SHE FELT A BEAD of sweat trickle down her back, while others formed ready to soak her shirt beneath her encounter suit. The overwhelming urge was to scratch at the irritation from the carbon that leached out from the suit, but she couldn’t. Couldn’t primarily because of the overly large rubber gloves covering her hands, hands that rested lightly either side of the communications rig, waiting. Waiting for a signal. A word. Anything that would tell her what was happening in her own little sphere of the war.
She had not taken her eyes from the leader board in over ten minutes, concentrating on the ever changing data as the text flipped over relaying the alarming truth of their situation. The battle was not going well. Four squadrons had flown out in the early hours of the morning to engage the enemy, through the thick fog that covered the tiny hamlet. The base lay hidden, nestled in the sheltering cover of trees. All but the runway that is. That thin ribbon of concrete that gave away their position as surely as a lit beacon flashing, ‘look we’re here’.
THERE WAS NO LIGHT. That was precious knowledge. The realization of which had cost her more than she would have thought possible. If she had but known.
