I pictured the map in my head, calculating the probabilities for various attack strategies, and suddenly my gut hit freefall. Avery had left early this morning as he often did, leading a party of traders along with a few other guns. And today’s planned route was toward the southeast.
“The trading mission across the bayou — have they returned?” I questioned the messenger urgently. Even the time it took to ask the question seemed too long to wait.
“Not when I left,” came the chilling answer.
“Damn it!” I shouted uselessly toward the canopy of leaves far above my head. The towering trees, and their ancestors in endless succession, had witnessed the birth of untold humans for thousands of years. The carpet of needles and decaying leaves yielding beneath my heels had subsumed just as many. This forest didn’t care who walked it for the fleeting few decades I drew breath. But if my husband lost his life because of my failure…
I couldn’t go down that path. If Avery lost his life, there would be nothing left for me on any path.
“Report!” I ordered as soon as I leapt the threshold of the command center.
Iris, chief of my captains and one of my most trusted allies from our Army days, pressed a handheld radio into my palm, which was emitting a flattened approximation of Graham’s voice.
“…Got first, second, and fourth platoons from Bravo Company and two from Echo taking positions north of the creek,” he was saying. “No movement sighted so far. Standoff weapons are on alert. Over.”
“Lansing, this is Demos, over,” I said into the radio.
“Go ahead, Demos.”
“Have you sent anyone to find the trading mission? Over.”
“A couple of Larsen’s squads are tracking down the bayou in hopes of escorting them in. If the traders hadn’t started back before the attack on Goldonna, we might not be able to reach them without running into LSDF’s main force. Over.”
“Avery was with them,” I said, entirely unnecessarily. It wouldn’t matter if Goddess Herself had gone trading this morning. The only way to get far enough south to rescue the team — if they were still alive by then — would be to win the battle at the creek.
There was a pause before Graham’s grave response came through the wireless. “I know.”
My whole being yearned to grab a rifle and search every square meter of wetland myself until I found my beloved. But I was too well trained. Snippets from the combat casualty manual, which I’d quoted countless times to subordinates, surfaced in my head: The most effective way to reduce casualties is the focused application of firepower by all personnel. Gain tactical control, then treat the wounded. Rushing off would only increase the chances of us both being killed.
Iris and I quickly arranged deployment of Fort Laurel’s forces, leaving some in reserve in case of a two-front strike. The contingent patrolling the northern woods had been recalled, but they likely wouldn’t make it for the initial assault. We’d hiked nearly to our planned forward operating base when the radio crackled with an unfamiliar voice.
“This is Sergeant Blackburn. Trading party located in sector five near the juncture of creek and bayou. Pursuers have been halted south of the creek. Estimated twenty combatants at this position. Guards remaining with our unit; civilians sent to base. Two casualties: Chase and Zhao, both being evacuated to the CCP for triage. Over.”
The instant I heard Avery’s last name, the rest of reality halted. The single syllable clanged over and over like an alarm inside my head: Chase. Chase. Chase. Chase. He was hurt, badly enough to be removed from the field. He was bleeding, possibly dying, at this very moment.
“Report status of casualties,” I managed to instruct the sergeant before anyone else spoke.
“Zhao gunshot to the thigh. Alert and tourniquet applied. Chase gunshot to the lower abdomen. Alert at evacuation but with uncontrolled bleeding. Over.”
This was it: my nightmare. The actual worst thing that could ever happen to me.
My husband’s gorgeous body ripped open by one pitiless twitch of the trigger.
His sensitive flesh, which my fingers had caressed so often, split and shredded.
His nerves flooded with agony. The blood draining from his veins, taking with it the ability to feed his tissues, heat his organs, and clot his severed vessels. All because someone’s boundless greed drove them to rob peaceful neighbors of homes and family.
I was still standing in frozen horror when Iris’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Julian, you have no reason to think he won’t make a full recovery. Third Battalion’s forward surgical unit is less than two clicks from there. Most injuries to the bowels are reparable.”
I didn’t bother speaking the counter-arguments, which she knew just as well as I did: That without medevac transport, Avery could easily bleed out before they could get him to the surgeon, especially since we didn’t know how long he’d already been losing blood. That if he lost too much, he would spiral down regardless of whether surgery was successful. That he’d be at high risk for infection we had few tools to fight. That the only medical resources available were half a battalion’s field hospital plus three unlicensed doctors in a barely-functional rural facility. And that we had no idea how many other wounded might soon be competing for surgical repair and resuscitation.
I’d led troops into enemy fire far too many times. I’d lost friends, colleagues, and lovers to callous metal cylinders. But none of the soldiers hauled broken from the field had ever been Avery: my love, my heart; my soulmate, if you believe in that sort of thing. I’d been conditioned since childhood to disregard distracting emotions while making decisions. But I couldn’t seem to remember how to do anything except stare into the forest toward where he was.
“You know there’s nothing you can do for him right now except win this fight,” Iris reasoned when I didn’t respond. “The medics will give him the best care they can. The more decisive our outcome, the easier it will be for them to treat him.”
That was true, of course. It made perfect sense. Except it still left Avery out there alone with strangers, in fear and pain and with a hole in his gut that he may or may not survive.
“I could be with him,” I told Iris, afraid to speak the words, but more afraid not to. “In case –” Well, it turned out I couldn’t finish that sentence after all.
“Julian.” She shook my shoulder to get my attention, and finally I looked at her. There was compassion in her gaze despite the lack of emotion in her words. “If that’s what you have to do, then go. But what would Avery say, if you could ask him? Because I think he would want you to focus your attention on halting LSDF’s advance, so that the surgeons have a secure perimeter to work on him, and so that we all still have a home tomorrow. This battle will go better if you’re committed.”
I swallowed a lump of terror from my throat, though I knew she could see it in my eyes. But I couldn’t yet find the strength to resist the invisible force drawing me toward my husband’s distress, as potent as gravity or electromagnetism or the binding between subatomic particles.