Theta-3 had barely gone twenty meters when the squad net crackled.
“Theta-1 to Theta-3,” a voice snapped in, tight with effort but not panic. “We are pinned at junction Delta-Seven. Multiple contacts, one turret, two critical. Request immediate support.”
Kaden felt those last two words land like a punch. Two critical.
Okafor cut across the channel a heartbeat later, voice cool.
“Theta-3, redirect to Delta-Seven,” he said. “Theta-1’s primary lane is compromised. You are closest. Theta-5 is engaged at engineering and cannot detach. Theta-3, assist and extract. Forward control is secondary until Theta-1 is mobile.”
“Copy,” Jax said. “Theta-3 rerouting. Vos?”
Vos slid closer to the wall, eyes flicking across his HUD. “I’m not a map fairy,” he said. “I need eyes first.”
He tapped a control on his bracer.
SKILL – Wasp Drone (R1)
AP: CPL VOS 7/8
A small, matte-black shape unfolded from the launcher on his shoulder and shot forward, hugging the corridor ceiling. A new tag winked into Kaden’s HUD: a tiny blue triangle labeled WASP.
“Wasp is up,” Vos said. “Feeding now.”
A picture-in-picture popped into the corner of Kaden’s vision: jittery but clear footage from Wasp’s camera as it skimmed along the corridor ahead, past a hatch, around a bend.
“Talk to me,” Jax said.
“First intersection, clear,” Vos said. “Second’s a four-way… there. Theta-1’s dug in behind conduit and an equipment stack at Delta-Seven. Turret on their twelve. Balcony above with six Opp firing down. Two of Theta-1 are deep red. Their medic—Park—is flagged KIA.”
A thin blue line traced itself across Kaden’s HUD, following the route Wasp had just flown.
“Distance?” Jax asked.
“Sixty meters if we go straight,” Vos said. “No contacts between us and them yet. Wasp’s perched over the junction now. Turret’s cycling like it’s bored.”
“Good,” Jax said. “We’ll give it something better to do. Tanaka, same stack, faster feet. Theta-1 first, glory later.”
“Copy,” Tanaka said.
They broke into a jog.
The corridor blurred into a rhythm of pipework, hatches, and flickering red strips. Somewhere deeper in the ship, something heavy boomed and the deck shivered under their boots. The sim didn’t bother naming it; it just made sure their bodies believed the ship was in a fight.
Kaden’s lungs started to burn, but his legs held. All the runs, all the gym hours: this was where they paid off.
His HUD ticked as they moved.
AP: SSGT JAX 7/9
AP: CPL VOS 7/8
Aurora slid little pieces of AP back into their bars while they ran.
“Thirty meters,” Vos said. “Wasp confirms: Theta-1 pinned, turret still up, balcony busy. Marquez and Kovacs are your red tags, Mercer.”
Kaden’s throat tightened. He didn’t know them, but the HUD marked them anyway.
PFC MARQUEZ – CRITICAL
PFC KOVACS – CRITICAL
PFC REYES – GREEN
PFC PARK – SIM: KIA
They hit the last corner before Delta-Seven. Wasp’s feed showed the junction from above; a heartbeat later, Kaden saw it for himself.
The junction was a broad, boxy intersection: four corridors crossing, ceiling cut open above into a grated balcony where six Opp silhouettes leaned and fired down. Theta-1 was jammed in behind a set of thick conduits and a waist-high equipment bank on the near side, armor scarred and pitted, returning fire in sharp, desperate bursts.
At the far end, an Opp auto-turret clung to the ceiling like some metal parasite, barrel tracking in smooth arcs. Every time a Theta-1 visor climbed too high, the turret snapped a burst that hammered their cover.
HUD tags flared as Theta-3 joined the fight.
THETA-1 – SQUAD:
SGT HAO – GREEN
PFC MARQUEZ – RED
PFC KOVACS – RED
PFC REYES – GREEN
PFC PARK – SIM: KIA
“Theta-3, that you?” Hao yelled over open comms, gunfire snapping sharp in the background. “We’re married to this junction.”
