Joanie. She hadn't been beautiful when he first met her, so she never had been. That suited him well enough; he didn't like the prewar standard of beauty that still prevailed in many places. Beauties were too fragile, didn't have the strength of a real woman the way Joanie did. Tall skinniness was fine in a paid-woman, but Joanie's compactness was better. Stronger and more suitable for an Enforcement officer or a mother, anyway-- He pushed that thought aside. Joanie might be able to stay in Enforcement, but she'd never be a mother. He tried to remember her as she had been, 165 centimeters and maybe 59 kilos, mostly muscle, of vigorous womanhood. But it'd hurt to see her lying broken and bloody on the hospital floor, her short dark hair stiff with drying blood; he couldn't get that image out of his mind, so he made himself study it instead, trying to bring out anything he hadn't consciously noted then. There wasn't much. The hospital hadn't been all that different from other Brothers of Freedom raid points, except in being a hospital, its occupants even more helpless than most. The only oddity was that they hadn't made sure of the woman they'd marked. Possibly Rascal and his locals had arrived before they were able to. Odeon grinned wolfishly at that thought. Joanie was alive, and she wanted revenge. That kind of personal motivation wasn't really necessary, but in going after terrorists like the Brothers it didn't hurt; some of the things necessary in anti-terrorist sweeps were hard to stomach. And the Brothers were the worst of the terrorists, as well as the most wide-spread; they had units in every one of the Systems, while most groups were restricted to one or two. He was getting off the subject, though, he told himself sternly. He was here to protect Joanie's interests, not worry about the Brothers. And if he was going to do that, it might be a good idea to get up. He glanced at the clock, then almost tangled himself in the sheets in his hurry to get out of bed. It was almost six-thirty! If he didn't get a move on, he'd be late for seven o'clock Mass! He made it, though with barely a minute to spare, and he found peace as usual in the familiar liturgy. There were still times he wished his call had been to the priesthood--he'd been raised in a monastery, by the White Fathers, after his parents died--but for the most part, he no longer missed the life too badly. The Fathers had comforted him when it became clear that his vocation was military rather than religious; enforcing civil order, they'd reminded him, was as important to human welfare as ministering to spiritual needs. And when he'd been commissioned, directly into Special Operations, several of them had been at the Academy to congratulate him.