Chapter 8
TROKA
The quiet after a firefight is never quiet.
The air still trembles with echoes—cracks in rock, distant moans, the hiss of cooling reactors.
Dust drifts in pale motes across the ground, settling like ash over everything we fought to keep.
My boots drag through grit. My armor has scorch marks I haven’t bothered to scrub off.
It smells of ozone and sweat and regret.
We’re camped in a ruined outpost—half-shattered walls, twisted girders, flickering lamps.
The squad clusters in the rubble, sharing water, rations, stories.
Laughter is brittle. Jokes are garbled by sand in throats.
I lean against a collapsed column, ammo belt slung low, trying to catch my breath.
My comlink crackles with static and half-conversations.
“Hey, Troka—got a minute?” Garrik saunters over, one boot scuffing exposed wires. He leans in. “I just peeked at your holo-inbox. You got fanmail, big guy.”
Heads around me shift. A few laugh, some snort. I inhale slow, letting the insult hang between nostrils. The air tastes of blackened steel and recycled oxygen. Dust chokes me.
I force a grin. “Fanmail, huh? They must be drunk.”
Garrik laughs, claps me on the shoulder hard. “Either that or smitten. What’d you do, charm a whole planet?”
I shrug, masking the twist in my chest. “Maybe I did.”
But no one believes me. They nod, joke, move on. I stare at the horizon—twilight peeling off the jagged skyline.
My compad buzzes in my utility pouch. I feel it against my thigh, cold, insistent. I swallow.
I have to open it. Or maybe I don’t. Maybe not opening is safer. A lie I tell myself again and again.
In the mess hall, they’re bartering old holo-movies for spare rations. The hum of generators fills the gaps. Someone’s playing a cracked war ballad, voice tinny through rusted speakers. I drift through, face blank, passing soldiers nodding but not seeing me.
I tuck into a corner table, pull out the compad. The screen blinks awake in the dim light. One unread message—hers. The sender field says “Southland, Alaina.” My jaw tightens.
My thumb hovers over the “Play Message” icon. But I don’t tap. Because I’m terrified that whatever lies inside will wound me deeper than any plasma blast.
What if she hates me? What if she regrets? What if she moved on? What if the message says she skipped the tracking protocols and shut me out altogether?
I sit there grasping the device like it’s a live grenade.
Sweat beads on my forehead—not from exertion, but from fear.
A low hum of generators, the shuffle of soldiers getting chow, cries in the distance—all of it fades to background noise.
The only thing real is that message and my refusal to open it.
I close the compad—soft click—and slide it into my pouch. Pretending it’s not there.
Fake cough. I return to the group. Garrik winks. “You gonna share the fanmail later, Troka?”
I wave him off. “Maybe if it’s interesting.”
Inside, I’m screaming.
That night I can’t sleep. I lie awake in the bunk that smells of cold metal and old uniform fabric.
My armor shed on the floor, scales bristling, mind racing.
I replay the war. The shots. The screams. The moment I felt alive because of her memory.
Every kill, every survival, every scalded nerve—they echo through me.
I reach for the compad again, need its shape in my palm, the weight. I flip it open. The message icon stares back at me, accusing. I nearly tap it. But my finger trembles. I shut it again.
I bury the device under my pillow. My heart is a fist inside my chest. I whisper to the dark: What are you waiting for?
Morning comes with a roar—alarms, orders, whiplash awakening. The squad scrambles. We’re redeploying. No rest. No pause.
I strap gear on in silence. My pouch feels heavy around my thigh. My mind is tangled. I leave the message there, unopened. One of many things I’m avoiding.
But I know I can’t avoid it forever.
And in the back of my head, Alaina's name burns like a star that won’t die.