Page 64 of Viking

I don’t remember how I keep going after that. We secure the base, clear the perimeter. Offices were hit, a possible intel breach, but we’re still verifying. I move on autopilot, my body a vessel of rage and grief. The base is ours again by dawn. The insurgents driven back, the fires mostly extinguished, the damage assessed.

Six KIAs.

The pain in my shoulder grows unbearable, but I don’t care. Not when Ryan’s body lies under a tarp, not when I failed to save him.

Medics finally drag me down, forcing me to sit. That’s when the world tilts, colors blurring. The last thing I see before blacking out is Ryan’s covered body, a stark silhouette against the burning wreckage.

***

I come to briefly in the med unit, pain crashing over me like a tidal wave. Voices shout, hands press down on me, trying to stabilize the bleeding. I hear someone say, “Shrapnel’s deep. We need to operate.”

I don’t care.

“Carter…is he…?” My voice is slurred, weak. They don’t answer.

When I wake up again, the sterile white of the medical bay blinds me. My shoulder is heavily bandaged, the burning pain dulled by drugs. But nothing numbs the hollow ache in my chest. I close my eyes, and all I see is Ryan’s face, the life fading from his eyes.

I survived. He didn’t.

And that truth hurts more than the shrapnel ever did.

FOB near the Spratly Islands

June 17, 2024

1015

Logan

I’m in the cockpit, and the world is burning.

The Raptor’s alarms scream in my ears, the canopy fractured like a spiderweb, cracks spreading with every second. Smoke fills the cockpit, thick and choking, but I can’t eject. My fingers are welded to the stick, muscles locked in place.

“Viking, break right!” Ryan’s voice crackles through the comms, urgent and sharp.

“I can’t—” My voice dies in my throat.

“Break right, James!”

I wrench the stick, but the jet doesn’t move. It plummets instead, the ground rushing up like it wants to swallow me whole. And then, suddenly, I’m not in the cockpit anymore.

I’m on the runway.

Ryan’s helmet is in my hands, heavy and slick with blood. His face stares back at me through the shattered visor—eyes lifeless, skin pale. I shake him, chest tightening with panic, but he doesn’t move. His body just slips through my fingers, falling to the ground with a sickening thud.

I scramble to catch him, but the tarmac melts beneath me, dragging me under like quicksand. When I claw my way back up, I’m not holding Ryan anymore.

It’s Lincoln.

His flight suit is charred, shredded from the explosion I couldn’t stop. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out. Just a hollow, gaping silence. I backpedal, heart pounding, but he follows—eyes burning, accusing.

“You were supposed to have my six,” he rasps, voice distorted like it’s coming through broken comms. “You let me die.”

“I tried—”

“You didn’t try hard enough.”

The words slam into me, and suddenly I’m in the crowd at an air show. The sun blazes down, the smell of jet fuel hanging heavy in the air. I scan the sky, searching, but the Raptors are gone. The stands are empty. The world is silent.