In a Time of Silence

Chapter 7

Caleb stared at the woman breathing raggedly in the medical cot with mixed feelings.

When his unit had been dispatched to make an exploratory incursion to gauge the Scav's strength, they had every intention of luring the savages out and retreating the second they felt too much pressure. Then, right as Sarg was about to give the order, gunfire broke out on the opposite side of the compound.

They watched for a minute to see what was going on, and would have done nothing to help if the lone gunman hadn't been so horrifyingly efficient. When it became clear she had drawn out the full strength of the clan and was doing significant damage, the Sarge ordered a full-scale attack on the Scav's now-exposed flank without marching orders from HQ.

Something that, as per usual, the whole unit paid for.

It had taken more than ten men to drag this woman off the Chieftess. When they got to the main lodge, they found the blonde, Charlotte, screaming and begging her to stop while she struggled to rip the dead woman's head off with her bare hands.

By the time they pulled her off the Chieftess, she'd almost managed to do it.

If she hadn't been preoccupied with overkilling the dead chieftess, Caleb wasn't sure they would have been able to restrain her at all. After seeing the damage she did to the Scavs, Caleb wasn't even sure they'd have survived.

He was told the woman's companions had surrendered peacefully. Charlotte and the sniper, Cain, were both being held in the brig for the time being.

Caleb had been assigned guard duty for their unconscious lunatic, Hawk. If the others were to be believed, Hawk was their leader, though Caleb had a hard time imagining the feral animal he'd seen that night leading anyone.

His mixed feelings came from the truth about his duties:
He wasn't standing guard to prevent Hawk from escaping. He was standing guard to prevent any of the men from offing her in her sleep.

Hawk had been captured wearing McMillan's armor. One of their younger scouts, and well loved by the others. The brass had tried to keep it secret but word got out and rumors surrounding it had spread.

Caleb neither knew if the woman was McMillan's killer nor cared. He was worried about the discord the woman's presence was sewing in the troops than about some misguided sense of justice.

If he had been the one giving the orders he'd have considered sacrificing the woman to his colleagues' egos just to keep the peace. Things had been tense since their arrival in this sector. The Scav presence was strong and wildlings like Hawk's little band, while few in number, were ferocious, and well adapted to asymmetrical warfare. A product in surviving in the wildlands like this.

They'd lost more men than they'd anticipated to traps and ambushes, and every step in this place they'd been dogged by the inhabitants.

While most of the troops felt disdain for anyone who would want to live so far outside of society, Caleb understood the sentiment. He played at sociability not from a place of liking or even giving a single shit about his compatriots, but from a place of preferring order to chaos. That said, it would bother him very little if he was alone in the wilds. People had no value to him at all save for creators of a comfortable hierarchy.

And the presence of this woman was threatening the stability of the one he currently occupied.

Caleb's eyes suddenly focused on Hawks chest. Had he detected a change in her breathing? Yes. It was slight, but there. She should be secured well, unable to move, but Caleb refused to take chances.

He drew his weapon and pointed it at her, "Open your eyes. I know you're awake. I have a gun on you, I do not miss, and cannot be startled."

Her startling icy gray eyes opened lazily and she turned her head slightly to face him, a smile more frigid than her eyes cracking her face.