Makita

Makita sits in front of the two graves she dug every day. Sometimes it is only for a minute or two, sometimes for hours, but each time she cries.

But life goes on. It must.

She's been working her way in a slowly-widening circle around the site of the battle, scavenging ammunition and food and equipment from the hulking shells of destroyed krawls and the piles of unburied dead. It's a familiar task and one which, despite her grief, Makita takes an odd comfort in.

Pushing herself to her feet, she begins circling west. A krawl platoon had been split off the main column and ambushed out that way, and she was pretty sure that no one had picked over the area yet.

The ten days since the battle had been enough to purge the air of the scents of combat. Smoke had cleared and blood had frozen and the air was crisp and clean. The familiar streets and a task she knows well will allow Makita to forget, for just a while, what she's lost.

She whistles lightly as she makes her way among the abandoned krawls and selects her next target. There's a body halfway out of the hatch, but bracing her feet on the edge of the krawl and heaving solves that problem. After poking her head in to make sure there are no more corpses inside, Makita drops into the vehicle and begins scavenging.