It was week four before anything went wrong, but it went wrong in a very big way. I was following Kos’s division down the street from where they had just completed their blood drive module. Kos-Api couldn’t donate blood for obvious reasons, but she had held the hands of some of the more squeamish members of her division while they got stuck.

  Kos was in front of the unit as usual, holding the pennant with their number on it. A distant shot rang out and she spun around, taking a knee. She didn’t drop the pennant, which was perhaps a bad idea because a second shot rang out as I ran to her, knocking her over completely this time. I thumbed my panic button as I drew my side arm.

  The division scattered, most following the instructor’s shouts to get into cover. As I reached Kos, I grabbed her arm and tried to drag her out of the street. I felt the impact of a third shot against my own body armor, but the retort of the rifle was drowned out by the crack of a sonic boom.

  Without further warning, Kos and I were surrounded by robots with riot shields that had dropped in from above. A fourth shot clanged off of a shield, and one of the robots aimed what appeared to be a pistol somewhere off to the left. I didn’t see anything else happen but one of the other robots scooped up Kos and another snatched me up into a princess carry. My pistol was easily plucked out of my hands before I even saw the robot that took it.

  “Please do not try to move, Agent Robins. You are wounded.” The ground fell away and I was hustled along with Kos through what appeared to be a hangar bay. The robot put me onto a table and unceremoniously cut away my coat and body armor with some tool I didn’t see it pick up.

  “I need to roll you over Agent Robins. Please continue to not move.” I was quickly flipped onto my face and there was more cutting.

  “Is Kos alright?” I tried to ask, but nothing came out. Spitting to clear my throat, I saw that there was blood. “Oh, that’s not good.” I burbled though the flood of red stuff. In a moment, everything went black.

  When I woke up, Kos was standing over me.

  “Kos, you’re alright!” It seems I could speak again.

  “Yes, I got both of us fixed up good. The crew is making us new body armor and replacing the clothes they had to cut. We will be ready to go back in about an hour.” A robot appeared on my other side.

  “What happened?”

  The robot spoke in a near monotone.

  “Kos-Api was hit by a seven point six two millimeter chemically propelled projectile at a point behind and below her left arm. The round bypassed her armor at the arm opening and impacted her fourth rib, fragmenting and deflecting upward into her lung. When she fell, a second round impacted her skull below her right ear. This also deflected upward, putting a gouge in the soft tissue on that side of her head and rendering her unconscious. You arrived and received a penetrating round through your armor. It entered your left lung above your eighth rib. At that point, we arrived and rendered aid. It took Kos-Api about fifteen minutes to wake back up, at which point she drew off of the bleed from our gravitational nodes to repair the damage both of you had received. By that time we had managed to stabilize you both and removed the bullet and bullet fragments.”

  “Shit. Thanks Kos.” I tested my movement to see if there were any ill effects. Everything felt good. “It seems your claims are not exaggerated. You do good work.”

  “You are a good person to have around, Ashley. I think I’ll keep you.” Kos grinned at me with a feral expression.

  “Don’t get a big head girl, you are still never taking me to bed. I don’t care how horny the energy overcharge makes you.”

  “That’s OK, we will find you a nice woman and double date.”

  “I never indicated to you anything about being gay.”

  “You don’t have to, I have eyes and I am trained how to use them.”

  “Are you going to be alright when we get back?”

  “Yeah, we had sexual harassment training last week, I know the rules. Although I really want someone to…”

  “OK, that’s enough of that.”

  Kos just laughed.

  “It is so easy to make you blush.”

  I looked down at the loose poncho that had been draped over me.

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  “How are we doing on more clothes?”

  “No change on the time line.” confirmed the robot.

  “What about the shooter?”

  “Despite Kos-Api’s desire to go take care of the problem herself, the assailant has already been taken into custody by your Raider team. We were in time to triangulate the shooting position from the fourth shot, and we used an x-ray laser to blind them. They should have been rendered incapable of further attacks or escape without vision.”

  “Can I talk to my doggies?” asked Kos.

  “We decided last month that revealing that we could calculate the encryption and frequency hopping of your military radios was acceptable, so yes.”

  “Do we need to go somewhere?” I asked.

  “This is the only room on the ship equipped for biologicals, so here will be fine. If you speak I will transmit it using the Raider’s obfuscation pattern.”

  “Devil Dogs, this is Operator Magicat. Please respond.” Kos said loudly.

  “Twelve, is that you?” came a voice from the robot after several moments.

  “One-Two reporting for duty. Guardian One and I will be down as soon as we are cleaned up.”

  “We will let the instructors know you are alright.”

