Redemption

Jocelyn Wimmer is a bitter, battle-scarred ex-doctor who spent her best years patching soldiers back together, only to be chewed up, spat out, and blacklisted by the same military she served. These days she's drunk more often than sober, and she likes it that way.

Ken Kamakura joined the Terran Union Army Medical Corps to save lives and never got the chance. Stranded after demobilization, he's desperate for the next low-resource, high-body-count war zone that actually needs him.
Their paths cross in a seedy bar on a backwater world, Wimmer brawling with three bruisers twice her size while Ken interviews with a mercenary outfit. Through the haze of alcohol she sees a younger version of herself in the idealistic kid. The galaxy is going to eat him alive. So she sobers up just enough to talk her way onto his contract.

Together they ship out to Eden Crescent, a desert world still bleeding from the collapse of the Grausian Empire. Local warlords fight over empire's remains, and when a rocket turns their transport into scrap metal, Ken and Wimmer are dumped straight into an ever-shifting hostage crisis thick with culture clashes, shifting alliances, and traditions that treat slavery and sex as currency.

In a place where today's friend might shoot you tomorrow, two broken soldiers finally feel at home. One never saw combat. The other saw too much. In the chaos, maybe the kid can find purpose. And maybe, just maybe, the veteran can find ...

Redemption.