Chapter 8

Mal pulled the body of their communications officer over to him and yanked out the man’s radio. He kept his head low and his body pressed to the ground as he called into the handset for reinforcements. He yelled until his voice was raw, but all he got in return was static.

“Not a good place to get caught out in the open, sir.”

He glanced around the flat terrain, at the charred remains of the structures that had once stood in this valley. Nothing was whole; there weren’t even many trees to shelter beneath.

“I see that Zoe.” He shook the handset and exhaled a sigh of relief when a familiar voice came over it. He silenced them immediately with, “we need someone to drop a big, bad bomb about three clicks to the north east before they send us back to Earth-that-Was – in little bitty pieces!” Mal brushed the back of his hand against his forehead, wet with sweat and filthy with three days worth of dirt and blood.

He received confirmation, gave the order for his people to lay low and smiled with relief when he heard the familiar whine of a missile - he only hoped it was headed away from them instead of at them.

He lifted his head and glanced once more at the flattened and utterly destroyed buildings that littered the landscape, at the bodies lying barely recognizable beneath the rubble. As the missiles whirled overhead, he desperately hoped his men would not add to that body count.

Today was not a good day to die.

~*~

Simon had avoided Mai for most of the past week. It helped that their specialties didn’t really coincide that much, and that they seemed to work different days and different hours. Simon didn’t have time to think about her, he had a job to do, plans to execute, and at the same time had two children to love and support – even though they lived with his parents.

He finished typing commands into a nearby terminal, glanced around the room, and cut the connection. It wouldn’t do for anyone to look over his shoulder and see what he was doing. When finished,