“I’m here thanks to the good people of the Prisoner Enlistment Service,” Sarah told David. The new arrival also caught her eye.<em>She must be a recent addition too—I would definitely remember seeing her around.</em>“Political stuff,” she added to explain further. Sarah no longer felt as self-conscious as she had initially about her background—PES had obviously grossly exaggerated how much of a pariah she would be. “I suppose that makes me trouble. But on the plus side, how many mobile infantry platoons get a doctor of internal medicine and surgery tagging along?”<br/><br/>At the question about what had happened, Sarah answered. The new girl was now in earshot. She might want to hear this as well, Sarah figured. “I don’t know everything that happened, or how badly the fleet and the operation as a whole was crippled by the orc attack. We started the day on the<em>Roger Young,</em>which was ambushed and boarded. Our unit put up a hell of a fight—we secured one deck, blew up several of those organic boarding craft, and Sergeant Paige even secured the bridge when it came under attack. And from what I heard it was brutal just getting up there.<br/><br/>“Unfortunately, there were even more boarding craft inbound, more than we could have handled. The captain was dead and Paige gave the order to abandon ship and set the auto-destruct. That was pure hell, had to get all the wounded in my infirmary to escape pods and had to leave two behind who would not have survived the acceleration.” She shook her head sadly. “We managed to get a lot of people off the<em>Roger Young,</em>at least—many of the escape pods and three stolen boarding craft. I didn’t realize humans could pilot those things, but fortunately it’s possible.”<br/><br/>“Last I heard, the overall operation is still going ahead despite the setback—the orcs are firmly entrenched on one of our colonies, and we get to fight for all that territory, meter by bloody meter.” Not for the first time, Sarah wondered if she should have just stayed in prison.