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And just that quickly, the war kicked her in the teeth again. God forbid she actually relish in a win. Olivia snapped off her gloves and turned away, fighting the building tide of desolation inside her. They fought and fought and fought, and it wasn’t enough to save them all. She knew that. It hadn’t taken long for her rose-colored glasses to shatter and drift away on the desert wind.

Tears filled her eyes as she moved to the sink to do a proper cleanup, but she refused to let them fall. Tears didn’t do anyone any good. She scrubbed and scrubbed, using a brush to get underneath her nails. Yes, they wore gloves, but she still managed to get grime underneath. The pain was good. It gave her a focus.

“Guess what I found,” a bubbly voice said, even as her body was hip bumped.

Baylee Mitchell had the effervescent joy of a child, and she was one of the few bright spots in this hellish place. They’d enlisted at the same time and went through training together. They’d also been deployed at the same time, and Olivia was so glad to have her friend there with her.

Those tears filled her eyes again at just seeing Baylee’s dry, mask-reddened, smiling face. Her honey blond hair was up in one of her haphazard buns, giving her a lopsided look.

“Oh, honey,” Baylee cooed, pulling her close for a hug. “It was bad today, I know, but Trent has decided not to send anyone out for a while. We’re fortifying our defenses and hunkering down.”

“That sounds ominous,” she murmured, just as another blast rocked the building. Why hadn’t the Centurion caught that?

Orderlies were cleaning up the mess from the multiple surgeries they’d just done, but sand was raining down. It was one of the hardest parts of their jobs, dealing with the sand.

The glint of laughter had left Baylee’s bright green eyes, and her chapped lips went flat. “I think we’re in trouble, Liv.”

As if her words were a premonition, another blast rocked the base, almost knocking them off their feet. Chunks of rock and other debris rained down on the roof, and Olivia instinctively braced her arm over her head. That had hit inside the wall! “The patients,” she breathed.

Baylee had already turned and run out the door, even as an alarm blared. There was a recovery bay where the patients who had been through surgery were monitored. Anesthesia took a while to wear off, and sometimes there were issues, so nurses had to monitor their vitals closely just in case they crashed. As they turned the corner into the adjoining tent, Baylee cried out. Part of the tent was fluttering in the wind and the heat of the fire blazing within it. People were scrambling to move gurneys, but so many of them were hooked up to machines. One patient on the far side of the room was alone, his linens burning on top of him. Thank God he was unconscious and couldn’t feel it.

Olivia ran across the tent and tried to smother the flames with a blanket. Reaching to the wall behind him, she turned off the oxygen valve. “Turn off the oxygen,” she screamed to the burning room, before turning back to the smoking man.

Nurses in sand-colored uniforms and blue scrubs immediately moved and cranked valves, and she prayed they did it in the other recovery tent as well. Oxygen could be temperamental in a structured setting, let alone a war zone. They didn’t need any explosions inside the base.

The patient didn’t move as she cleared the embers from his body and shoved his gurney toward the door. If they could get them into the surgical ward, it had more structural reinforcement than these tents.

Rex, the only male nurse they had, grabbed her wrist in a hard grip. “Liv, I need your help.”

She turned and saw that the patient on his gurney was rousing from anesthesia, and he was fighting the ventilator. Since they’d turned off the oxygen, Rex had been breathing for him with a vent bag and trying to push him out of the burning tent at the same time. Baylee saw the issue and reached for Olivia’s gurney. “I’ll take your guy. You help Rex.”

The patient was thrashing on the bed, his eyes wide open with fear. Apparently, his body had reacted with a huge surge of adrenalin to what was going on around him. Enough to rouse him from the lingering grogginess. Normally, the staff made sure the patient recovered from the anesthesia, then they removed the vent once they proved they could breathe on their own. This guy was trying to rip his vent out.

She caught the Marine’s eyes as she leaned over him. “You need to chill out. We’re going to remove it, but we have to do it carefully. Do you understand?”

He blinked rapidly, but his hand lowered to the mattress. Despite the madness they had going on around them, she and Rex removed the tube from the man’s throat, then watched carefully as he coughed and began breathing on his own.

“His name is Ryan Dickson,” Rex told her, flinging the tubing away and moving behind the gurney to push it out of the burning tent.

The chaos of the moment hit her then. They were extubating a patient in the middle of a fucking burning tent…

As they passed through the doorway, soldiers came through with fire extinguishers, but she had a feeling the tent was a loss.

There was a backup in the hallway to the surgical building. Too many gurneys and equipment and not enough space. What the hell were they going to do? If the surgical building got hit…

Colonel Trent materialized out of the smoke and began screaming out orders. The mass of Marines and medical personnel began shifting to do as he bid.

“The Centurions are working as designed,” he called in his deep voice, “but we all know the system can’t catch everything being thrown at us. We’re okay. Care for your patients and know that we’re doing everything we can to protect the base.”

Baylee was right beside her, and she snorted. “You know, I like Trent, but he sounds like he’s worried.”

Olivia nodded, shuffling forward with her unconscious patient. “I thought so too.”

Eventually, by removing a lot of equipment, they were able to get most of the patients into the more secure surgical area. Hesco bastions were stacked around this building, in addition to the perimeter fence, so it was one of the more secure locations on Nightshade, but there wouldn’t be a lot of protection if something landed on them from overhead, like the tent.

Even as they were settling the patients, the barrage of small arms fire continued outside.

“Why won’t they just get tired of shooting at us?” Baylee demanded, a little petulantly. “It’s been more than twenty-four hours…”