“Yeah,” Jax said. “We’re your divorce lawyers. Tanaka, shield up.”
Tanaka lifted the Bulwark into a full wall.
Jax’s tag pulsed.
SKILL – Overwatch Directive (R1)
AP: SSGT JAX 5/9
Kaden felt his sight picture tighten. The little wobble at the edge of his aim smoothed into something clean. Navarro’s breathing over comms synced with his for a heartbeat, their bursts wanting to fall into the same groove.
“Vos, that turret’s node,” Jax said.
“Wasp’s parked above it,” Vos replied. “I see the link. Local control. Stubborn, not smart. I can choke it short.”
“Choke it,” Jax said. “Tanaka, Bulwark Advance on my mark. Navarro, Mercer, take that balcony away from them. Hao, keep your people down until the gun’s busy.”
“Copy,” Hao said.
SKILL – Rapid Override (R1)
AP: CPL VOS 6/8
The turret icon on Kaden’s HUD stuttered. Its tracking went from smooth to jerky for a heartbeat, like something had slipped in its brain.
“Go,” Jax said. “Tanaka.”
Tanaka surged out of cover.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
SKILL – Bulwark Advance (R1)
AP: LCPL TANAKA 3/5
He drove forward like a battering ram, shield up, boots pounding. Fire from the balcony hammered the Bulwark, impact flashes popping across its face. The turret tried to follow his motion and stumbled under Vos’s interference.
Kaden and Navarro went with him, a pace back and slightly off to each side, firing over and around the shield.
Kaden dumped short bursts into the balcony line. One Opp leaned a fraction too far to cut around Tanaka’s left edge; Navarro put a controlled burst through its neck. Tag dropped.
“Balcony one down,” she called.
Kaden caught another silhouette trying to slide for a better angle on Tanaka, its weapon tracking with that same System-slick precision he was starting to recognize. He walked three shots into its chest. It toppled over the railing and vanished from his HUD.
“Second down,” he said.
The remaining four Opps broke up their pattern, ducking deeper and firing more cautiously. Their volume dropped, but the turret was still the main problem.
“Turret’s fighting me,” Vos said. “It wants its brain back.”
“Nine meters,” Jax said. “Tanaka, keep moving.”
Tanaka didn’t answer. He just ran.
The turret jerked, then managed to spit a brutal burst past Vos’s choke, chewing a bright scar across the top edge of the Bulwark. Tanaka dipped his head, but he didn’t slow.
Then he was under it.
He slammed the Bulwark up into the turret mount with his full weight. The impact boomed. The turret squealed as its barrel tried to angle down into something that refused to move.
“Mercer, Navarro,” Jax said. “Left. Link with Theta-1. Tanaka, you stay married to that thing. Vos, keep it stupid.”
“On it,” Vos said. “It’s already sulking.”
Kaden and Navarro broke left, sprinting across the junction. Fire from the balcony reached for them, but Overwatch kept their return shots clean enough that any Opp who leaned too far risked eating a round. One did; Jax erased it with a tight burst.
Three left up there, by Kaden’s count. Pinned, but not gone.
They slid into cover beside Theta-1, armor scraping conduit.
Kaden’s eyes snapped straight to the red tags.
Marquez lay flat on her back, chest rising in shallow, rapid jerks. Her abdominal armor was blown inward and blackened, blood seeping along the edges and pooling beneath her.
PFC MARQUEZ – CRITICAL
PROBABLE INTERNAL BLEED – HIGH
Kovacs sat propped against the conduit stack, lower leg gone below the knee. The stump was a ragged mess of torn plating and flesh. A tourniquet had been thrown on too low, half-buried in destroyed muscle. Dark blood still seeped past it.
PFC KOVACS – CRITICAL
BLOOD LOSS – SEVERE
TOURNIQUET INTEGRITY – 72%
Park lay sprawled nearby, visor spiderwebbed, tagged with a blunt red SIM: KIA. Reyes crouched beside Hao, still sending controlled bursts around the edge of cover.
