Gold and Purple Bracelets

When Rainey jumps into New York City, her mission is to get the President out and get her unit out alive. They are to take no other survivors, but there are very few anyway in the city. Teams of front line troops are fighting, but losing, to the Visak, and she is a Navy Seal, with a clear and specific mission. 
But she's never been very good at sticking to the mission, especially when a child's life is at stake. She sees a child reaching up from a pile of bodies and ruin, her arm covered in purple and gold bangles. As the team moves into the building to secure the evacuation on the roof, she darts away to rescue the child, and in the process of saving her, fights and kills a Visak in hand-to-hand combat. Rainey loses her forearm and hand and a lot of blood in the process, and as she carries the child to the copter, she passes out once they are inside, the child gripping to her, impressing the bracelets into her skin. 
Rainey wakes up in the hospital, Solis and Tolana surrounding her, ready to install a mech hand. She will be sent to represent Earth on the first intergalactic alliance. She takes the bracelets with her. Throughout her missions with the crew, she takes them out and looks at them, wondering about the value of one life when many are being lost, about sacrifice, humanity. 
Sandi has saved her things, including the bracelets, in the beginning of book 2. Rainey refuses to go through her old things, feeling disconnected from who she was. When she finally does go through them as she starts to come to terms with what has happened to her, she finds them and has to reckon with who she is. As a Seal, is she loyal to the United States, the Northern Alliance? Earth? Or to the fledging and troubled intergalatic alliance? Or, should she throw in with the pirates, wanting too blow it all up and start again? They helped her, after all, and the mission is enticing in many ways. 
She thinks of the girl, and what's best for her. A stronger Earth means stronger allies, securing Earth's place in the galaxy. She proposes a special opps training plan, allowing for the alliance to grow and build more structure. This will come in direct conflict with the pirates in book 3. The new special opps teams wear gold and red gauntlets when on overt missions.