I sit strapped into the acceleration couch, my heavy assault rifle resting across my lap. My hands are heavily bandaged, the nerve damage making it difficult to grip the weapon, but I hold it tight.
Kade is beside me. He is strapped into his heavy, reinforced deep-sea pressure suit. His left gauntlet is locked in a fixed, defensive position, a rigid titanium shield. His right hand rests on the hilt of his thermal-bladed combat knife.
Through the mate bond, I feel his physical agony. The pressure is exacerbating the phantom pain in his missing arm, a dull, throbbing ache that threatens to overwhelm his senses. But beneath the pain, his mind is a fortress of cold, tactical calculation.
We’re at thirty thousand feet, Kade projects, his mental voice a steady drumbeat in my mind. Sonar conta
