Editing Story:Praise the Emperor (and Pass the Ammunition) (section)

== Interlude: Memories ==

At night, she slept with an autopistol in her hands, cradled against her chest, her body coiled around, pressing her knees almost to her belly. Her eyes closed and she muttered under her breath.

“Won’t…won’t…I…”

She jerked away, with a sudden rush of adrenaline and fear. The wakefulness that she was in was a confused one. For a moment, she was positive she felt clammy, rotting hands grabbing her by the hair, dragging her towards gaping mouths. She shook her head, banishing the night terror. What had she…

Music.

Music wafted through the empty hive, carried to her ears by a traitor wind. The music was slow and stately, then suddenly sprightly, as if the earlier steadiness had been a trick to get the ear to listen. Now, the music flowed fast like a brook in a garden, burbling and calling her to stand and dance. She heard laughter with it. Mocking laughter, for it was unreal, it had to be unreal. She curled up tighter around the pistol. 

“Why do you have walls to your tent?” Thor’s voice came from the tent-flap. They were not a question so much as a condemnation. “I think I know why you built the tent this way.”

“Shut up…”

“I know why you do not look north.”

The words, as minor as they seemed, struck an intense, crawling terror in Connie. She started to tremble and when she slept, the music was in her ears, playing endlessly, faster and faster and faster…