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This isn’t the first time one of her orders has sentenced someone to death.
The first time, she’d been newly assigned to Brisingamen. It wasn’t a seasoned squad of name-bearers like Spearhead had been – it was a squad of 86 that most likely wouldn’t even live to see Spearhead, and it had a fresh recruit. Piya Oriki. She was twelve. She survived for two battles.
In her third, she’d stepped out of position and gotten the right hind leg of her Juggernaut blasted out from under her by a Löwe. Her unit had rolled down into a ditch – Shiden and four others were close enough to try to help her and Lena had ordered them to hold their positions instead.
“Like hell, I am!”
“This is a direct order: hold your position.”
Piya was sobbing. Frightened. “Please help me. Please help me. I don’t want to die.” Her voice sounded so small that it gutted Lena. Her hands reached up toward the dot on her screen that was all she’d ever see of the little girl. Clenched into fists at the red of enemies closing in around it.
“You might be our Handler, but I’m the Captain of this squad and like hell if I’m ever gonna follow an order like that!”
Cyclops was already moving toward Piya, the rest following, when Lena said, “Fine, Captain. You can lose one or you can lose five. It’s your call.”
Shiden had hesitated for just a moment. Just a moment was all it took. In the next moment Piya was gone.
Lena had wanted to cry.
No.
She’d wanted to die. To trade places with little Piya. To explode in her place instead. But she couldn’t. There was still a battle going on. So she’d pulled herself together. She’d given orders and the squad had obeyed them, and nobody else had died that day.
That night, when she’d synchronized with them, Shiden had been so angry. “You’ve got some balls calling us now.”
“I can’t save everyone,” was all Lena had said. “I can only save who I can.”
Shiden had sworn bloody murder at her, and Lena knew there was a time once when she would have tried to apologize. Would have maybe even cried over the Para-RAID synch.
But she didn’t that night: the numbers were on her side. All she'd really done was work through the simple, cruel mathematics of life in the 86th District.
She’d cried herself to sleep and woken up the next morning. Gone into work. Prepared for the next battle.
In the years before she’d joined the 86th Strike Package she’d made countless decisions just like that one: lose one or lose five, lose five or lose ten, lose ten or lose twenty. Shiden called her Bloody Reina, and she’d carried that name. Because that was your duty when you were in command. To make the hard decisions. To live with them.
This time, the decision should be easy. Lose just four or all of humanity. The stakes are so astronomically high that the math is simple. That it shouldn’t take a second thought.
Frederica is with Shiden, ensconced in Brisingamen. Protecting her is the mission’s top priority. What’s left of the vanguard is broken, surrounded by Legion. There exists no feasible way to retrieve them. She could take a thousand years to consider this problem and the numbers would still never add up the way she wants them to. As a commander, she only has one course of action, and still –
“Tell me to come get you,” she whispers into the Para-RAID. She’s synchronized with just him. If he asks her to, she thinks she might be able to find the strength to do it. There’s a small part of her that thinks it’s not worth saving humanity if she can’t save him. Just the tiniest piece that doesn’t care how crazy the numbers are.
“You know I can’t do that. The mission takes priority.”
“I can’t send units to your position.” She almost chokes on the words – realizes that even if he’d begged her, they’d have come out the same anyway.
It’s the only choice she can make.
“I know,” he says. “I love you. And –
“I’m sorry.”
I'm sorry I can't come back to you.
I'm sorry I can't keep my promise.
I'm sorry we'll never see the sea together.
The unsaid words echo in her ears. She wants to sob and beg him for forgiveness. She wants to take it all back. Wants to refuse this choice. To give up command. To shift the burden to someone else - anyone else, but she can't. And she has something critically important for him to hear -
“I love you too.”
She can almost see the sad smile on his face before he cuts their synch.
She straightens. Bites back her tears. Gives the orders that will save the world.
The orders that will kill him.
She doesn’t cry when the vanguard vanishes from her map. She doesn’t cry when she hears their bodies have been found. She doesn't cry when she sees his, broken and bloody. She doesn’t cry at the funeral. Walks through her days, numb to everything. There aren’t any more battles – she’s survived to the end and, without him standing there with her, finds it empty. The place she’s been moving forward to all this time is nothing more than a desert. She can’t help but wonder why she’d bothered going ahead at all.
She doesn’t cry until Frederica visits her room, pats her awkwardly on the shoulder and says, “You can survive this. You... you did the right thing.”
For some reason, those words from this girl break her down, and all of a sudden she can’t stop crying.
She knows she’ll survive it.
She knows she did the right thing.
That’s what hurts the most.
Because she’d thought that her world would end with him, and it hasn’t.
Because still, more than anything, she wishes she could have done the wrong one.