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That was progress. Real, hard-fought, legitimate progress. Weeks of Patrick forcing them to be together, forcing them to be nice to each other, forcing them to push themselves through pain and fear, and showing them he had their back and that they could have each other’s, too. Fast-paced military trauma bonding at its finest. Listening to Bar’in tell Sazahk where to put his long fingers on a rifle for the fiftieth time, Patrick knew it was working.
It was working. But was it working fast enough?
Patrick’s ass still hurt from how viciously Yal’rest had chewed it out twenty minutes ago and his pride still hurt from how public the upbraiding had been. He’d been keeping his team out of the official training for the Trial and Yal’rest had had his ass for it in front of every other officer at the meeting that evening.
And he wasn’t all wrong. Maybe he wasn’t wrong at all. The Trial was in a week and his team wasn’t ready for it.
But Patrick refused to throw his team to the wolves. Yal’rest could do and say whatever he wanted to Patrick. Patrick had heard it all for decades. But he wouldn’t let Yal’rest get at Bar’in or Tar or Sazahk or, God forbid, Fal’ran. He wouldn’t let his asshole general tear them down. Not until he was sure they were strong enough to take it.
And he would not let them get pissed on by all the other squads that had been told it was open season on Squad M. The top set the tone, and the top had said in no uncertain terms that Squad M was made up of fuckups and embarrassments.
But damn it all if Patrick was going to let anyone treat his men like that. He was their leader. That meant he was their shit umbrella, and he took that seriously.
But what if he was wrong?
He heard a low rumble from inside the tent and a loud, pained snarl from Fal’ran— “Fuck you, Tar, fuck you”—and he smiled. That was the sound of a man lifting to muscle failure and as clearly as he saw Bar’in arranging Sazahk’s pale fingers on a gun he saw Tar leaning over Fal’ran on the weight bench and telling him to do another rep as Fal’ran forced the barbell over his chest one more time.
God, he was so fucking proud of them.
They weren’t ready for the Trial and the Trial was coming and Patrick was hesitating. And, to himself, as he lurked outside the tent, he admitted it was at least partly because he wasn’t sure what he wanted.
Their performance in the Trial would determine their assignments and placements in the field. If they failed, it would confirm the narrative forced on his teammates—and fuck, himself—from the beginning: that they were worthless and always would be. But if they succeeded, they’d end up on the front lines. And if Patrick didn’t think they were ready for the Trial, how was he supposed to think they were ready for war?
He remembered the Insects. The horrible clicking, the swarm, the way they’d moved, the way his team’s bullets had ricocheted off their shiny black armor plates. He didn’t relish the idea of sending his squad into battle with them.
“Smith!”
Patrick jumped as Bar’in’s voice snapped out of the tent and broke him out of his thoughts.
“We can smell you out there, you know. Are you coming in or what?”
The back of Patrick’s neck heated as he ducked into the tent. He hoped Bar’in didn’t smell his sentimentality as well, but he suspected that not much escaped Bar’in’s keen nose.
Waving his data tablet in front of himself, he let the tent flap fall shut behind him, but the words dried on his tongue. His gaze tracked to Fal’ran stretched out over the weight bench as though magnetized. He eyed his excellent lifting form with a pulse of pride, which was appropriate, and a pulse of arousal, which was not. Fal’ran’s glanced at him and, with a final grunt of effort, forced the bar up over his chest, where Tar pulled it back onto the hooks before Fal’ran’s shaking arms gave out.
Patrick dragged his gaze away and waved his data tablet again. “I just needed to finish checking on a few things. We got some news from Qeshian Intelligence today.”
“What news?” Sazahk blindly shoved the rifle back at Bar’in, who grabbed it before it dropped and rolled his eyes. “Can I see?”
“You’re our scientist,” Patrick agreed with a shrug and passed his data tablet over to Sazahk. There was nothing embarrassing on there and he doubted Sazahk would have eyes for anything other than news on the Insects, anyway. Though, as he had told them all multiple times, he refused to call them that until there was some evidence that they had any sort of evolutionary relationship to actual bugs.
Tar racked the barbell above Fal’ran’s head with a heavy clang and Fal’ran sat up, sweat glistening over his shoulders, breathing hard but not near as hard as when he’d first arrived on Klah. “News about the In—” Fal’ran raised his hands in surrender when Sazahk shot him a look “—about the uncatalogued sentient species invading our sector?”
“We don’t know that they’re invading.” Sazahk waved a finger at him as he hunched over Patrick’s data screen.
“Well, they’re here and they weren’t invited, so…” Bar’in shrugged and sat on the edge of his cot with the rifle he’d been trying to teach Sazahk to hold. He had gun cleaning supplies spread out over his blanket and Patrick smiled to see him lovingly dissembling his weapon. Bar’in had taken to sniping like a duck to water. That he had an affinity for precision shots intended to kill was not surprising to any of them.
“So, what was the news?” Fal’ran pressed again, waving down Bar’in’s snarky expression. He moved off the weight bench and let Tar take his place.
Sazahk spoke before Patrick, his voice falling. “The uncatalogued species discovered one of the Qeshian sleeper agents.”
“Fuck,” Fal’ran sighed and bent to pick up another plate to stick on the barbell for Tar.
“And killed him?” Bar’in didn’t look up from stuffing a pipe cleaner down his rifle barrel, but even his flippant voice had a tightness in it.
“And killed him, yeah, but that’s not the most troubling news.” Patrick grabbed another plate and slipped it onto the end of the barbell across from Fal’ran.
The Qesh had identified the lurking threat of the Insects earlier than any of the other species states. The Humans and the Klah’Eel had been more concerned with the territorial squabbling over Tava, and even the Qesh had gotten complacent with their own defense. By the time they’d realized there were strange, unidentified ships flying under the radar throughout the sector, there were already too many for them to track.
