He Called Her a Deserter, Then the General Said Her Callsign

They moved the confrontation from the gate to the command tent only after the wounded were stabilized and Rook had water under a handler’s supervision. I sat on a metal chair with a blanket over my shoulders, hands wrapped around a canteen, while Holt, Pruitt, and two intelligence officers reviewed the first pulled records.

I did not speak unless asked. Not because I had nothing to say. Because I had learned in the valley that energy spent wrong could cost lives.

The logs did not take long to become ugly.

A route update had been transmitted through a secure channel minutes before the ambush. The extraction request had been delayed. The MIA classification had been pushed forward with unusual speed. A gate security instruction had flagged any unidentified survivor from that sector as “possible compromised personnel.”

That last line carried Thorn’s authorization code.

Pruitt placed the printout on the table.

Thorn, now standing without his earlier confidence, said, “I followed protocol.”

Holt looked at him. “You wrote the protocol for this incident.”

“I had reason to believe the team was compromised.”

“You had reason,” I said, voice rough, “because you compromised it.”

Everyone looked at me.

I reached into the torn pocket of my tactical pants and pulled out a sealed data card wrapped in medical tape. It had been hidden beneath Rook’s harness for thirty-two kilometers.

Thorn’s eyes widened.

There it was. The fear I had been waiting to see.

Holt took the data card with care. “What is this?”

“Drone fragment telemetry. Radio capture. Partial call sign. Enough to explain why they knew our route.”

Thorn whispered, “You couldn’t have known what it meant.”

“No,” I said. “But Rook knew who smelled like the valley when we reached the gate.”

Rook lifted his head from across the tent.