Saturday September 23, 2017
Book 18: Mandatory Failure — Part I

Note: For those attempting to construct a calendar of events, five months have passed since the events of A Little Immortality, Schlock Mercenary Book 17. One of those events was the dramatic passage of a pair of medium-velocity antipersonnel rounds through the upper left quadrant of Corporal Peri Gugro's torso moments after the corporal rushed into battle without her armored uniform.

Those two bullets went on to embed themselves in a block of reusable packing material, and after a near miss with the cleanup crew their new home was repackaged, allowing them to escape onto a munitions freighter bound for a distribution station in Ithiv's Clutter. Three repackagings later they found themselves braced against what retailers might call "slow-moving inventory" in a warehouse on Othlin, where they've been able to settle down together. 

This book is not their story.

Transcript

NARRATOR: The office of Doctor Edward "Bunni" Bunnigus...

PERI: Doc, it's been six months, and I still can't shoot straight with my left arm.

BUNNI: That problem is in your head, Corporal.

PERI: Really? Because I wasn't shot in the head. I was shot in the chest.

BUNNI: Was it your chest or your head that sent you into combat stark naked?

PERI: Now you're just being mean.

BUNNI: And my brain says it's only been five months.