Princess
Copyright© 2026 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 3: The Long Night
At 0347, she saw something that dropped her stomach into her boots. A fourth shape joined the three on the ridge—then a fifth. Then headlights briefly on the reverse slope before they were doused. The enemy was bringing up more men. And something else. Something with wheels.
She picked up the radio.
“Sector Four to Command. Sector Four to Command. Priority traffic.”
“Sector Four, this is Corporal Rodriguez. What is it now?”
“Rodriguez, I need you to wake the captain. I’m watching headlights on the Molar. I’m watching a vehicle come up the reverse slope. I believe it’s a technical with a mounted weapon. They are setting up for something large. You need to get Kowalski up right now.”
“Duncan. It’s almost four in the morning. The captain is asleep. The sergeant is asleep. I’m not waking either one of them because you think you saw a headlight.”
“I didn’t think I saw it. I saw it. Rodriguez—please.”
“Log it. File it in your report. Stand down.”
The radio clicked off.
Kirsti set the handset down very gently. Her hand was shaking—not with fear, but with something colder. She looked through her thermal scope at the ridge. Heat blooms, small and careful, masked beneath what looked like insulating blankets—but there. Eight signatures. Maybe nine. And behind them, lower on the slope, the square heat shape of a cooling engine.
She thought about the men on this base. She thought about Davies, who had called her sweetheart. She thought about Rodriguez, who had bet she would cry in the latrine. She thought about Robert Evans—twenty years old, from Tennessee, saving up to buy his mother a house. She thought about Captain Kowalski, who was tired and had a wife and two daughters back in Virginia. She thought about the fact that every single one of those men was about to wake up inside a kill zone.
Kirsti took her finger off the trigger guard. She placed it along the side of the receiver. She closed her eyes for three seconds. She opened them.
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