Re: Non-com quarters
Koos gave Irina his big grin when she said that she had control. "I'm glad to hear that skat. Coming to visit you in a fireproof suit just wouldn't be the same." He knew enough not to touch the 'just coming to love me' comment, there was no good answer to that one.
"My war. Hmm. Adventure is somebody else being cold and hungry and scared far away. That's what it was. Hunger and thirst and cold and fear. I was very young. My first clear memory is just after the Strike. I was three or four years old, they had to guess my age as all the records were vaporised with the city you understand. Dust so thick you choked on it, that grey concrete dust, swirling around in the fires and coating everything. I remember feeling incredibly guilty, my mother always told me that the Skinke came for bad boys who didn't eat their vegetables, and I had sneaked some of them to the dog that afternoon. Silly I know, but that was the way of it then."
"There was a Troll, digging in the rubble. My best guess now is that he was one of the Marines that Admiral Hennesy court-martialed for conducting rescue efforts without authorisation, and that he was probably trying to rescue someone, but at the time I figured he was looking for me to kill me because I got away. I backed away, and there was Piet. He just looked at me, then asked me if I wanted to learn how to kill Trolls. Our main enemy though, was starvation. I have heard all sorts of theories on why the Rubble Rats lasted as long as we did, from Marines being unwilling to slaughter children to our small size making it difficult to tell us apart on Thermal from the packs of Ferals, but they all come from people who weren't there. It was simple, we could get by on less food than anybody else. There were adults coming in all the time, trying to help. But what fed one adult fed eight or ten of us, that simple. That was the Siege of Johannesburg, that was my war."