Page 3 of Alien Mercenary’s Wife (Lathar Mercenaries: Warborne #7)
Her comm chimed with an incoming call. Hughes's face materialized on the screen, and her heart clenched at the sight of him.
The kid had been her comms specialist, solid as granite under fire, the kind of soldier who kept his head when everything went to hell.
Now he looked like he'd aged a decade in the past month, his face drawn with the exhaustion that came from fighting an enemy you couldn't see or touch.
"Captain," he said, his voice tight with something that might have been pain or fear. Probably both. "Got the test results back from that neurologist in Seattle."
"And?" She kept her voice level, though dread was already building in her stomach.
"Same bullshit as always. Progressive neural degradation, cause unknown." His laugh was sharp enough to cut glass, bitter as old coffee. "Doctor recommended immediate psychiatric evaluation. Apparently, I'm imagining the paralysis."
Hughes's test results settled in her chest like a cold weight. She kept her expression neutral, years of command training holding her voice steady. "I'm sorry, Hughes. You deserve better than that."
His results were just one more piece in the mountain of evidence she'd been building one devastating piece at a time.
Fifty-three veterans with identical symptoms, all dismissed as head cases by medical professionals who wouldn't recognize a cover-up if it bit them on the ass.
The corporate machine ground on, efficient and merciless.
"Any word from the legal team?" he asked, hope flickering in his eyes.
"That's the other problem," she sighed, the weight of constant disappointment settling on her shoulders. "Lawyer says the class action is stalled again. Defense is claiming national security privilege on everything related to implant specifications."
"Shit." Hughes's expression crumpled slightly. "So what are we going to do?"
The coffee maker finished its death rattle, producing something that barely qualified as caffeinated water but would have to do.
She poured a cup anyway, needing the ritual more than the stimulation, the familiar motions a small anchor in a world that seemed determined to drift away from her.
"I'm going to get him to file discovery motions on the safety testing protocols.
Those predate military contracts. Let the team know that's the way we're going and to sit tight. "
Hughes nodded, making notes on his own tablet with hands that trembled visibly. "Will do. Anything else?"
"Yeah." She leaned forward. "Tell everyone to vary their routines. Different routes to work, different times, different patterns. And if anyone sees the same car twice, I want to know about it."
"You think they're watching us?"
She sipped her coffee and grimaced. It tasted like disappointment with notes of artificial vanilla. "They're a multi-billion-dollar corporation with government contracts and a lot to lose. What do you think?"
"Yeah. Good point." Hughes straightened slightly, some of his old military bearing reasserting itself. "I'll tell everyone to watch their backs. Catch you on the flipside, boss."
After Hughes signed off, she pulled up news feeds on her tablet, scrolling through the digital detritus of a world that had forgotten how to care about its broken soldiers.
Mainstream media was useless… Corporate advertising budgets bought editorial silence more effectively than any government censor.
But… She bit her lip as she tapped in a new search term.
Local outlets sometimes missed the memo about which stories to bury.
There. Jacksonville local news: "Veteran Found Dead in Apparent Suicide."
The photo showed Janet Dubois, former scorperio pilot and one of the loudest voices in their lawsuit.
The article described a single gunshot wound to the head, no note, no warning signs.
Just another troubled veteran who couldn't handle civilian life, according to the neat narrative they'd constructed around her death.
Except Janet Dubois hadn't been troubled.
She'd been furious, burning with rage that the government they’d all trusted had implanted defective equipment into their bodies and then gaslit them about the consequences.
The Janet she'd known would have fought this battle to her last breath, not put a gun to her head in a moment of despair.
She copied the article and added it to her evidence files. Pattern recognition had kept her alive in three combat zones, and the pattern here was becoming as clear as sniper fire… Veterans who spoke out publicly were having "accidents" at statistically impossible rates.
Her tablet chimed with another news alert, this one from Detroit. Car accident, brake failure, another familiar name from her unit. Another voice silenced, another witness eliminated with the professional efficiency of corporate cleanup crews rather than random misfortune.
