PROLOGUE S and blasted Roshan O'Landha's face and crept into every crevice, every wrinkle. Squeezing her eyes closed behind her night-vision visor, she tried to soothe the stabbing pain the bright light from an unexpected explosion caused. It reverberated throughout the chain of mountains around her, booming until her ears rang. "Get down and stay down!" Roshan yelled into her communicator and prayed her team was all right. She pressed a different button with her thumb, using her call sign. "Paladin to base camp. What's your status?" Jubinor's unmistakable voice, intermixed with loud coughing, emerged through the static. "We've got fighters down and I'm missing one, Paladin. Trying to get an update now." "I copy. Standing by." Roshan tore off her visor and moved behind a pile of debris as she squinted through the whirling sand. She wheezed, then tried to clear her throat when she inhaled fine dust. Suddenly she heard an all-too-familiar sound and rapidly flipped a switch on her communicator. Her voice insistent, she manually overrode any conversations going on at the moment. "All frequencies! We've got incoming! Take cover!" Roshan jerked her chin strap tighter and rolled to her right into a shallow trench she knew should be there. She landed with a thud in the apparently not-so-shallow ditch, and the air gushed from her lungs on impact. Roshan was on her back and couldn't take her eyes off the missiles as they approached, deceptively looking like pretty falling stars. "Damn it!" she whispered as she watched the missiles rain on their positions. She tore at her radio and switched to another channel. "Paladin to base camp. We need ARA now! What the hell are you people doing back there?" "This is base, Paladin. Counterfire has commenced." The young man responsible for the Automatic Response Artillery sounded urgent. "They fired missiles from Ganath, undetectable by sensors. We had no way of knowing where to?" "Well, they're here now, so?" The ground shook and tossed the communicator from Roshan's hand. She clawed through the whirling debris for it but couldn't find it. Trying to open her eyes, she quickly closed them again when the sand battered them. Explosions, on the ground and above her, hurt her eardrums. Roshan rolled into a position that provided better protection and covered her body as she let the shielding vest take most of the onslaught of debris. As the trash and the continued explosions pounded at her, all she could think about were the other members of her team. They were trapped at coordinates due south of hers, which meant they were farther away from this barrage of missiles and plasma-nodes now blasting into the ground. They have to be all right. There's no other option. Roshan repeated her mantra continuously. Debris hit her helmet with a nauseatingly cracking sound, and she moved her neck carefully, relieved to find that the noise hadn't come from any broken vertebrae. As another missile hit nearby, the ground shook, and Roshan felt the heat as a ball of fire expanded from the plasma charge. "Damn Onotharians! Damn them all!" The hatred in her voice didn't scare her. She had lived with this hate for so long, nourished it until it had become second nature, as it had for so many of her generation. It was better to fight back than to surrender. Giving them hell is what we live for. Payback. Finally Roshan managed to pull her visor down to cover part of her face. She was tired. Twelve days in the field on emergency rations and recycled fluids, combined with sporadic fighting, had taken their toll. Roshan rose onto her knees and scanned the area. She couldn't use the infrared as long as explosions filled the sky, since it could blind her permanently. Dragging herself forward she felt with her hands to make sure she was following the trench. The luminescent compass strapped to her left arm above her chronometer wasn't working because of the charges' magnetism. Roshan thought she heard something through the noise and stopped crawling. Pulling out a scanner, she set it to monitor her closest surroundings but found no sign of life. She paused and her blood ran cold. No sign of life? As far as she could determine, two of her team members should be within reach. At least her most junior team member, whom she always made sure stayed close during missions. Roshan huddled over the scanner cradled in her lap as she rebooted it. When it went online again, it showed the same. No life signs. She wanted to toss the offending piece of technology as far as she could, but she forced herself to pocket it and resumed crawling due south. A zinging sound from the night sky made her look up involuntarily and spot a distinct light traveling at an unimaginable speed. Not sure what kind of weapon this was, Roshan again threw herself headlong into the ditch. "H'rea deasav'hV She didn't even have time to warn anyone over the comm link. Deep, resonant