Kara froze. The voice was shredded, warped by static, but unmistakably human. And unmistakably dead . Corporal Mendez had been the squad leader. His body had been cold for thirty-six hours.

Kara Voss tapped the reinforced glass of the field terminal, watching the stubborn blue line refuse to move. Outside the depot’s plasti-steel walls, the alien jungle of Cygnus-7 hummed with a frequency that made her teeth ache. Inside, her only company was the low whine of the Astro 25 Mobile Depot—a portable command hub designed to re-tune, reprogram, and resurrect any compatible comms unit in the field.

The download bar flickered. 99.8%… 99.7%… It was regressing .

The download bar hung at 99.8%.

“Come on, you brick,” she muttered.

Not from the Depot’s speaker. From the radio .

“...echo tango zero... request dust-off... they’re inside the wire...”

The radio screamed. The Depot whispered, “R20.01.00 ready.”