Editing Brahnamin's Characters - Dimitri (section)

==''"You can't take the sky from me . . ."''==
Even before the war, Lev was deep into the anti-unification counterculture that had sprung up among the affluent youth of Londinium, attending rallies, staging protests, and using his skills as a socially-conscious hacker to covertly undermine the Alliance agenda across the cortex. So, when war finally did break out, it seemed like a no brainer to run off and join the Independents and train as a supply pilot to support the effort as a non-combatant. 

Things did not go smooth. 

In his third week of training, Lev's jump shuttle was shot down in a ''"police action"'' initiated by an alliance gunship, and he lost both of his arms. 

That should have been the end of it, but a bland little man in a grey suit and blue nitrile gloves visited him in the hospital and offered to pay for his rehabilitation and put him back in a cockpit. Instead of shipping home in disgrace, Lev endured months of experimental procedures and intense therapy as they grafted fully functioning cybernetic replacements where his arms used to be. 

Security Operations [Sec-Ops] signed him straight from the facility, and he flew for them until the end of the war.