Kindness of Strangers

Always make sure your murder victim is truly dead…striker payback is usually with interest.

Strike Force Colonel Rahmsin Singh is almost as much machine as man, and he wants to know the root cause.

Unfortunately, the woman who can tell him that is in deep cryosleep...her body mostly a freeze-dried husk that's going to require a lot of regeneration, though her consciousness was protected.

The last thing Chandra Ramasamy remembers is the burn of a bullet hitting her chest after hitting the escape pod eject button. Now she's in a net-avatar conference room with a military officer telling her she's been in bad cryosleep for seven and a half years.

Can she piece together what happened after her memory stopped and help him figure out what killed him and his soldiers? Well, the MarsCorp thugs didn't quite manage to kill her seven years ago, and now she has the Strike Force on her side. He's a little stiff, but deep down he's a gooey-hearted mother hen.

She can work with that, particularly if she can help take down MarsCorp as payback.

And then get her body un-freezedried and working again. And, if they both survive, she might want to keep the universal soldier with the heart of gold.