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From back in ops, Mitch’s voice carried with a slight static into Jaz’s earpiece.
She’d always liked it when Mitch took the lead–not that Preach would ever let her tell Noah. His easy charisma and relaxed comms discipline kept missions relaxed, right until they needed to focus.
When he switched to “mission mode”, they all followed suite, something she knew Top was grateful for; they’d been working as a team for a while now, and while that usually meant they worked smoothly as a team, it also meant they’d been hanging out outside of work for so long it sometimes took them longer than he would want to get back their professionalism, even in the field.
“ Dalton, this is ops. I’ve got you passing the two-kilometre mark now. Enacting radio silence on our end, barring emergencies. ”
“Acknowledged, ops. Agreeing radio silence. Dalton out.”
The lightness and professionalism both were especially valuable now, after-
After.
He shouldn’t have died. The team wasn’t the same now. Wouldn’t be for a long time. But even Jaz could now admit that one day they would get there. But humour and civility were in short supply still, and having a reminder of what they were working back to over the comms couldn’t be understated in value.
With his mic muted, Dalton murmured to the team, gentle as the breeze, “Alright guys, let’s keep our noise to a minimum. Heads in the game, on a swivel.”
Jaz could feel some of the team swallowing down retorts along the lines of ‘I know how to do my job’. Good, she thought. Dalton knew that already. He still had to do his job.
From nowhere, a spray of blood.
A strangled cry, c ut off in Dalton’s throat.
From the distance, an echoed retort. The crack of a rifle on the wind.
Then shouts. Practised voices filled still with panic, the recent blood of their fallen friend mixing with their leader’s in the dirt. Calls for medical equipment, for eyes on the sniper, for counterfire and cover fire and requests for backup or exfil or a drone strike or something.
Dalton’s voice, as ever calmest of them all, cut through the noise.
“We’re a team. You all know how to do your jobs. So go do them.”
And that was that.
“” “” “”
Later, once the shooting was done and they were all piled into a chopper bound for an airbase, bound for home, Jaz tried to hold Dalton’s hand against the pain. It felt too much like-
She let go.
But-
But the phantom sensation made her retch anyway, emptying the contents of her stomach from the side of the chopper, and she pulled her legs in close, edging slowly away from her leader, from Dalton, from Adam, wishing she could be anywhere but here.
If she were anywhere else, of course, she would wish she were here. This family of theirs was strange like that.
She wished there was something she could do to help. When Jaz locked eyes with Preach across the space, when his eyes flicked down to her hand, and to Dalton’s, eyes clenched shut from a pain they couldn’t treat, she knew exactly what would help. Knew exactly what she would usually do to help.
Jaz looked down.
She kept her distance.
At some point in the chaos, Dalton’s wound had opened up, bled more, causing him to grow steadily more tired, less coordinated. It stole from him his usual complete control–or at least adaptability, and he tripped.
Adam Dalton tripped over his own feet.
He hit his head. Even he’d been able to tell her it was likely a concussion. So. No painkillers. It wouldn’t be long before they got back to the airbase and a medical team could make it all go away, but until then the only option she had was to hold his hand, and she just… couldn’t.
Coward, her mind told her.
Weak.
Selfish.
And then:
“ Guys? ” Noah’s voice, static-filled over the comms. Great. Just what this moment needed.
Dalton winced, pawing at his comm.
His voice was surprisingly steady–not that it should surprise her still, his capabilities–as he spoke: “Ugh. Dalton receiving. Go ahead ops.”
Even with the shitty connection, Jaz almost shivered at the venom in the analyst’s voice.
“ We’ve got a bit of a situation. ”
“” “” “” “” “” “”
“Hey, Noah, what happened to the guy I replaced?”
They were all bored in ops. Things had been tense for the first hour or so, watching Dalton’s team’s location markers move across the screen, but no environment can maintain heightened emotion forever. Tedium had set in, and stilted conversation had quickly followed.
Noah froze in his seat, pork rind halfway between the bag and his mouth, staring her dead in the eye.
“You never read the files from the last few missions before you joined?”
“No, well, I-” Of course she had. Most of them, at least. But their work schedule didn’t allow much down time, and files that were already closed weren’t high on Hannah’s list of priorities. “I read what I could, but there’s barely been time to breathe since then, let alone read a bunch of old reports.”
Noah looked at her with a strange mixture of confusion and commiseration.
“What?” she hissed.
He startled a little, looking enough like a meerkat that she had to fight not to laugh, and said, “Well, I just assumed you’d read everything you could get your hands on. Not that there’s anything wrong with you… not having done that.”
She rolled her eyes at him. Glared pointedly.
“What?”
“Go on!” she said.
“With what?”
“Give me the highlights! What did the guy do that was so bad he’s never mentioned?”
He was silent and still, locked in eye contact for far too long, if you asked her. He wouldn’t.
“You’re probably best off just reading the files. Some of the things he did… Some of the things we did to him… I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“Wouldn’t worry? Come on, Noah. Give me something! ”
Noah glanced around the office again, like he expected Patricia to jump out from behind a computer screen and tell him off for gossiping in ops, before leaning towards her nervously.
“It’s just- Well- Mitch was everyone’s favourite; he had this natural charisma that made everyone want to be his friend, put everyone at ease, but he could switch to professionalism at the sound of the gun, so to speak. He- Don’t worry about it.” She started to interrupt him, but he kept going anyway, hands held out as if to stop her. “As long as you don’t kill anyone–and I mean that physically–you’re a thousand times better than him regardless of anything else.”
He broke eye contact then. Hannah knew what that meant; even if she didn’t know Noah all that well yet, she knew people. He wanted her to leave it.
She couldn’t.
“What did he do that was so bad I’m on a pedestal just for showing up?”
And all at once, the dam holding back Noah’s nervous energy burst, and he whispered to her, so angry, so loud that she wouldn’t be surprised if the whole office heard.
“He sold out the team. Dalton’s team. Betrayed them. Set them up.”
“You’re saying he was-”
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Right… Okay.”
“I found him out. Caught him. Set the team on him. They had me run the op. Watching from here, while they brought in the guy I’d been working with for the past few years. He- He resisted. They had their orders. I know he was a traitor, but he was-”
Hannah put her hand over his on his desk.
“Noah?”
“Hm?”
“I get it. You don’t have to-” She paused, smiled at him, careful not to be too sympathetic. “I’ll read those files tonight.”
He didn’t respond. Didn’t turn back to look at her.
But didn’t move his hand from under hers either.
“If you-” she said. “If you ever want to talk…”
She trailed off, and until the team’s radios crackled back to life for their hourly comms check, they lapsed into silence.