Misha glanced down, frowning slightly as if he’d forgotten about his injuries. He shrugged dismissively.

“I had to dig you out of the rubble,” he explained, as though it was nothing, as though he hadn’t damn near cut himself to ribbons to get to Riley. Misha waited until Riley had emptied the second glass before he came back with a careful, “What happened to you?”

There simply was no way to make this sound anything but ridiculous, so Riley copied Misha’s shrug and tried for nonchalance.

“I got body-snatched by an alien.”

McClane grumbled a protest.

“A sentient alien armor and weapons system,” Riley clarified. “Very sophisticated. Very unique. Very much a smartass. His name’s McClane.”

THIRTY-SEVEN

LEANDRA BUTLER had never been a coward, but as she walked down the drab corridor leading to the infirmary and a very unhappy general, she seriously considered a tactical retreat. Young would never know she’d been on her way to him. She could simply head back to her assigned lab, give him time to cool down, wait until he summoned her. It might’ve been the smartest thing to do. She wasn’t exactly in the man’s good graces after hitting him with the non-lethal edition of friendly fire. Of course, that was one of the reasons why she couldn’t turn tail. Like it or not, she owed him.

Leandra could tell herself her doubts in the general had been based on experience and rational considerations until the cows came home; fact was she’d been prejudiced against him. Didn’t matter that it was usually the other way round. She’d lost the high ground. She owed him; maybe an apology, certainly someone to yell at so he could vent, and somehow, between sliding over that file to him, burying the metaphorical hatchet in his back, and setting up camp in Fort Bliss—in command of the base unit, no less—Leandra had become the prime candidate for that.

The air seemed to grow thicker the closer she got to the infirmary. A medic walked out of a room looking somewhere between cowed and irritated, a sure sign the general was close by and his mood hadn’t improved since his arrival. She couldn’t blame him. Operation Ripley had blown up in their faces spectacularly. Young’s troops had taken heavy losses, and not because of the armor system. Young himself had been taken hostage, jumped out of a moving car, and slammed up against a light pole. There was going to be hell to pay and she was about to volunteer for a first taste.

“General Young?” she asked the medic, mostly to stall for a little more time.

“Get your ass in here, Lieutenant,” a deep voice bellowed from the inside of the room.

The medic gave her a pitying look. “Good luck, ma’am,” he murmured, and then he saluted and made tracks.