The soldier knelt on the chapel waiting for her father's armor to finish booting. She had already slaved the armor to her voice and her parasympathetic nervous system to its electrochemical commands, metamaterials patiently reknitting its interior to mirror her body as intimately as it had mirrored its previous owner-partner-political proxy.
All it remained was to wait for all the armors in the squadron — now hers — to finish the careful chorus of quantum protocols that would fuse them into a single murderous will. This command she had earned; the armor, inherited; the squadron's loyalty was a so-far unstable mix. She knew the history of how her father had earned their allegiance with perhaps-atrocities committed in the name of long-dead innocents. The apologies, the curses, the futile enumeration of war crimes. She didn't know the detailed scenario analysis and the interoceptive logs. What her father had thought and felt as he did what he had done.
That was kept in his armor - now hers. She would know soon.
The armor opened inviting and commanding. It might not open again for years: it was not that kind of war or that kind of world.
The soldier entered the armor to fulfill a promise that wasn't this. The armor closed and greeted her with her father's voice. Her first command was to change it. Her second was a roll call to her squadron. By long tradition they answered not with a data burst but a single shout: her fathers' name, hers now.