Page 88 of Brawler
The Veil tore the sky open.
Sunlight blazed down on calm blue water, the illusion of peace so sharp it hurt. Then the scream of engines cut throughthe morning. Shadows of planes darkened the harbor, and in an instant the sky became teeth.
Explosions ripped through battleships. Metal shrieked as steel hulls split. Columns of fire and smoke clawed toward the heavens. Men staggered on decks, some leaping into the water, flames licking across their uniforms. The air itself seemed to burn, thick with cordite, with oil, with human screams.
He stood there on the dock, dressed in sailor’s blues, the brim of his cap knocked askew by the blast wave. His throat seared with smoke as he clutched a rope, yanking men from the oily water, hands raw with effort. One sailor’s skin was blackened, another bled from a jagged wound in his scalp, but he pulled them anyway, refusing to let them sink beneath the crimson tide.
The shriek of dive bombers split the air again. Bullets strafed the dock. He dropped flat, teeth gritted, his body shaking with rage.
Then he saw it.
Above the burning ships, above the strafing planes, the great shadow loomed again. Bigger. Darker. Fed by the shock and devastation. It spread wings of smoke and ash, blanketing the harbor, feeding on the helplessness of a fleet caught unready.
His hands shook as he gripped the rope tighter. In the water, another man flailed, drowning in flames.Dagger!He fought valiantly. His gut twisted as his voice tore into Flash. Dagger gasped. “This is our Navy. Our ships. Our brothers.” The knowledge cut bone deep. Flash dove in, cold water biting, dragging Dagger up. His lungs screamed, but he refused to let go. The whisper lashed sharp against his skull. “Not theirs. Ours. Their fight is our fight. Their fire runs in our blood. Do you see now? Chaos strikes not only warriors. It strikes home.”
The smoke thickened. The shadow swelled. The battleships capsized, their keels rising like tombstones.
He surfaced, gasping, oil clinging to his face, and for one impossible moment, he felt the echo of the trident on his chest. The call of the sea, the oath to protect, burning in his bones.
He choked on smoke, rage surging through him. “I am them! I am all of them!” he rasped. “Always connected. Always fighting as one.”
Something popped, and then he heard it, multiple sounds all together, then as one impossible voice.
The Veil pressed harder. “Then see what they did next.”
The harbor dissolved into surf, into darkness, into men crawling through water toward fortified shores.
The UDT waited.
The world lurched and he slammed into sand.
Heat blazed down from a merciless sun. Palms shuddered under artillery fire, fronds ripped and burning. The crash of surf mixed with the staccato rattle of machine guns. The beach ran red with blood, men falling in waves, some never making it off the boats that delivered them.
He spat grit from his mouth, lifted his head, and saw the jungle looming beyond the sand, dense, green, impenetrable. Rifle fire spat from its shadows, cutting men down as they clawed forward yard by bloody yard.
A Marine staggered past him, entrails spilling, still firing his weapon until his knees buckled. Another dropped beside him, eyes already gone glassy. He gritted his teeth and surged forward, dragging the dead weight of a wounded sailor toward cover.
The air was thick with smoke, the acrid bite of cordite, and something worse, rot, heat, the stench of bodies left too long in the sun.
The jungle swallowed men whole. Snipers in the trees. Mines in the sand. Every step forward was bought with blood.
Then he heard it, a scream from above. He looked up. A plane spiraled down in smoke, the pilot refusing to bail, aiming straight into a ship anchored offshore.
Kamikaze.
The impact thundered through his chest. A column of flame burst skyward, the shadow swelling with it, thick and greedy, spreading across the ocean like an oil slick.
His knees nearly buckled.This is my world. My element. Sea, sand, jungle. The same elements I know, twisted by a different war. This isn’t history anymore. It is a mirror.
He felt it in his bones, in his marrow. This was his Navy’s crucible. The place where brotherhood was tested not for weeks or months, but for years of relentless bloodletting.
The whisper pressed like a brand.Survival is not enough. You endure, but you endure together. Alone, men die. Together, they hold. Remember this.
He looked at the men clawing forward, the faces of his team, Tex, Bondo, Easy, Shark, Dagger, Twister, Brawler, broken, bloodied, but dragging each other through surf and fire. Not a single one quit. Not a single one left a brother behind.
His throat closed. That oath,never leave a man behind,was his oath too. It had been carried across generations, carved into the bone of his Navy long before he was born, tempered by the fire where SEALs were molded.
The shadow pressed close, thicker than smoke, heavier than the jungle heat. He clenched his fists, heart hammering, and roared back at it. “We endure!”
