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meters more, another pause, and she was sure of it.
    â€œLieutenant Heerik!”
    â€œGunnery Sergeant?”
    No mistaking the Krai lieutenant’s voice. There just weren’t that many female Krai in the infantry.
    Five meters more and Torin slid down into a crater, riding a ridge of dirt to Sergeant Hollice’s side. A quick count gave her all twelve members of the squad and Second Lieutenant Heerik. Mashona lifted a hand in a remarkably sarcastic wave, but Ressk kept his gaze locked on the lieutenant.
    â€œCaptain would like your three squad back behind the barricade, sir.”
    â€œI came out to bring them back in, Gunnery Sergeant . . .”
    More planes screamed by. Theirs. Others. Torin frowned as something broke the sound barrier. Navy?
    â€œ. . . we were just about to leave.” She had her boots off and scrambled up the crater wall a lot faster than anyone but Ressk was likely to manage.
    No, not Navy.
    â€œSir! Get down! Now!”
    Torin had no idea which side had dropped it, or what it was, but on impact it distinctly went BOOM.
    BOOM was never good.
    The lieutenant turned, lips drawn back off her teeth, and looked startled as the top half of her body blew across the crater, spraying blood onto the uplifted faces below. Her legs swayed for a moment, then slowly crumpled. As they slid back down the slope, each individual mote of dust in the air picked up a gleaming white halo.
    The halos joined.
    The ground rose.
    Torin’s knees slammed into her chest, and she tasted blood.
    The whole world went white.
    Then black.

TWO
    â€œN° . ” “I are being sorry, Craig, but Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr are . . .”
    â€œNo.” Hands flat against the control panel, Craig leaned in closer to the screen. “She isn’t dead.”
    Presit pulled off her dark glasses and arranged her features in what she probably thought was a sincere expression— something furbearing species sucked at, Craig sneered silently. “I are knowing you are not wanting to believe, but . . .”
    â€œYou said there’s no body.”
    â€œThe blast are having melted her position. I are having seen the raw news feed, there are being no hope of bodies. There are barely being hope of DNA resolution.”
    â€œThe news . . .” He didn’t bother hiding his disdain. “. . . has been wrong before.”
    Dark lips drew back off very white, very pointed teeth and, within the black mask of fur, Presit’s eyes narrowed. But all she said was, “True.”
    â€œAnd the military doesn’t know shite half the time.”
    â€œThat are being also true.”
    â€œThey haven’t told me . . .” He stopped then, unsure if they would tell him. He didn’t know, had no way of knowing, if Torin had added him to her notification list. If she hadn’t, if Presit hadn’t spotted Torin’s name in the data stream coming into Sector Central News for rebroadcast, he would never have known. He’d have just kept waiting and wondering until finally there’d be no question and then . . .
    His fingers curled against the warmed plastic. “She isn’t dead.”
    Presit shook her head, the motion sending a visible ripple through her silver-tipped dark fur, the highlights too artfully natural to be real. “Saying it are not making it true. No one are surviving that attack.”
    His laugh sounded off, even to his own ears. “It wouldn’t be the first time Torin’s beaten the odds.”
    â€œA direct hit by a missile fired from orbit that are melting the landscape to slag are being large odds, even for Gunnery Sergeant Kerr.” The reporter sighed, her acerbic tone softening. “She are not being invincible.”
    Yes, she is.
    â€œNo.” Craig had no idea whether Presit took his soft denial as agreement or disagreement—mostly because he wasn’t sure himself—but she clearly accepted it as the end of the