Nameless

Chapter 1 - The Trafalgar Incident

Bri had her feet kicked up over the corner of Gib's hospital bed and her chair tilted on its hind legs while she stared at the five cards fanned in her left hand. She was about to lose again and she knew it. Knew it the way she knew Carver was about to fold and Gib was about to celebrate the umpteenth victory over his friends. They had been playing for hours. Once Gib was clear of surgery and they had been debriefed, they had all gathered in Gib's room to play cards and wait for the next assignment.

She had been losing most of it and the little pile of chips laid out on the blanket next to Gib's leg was getting smaller by the hand. But she didn't care. It was their second day keeping Gib company. And if he won a few games of poker, what did it matter? He was alive. As was Carver, who was sitting on the other side of the hospital bed, glancing back and forth between his own hand of cards and the dwindling pile of chips on his side.

Everyone had made it back. Gib was a little banged up, but he would be fine in a couple of days. And in a couple more, the three of them would be gone, on a new assignment. Orders had already come down, Bri had been briefed, alone, with orders not discuss the briefing or the upcoming assignment with anyone, even her own team.

"I fold. How many days did they say you had to stay in here?" Carver groaned and tossed his cards into the center of the bed.

"I get to leave tomorrow if everything keeps healing." Gib chuckled and threw a glance at Bri to see if she was going to fold too, but she only rolled her eyes and leaned a little further back in the chair, tilting it to the point where balance became difficult.

"The exo took most of the hit," Carver smiled like a predator as he moved the cards around, "but it doesn't look like I am going to get a new one anytime soon." He frowned.

It had been three days since they had arrived at Perseus a Forward Operating Base (FOB), along the frontier. Orbiting a massive asteroid, the Perseus station was little more than a few buildings and defenses mounted along an old mining station. It was small, and just far enough from the front lines that it was safe from Eather assaults.

One of the ten or so buildings on the platform had been transformed into a makeshift hospital - a metal rectangle cut into a hundred different little rectangles, some with real walls for things like surgery, the rest with just sonic walls to keep the sound down. Gib had been admitted for surgery and then assigned one of the recovery beds. It wasn't a private room, but the war was eating luxuries like private rooms along with everything else.

While staring at her cards, Bri thought back to the moment Gib had caught the Earther shell, his little scream as the pain rippled through him, and then him flying across the room.

It had been the luckiest shot she had ever seen. If Gib's SSG (static shield generator) hadn't fritzed, they wouldn't have even been in the hospital, but Gib had somehow banged the damn thing around enough upon ingress, that he had left a twelve-centimeter hole in his armor. Which he didn't even notice until some Earther PFC who happened be on watch, stumbled on them in the server room.

But it had been the Earther's lucky night. Three NewT soldiers in a closed room, one way in, one way out and all of them busy working on mission tasks. What more could he have asked for?

And what does this lucky, Private in the glorious Earther army do with this rare opportunity? What any Earther Private First Class would have done upon turning a corner and seeing the three of them in full tactical.

He panicked, pressed his battle rifle against his hip, closed his eyes, and let fly.

God, how that room had come to life.

Nothing like being hunkered down, tapping through computer code or sorting through database slices, quiet as mice, working away. And then all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose.