expected to serve five years. During those years, whether mundane or mutated, Kohl expressly forbids fraternization, especially between officers and subordinates. Everyone is welcome to pursue romantic goals after they have served their requirements, but he considers it a distraction and a weakness when his soldiers are meant to be fighting and upholding his ideals. Breaking any of his laws results in punishments of varying degree depending on the infraction, and for muties it often means exile or years added to indenture. Until Miko and myself, no one had ever broken the fraternization rule, at least none that had been caught. It was worse, because Miko was my commanding officer, my trainer, not to mention Kohl's son, and I was Kohl's rising star. He doted on me, gave me more room to move than some of the others. Miko was being groomed to Kohl's right hand, and I was being groomed to serve as his left. Because of all these things, Kohl took our betrayal...far harder than he might have otherwise. We, whom he trusted implicitly, who would take his place and lead his march when he wasn't around anymore, thwarted his law and forced his hand. He had no choice but to make an example of us, not if he wanted to keep everyone else in line. No matter who we were or what we were to him, we had to be punished accordingly," she explained, her voice never rising above a whispered octave. Her hands were clasped in front of her tightly, the knuckles of her flesh and blood hand tight and colorless over her knuckles.
"He chose to throw us in the sparring pit and make us fight to the death, but he also weighted the odds heavily in Miko's favor. He threw us in the pit to fight, and then he released the mutated beasts that Miko himself had raised. They wouldn't attack him, but they attacked me. I lost my arm and my leg to them--well, the left side of me, really--before Miko killed them. He could have killed me too, should have killed me, but...he wrapped my right hand around the hilt of his blade and held it there, then used it to take his own life rather than mine...Kohl was so enraged that he had me whipped until I was only a breath away from death. Only then did he allow Maggie to heal me enough to save my life, but only so far as that. He decreed that I would keep my scars as a reminder, a reminder for everyone. He kept me in his ranks, added ten years to my indenture, and ensured that my status as a traitor among his ranks was maintained no matter how many new people joined up...I'm a cautionary tale, a horror story told to the children of Kurmaraja to keep them in line." Sabine shook her head then, the bright vibrancy of her living eye dimming somewhat with the threat of tears. "So you see...I'm a bad example to judge by. It was my choices that led to this, my mistakes."
