Page 1 of The Monster's Daughter
CHAPTER 1
BELLA
The first explosion rattles my teeth so hard I nearly swallow my tongue. The sky above us is on fire—orange blossoms of plasma blooming against a backdrop of gray stormclouds and greasy smoke. Starfighters scream overhead, streaks of burning blue tearing across the sky. Somewhere in the distance, a mech bellows as it tramples buildings like they’re made of sand and not reinforced steel. The whole world smells like blood, cordite, and burning ozone.
I drag my pack tighter on my shoulders as the dropship shakes beneath enemy fire. “Well,” I mutter, mostly to myself but loud enough for my team to hear, “who’s ready for a day at the beach?”
“Shut up, Bella,” Koren says, clutching the straps of his kit so tight his knuckles have gone white. He looks like a rabbit about to bolt.
“Hey, it’s all palm trees and cocktails out there,” I say, raising my voice as the ship lurches hard. “Don’t be such a pessimist.”
The ramp drops before he can respond, and the world outside roars at us.
We hit the dirt running. My boots sink ankle-deep in mud, sucking me down with every step. Artillery thunders from theridgeline, the ground shaking so bad I nearly face-plant. The air is thick with ash that burns my throat raw.
“Medic team, spread!” I bark. My voice cuts through the chaos, sharp as glass. We scatter across the killing field. Bodies are everywhere—some screaming, some not moving at all.
Koren stops dead, his face pale under the grime. “There’s too many. We can’t—we can’t save all of them?—”
I grab him by the collar, yanking his face to mine. “Pick one,” I snap. “Pick one and start working. That’s how you save who you can. You freeze up, they all die.”
He stammers, eyes wide, but something in my glare must land, because he nods and stumbles toward a Brall soldier with a chest wound.
I turn and drop to my knees beside a Vakutan soldier whose arm is nothing but shredded meat hanging by a tendon. He’s still breathing, wheezing through a chest plate riddled with holes.
“Hold still, big guy,” I mutter, already pulling the dermal regenerator from my belt. “You’re not dying today. I don’t have the patience for it.”
His eyes snap open—yellow and furious. He rakes his claws down my shoulder, shredding fabric and skin. The pain is a white-hot line that makes my stomach flip. I grit my teeth and glare at him. “You wanna bleed out, or you wanna walk out? Your call.”
He stills, trembling, maybe from blood loss, maybe from rage. I don’t care which. I slap a sealant over the shredded stump, the regenerator hissing as it knits charred flesh together. He groans, body jerking under my hands, but I don’t stop.
“Yeah, yeah, I know it hurts. Scream into the dirt, not at me.”
When it’s done, I slap a patch on my own shoulder with the other hand, not even pausing. The wound sears shut with a hiss. “There,” I mutter, standing as drones begin hauling the Vakutan away. “You’ll live to punch somebody else tomorrow.”
I scan the field. It’s bad. Worse than bad. Bodies everywhere, the stench of death crawling into my nostrils until I taste it on my tongue. My team is spread thin, stim packs dwindling, and the screaming—it never stops. It drills into my skull like it’s going to live there forever.
I shove two caffeine stims under my tongue, bitter and sharp as battery acid, then sprint to the next soldier. My voice is hoarse from barking orders. “Patch his lung! Keep pressure—don’t let it collapse!” “You, on the Brall—tourniquet high, dammit,high! If you can’t see daylight through it, you’re not done!”
The world narrows to triage and fury. Run. Patch. Seal. Shout. Repeat.
When the smoke clears a little, the Alliance heavy mech is a burning carcass in the distance, its screams silenced. The Coalition is routed. The Alliance barely holds. Thousands dead for a few meters of ground.
I collapse against a crater rim, sweat stinging my eyes, and look up at the ruin of Lurax looming against the horizon. Once a jewel of the planet. Now a jagged skeleton of twisted towers and burning glass.
A runner finds me, mud caked up to his thighs. “Senjak!” he shouts. “Command says you’re to move with a squad into Lurax—lost contact with a company inside the ruins.”
Of course they did. My stomach knots, a coil of dread tightening in my gut. But my mouth opens and out comes sarcasm. “Oh, good. I was just thinking how much I missed sightseeing tours.”
The runner doesn’t laugh. Figures.
The march into Lurax is worse than the battlefield.
The escorts are Alliance soldiers, all swagger and rifles too big for their brains. They move like they’re already drunk on victory, or maybe just high on adrenaline. One smirks at me aswe cross the shattered streets. “Stay close, sweetheart. Wouldn’t want you getting lost.”
I give him a flat look. “Sweetheart’s what I call people I like. You’re not even in the top fifty.”
His buddy snorts, but the smirk just widens. “Spicy. Bet you’re a handful.”
