Page 264 of Commander’s Mate

Scarlet came to stand at my shoulder.

“This part sucks,” she said.

“Yes.”

“You get used to it.”

I looked at her.

She stared at the shuttle doors. “No. That’s a lie. You learn how to function while it sucks.”

That sounded more believable.

The shuttle launched.

I tightened my grip on the registry tablet.

Somewhere below us were people whose names had been waiting in our files.

Now we had to make sure they came back as people, not numbers.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Zared

The shuttle dropped through Breskaa’s thin atmosphere with twenty-two of my warriors strapped into crash seats and one thought I refused to name.

Harper was aboard Dreadnought One in Protected Intake Two. She had a real assignment, real orders, med-techs and guards around her, and enough sense to obey an evacuation command if one came. I had agreed because she was useful there, not because I had stopped wanting her half a galaxy away from danger.

War preparation had always steadied me. Armor checks. Weapon calibration. Team assignments. Extraction timing. Clean lines of command and consequence. Tonight the lines were less clean. Every warrior around me had someone waiting—or someone missing.

“Two minutes,” Pyrr said over the team channel.

Dreadnought Eight’s reconnaissance had been correct about the outer defenses and wrong about one important detail: Sargus regular troops now supplemented the private mine guards. Their uniforms showed on thermal imaging around the northern barracks and lift towers.

“They knew we might come,” Pyrr said.

“They knew someone might,” I answered. “That changes nothing. No explosives near occupied barracks. No power shutdown until every mine lift has independent support confirmed. We free who we can reach and leave before their regional carrier closes the system.”

The words tasted like ash. There were always people we could not reach.

The shuttle hit ground hard enough to rattle my teeth. The ramp dropped.

Breskaa smelled of hot stone, metal dust, and machinery that had been running too long. The compound spread across the desert in blocks of barracks, processing sheds, lift housings, guard towers, and electrified fencing. Searchlights swept across the sand.

Our first shots took out cameras and tower weapons. Team Two cut the fence. Team Four moved toward the northern dormitories. Dread Eight’s ground unit struck the agricultural complex at the same time.

Then the guards came out shooting.

Their weapons could damage armor if they hit often enough. Ours were better. Training was better still. We advanced by pairs while Pyrr’s team flanked the guard barracks. Sargus soldiers tried to hold the central lane and discovered too late that open ground favored warriors in sealed combat armor.

“Main barracks secure,” Pyrr reported. “Prisoners inside.”

“Open them. No one touches a prisoner without warning first.”

I reached the largest dormitory as the locks released. Rows of bunks filled the room, three levels high. Men and women sat up in confusion. Some recoiled from my armor.

I opened my helmet.