Page 18 of Duty and Desire
Ros's voice came through, tight but relieved. “Good work, Captain. Hold your position until the reinforcements arrive.And, Bennett”—er voice softened, just for a moment—“be careful.”
Scarlett felt a smile tug at her lips despite everything. “Always, General.”
She lowered her weapon slightly, her eyes still scanning the street. She knew this wasn’t over, but for now, they had won this round.
Monitors lining the room flickered with incoming information. Troop and enemy locations alike were indicated by colored dots moving across the map in a flashing game of cat and mouse.
Each time the dots would collide, Ros’s heart would stop. Every crackle of gunfire that echoed across the radios had her head spiraling, conjuring image after image of Scarlett laid out on the frozen ground, her life blood seeping into the snow. Never to return. Never to be held in her arms or sleep in her bed again.
The chaos of the control room was nothing new to Ros; it was her life’s work, after all. But today? Today, her mind would not focus. She usually had no fear for her soldiers. Concern, yes, but now fear gripped her heart in its iron-like vice. Her focus should have been razor sharp, as it always was during operations like this. She knew the stakes and had been trained to manage the weight of command under the most extreme conditions. But today, her mind was fractured, unable to push past the gnawing fear that had taken root deep inside her.
Scarlett was out there in the thick of it, countering the insurgents who had overrun the nearby town. Ros had assigned her to the mission knowing full well the dangers. Scarlett had insisted, her resolve unshakable, and Ros, bound by duty andprofessionalism, had no grounds to refuse. Scarlett was one of the best, and Ros knew it.
Ros tried to push the thoughts away, tried to drown them in the chaos of the command center. But they kept resurfacing, stronger each time, pulling her deeper into a spiraling pit of dread. She couldn’t allow this; shecouldn’tlet her emotions compromise the mission. Lives depended on her clarity and decisions.
She forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Reports were coming in from the frontlines detailing the insurgents’ movements. Ros moved to the map, studying the shifting patterns, the ebb and flow of the battle. She began issuing orders, directing reinforcements to where they were needed most, coordinating air support, and guiding troops through the maze of streets where the fighting was most intense.
But every time she gave an order, her mind circled back to Scarlett. Was she safe? Was she pinned down? Was she hurt? The questions battered at her relentlessly until they drowned out everything else.
“General Carson, we need your approval on the airstrike coordinates,” one of the officers said, snapping Ros out of her thoughts. She blinked, trying to pull herself back to the present, to the here and now.
“Send them to me,” Ros replied, her voice betraying none of the turmoil raging inside her.
She stared at the map, at the cluster of dots representing insurgents in the town square. She knew what she needed to do, knew the risks, but her thoughts kept drifting back to Scarlett. “General,” the officer pressed, “we need those coordinates now.”
Ros looked at the screen, the coordinates blurring as her mind split between duty and dread. She nodded, finally issuing the command, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Then it happened. A sudden, jarring crackle over the radio—a voice calling out for backup, urgent and strained. Ros's heart seized. She recognized the voice. It was one of Scarlett’s team members. The words were muddled, barely coherent over the noise of gunfire, but the desperation was clear.
“Carson!” the officer at her side shouted, trying to pull her attention back. “The airstrike! You’re about to?—”
The warning came too late. Ros's hand hovered over the control panel, her mind still caught on the radio transmission. She had given the go-ahead for an airstrike that could hit friendly forces, including Scarlett.
She froze, panic surging through her, paralyzing her as the realization struck. If she didn’t cancel the strike in the next few seconds, it would be too late. Her world narrowed down to a single point: the lives she was about to end because of her distraction, because of her fear for Scarlett.
“Abort the strike!” she shouted, slamming her hand on the radio. “Abort! Friendly forces in the vicinity! Abort!”
The room erupted into action as officers scrambled to relay the command to the pilots already en route. Seconds stretched into an eternity as Ros waited, breathless, for confirmation that the strike had been called off. She gripped the edge of the table, every muscle in her body tense, her heart hammering in her chest.
Finally, the confirmation came through.
The airstrike was aborted just in time, and the planes pulled back. Ros exhaled, and the tension in her body slowly ebbed away. But the relief was short-lived and replaced by a cold, harsh realization: She had almost made a fatal mistake. And for what? For the fear that had clouded her judgment, for letting her emotions take control when she needed to be at her sharpest.
She straightened, forcing her thoughts back to the task at hand. The map still glowed on the screen, and the dots stilldanced in their deadly patterns. She let the cold, clinical part of her mind take over, the part she had relied on for years to make the hard calls, to keep her emotions at bay when lives were on the line.
“Status update,” Ros barked, her voice cutting through the noise of the control room.
One of the officers, a young lieutenant with worry etched on his face, stepped forward. “We’ve managed to hold the northern perimeter, but the insurgents are pushing hard on the east side. We’ve got reports of heavy casualties, and the comms are down in that sector.”
Ros's eyes flicked to the map, taking in the shifting dots on the eastern edge. The insurgents were concentrating their forces there, trying to break through the weaker defenses. She could see it clearly now, the pattern of their attack and the steps she needed to take to counter it. Her mind locked onto the solution, each move falling into place like pieces on a chessboard.
“Send reinforcements to the east. Pull two squads from the north and have them flank the insurgents from the south. And get those comms back online. I want to know what’s happening on the ground. Every second counts,” she ordered, her voice steady and commanding.
“Yes, ma’am,” the lieutenant responded, snapping off a salute before rushing to relay the orders.
Ros watched the screen, her focus sharpening as she saw the dots shift according to her commands. The chaos of the battle started to make sense again, the strategy forming in her mind like a blueprint. This was what she was trained for, what she excelled at: keeping her soldiers alive and making the tough decisions. She couldn’t afford to lose sight of that, not even for a moment. But as the operation continued, a single thought kept intruding, no matter how hard she tried to push it away. She knew what she had to do when this was over. The near-disaster with the airstrike had shown her just how dangerous her distraction was. How dangerous it could be to both her and Scarlett. She couldn’t let her feelings for Scarlett cloud her judgment again. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake like that, not with lives on the line.
She took a deep breath, the decision settling like a stone in her chest. She would have to talk to Scarlett and end things before they went any further. It was the only way to protect them both and ensure that neither of them would be compromised by…this. Whatever this was between them.