An edge of suspicion crept into the man’s expression. “Who wants to know?”
“I believe we have a mutual friend who came to visit you yesterday. Sebastian?”
Halden shared a quick, shuttered glance with the CSS pilot. “Take everyone else and get started, I’ll take care of this.”
The pilot led the group of around ten people off toward the village, where wispy tendrils of smoke still rose from the ruins.
“You’re UEF?” Halden asked once they were alone. He glanced pointedly at Neve, before shifting his attention to Bren. “You radioed in last night and talked to James.”
“Yes, I’m Bren. This is Neve. We found her living in an abandoned farmhouse outside your village.”
A shadow of familiar sorrow passed through Halden’s expression. He crouched down to put himself at eye level with the little girl.
“Hi, Neve. I have a daughter about your age. Her name is Talia, and she’s always hungry.”
Neve gave a shy smile. “Me, too!”
“Well isn’t that something.” Halden gave a quick laugh. “If you head into the shuttle, you’ll find all sorts of food. Fruit and fresh bread. You can eat anything you like.”
“Really?” Neve’s eyes widened, like she’d never been told anything better in her life. She looked up at Bren and him, as if she needed their permission.
“You go ahead,” Cam murmured. “I promised you a feast, didn’t I?”
“Thank you!” Neve flung herself into his leg, squeezing tight and then letting go so fast, he didn’t have time to react. She repeated the hug attack on Bren, then scampered into the ship, disappearing from sight.
“Thanks,” he said to Halden. “I’m not sure when the last time was she had any actual food, and we’ve only been able to give her military-issued protein meals since we found her.”
“The way I hear it, those MREs are probably better for her after being half starved to death than anything I could offer. She’s lucky you found her.” Halden held out his hand, and Cam shook it.
“So, were you here when this happened?” Halden gestured toward the village, where his small group had started scouring the remains of the houses.
“No, we arrived after,” Bren replied.
“No sign of survivors?” Halden asked, though from his tone, it seemed he already might have guessed the answer.
“I had a quick look last night, but it was dark, and hard to get close with everything still burning.” He shook his head in resignation. “But no, there weren’t any signs of survivors. I’m hoping most of them escaped, maybe went to the next village—”
Halden’s dour shift in expression stopped him short.
“Do you know something?” Bren asked, a note of dread in her voice.
“We got a few reports through various sources. Both from the CSS and the rebels. And while some of the details didn’t match up, they all had the same conclusion. No one survived. It was a sneak attack before dawn. The CSS had heard the rebels were holding an important meeting here, and instead of trying to capture them, they quietly took out the people we had standing guard on the perimeter and razed the entire town while everyone else was sleeping. It was a sophisticated and calculated attack we didn’t see coming. We came this morning to bury the dead.”
Cam’s pulse spiked, thrumming through his body on a surge of apprehension.
“And Seb? My other men? What about them?”
Halden shook his head. “I’m sorry, I haven’t had any specific reports on them. But if they were sleeping in the village…”
They wouldn’t have all been sleeping, but if they’d stayed to help fight with the rebels, they were dead, just like everyone else. No survivors. Halden didn’t need to finish that sentence. The guy gripped him on the shoulder, shooting him a sympathetic look.
“I need to go help the others. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.” He nodded, and set off toward the charred remains of the village.
“We still don’t know anything for sure,” Bren said stubbornly. “They might have camped outside the village. They might have escaped.”
“You’re right.” Despite the stone in his guts, he refused to believe they’d all been killed. “Until we see some kind of evidence, I’m going to assume they made it out.”
“Is there protocol?” Bren had a willful gleam of hope in her gaze
Protocol? That’d gone out the window around twenty-four hours ago.
“If things go to shit, protocol is to pull out, cross back over the lines, and regroup at the rover. For anyone separated from the group, we give it twenty-four hours before heading back to base.”
“That’s probably what they’re doing now. We should make a start. It’ll take at least a few days to get back across the lines, and we’re probably a few hours behind them, but we’ve got a twenty-four-hour buffer.”
Bren had pinned all of her hope on this one eventuality. And while he wanted to believe it as much as she did, experience told him this probably wasn’t going to work out all rainbows and sunshine. The only thing he knew for certain was the risk for the two of them to continue with the mission objective had become too great. He’d made his call, but that still left the reason that’d brought Bren out here.
“What about Shen?”
A shadow of pain crossed her features, but she quickly hid it behind her CAFF mask. “There comes a point where we have to admit it’s too risky to move forward. Once we know what happened to Seb and the others, we’ll reassess our options to recover my pilot.”
Sensible and reliable even when things were going to hell. No wonder he was falling for her.
“And Neve?” He kept his words low and quiet, even though the little girl wasn’t within earshot.
“We take her with us,” Bren replied, as if this decision should have been obvious.
“She’ll slow us down.” He didn’t know why he was pointing that out when there was no way he was leaving this godforsaken side of Ilari without her.
“Which is why we should get going ASAP.”
