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Wolf's Daughter - Prologue by Pakkrat A building down the street was collapsing. Even as her assailant was focused upon her, she chose to tilt her head to look at the crumbling building and hear its grinding structure fall. It kicked up a huge, expanding cloud of dust, debris, and sound. She watched with a logical dissociation as Jove City crumbled in its death throes. Such was war. With detached mental calm, she returned her pained gaze to the insignia lapel on the uniform of the Dog Soldier who was using her. Pain registered repeatedly in multiple places upon her body, but through her psionic training she was able to retreat from the physical and the emotional aspects into a walled-off kernel that was mind. From there she watched as the Dog Soldier used her body in his own primal madness. Around them, the city's pacification was without order and its beauty was war-torn, its spirit fading rapidly. She noted the name on his lapel, obviously some given nickname. This "Wolf" was enraged, maddened, and totally given over to his id, the primal aspect of fulfillment of desires. Right now his desire to rape her was at the forefront. Yet try as he might, despite the violation of her flesh, she would not give him any satisfaction of her use. She had already partitioned off her mind from body and emotions when the Dog Soldiers attacked the domiciles of the hiding citizenry of Jove City. She decided to remember this one's designation, this 'wolf'. He had left her for dead, having spent himself and seeing no suffering come forth. A radio call had come to move to the next section of the orbital city. Jupiter's angry eye storm gazed down upon the orbital space city, watching the carnage, destruction, and wild abandon. Citizens died, structures collapsed and any resistance had been broken. The Dog Soldiers continued to expend ordinance, maim simple citizens of the Jenquai race, and stalk through the city streets for more prey. Such was war. Through her psionic training allowing her to partition off her mind from body, the Jenquai woman had appeared paralyzed to the Dog Soldier, Wolf. So, when he had used her and heeded the call to more destruction, she slowly allowed the pain and injuries to register. Excruciating agony, emotional suffering, and utter sorrow for fellow citizenry poured in and were felt. She felt again. Crying and sobbing, the woman slowly began to test her physical body for capability. Her blood was soaking her tunic. She had taken a round of gunfire. She could still move even though the 'wolf' had bitten her neck and drank her blood. His red teeth she would remember. Now that she could feel again, fear and violation spoke to her. She had been shot, bitten and raped after the blast that threw her body into a corner of the domicile. Before she could give up and succumb to death, she would fight. Another emotion registered. It was anger. It was not the anger of rage nor of vengeance. It was more controlled and focused, purposeful, giving impetus for her to move and take action again. She lay there in the corner and began to administer first aid with what she could reach or tear off her flayed clothes to tie tourniquets and makeshift bandages for her neck and projectile wound. Her apartment was, by standard building codes, equipped with a first aid kit. If she could crawl to the closet, perhaps she might have enough physical energy to save her life. Dignity and perhaps retribution could come later. Psionic prioritisation was her particular gift. She could detach and partition her psyche into mind, causality, emotions and the physical to compartmentalize each and take actions in each realm as needed. It was this sort of focus that allowed her into the medical fields of the local Jenquai med-surg center, her occupation. Arm over arm, she dragged her body through the apartment to the closet. Pain bursted through her body and crashed upon her emotions. Wave after wave of violated sorrow for herself, her family, the neighbors, and the Jenquai of Jove City fed her anger-focus. When she reached the apartment first aid kit, she was fully in the moment and determined to live through this. She had made a decision to survive. Her hands worked methodically with trained precision even through her physical and emotional pain. She was the physician and the patient. No questions were necessary. A painkilling drug was first administered. Then came a drug used for keeping shock at bay. The psionic training she had could sustain her for a while, but only as long has her will held. Thus, the drug pushed her forward, further into the here and now. She continued to work on her wound. Her training used what was at hand in the first aid kit. The impact projectile was extracted after the local deadened the area. A coagulant foam stopped any further bleeding. Jenquai medicine was far advanced than the likes of Terran or the barbaric Progen. Humanity, it seemed, had taken three separate paths in the realm of healing. Slowly and more humanely, the Jenquai woman stopped the entropy that was her death. Weeks later, the Jenquai woman, Juna Wa, was extracted by resistance fighters and put aboard an outbound ship full of refugees. Juna was the only physician left on that last vessel and she worked nonstop on the injured even as the ship left Jove City, never to return. She fought the Progen occupation through her skill-set, as a med-surg tech. Keeping her people alive was her battle. Life was too precious now to the Jenquai race. The Ashanti Maru had escaped to the far side of the Jovian moon, Europa. For months Med-tech Juna Wa worked as a ship's physician until too pregnant with child for duty. A daughter was born aboard the Ashanti Maru. "Wolfsdottir," breathed Juna, when the nurse asked her the female infant's name. "Her name is Wolfsdottir."