“She’s asking for the telemetry logs, Dan,” Harris said, keeping his voice low, though it vibrated with unmistakable tension. “One of her hospital liaisons caught her trying to access the post-incident network using a borrowed terminal in rehab yesterday morning. She’s looking for the Orion unit’s internal crash dump.”
Maya held her breath. The pain in her lower back flared, a blinding white heat, but she didn’t twitch.
Her father didn’t flinch. He didn’t drop his head or display the sorrow that had glistened in his eyes for the cameras only three minutes ago. His face was cold, flat, carved from stone.
“She’s not stable, Tom,” Daniel said, his tone devoid of any fatherly warmth. “The physical trauma was catastrophic. The cocktail of analgesics and ketamine they gave her in field triage has clearly altered her perception of the sequence of events. She’s not thinking clearly. She’s seeing things that simply aren’t there.”
“She’s an Annapolis graduate with a flawless tactical record, Daniel,” Harris replied, though there was no defense of Maya in his tone, only cold calculation. “If she starts talking to the board of inquiry about system degradation before the primary ambush, the Orion contract is dead in the water. We have twenty-two billion dollars allocated for the second procurement phase next quarter. If the Senate Armed Services Committee smells a hardware defect tied to six fatalities, they won’t just freeze the program. They’ll pull audits on the testing trials we signed off on three months ago.”
Daniel took a step closer to Harris. His eyes narrowed, and when he spoke, the ice in his voice chilled Maya down to her marrow.
“I know what is at stake,” Daniel said quietly. “My daughter served honorably. She has her medal, and she will have a medical pension that will support her for the rest of her life. But I will not allow the erratic delusions of a traumatized junior officer to derail thirty years of military advancement or compromise our strategic readiness. She is becoming a liability.”
*A liability.*
The words did not just hurt; they severed whatever thread of childhood reverence Maya had clung to through the hell of her deployment. Her father had always been demanding. He had expected top marks at the Academy, had demanded stoicism when she broke her collarbone in plebe summer, had treated her entire life as an audition for his own personal legacy. But she had believed, foolishly, that somewhere underneath the starch and ribbons, he was still the man who had taught her how to set an anchor in Chesapeake Bay.
He was not that man. Perhaps he never had been.
“What are you going to do?” Harris asked.
“Dr. Morrison at Bethesda is drafting an evaluation,” Daniel replied smoothly. “Severe combat fatigue complicated by traumatic brain injury and reactive paranoia. In forty-eight hours, she’ll be transferred to a restricted psychological recovery ward at Fort Meade. No personal devices, no outside visitors without flag-level clearance. She will rest, she will take her medication, and the review board will ratify the official after-action report without interference.”
“And the telemetry?”
“The black box burned in the vehicle,” Daniel said without blinking. “Accidental detonation of secondary munitions destroyed all internal memory modules. That is the official finding. It’s already been submitted to the Secretary’s desk.”
Maya leaned back into the chair, her chest heaving silently. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Her father had rewritten the deaths of her friends with a stroke of a pen.
Corporal Torres. Sergeant Miller. Specialist Vance. Lieutenant Evans. Hospitalman Davis. Private First Class Jenkins.
They weren’t casualties of an unavoidable tactical catastrophe. They were sacrifices tossed into the furnace to keep a flawed defense program alive and protect the men who had approved it.
The footsteps in the hallway shifted. Maya quickly spun her wheels, gliding back to the foot of the hospital bed just as the door clicked open.
Daniel walked in alone. He had already slipped the mask back on. The hard, calculating predator from the hallway vanished, replaced by the loving father checking on his wounded hero.
He walked over to the bed, reached down, and gently lifted the thick, navy-blue fleece blanket with the embroidered gold anchor that had slipped off her knees. He draped it carefully over her paralyzed legs, tucking the edges beneath her thighs with deliberate, rhythmic motions.
“You should be in bed, Maya,” he said softly, looking down at her with a gentle, patronizing smile. “The doctors said sitting upright for more than thirty minutes puts undue pressure on the spinal fusion. You need to be sensible.”