“We probably should.” His gaze was drawn to the village, where people were already starting to bring bodies out.
“You want to help them.” Bren spoke the words he’d left unsaid. “It’s not relevant to the mission or our responsibility.”
No, it wasn’t, and maybe during any other mission, he would have said the same thing, managed to disconnect himself and soldier on. But between his perceptions of Bren shifting and finding Neve, his emotions had shoved themselves into the equation, and he couldn’t find a way to disengage the two.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Bren said when he didn’t answer her.
“We can spare a few hours before we set out.”
Cam ducked into the ship, leaving his and Bren’s packs, then found Neve with a bread roll in one hand and apple in the other, sitting on a spread out tarp. He asked her to stay in the ship and gave her a radio, telling her to use it if she needed them for anything while they were in the village. She seemed happy enough, pointing out that Winky, her pink cat doll also had its share of food and they were having a picnic.
He left her chatting away happily to the ragged toy, joining Bren where she stood waiting for him.
The two of them picked their way through the charred ruins of the village and found Halden in what had once been the town square.
“We’d like to help you before we leave,” Cam said as they stopped in front of the other man.
“Actually, I was just coming to find you.”
From Halden’s tone and the tightness in his expression, Cam’s guts got heavy, as if he’d eaten bricks for breakfast, not an MRE.
“Problem?” He couldn’t get his brain to form anything other than the single word.
“Something you need to see.” Without waiting for an answer, Halden turned and headed back the way he’d come.
Bren looked at him, but he couldn’t meet her concerned gaze.
He followed Halden to the far s
ide of the square, to what would have been the communal eatery. Halden picked something up, setting on a blackened stone table, one of the only things not destroyed.
Cam recognized what was left of the item—it was a rucksack, identical to the ones he and Bren had been carrying. When it had melted, the secret seam had been revealed where the radio and other identifying UEF items had been stashed.
“Bodies?” Cam asked grimly, handing the pack off to Bren, who also had a quick search through it. Possibly to work out whose pack it’d been. But there wouldn’t likely be any personal items inside to give that answer.
“By the back door. Hard to tell how many, because of the way the roof collapsed. It’ll take some time to clear the debris.”
“We better get started, then.” He headed out of the building and around to the back to tackle the wreckage from the outside.
As he began, Bren joined him, and the two of them fell into an efficient routine.
The sun rose higher, and the hours passed quickly, as one by one, they pulled bodies out of the building. All burned beyond recognition, as nearly all of the people who’d died in this village were. But after clearing the building, they had four bodies. Likely male from the size and shape. There was no way to tell for sure, but four men plus the UEF rucksack equaled a fairly definitive answer in his mind.
Seb and his three men had been killed in this CSS attack.
Chapter Seventeen
Bren couldn’t remember the last time she’d needed a shower so desperately. Besides the fact she’d already been behind enemy lines for several days without anything more than a quick wash from a river or bottle of water, after spending the day moving rubble and helping to pull out bodies, she was covered in a fine ash, leaving her skin and clothes feeling gritty.
Now, the sun was getting low to the horizon and they’d soon lose daylight. Many houses still hadn’t been searched, so Halden and his people were making plans to return the next day.
While she and Cam had pitched in after pulling those four bodies from the communal eatery, tomorrow they’d have to begin the journey back to base.
God, she couldn’t believe Seb was gone. He’d always been so brash, so larger-than-life. Always had a joke and an easy smile when life got dark. He’d been the one person she could rely on to cheer her up when things were getting her down. Just the thought of facing his girlfriend, Jenna, and explaining what had happened made a lump swell in her throat. Jenna would be devastated. As much as Bren loved Seb as a friend and couldn’t imagine tomorrow without him beside her when they went to face the enemy, Jenna loved him completely, deeply, in that terrifying way Bren had always shied from.
And this was exactly why. What did a person do when they loved someone in such a consuming way, only to lose them?
Putting the disturbing thought aside, she made her way into the town square where the bodies had been laid and covered up with whatever tarps, towels, sheets, or blankets people had been able to find that weren’t completely incinerated.
Cam was crouching next to the four bodies they’d pulled out earlier.
Part of her was in denial and wanted to tell him they didn’t know for sure it was their people laying there. But the soldier in her, the realist, rolled right over that hope to tell her the sooner she faced facts, the easier it would be.
Still, despite her training, despite being somewhat desensitized, because she’d unfortunately seen more gruesome deaths in her years at war and had been dealing with the burned victims all day, she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at the four bodies as she approached Cam, otherwise she might start trying to guess which one was Seb, and that would end up being her undoing.
Stopping a few steps from him, she studied the granite-like hardness of his profile. His expression had set into a detached mask of ferocity when Halden had pulled the rucksack out of the rubble and hadn’t altered since. Hour after hour today, he’d methodically worked, stoically dealing with each body they’d found and acting as the natural-born leader he was, stepping up to help Halden in organizing his people with pragmatic efficiency.
