But I don’t fight for maps.
Today, I fight because it’s easier than thinking.
Because the second my pulse slows, Ifeelher again.
Alaina.
A whisper under the cannon fire. A soft laugh buried beneath the scream of engines and the whine of med-drones.
She’s with me.
And ithurts.
“Troka! Six o’clock!”
Sergeant Korr’s voice cuts across the comms, sharp and cold. I spin, drop to a knee, and fire blind. The shot clips a Birex scout mid-leap. He tumbles, hits the dirt twitching. I don’t stop to admire my aim. I surge forward, slam my shield into a charging brute, and follow through with my elbow to his throat.
His trachea collapses with a satisfying crunch.
Korr grunts. “You’re a goddamn murder machine.”
“Trying to keep it interesting,” I snarl.
She laughs—harsh, brittle. There’s no joy in it. Just relief. If I’m talking, I’m alive.
And that’s the trick of war. You keep talking, you keep killing, you keepmoving, because the second you pause, the second you let yourself feel anything other than rage, you’re already halfway to dead.
But I feel her anyway.
In the cracks. Between reloads. Between kills.
Alaina.
The weight of her thighs. The heat of her breath. The sound she made when I bit her shoulder just hard enough to leave a mark. The mark I dream of tracing with my tongue.
I shouldn’t be thinking of her.
But she’s the only thing in this hellhole that feelsreal.
We win the sector by sundown. “Win” is generous. We outlast them. Their flank caves, and the survivors scuttle back into the mountains like rats smelling a flood.
Our casualties are piled under silver tarps, stacked in the loading bay like cargo.
I sit against a boulder, helmet beside me, pulse-rifle laid across my lap like a tired animal.
My arms shake.
Not from fatigue. From restraint.
I fought like a beast. Broke bones. Tore flesh. Used a vibroknife on a Birex medic who tried to surrender. I didn’t even hesitate.
But now?
Now, I hesitate.
Because in the silence, in the aftermath, I do something stupid.
I pull up my compad.
