Rhodes surveyed what was left of his battalion now that Henshaw was gone.

Dr. Osborne had woken up Coulter, Rhinehart, Oakes, Lauer, Dietz, Fuentes, and Thackery one after the other.

None of them had any problem interfacing with each other or each other’s SAMs. None of them malfunctioned at all the way they did before.

Henshaw’s death cast a cloud over the group. They’d gotten even more serious than they were before if that was possible.

Dr. Osborne had woken up Thackery only yesterday—just in time for the battalion to return to Coleridge Station.

Rhodes couldn’t imagine why the Legion even bothered to bring the battalion back here. He and his people were scheduled to run training sessions to test that all their SAMs’ modifications were holding and the battalion could still function normally.

The battalion could have done that on board the Ero. They didn’t need to come back to Coleridge Station for that, but no one consulted Rhodes on these decisions. No one consulted him about much of anything these days.

This whole trip had been one long delay. The Legion brass and the Battalion 1 governing body would decide sooner or later that the battalion was ready to go back into combat.

Then they would have to make another return trip to face the Masks. It was only a matter of time.

Rhodes really didn’t care anymore. He could wait as long as it took. Another delay just gave him one more day to spend with his friends in the privacy of their personal capsule hold.

Henshaw’s death brought them closer together. No one talked about bumping off Dietz even though they were all thinking it. No one mentioned him killing Henshaw even though her absence offered a stark reminder every minute of the day.

For some sick reason, the Ero crew didn’t remove her capsule after her death. They left it sitting there as some kind of monument.

She wasn’t the first member of the battalion to die and she certainly wouldn’t be the last. Maybe the crew thought or Dr. Osborne or some other genius thought they could reuse the capsule for the next poor schmuck who got roped into this circus.

Rhodes tried not to think like that, but he got another reminder when he returned to the Coleridge Station barracks. All of Henshaw’s wooden carvings still sat on the shelf where she left them. Even the unfinished ones were there.

Rhodes wished now that he could go through the station and ask everyone to give back the carvings she’d passed out to the station personnel.

He would have liked to display all her carvings on the barracks bookshelf. Henshaw wouldn’t get any other memorial anywhere else.

He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t disturb her sleeping ghost by asking anyone to give back her carvings. If they cared enough to keep them, the carvings were better off with the people to whom she’d given them.

Now he faced his first training session without her. He didn’t let himself feel anything about that.

Thackery, Coulter, and Fuentes were feeling enough for the whole battalion. Oakes, Lauer, and Rhinehart kept their expressions as impassive and apathetic as possible.

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Coulter tried to do the same thing and failed. Thackery and Fuentes didn’t try. They kept grimacing and writhing in despair.

Dietz pretended not to notice anyone’s reaction. He breezed through every day, talked as though Henshaw was still alive, and went about his business.

Rhodes couldn’t exactly blame him. What exactly was Dietz supposed to do—fall on his sword because he malfunctioned?

Rhodes no longer cared if a real malfunction caused Henshaw’s death or not. What the hell difference did it make in the end?

He needed one more person in this battalion. He needed everyone who could shoot and that meant Dietz.

Rhodes himself could have killed both Oakes and Lauer during that malfunction. Then the battalion really would have been screwed.

Rhodes refused to think about that. “Are you all ready to go?” he asked.

Everyone nodded. Rhinehart said, “Yes, Sir,” and the group dropped into The Grid in their old training room.

Rhodes wasn’t at all surprised when they wound up on Bao fighting the Masks. The whole point of this was to test the SAMs in battle against the Masks—to see if the SAMs could fight the Masks.

The whole training session played out the same way it did last time. The battalion soared up to the Kuestrian Ridge and joined the 249th.

The only difference was that a horde of Masks filled the valley below instead of Emal.

The Masks made better progress than the Emal. They advanced higher up the hillsides and it took more Legion firepower to knock the Masks down.

They didn’t fall down as far. They got up quicker and climbed higher still. They kept advancing no matter what the platoons did.

Rhodes waved his people forward. This was a training session. It wasn’t real.

Did knowing that affect how the SAMs reacted? He didn’t have time to decide before the Masks rotated their weapons upward toward the battalion and opened fire.

Rhodes changed his grid lines into a Striker, raced over the Masks’ heads, and unloaded his Vipers on them. He bombarded the ground troops and even targeted their invasion ships in the air.

Seeker missiles, scourge gun blasts, and more lasers from the rest of the battalion flashed around the landscape. Some of Rhodes’s Vipers exploded against the enemy vessels.

Those blazing fireballs lit up the battlefield as far as Rhodes could see. He kept soaring back and forth over the enemy position to take out as many Masks as he could.

“What’s our objective?” Oakes asked from somewhere.

Rhodes checked The Grid to find out where his people were and how they were fighting the enemy, but at that moment, The Grid evaporated.

The whole battalion fell out of the Bao landscape, switched back into The Grid with the green lines and black squares, and just as fast, that disappeared and they went back to the white training room.

“Um…what the hell just happened?” Rhinehart snapped.

“The Battalion 1 governing body is calling you to a meeting, Captain,” Fisher reported.

“Right now?!” Lauer snapped. “What the hell!”

Rhodes threw up his hands. “I guess I just have to find out what they want.”

“It better not be the order to deploy when we haven’t even tested our SAMs.”

“I’ll tell the governing body that we aren’t ready.”

“I’m sure they’ll be receptive to that,” Wild muttered out the side of his mouth.

“I at least have to go see what they want,” Rhodes replied. “I guess you can all go back to the barracks.”

“You mean…just…leave?” Rhinehart made a face. “What a waste of a perfectly good training session.”

“It will still be there when we come back.” Rhodes turned away. “I better get this over with.”

“I hope this isn’t an order to deploy,” Fisher remarked on their way down the corridor. “We’re nowhere near ready for that. Even the governing body must realize that—what with Henshaw’s body barely cold.”

“She died on a Ravager out in space—hundreds of lightyears away from them,” Rhodes replied. “I’m sure her death is the least of their concerns.”

“Well, it’s the greatest of ours—or mine at least.”

Rhodes found himself smiling at his SAM. “That’s because you’re much smarter than they are. You should be in charge of Battalion 1.”

“There would be no Battalion 1 if I was,” Fisher murmured.

Rhodes laughed. “That’s why you’re smarter than they are. Would you like to do the talking today? I’ll stand aside and listen the way you do.”

“Very funny, Captain. The governing body can’t hear me.”

“I’m sure Dr. Osborne could arrange some kind of interface—if you really want to.”

“I don’t want to. You can take it on the chin for the whole battalion.”

Rhodes sighed. “So what else is new?”

End of Chapter 33.