Page 260 of Reaper Said Mine

Skahar stands beside the command table with his cane planted before him like a small, stubborn monument to survival. “That is what happens when a war realizes its enemy has learned caution. It throws more hooks into the water and hopes hunger remembers old habits.”

I look at the hostile probes pulsing along the corridor’s edge. They are exactly where I would have chased them a week ago. Close enough to insult. Far enough to draw pursuit. My captains know it too, and I can feel their frustration through the comm chatter. Reapers are not gentle creatures by instinct. We are very good at answering provocation with teeth.

My hand hovers above the tactical display.

The old answer whispers.

Send Blood Argument wide. Cut behind the probes. Trap them against the debris field. Make examples of them.

I let the thought burn out.

“Hold escort formation,” I say. “No pursuit beyond civilian envelope. If probes cross within firing range of the transports, kill them. If they run their mouths from the dark, let them choke on their own noise.”

Vakka’s shoulders ease by a fraction. “Order relayed.”

A captain’s voice bursts through the squad channel, angry and raw. “Lord Gnash, they are mocking us openly. They claim we hide behind children because we have forgotten how to raid.”

“Tell Captain Rokk that if his pride requires exercise, he may carry evacuee crates until his arms improve,” I say.

Several officers in the pit hear that and smile despite the red glow.

Vakka relays it with visible pleasure. “Captain Rokk acknowledges.”

“Does he?”

“He used several words that amount to acknowledgment if one is generous.”

“Generosity is for people who sleep.”

Skahar grunts. “Then you are in no danger of becoming generous.”

Another alert forces itself across the central map.

Bravax again.

The colony dome flickers into view through a dirty feed from a Coalition high-orbit drone. The agricultural annex is gone, peeled open like fruit beneath the thin atmosphere. Emergency shelters glow along the settlement’s lower ridge while civilians in pressure suits move in lines toward transport skiffs. A Combine cutter lies crashed against a coolant tower, its hull split and venting flame. The transmission carries no sound, but my mind supplies it anyway. Wind. Alarms. Mothers shouting through helmet comms. Children breathing too fast inside suits too big for them.

“Casualties?” I ask.

Krell swallows. “Updated count: seventy-two dead on Bravax. One hundred and eight injured. Unknown missing from the agricultural annex.”

Skahar closes his cloudy eye.

Vakka’s claws pause above her controls.

I read the number and do not let myself imagine faces, because if I begin assigning faces to every figure on that map, I will become useless. Then I think of Ursa, who would tell me that refusing to imagine faces is how war survives good men and monsters alike.

So I imagine one.

Only one.

A child in an oversized pressure suit, frightened in the dark between domes.

The grief lands like a weight behind my ribs, and I use it.

“Send medical corridors to Bravax,” I say. “Reaper med-runner first, Coalition support second. Humanitarian code open on all public feeds.”

Krell’s head lifts. “Public feeds?”