  Kos and I waited as patiently as we could for the crew of the ship we were on to finish replacements for our wrecked clothes.

  “Here are your things.” announced another robot in the same voice as the first as it walked in with an arm full of stuff.

  The armor was much different. It was still a cloth outer layer for comfort, but underneath I could feel linked hexagons each smaller than a dime. My clothes and Kos’s new uniform were exact replicas of the ones that got cut and bloodied.

  “We don’t have good body scans of your coworkers, Agent Robins. When we get them we will deliver better armor for them as well.”

  After getting pants on again I shrugged into the new undershirt and body armor and put my replacement blouse over it all. A new bra could wait until I got back to my rooms. The holster for my gun had been patched rather than replaced. The new coat fit just as well as the old one, the only real difference I could see was that it totally lacked manufacturer labels. At least they didn't have to replace our shoes.

  Kos’s uniform had been made by the Hive already, so they probably just downloaded the template from whatever they call their cloud storage and threw a new one together.

  “Are we ready to go?” I asked Kos-Api.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, without Givens here.”

  “TMI.” I retorted. The robot showed us to the door. A bus was waiting in the hangar on the other side.

  On the ride down what the robot had said finally caught up to me.

  “Wait a minute Kos-Api. You took an armor piercing rifle round to the head and… It. Bounced. Off.”

  “What is the expression that Givens uses? Too Kawaii to live but too Sugoi to die? I am a bad bitch.” she said over her shoulder as she watched re-entry through the huge windows. She thought for a moment as she looked back outside.

  “Ashley, you took a serious wound for me today. If circumstances had been different, you probably would have died. Some people get scarred by things like that. They can't process it in a healthy way. If you need to take some time to think about that, I support you. And if you decide that I'm too dangerous to be around, I support you in that too.”

  “I'm going to be required to talk to counselors about today.” I confirmed. “Once I make my report they're going to replace me until the head doctors decide that I'm okay to keep working.”

  When the bus landed in the parking lot’s fire lane Tracy and Bianca were waiting with two of the Raiders.

  “Apologies ma’am,” started Tracy “but regulations…”

  I cut her off with a gesture and held open my coat. Bianca took my firearm, and I removed and handed her the spare magazines.

  “First we report to Recruit Training Command, and then I make a phone call.” I directed. Bianca and Trcy led us into the building, and the two Raiders followed behind, loaded for some very angry bears.

  The Division Officer saw us coming and signaled for us to follow him to his boss’s office. The Lieutenant took us to the Captain, but unlike the Ensign who escorted us the first time he remained to hear what we had to say.

  Kos’s report was quick, since she was out for most of the more active parts. I filled in the details she didn’t know until the point I had passed out, and Kos filled in the rest from when she came to.

  “Get all the chaplains over there and get everyone talking.” was the Captain’s determination. “If you need to activate SPARK let me know so we can get the back end details sorted, but I think we have enough resources on hand to not need them. 342’s training will be on hold until we make sure everyone has had the chance to unload. Document that each person was spoken to. Not the contents of the conversions, just so that we keep accountability and make sure we don’t miss anyone. And don’t leave out the Petty Officers.”

  “Aye sir.” the Lieutenant agreed.

  “Recruit wem… wem Wammat, Special Agent Robins, do you two need to talk to someone about this?” the Captain asked the two of us.

  “I’ve been wounded more seriously before.” answered Kos.”I lost an arm to a Greater Combat Beast once. That one nearly killed me.”

  “So do you feel that you were not in danger today?”

  “If the attacker had been allowed to continue to shoot at me while I was unconscious, I might have been in trouble.” she said thoughtfully and then looked over at me. “However, people in positions to make it so have decided that I will never be alone.”

  “I am going to be relieved once I have a chance to report this to my own chain of command.” I told the Captain. “They will likely fly me back to DC to talk to everyone, but I would not be surprised if they doubled up on the protective detail here at the least. The Marines might also decide to do something, but that isn’t in my sphere of influence.”

  “I’ll let you all get to it then. Dismissed.” pronounced the Captain. His Yeoman was already hovering with an eye on his watch. When we got outside Kos stopped me with a hand on my arm.

  “You do know, in the top of your brain and not the bottom, that as long as I draw breath you are also never alone.” she said to me earnestly. “And if you don’t come back from Washington because they decided rather than you then I will have words with them.”

  “That’s a series of decisions away at this point.” I said as I indicated we should move along. "Let’s get you back to your ship and then I have some phone calls to make.”

  Tracy stayed with me while I made the call to the boss. As I predicted, I had a plane ride ahead of me.