“Medical?” Hao barked. “Tell me you brought medical.”
“Yeah,” Jax said. “We brought a medic. Mercer, they’re yours. We’ll keep the room loud.”
The rest of the world shrank.
Kaden dropped between Marquez and Kovacs, kit already unclipping from his belt. HUD panes bloomed near each casualty, vitals ugly and red.
Marquez:
Heart rate fast and thready. O2 dropping. Armor breach midline. No airway flag.
Kovacs:
Heart rate erratic. Pressure low. Tourniquet slipping. Blood loss severe.
Both circling the drain.
His breath wanted to hitch. Trauma Response shoved the panic away from his hands.
“Field Stabilize,” he murmured.
SKILL – Field Stabilize (R1)
AP: PFC MERCER 4/5
The chaos inside his working circle resolved into clean lines. Pulse patterns, breathing rhythm, how the blood spread under armor, what mattered in the next ten seconds—his brain picked it apart without noise.
“Gut first,” he muttered. “If she crashes, the leg doesn’t matter.”
He popped Marquez’s abdominal plate.
The sim didn’t flinch: dark blood pooled under the crumpled armor, torn synth-weave, organs pushed where they shouldn’t be. At least two bad bleeds, one pulsing harder with each beat.
He grabbed a trauma pad and slapped it onto the worst visible source. It swelled as it soaked and compressed, but the red kept coming.
“Come on,” he said.
Another pad, slightly offset. Coagulant hissed as it activated. The worst of the flow slowed, but one deeper stream still pulsed stubbornly.
“Mercer, talk,” Jax said. Gunfire cracked overhead. Tanaka’s shotgun roared close enough to make his ribs vibrate.
“Internal bleed, for sure,” Kaden said. “Slowed it, not stopped.”
“Kovacs?” Hao asked.
“Leg’s half gone,” Kaden said. “Tourniquet’s wrong. He’s got minutes, not hours.”
“That’s better than what he had,” Hao said.
“No argument,” Kaden muttered.
He slid a clamp tool into Marquez’s gut, following the biggest pulse of blood. Field Stabilize gave him a faint sense of where that vessel ran, like a ghost line under the mess. The sim added a small haptic cue when he hit the right spot.
He clamped. The flow dropped from surge to ooze.
He layered a coagulant patch over the area, thumbed the activator. The patch heated, fibers knitting into the wound edges.
Marquez’s vitals nudged upward. Heart rate still ugly, but less frantic. O2 stopped dropping and leveled just above the point where the HUD would start screaming.
STATUS – CRITICAL → UNSTABLE
“Okay,” he said. “She’s still a mess, but she’s not about to crash.”
“Mercer,” Jax said. “You’ve got maybe thirty seconds before I pull you. We’re not dying at Delta-Seven.”
“I hear you,” he said.
He turned to Kovacs.
The tourniquet was dug into muscle too low, not tight enough, leaving too much stump free to bleed. Dark red still seeped with every beat.
He grabbed Reyes by the harness and yanked him closer. “Reyes. Hands on that gut patch.” He guided Reyes’ gauntlets to Marquez’s abdomen. “Right there. Don’t let it move. If it shifts, push it back. Do not peel it off.”
“Yes, Private,” Reyes said. His voice still shook, but his hands went exactly where Kaden put them.
Kaden sliced the bad tourniquet away and slapped a new strap higher on Kovacs’ thigh, as close to the groin as the armor allowed. He cranked it until flesh bulged around the band. The bleed slowed, but didn’t stop.
“Too much damage,” he muttered. “Fine. We go deeper.”
He dug out a vascular clamp. The sim projected faint ghost-lines under the shredded stump, hints of where the main vessels should be. Field Stabilize turned those hints into a usable map.
He cut deeper, ignoring the jerk of Kovacs’ body and the ragged sound that escaped him. There—hotter pulse, angry and strong. When Kaden nicked it, a bright surge of blood pushed against his fingers.
He clamped hard.
The flow sagged to a sluggish seep.
Kovacs’ vitals twitched.
