Page 42 of Alien Mercenary's Wife
Static burst across the comm channel.
"Ryans? Becker?" Her voice sharpened. "Report."
Nothing.
The electromagnetic pulse hit like lightning, racing through her neural pathways. The pulse touched her implants and passed on, seeking the concentrated neural networks of her units.
Her Scorperio remained functional. Her soldiers didn't.
Alpha Section stopped. Six walking tanks became six tombs in the space between heartbeats, their pilots trapped inside armor that no longer responded to command. She watched Rodriguez's unit topple sideways into a crater, watched Becker’s machine seize mid-step and crash through the facade of a building.
"Alpha Section, respond!" Her voice cracked across dead comm channels. "Anyone, report!"
Heavy weapons fire erupted from concealed positions. Armor-piercing rounds designed to penetrate Scorperio plating hammered into her disabled units.
They’d known they were coming.
She tried to run back, her Scorperio's legs pumping. But plasma cannon fire bracketed her position, forcing her back, and she couldn’t reach them.
"Bravo! Charlie! Anyone!" Static answered her calls.
Movement caught her peripheral vision. One of Bravo Section's units, Archer's machine, was crawling across the broken pavement with sparking servos and failing power systems. The neural link flickered but held—barely functional, fighting the electromagnetic poison flowing through damaged circuits.
She watched Archer’s machine slow and stop, shadowy figures emerging from hiding to finish off the stranded tanks and their pilots. Archer's hatch cracked open, and she tumbled out, rolling across rubble as large-caliber rounds stitched death through the space she'd occupied seconds before. Reese held her breath as Archer ran, zigzagging between debris while her abandoned Scorperio sparked and died behind her.
The others weren't so lucky.
Brennan was trapped in his unit as plasma fire melted through the cockpit. His scream cut across the comm for three endless seconds before silence claimed him.
Hayes, trying to manually eject while corporate soldiers pumped rounds through his unit's viewports. She watched his blood spray across cracked armor plating.
Rodriguez, Ryans, Nilsson, Webb, Becker, Kowalski.
She tried to reach them. Tried to save them. Tried to die with them.
But her Scorperio wouldn’t respond to her command, its survival protocols kicking in to carry her away from the slaughter, forcing her to survive while her people died in disabled machines that had become their tombs.
"No!" The word tore from her throat like shrapnel. "No, get back here! I'm their commander! I'm their?—"
Pain exploded through her neural implants, electrical fire racing along damaged pathways as the dream shattered. Reese jerked upright on the narrow bunk, her heart hammeringagainst her ribs. Cold sweat soaked through her sleep shirt, the fabric clinging to her skin.
The guest quarters materialized around her like a fever dream in reverse. Gone were the burning streets and dying machines. Instead, soft lighting and the sight of theSprite’sguest quarters surrounded her.
Her throat felt raw. Had she been screaming? Christ, she hoped not. The last thing she needed was to wake the entire crew.
Her left hand cramped, fingers curling into a useless claw. She hissed as she massaged the muscles with her good hand, working at knots of tension as her breathing returned to something approaching normal.
It was just a dream. The same fucking dream she'd been having for months, the one that replayed Rodriguez's death scream and the wet sound of Hayes's blood hitting his viewports.
The neural stimulator hummed against her spine, and she closed her eyes. Tal's device worked better than anything human doctors had offered. Pity it couldn’t do anything about the nightmares.
Her lip curled back from her teeth as she realised the sheets were soaked with sweat. Great, just great. She'd have to change them before trying to sleep again, assuming sleep was even possible after reliving eighteen deaths in vivid detail. If she couldn’t, four hours' sleep would have to do.
Her hands shook as she reached for the water bottle beside her bunk, the tremor a leftover from neural implants misfiring under stress.
The door chime went off, softly demanding her attention.
"Reese?" T'Raal's voice carried through the metal of the door. "You okay?"
