I can still see the last rip on the HUD, every time I make a jump from the Nexus. It's really a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing, but it still shows up on the instrumentation, even if it's quite unnecessary: it's not like everybody will let me forget. [hr] Thirty-four hours since last Jump, subjective. We're down to me, Vasquez and Uronen. The Spiders set up an ambush, a good one: neither past nor future records show them having conducted any reconnaissance right at the insertion point. Gorag and Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence vanished into nothingness milliseconds after the Jump, and they're the ones that got it easier. They have been hounding us since then. We dropped the disguise and went for the battlefield. That's where they nailed Van Buren; Wei covered his signature with the expanding ball of plasma that used to be Van Buren, and managed to distort spacetime long enough so we could bring weapons online and really begin to fight. We got two of them before going for supplies. They were already at the cache; nobody can move that fast, but they didn't: they had been there the whole time, since tomorrow. Wei went down first, he was almost out of energy, and covered our next Jump. Battlefields were not sure, so we went for a gravity well, but they were already there, and we had to Jump again. And again. Wu bought it at Third Troy, while the city burned, and Singh at the Second Battle of Titan's Lakes, another casualty among the nameless hordes of that war's clone troopers. I would like to lose count, I would like to forget, but I can't, as every instant flies in front of my eyes and I look for a point to counterattack, but now we're out of Time, the stars are dying, cold and distant, and it's just me, Vasquez and Uronen. I am waiting for the Last Moment; I know that somewhere the 345th Platoon is doing the same, I read it in next year's report, but they're too far to be seen. The Last Moment has come, Vasquez watches me wide-eyed, but he doesn't have time to blink: as the Spiders make their Jump and appear in front of us, I detonate the Time Bomb. -It's okay, Ramirez, they're gone. Where's Uronen?- -Uronen who?- he asks. We Jump to the Nexus, while the new Rip blinks a furious crimson on the HUD. [hr] -Did you hear about Sgt. Ripper?- -Yeah: the Board of Inquiry cleared him of any wrongdoing. Again. Crazy, uh?- -Yup: I heard that he Erased at least one member of his own Squad; and the other survivor came back wrong.- -What about him?- -Do you remember his name?- -He's just the Ripper as long as I can rem… oh, I get it.- -Yeah. I doubt he can even remember who he was. One of these days he'll just be Erased like the others. In his own bunk, maybe. Cpl. Zer0 said…- Their words vanish past one more bulkhead, but I don't mind. The only thing that catches my attention is the new Rip: quite far away from the other one, still a large gaping maw in the fabric of spacetime, but a tad smaller, while reality strands slowly reconnect with each other. I don't know how longer I can last, but Time heals most wounds.