However, as reliable and steadfast as he’d been, something else had struck her about him in those hours, and as he stared at the bodies of the men he’d led into enemy territory a few short days ago, she could see it clearly. Isolation.
He seemed so aloof, but in a way that told her he was holding himself distant from everything, because it was the easier way to be the leader other people needed and expected.
She’d become intimately familiar with that way of living over the years—especially in the months since she’d taken on the position of CAFF.
Yes, in a lot of ways it was easier, but maybe it wasn’t better.
“Halden and his people are getting ready to leave,” she said by way of announcing her presence, since she wasn’t sure he’d noticed her approach.
He pushed to his feet, wiping at the dark smudges of ash on his face. “If they’re willing to give us a ride back to their village, that’ll save us a day of walking.”
Her stomach, already unsettled, pinched uncomfortably. She didn’t know how to deal with this Cam. The formidable soldier. The undaunted colonel. She wanted the other Cam back. The one who’d made Neve his primary concern. The one who’d rescued her from that hunter’s snare while she’d still loathed him. The one who’d agreed to go with her to scout the crashed fighter jet, even though it hadn’t been part of his primary mission.
As he went to step past her, she shifted into his path, catching her arms around his waist and pressing herself into him. At first he froze, every muscle in his body taut, like he didn’t know what to do with her hug.
But then his arms closed around her, and he held her for a long moment. He didn’t relax, though. There was a tension to his body, one seemingly strung tight enough to snap. She wanted to help him, but had no idea what she could do, or what he might need. Realistically, there probably wasn’t a single thing she could do to make this better for him.
She had this terrible pit in her stomach from losing Seb, and probably Shen, since their chances of recovering her now were probably slim and getting slimmer.
But Cam had lost three men, and this wasn’t the first time a mission had gone so terribly wrong for him. Maybe in the past he’d made mistakes that had led to such an outcome, but this time, there hadn’t been anything he could have done to change the outcome. There was no way they could have seen this coming. Didn’t make it any easier to bear.
“Come on.” Cam eased her away, then dropped his hands, leaving an odd coldness sweeping through her. Maybe her motivation for that hug hadn’t all been about him and what he was going through. “We better get back to the ship and see what Neve is up to.”
She kept pace next to him as they walked away from the destruction, left behind their men. It seemed so wrong on a fundamental level that made her whole body ache. But there was no way they could safely call an extraction team this far into enemy territory. Halden and his people would see Seb and the others buried. For those back on the Knox, a simple memorial would have to suffice.
Never once today, even when they’d discovered the pack and the four bodies, had she let the emotion seething inside her get even close to the surface. She’d had a task. Something to focus on. Things to do and distractions to keep her grief in check. Walking away was different. Walking away was final and undeniable, and it left her eyes burning.
She focused on her feet, concentrating on the steps she was taking, and though she hadn’t thought she’d given away anything of the turmoil inside her, Cam reached out and took her hand, linking their fingers together.
Gripping tight enough to make her knuckles ache, she dragged in a ragged breath, finding strength in his solid, silent understanding.
Back at the ship, the people they’d seen disembarking earlier today were now quietly, somberly shuffling into the cargo bay.
Neve had been lying down on a tarp, clutching her ragged pink cat. She sat up as people star
ted boarding, relief obvious in her gaze when she spotted them.
Cam managed a smile as he went over to her, features losing some of the harshness as he sat down next to the little girl.
Halden came over as the ship lifted off, crouching down next to them.
“For what it’s worth, I can offer you a place to stay tonight before you head back to UEF territory tomorrow. It’d probably do Neve some good to spend time with my little girl, Talia. Have a decent meal and sleep in an actual bed with a roof over her head.”
“Thank you. That’s very generous of you.” She was exhausted, both physically and emotionally. One night’s sleep wasn’t going to make much difference to their timeline at this point, and would probably see them better off for beginning the return journey to cross the battle lines.
“It’s the least I can do for you. It was my intel on the rebel meeting that led to your men being in the village when the CSS attacked. I’ve got to live with that.”
“It’s not your fault, Halden. The only ones to blame here are the CSS and the Pontifex.”
He clenched his fists. “The one thing this has starkly highlighted is that it’s long past time the Pontifex paid for his crimes.”
“He will. Somehow, we’ll see this war ended.” A fury had been lit within her, and no matter if it took another decade, she would strap into her jet and fly out every day until the monster who’d cowed the people of this planet was dead, his legacy along with him.
The journey between villages that had taken nearly an entire day on foot was over in a few minutes in the shuttle. They walked a number of streets until they came to a modest house on the outskirts of town.
The door opened before they’d even entered the small yard, a little girl close to Neve’s age flying out and running down the path in bare feet yelling “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” the whole way.
Halden introduced his wife, Merrie, to them while his daughter, Talia, took Neve’s hand, and the two little girls headed off inside.
“There’s a second shower in the laundry if either of you want to use it,” Merrie said after learning they’d spend the night, then followed after the children.
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