Two deaths in three days. Both veterans who'd been vocal about their symptoms, both now conveniently silent.
The coffee turned bitter in her mouth. Setting the cup down, she crossed to the window again, this time studying the street below with the tactical focus that had once made her one of the most effective scorperio commanders in the service.
A blue sedan sat parked across from the building entrance, empty, but the heat shimmer rising from the hood said the engine was still warm.
Her eyes narrowed. Someone was watching. Professional surveillance, the kind that cost serious money and came with government clearances.
Memorizing the license plate, she stepped away from the window.
The apartment suddenly felt smaller, more vulnerable, though she'd been careful when she picked it.
Two ways out—the front door and the fire escape off her bedroom—plus sight lines to the street from multiple angles.
Not perfect, but better than most places in her price range.
You didn't survive years of combat by forgetting the basics, even when you were trying to disappear.
She walked to her bedroom closet and pushed aside civilian clothes that had never quite fit right on a body trained for war, revealing the gear she'd hoped never to need again: body armor, tactical vest, and weapons that could punch through corporate security like tissue paper.
All off books, of course. They were the tools of a trade she'd tried to leave behind, but that she knew she was going to need again.
Her hands shook slightly as she ran inventory. Not from fear… she'd left that emotion behind in her first firefight. The tremor was getting worse each day, spreading through her nervous system like a slow poison, but her grip strength was solid, and her aim was still good.
Good enough for what might be coming.
Returning to her desk, she opened a new document, typing quickly despite the occasional muscle spasm that made her fingers jerk across the keys.
A detailed report of everything she'd observed, complete with timestamps and evidence cross-references, all bundled up with a dead man’s trigger on the send function.
If something happened to her, when something happened to her, at least the information would live to fight another day.
The cursor blinked at her from the screen, waiting for words that might be her last testimony.
She pulled up her notes for tomorrow's holoconference with the neurologist who'd agreed to review their medical records.
The woman was risking her career by helping them, sticking her neck out for soldiers she'd never met because she'd seen enough cases to know the military doctors were lying through their teeth about the psychological diagnosis.
Reese spread medical reports across her console screen, organizing them by symptom severity and progression timeline with the same precision she'd once used for battle plans.
Each document represented a soldier whose life was slowly being stolen by corporate greed and government complicity, their bodies betrayed by the very technology that was supposed to make them invincible.
The meeting could be the breakthrough they needed…
an independent medical expert willing to testify that the implant failures were real, not imagined.
She double-checked her list of questions, making sure she'd covered every angle the corporate lawyers might use to attack the doctor’s credibility.
Details mattered in battles like this, where victory was measured in precedents and paper trails rather than body counts.
One missed fact, one poorly documented symptom, and their case would crumble.
She hissed as her left hand cramped suddenly, fingers curling into an involuntary claw.
“God fucking dammit!” She massaged the muscles until they relaxed. The paralysis was spreading, climbing up her arm, but slowly. Thankfully.
Outside her window, the blue sedan was gone, replaced by a different car with tinted windows that reflected the morning sun. Maybe nothing. Maybe a routine surveillance rotation. Maybe corporate cleanup crews moving into position for the final phase of their operation.
Either way, she was ready for them.
Saving all her work to a digi-drive, she took it to the small safe hidden behind her bookshelf, her fingers working the combination lock.
Old school, like the drive, so it couldn’t be hacked.
Inside the safe were backup drives containing every piece of evidence she'd gathered over months…
years of investigation. All insurance against corporate cleanup efforts, a legacy that would outlive her if they managed to put her down.
If something happened to her, the truth would survive.
Locking the safe, she headed back to her desk, already planning tomorrow's strategy. The corporate lawyers thought they were fighting a broken-down veteran with PTSD and delusions of persecution—another damaged soldier ranting about government conspiracies.
They had no idea what a tank commander could accomplish when she had nothing left to lose.