The hangar smelled of hydraulic fluid, grease, and stale, recycled air. It was a smell I had breathed for 1,095 days. It was the smell of anonymity.
Of patience. I was Sergeant Lana Thorne. Invisible.
Just another mechanic in grease-stained coveralls, qualified but quiet. The kind of person you look through, not at. And that was exactly how I needed it to be.
My world was the GAU-8 Avenger cannon, the 30mm heart of the A-10 Thunderbolt. I knew its systems better than I knew my own name—or at least, the name I used now. I was tightening a bolt on the feed synchronizer, my knuckles raw, my mind a million miles away, counting threats.
Then, the shadow. It fell over my workbench. I didn’t look up.
You don’t make eye contact when you’re hiding. You become small. You become part of the machinery.
But the shadow didn’t move. “Sergeant.”
I recognized the voice. Colonel Hargrove.
The base commander. A sharp man. Too sharp.
I’d been tracking his movements for weeks. He was an intel officer by trade. He saw things other people missed.
I kept my eyes on the bolt. “Sir.”
A beat of silence. He was just walking by, a routine inspection.
But he had stopped. Why had he stopped? “Your sleeve,” he said.
His voice was different. Taut. I glanced down.
My coverall sleeve, damp with solvent, had ridden up my forearm. And there it was. Exposed in the harsh hangar lights.
The black and silver insignia. A raven, wings spread, clutching a single, shattered talon. The mark of Operation Swift Talon.
My team. My family. Officially, that symbol didn’t exist.
Officially, the six people who wore it were ghosts, listed as Killed in Action, their bodies vaporized in a facility explosion in Sevastapole five years ago. I slowly, deliberately, pulled the sleeve down. But it was too late.
I could feel his eyes on me. I finally looked up. Colonel Hargrove’s face was bloodless.
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