But here, beneath the stone, people were rebuilding. Not perfect. Not safe.
Together.
I touched the bandage on my wrist where his hand had held mine.
Captured again, I thought.
But this time, by something I didn’t want to escape.
Chapter Twenty
Blood in the Snow
Rygnar
The scouts brought the news before dawn.
“Tracks in the southern basin,” one said. “Four raiders on foot. Maybe more hiding in the timber.”
They hadn’t gone far after the collapse. The storm that rolled in overnight had covered their retreat; now they were circling back, desperate, wounded, and angry. That kind of cornered fury could burn through any defense if we gave it time.
Veklan’s orders were simple. “We finish this.”
We gathered at the outer ledge where the snow had crusted thin and white across the ridgeline. Wind whipped down from the peaks, scattering ash and frost in equal measure. The cold bit through armor seams; breath steamed and vanished. Behind us, the colony lights flickered low, hidden under the mountain’s skin.
I checked my weapon charge and turned to the others—ten Mesaarkans three humans. All tired, all ready.
“We don’t let them reach the vents,” I said. “They won’t stop at taking what they can carry. They’ll burn it all for spite.”
No one argued. We’d all seen what humans could do when fear hardened into hunger.
We moved out, fanning through the trees. Snow muffled our steps. The air smelled of smoke from the burned trucks below and the clean, sharp scent of pine. Every sense was tuned to the silence, every motion measured.
Half a kilometer down the slope, the first shot cracked the stillness.
A plasma burst sizzled past my shoulder, cutting a black scar across the bark. I dove behind a rock, signaling the flank. Return fire lit the forest in flashes of blue-white.
The raiders were dug in near the edge of a frozen stream—five, not four. Two humans, three cyborg remnants: twisted prosthetics grafted to scarred flesh. Castoffs from both sides of the war. No wonder they fought like they had nothing left to lose.
We pressed them from both sides. The battle was short and brutal. I moved through the smoke on instinct, weapon rising and falling in the rhythm I hated but had never forgotten. The world narrowed to heat and motion, to targets and trajectories. There was no time for thought, only the certainty of what needed doing.
One raider rushed from behind a fallen pine, swinging a broken rifle like a club. I caught the strike on my arm, turned, and drove my blade under his ribs. His eyes went wide, a flash of disbelief, then dimmed.
When it was over, the snow was stained gray and black with smoke—and red with blood. The wind keened through the pines, carrying away the last sound of the fight.
“Clear,” someone called.
I lowered my weapon, chest heaving. Around me, the others began checking the wounded, collecting what salvage we could. The raiders who still breathed were disarmed and bound. We’d send them to the cyborg patrols; let justice decide what mercy looked like.
Veklan came down the slope, his armor frosted white. “Losses?”
“None of ours,” I said. “Five of theirs.”
He looked over the field, then at me. “You did what you said you would.”
“It never feels like enough.”
“It never will,” he said quietly. “That’s the price of surviving the wrong war.”