STATUS – CRITICAL → UNSTABLE
BLOOD LOSS – SEVERE → MAJOR
“Got the artery,” Kaden said. “He’s still in a bad way, but he’s not emptying out in the next half minute.”
“Time,” Jax said. No edge, just the line.
Kaden wrapped a hemostatic dressing around the clamp, cinched it down tight, then sealed the whole thing with a layer of synth-weave. It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t need to be.
Field Stabilize tugged at his attention any time it tried to drift. Bleed patterns, heartbeat spikes, pressure numbers nudged him to recheck.
Marquez’s O2 ticked up another sliver. Kovacs’ pressure graph flattened instead of sliding.
His HUD flickered.
PFC MARQUEZ – STATUS: STABILIZING – CONDITION: GUARDED
PFC KOVACS – STATUS: STABILIZING – CONDITION: CRITICAL
Not fixed. Just not falling apart.
“Right now, they’re not dying,” Kaden said. “If this were real, they both need evac yesterday. But right now, they’re not dying.”
“You heard him,” Jax called for Theta-1. “You’ve got two chances instead of two toe tags. That’s as good as you’ll ever get mid-fight. Theta-1 holds this junction. Theta-3 moves.”
Kaden’s hands wanted to stay where they were.
“If Field Stabilize drops, they’re going to slide,” he said quietly. “Aurora’s carrying part of this.”
“And that’s what med bays are for,” Jax said, cutting him off. “We’re not one. You did your job. If we stay here, we fail ours. Move.”
It scraped, but Trauma Response made it something he could function around.
He checked both HUD windows one last time. Marquez: unstable but holding. Kovacs: pressure terrible, but not dropping by the second. Bleed indicators flat instead of creeping worse.
It would have to be enough.
He squeezed Reyes’ shoulder. “If her breathing spikes or she starts choking, tilt her head. If that patch slides, push it back. Don’t rip it off.”
“Yes, Private,” Reyes said, steadier.
Kaden pushed himself up. His legs felt heavier than they should. His hands started to shake as the skill’s razor edge faded.
SKILL – Field Stabilize (R1) – ENDED
AP: PFC MERCER 3/5
He stepped back into the cover line and brought his SMG up. Jax, Navarro, and Vos were already rotated toward the corridor leading away from the junction. Tanaka still stood under the turret, Bulwark jammed into its mount, shield face peppered with fresh impacts.
“Good work, Mercer,” Jax said on their local loop. “That’s how you earn your patch. Hao, you’re as stable as you’re going to get without a stretcher. Theta-3 is moving.”
“Understood,” Hao said. “We’ll hold. Reyes, keep pressure on Marquez. Kovacs, don’t bleed out.”
“I’m trying, Sergeant,” Kovacs muttered, voice thin but present.
Kaden’s HUD pinged as he slid back in next to Navarro.
EVALUATION – TRIAGE / FIELD PROCEDURE: ABOVE BASELINE
FIELD STABILIZE – PROGRESSION: 18%
The number felt small compared to the weight behind him. Two people who should have been corpses weren’t—yet—and he’d walked away because that’s what the job asked for.
“Mercer,” Jax said quietly. “Eyes front. You did what you could. The rest is on whoever’s waiting at the aid station. Our lane isn’t done yet.”
“Yeah,” he said. Rough, but steady. “Copy.”
“Tanaka, drop Anchor,” Jax said. “We’re done in this box.”
“Dropping,” Tanaka replied.
Kaden’s HUD acknowledged it.
SKILL – Shield Anchor (R1) – ENDED
“Same stack,” Jax said. “R1s only unless something huge lands in our lap. Save your AP for when it matters.”
“Wasp jumping ahead again,” Vos said.
The drone’s tag darted away on Kaden’s HUD, streaming down their route.
“Move,” Jax said. “Same lanes. Call weird early.”
Theta-3 stepped off again, leaving Theta-1’s wounded and their uncertain futures behind, jogging back into corridors that cared about objectives and routes and the next fight waiting around the bend.
