Later, Luke gave a mission debrief. Formal. Detached.
“Enemy presence was underestimated. Losses, while tragic, fall within wartime margins. There were no procedural violations.”
I sat in the back of the tent. No one mentioned the signal I flagged. No one questioned why they advanced early. No one even asked what intel was used to greenlight it.
When it was over, I followed him outside.
“You knew,” I said.
He turned, raised an eyebrow.
“Knew what?”
“That it wasn’t ready. That we didn’t have enough.”
He shrugged.
“There’s never enough. That’s why we train.”
I stepped closer.
“People died.”
“And people always will,” he said. “That’s war. You don’t get to pick the perfect op. You move or you miss.”
I stared at him, searching for something—remorse, reflection, even discomfort. There was nothing.
He patted my arm again.
“You did your part. Can’t save everyone.”
He walked off into the night, and I stood there alone with the sound of rotor blades fading into the dark and a voice in my head whispering what no one else had the courage to say. This wasn’t just a bad call. It was a preventable one. And now it was mine to carry.
Grief has its own rhythm. It doesn’t hit all at once. It seeps like fog under a closed door. After the explosion, I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, didn’t cry. Instead, I worked.
The next morning, while the others attended the ramp ceremony for Jimenez, Harlo, and Marks, I sat alone in the back of the intel trailer, eyes locked on three screens, headphones over one ear. Not because I was ordered to. No one told me to analyze anything. In fact, no one expected me to do anything at all. But I couldn’t let it go. Something didn’t sit right. Luke’s version of events sounded rehearsed—too clean, too aligned with the post-op summary that command issued before the dust even settled. They said the mission had been approved based on updated intel. That the change in timeline had come from strategic adaptation to shifting enemy patterns.
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