Rabab Mehndi was getting old for a child soldier. She must have been nearing forty, her childhood supersoldier indoctrination fading in the rear-view mirror. It was, she reflected, a major miracle that the Union of South Asia was still more or less intact for her lifetime thus far, and even more of a miracle that she was still alive and not a frozen corpse on some Himalayan mountain. Indeed, the USA has been somewhat of a sleeping giant within its own "borders", despite its numerous official commitments to the Bandung Pact in Africa.

It was even more of a miracle for the USA that she had been allowed to remain the general overseer of the Smooth Operator program, one of the few federally which has survived the constant bickering and (sometimes) outright warfare between the various states. With her father still MIA in some nuclear submarine somewhere, she has perhaps wisely chosen to stay out of federal politics, which has widely devolved to sporadic gunfights in the parliament building (though she would be rather good at this brand of politics).

Rabab picked up a long-arm from the latest shipment of Indian-made weapons intended for the program, inspecting it for defects and potential ergonomic pitfalls. I guess we're still using the AK-203, she thought to herself.