Chapter 4

THE THREE COATS covering Madlyn, or "Mad" as everyone called her, weren't enough. She could feel the freezing wind of the ice planet Frigidum as it swept right through them and bit at her skin.

The weight of the pack on her back and the rifle in her arms did nothing to help. Mad was exhausted, but she wasn't about to admit it to her traveling companions, fellow United Revolutionaries like herself who had the unfortunate job of being stationed here on Frigidum.

She couldn't remember how long she had been walking in the ankle-deep snow, but it felt longer than any patrol she had been a part of. When Mad had joined up a year earlier, she had envisioned fighting heroically against the tyranny of the New Human Sovereignty, taking down major bases and liberating entire planets. Instead she was patrolling the wastes of a frozen hell.

Mad had been told by an undercover recruiter that Frigidum was an important planet to the Revolution due to its enormous reserves of oil and natural resources, so she assumed most of the action was there. Nope. There was nothing on Frigidum except snow, ice, and a lot of spare time. She spent most of that time disassembling and reassembling her rifle, her pistol, and her will to stay with the Revolution.

She judged herself to be roughly nineteen years old (nobody kept an intergalactic standard calendar) and constantly worried over her messy strawberry blond hair (nobody kept a comb either) when she had the time. Normally, Revolutionary soldiers would keep their hair close-cropped, but the biting cold of Frigidum convinced most of the soldiers to let their hair grow out for maximum warmth.

Mad was the only woman in a squad full of many, many young men. She tried to keep track of how many times she was flirted with every day, but she usually lost count. She always made a show of tucking a knife under her pillow in the barracks before bunking down each night, just to let her squadmates know if they tried any funny business that fingers would most definitely be lost.

Mad went on patrol every day without voicing complaint and had earned the squad leader, Hack's, respect by doing so. Half the men on the squad whined when he'd ordered them to clear freshly fallen snow from the home base's main entrance. Mad did no such thing, striving to work twice as hard as the others, despite the cold. As a reward, Hack had recently promoted her to second in command, which lightened the load of flirtation considerably, though a few determined squadmates persisted.

"Hey Mad," called a voice somewhere behind her in the patrol line, "I've got an extra ration with your name on it if you give me a kiss!"

Mad almost reflexively extended her middle finger in the air, drawing hoots from the direction of the call.

Hack chuckled in front of her, his gray beard swaying in the ever-present wind. "Will they ever get tired of that nonsense?"

Mad smiled tiredly. "I don't think so, sir."

Hack chuckled again. "I suppose that's true. What we need here are men and women like you. Good workers, soldiers to the bone. Instead we have a bunch of rowdy boys."

"Don't say that, sir. I'm sure once we've seen a little combat they'll straighten themselves out."

"Suppose you're right, but I hope they never have the chance to see it. Once upon a time, I was like them. Until this."

He turned to face Mad and pointed to the eye patch covering the scar earned during the Coalition-Sovereignty War.

"You got that in battle, sir?" Mad asked sarcastically. "I thought you got it in a freak shaving accident."

Hack laughed and turned back around. "I sure wish I did. Then I would've kept my innocence."

"Yes, sir."

The patrol continued in relative silence for a long span of time. Some of the youngest men still joked and snickered towards the back of the line, but otherwise the whistle of the wind was the only sound keeping the soldiers company.

Mad noted a ridge rising out of the snow to the squad's left, and although it seemed like the many other irregularities in the vast plains of snow before her, something about it tickled the back of her mind. She turned fully to get a better look at the ridge, nearly jumping out of her skin as she saw a small black streak race across the hilltop and disappear.

"Sir," she said to Hack, realizing her voice had taken an instinctive whisper, "that hill. Somethingª"

"Saw it," he whispered back, his good eye narrowed and steady. "Ready your rifle. Pass it down."

"Ready rifles," Mad whispered to the man behind her, Taps Cobb. He wasn't much older than Mad, and that was all she knew about him. Of all the squad members, Cobb was one of the few who had never bothered to hit on her. "Keep it quiet. Pass it down."

Mad chambered a round as quietly as she could and braced the butt of her rifle against her shoulder, scanning the area. Her throat burned with a sinking feeling she couldn't shake. Something was here on Frigidum. And it wasn't friendly.