thunder permeated the ground and air and rumbled toward her. Twelve days in hell. Twenty-five years of my life. For this. Roshan closed her eyes and grew more certain she might not survive. A trap. A damn ambush instead of the breakthrough we expected. Roshan braced herself for the impact of the detonation. What s left, anyway? I've lost so many. Parents, friends, comrades...and, all those years ago, her. A short moment before the shock wave hit, everything went white and erased the image of beautiful amber eyes. After that, all she knew was complete darkness. CHAPTER ONE I 'm not using that thing." Roshan scoffed at the thin metal cane in Doc's hand. "Isn't it enough that my unexplained three-week absence will raise a bunch of questions? If my Onotharian contacts see me with a cane, after their successful ambush against the resistance, they're bound to be suspicious." "But your ankle hasn't quite healed," Doc objected. "If you're not careful, you may walk with a permanent limp." Roshan gestured impatiently toward her friend and comrade-in?arms. "Doc, listen to me. I have to get back to the capital. I can't limp, and I certainly can't use a cane. I have to appear as if I've just come back to Ganath from the Desamea asteroid belt. The Onotharians know I have my stockpile up there. My foreman created a disaster that needed my personal attention before the mission.. .and for all he knows I may have been captured, or worse." Doc shook his head. "All I can do is advise you on what's medically sound. Do what you need to do, but please, stay off that foot as much as possible. And no personal combat training." Roshan knew from the expression in Doc's eyes not to push any further. Rising from the gurney she reached for her jacket. "Thanks," she murmured, her thoughts already elsewhere. Time was a luxury she didn't possess. She had too much to do. "I'll do my best. I..." Roshan stopped in midstep and half smiled at him. "...owe you one." "How do you figure that, Paladin?" Doc shook his head. "You were the one who dragged half of the members in the Gedor cell back to safety." Roshan's chest constricted with a quick, sharp stab of pain. "That doesn't count. They were just inexperienced kids." "Yeah, not like us veterans, are they?" "They're nothing more than trainees who think they're invincible. I hate using anyone younger than eighteen on these operations. Their inexperience and immaturity.. .it's just wrong." Doc shook his head. "There isn't much of a recruiting pool left to choose from. Let's face it, everyone is either dead, captured, or off planet." "Maybe, but I don't have to like it. Well, enough of this. Got to go. Thanks, Doc." Roshan nodded briskly and was out the door before her face could give her away. Roshan had been amazed to find herself still alive when she regained consciousness after that last major blast that had knocked her unconscious. The scene she had come across still haunted her. Five young resistance fighters, two boys and three girls, had all been badly wounded, and their remaining companions were dead because they'd strayed into the enemy's kill zone. From her vantage point Roshan had watched them try to take cover but without a clue where to go. Every move they made seemed to be a mistake. Logic told her to hold her position, but she couldn't stand to watch the slaughter. She had transmitted her position to base camp and given a spot report to her team. Yanking off her pack and anything else that might weigh her down, she hid the equipment in the building she was about to abandon. Roshan had dashed toward the wounded, taking cover wherever she could. Once on the ground she gathered the scattered resistance fighters and directed those who could still move to a bombed-out bridge north of their position. It had taken her three trips to drag the ones who couldn't walk, one at a time. As she pulled the last one to safety, Roshan had lost her luck. An incoming barrage threw her several feet, nearly dislocating her hip and damaging her right ankle. Roshan had still managed to crawl to the bridge, pulling one of the youths with her. There she rendered what assistance she could as they huddled together until the incoming fire ceased, allowing her team to find them. Roshan rubbed her hip absentmindedly. She needed to forget the ordeal. Doc was right; their pool of recruits was limited. It was the price of this damn war. "I still don't have to like it," she growled to herself as she settled behind the wheel of the hovercraft parked outside the aluminum-carbide 1 s~ _ cubicle that housed the small clinic. Her cell staged their operations from this site within a deep ravine, located among the Merealian Mountains. The mountains, which stretched from just north of Ganath toward the Davost peninsula, were well protected from the Onotharians' sensors because ...
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