“What the hell, Bill? You sent my guys into a meat grinder!”

  Filson and the rest of the officers in the Casino stared in horror at the large tactical display. The combination of holographic and video streams conveyed Third Platoon’s situation. Red icons smashed into green icons. POV feeds were chaos as soldiers sought cover. Dense enemy fire knocked aerial drones from the sky and destroyed soldierbots working to establish a defensive perimeter. Soldier telemetry flipped red. They were already taking human casualties.

  Urgent radio calls filled the Tactical Operations Center and decrypted data bursts streamed across displays. All said the same thing—the situation on the ground was not what the Intelligence Officer had told them it was going to be. Only a few minutes into the mission, they were in serious trouble.

  “Shut up and let me talk to Regiment, sir!” Captain Bill Preston yelled back at Filson. He had a telephone handset in each hand and pressed to both ears as he tried to figure out what was going on.

  Major Reeves, the Battalion Operations Officer, gestured at Filson with his palms down. “Easy, Don! Let us work the situation. Yelling is not—”

  “Your working the situation is what put my guys in a kill box!” The veins in Filson’s forehead bulged and his augmentation scars flushed as he stalked across the TOC, hands in fists, toward Reeves.

  Captain Paredes grabbed him by the arm before he could get there. Filson spun, ready to fight, but spooled down at the sight of the Chilean Army captain.

  Tomas Paredes commanded the Lobos, a Chilean Regular Army company attached to Filson’s Raiders. Technically, he reported to Filson. But the pair functioned as equals, and their units worked well together. One of his platoons was getting chewed up between the rivers with Filson’s.

  Paredes was a fit, trim man whose jet-black hair was always a little too long, but whose goatee was always perfectly trimmed. He was handsome. Disarmingly so. He walked into battalion headquarters almost a year ago to report to Commander Akande and walked out with the nickname that stuck hard. Captain Suave. All the Raiders pronounced it “Swa-VAY,” lingering on the last syllable when time allowed. Filson suspected the nickname’s sticking power came not only from Paredes’ striking good looks, but also from the Raiders’ self-consciousness. Centaurs were not handsome. The augmentation procedure made sure of that.

  “Don, would you shut the hell up!” Commander Akande glared as he crossed the Ops Center. “The last thing we need right now is one of your tantrums. Let the team work the situation.”

  Filson’s veins were still bulging, but he bit his tongue. He respected Akande. Begrudgingly, he knew the old PJ was right. There would be time to kick the battalion staff’s asses later, when Third Platoon and the Lobos were out of the shit.

  Akande was one of the thousands who answered Havron’s call for combat veterans when the general was scraping together a force to liberate Chile. He was not a Centaur, but he spent fifteen years in SOCOM—one of the few who served with the Rangers as their Air Force controller, calling in airstrikes, and then also earned his Pararescue beret. He was a tough, experienced warrior, respected by the entire regiment. Filson felt lucky his battalion got Akande. Most of the re-activated veterans were not of his caliber.

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  “Regiment says the whole AO just lit up. Signatures from a shit ton of PLA assets!” Preston lowered one handset, speaking loudly to the whole Ops Center. “Looks like we put Third Platoon down in the middle of PLA preparations for an offensive.”

  Filson and Akande made eye contact, shaking their heads. Paredes rubbed the back of his neck.

  “Woulda been nice if they coulda figured that shit out before we launched,” Captain Evan Merko muttered. He led Third Platoon for more than a year, from the beginning of General Havron’s invasion until just a month ago, when Filson promoted him to Company Executive Officer. A tall former college basketball player from Chicago, Merko had spent his formative lieutenant years as a Raider. Seeing his old platoon in a fix like this was killing him.

  “They’re saying our operation flushed them out.” Preston had both handsets to his ears again. “Regiment sounds pretty happy about it. Saying we forced them to show their hand.”

  The comment sent Filson back over the edge.

  “Goddammit!” He charged Major Reeves. Paredes grabbed for his arm but missed. “My guys are not expendable recon! What’s the exfil plan? Get them outta there!”

  Akande inserted himself between Filson and Reeves at the last minute. He was taller than Filson and glared down at him as he jabbed a finger in his face.

  Certain that Filson was momentarily under control, Akande spun on his heels, swinging his still-pointing finger toward Reeves. “Give me a plan, Reeves. Now!”

  “Working it, sir!” He and the rest of the battalion operations staff clustered around a map, talking on radios and peering at tablet computers.

  “Work faster!” Akande demanded.

  Filson grimaced. They’d lost it. Initiative—that invisible force that determines who dictates the terms and tempo of a battle. The commander who seizes the initiative gets to decide where, when, and how to fight. They set the pace, the conditions, and the parameters, leaving the enemy disrupted and reactive while maintaining their own freedom of maneuver. That’s what the previous two days of planning had been about—giving Third Platoon and the Lobos the initiative so they could crush the enemy.

  Just minutes into the operation, though, they had lost that initiative.

  And losing the initiative in battle means ceding all those advantages to the enemy.

  It never ends well.

  Filson had been in scrapes like this more than once on the battlefield. As much as he hated it, he knew how to get through it. How to get his guys through it. First Lieutenant Wagner was new, though. He’d had Third Platoon for less than a month. Filson was worried.

  Another round of radio and data burst transmissions surged through the TOC. LT Wagner spoke rapidly. Explosions and gunfire in the background drowned out his voice. More soldier telemetry feeds flipped red.

  “Oh shit,” Captain Preston said, eyes wide, looking at the tactical display.

  Every head in the TOC turned to look at the map.

  “I guess the PLA figured, ‘To hell with it,’” Preston said. “Now that there is a fight, they’re bringing everybody they've got out of hiding.”

  Red icons and intel data bursts told the story. Third Platoon was surrounded by at least a battalion’s worth of PLA infantry.

  “It’s a good move.” Filson’s voice was angry. “They’ve got the initiative. They’re not gonna waste it.”

  Still more red icons flooded the map as more PLA revealed themselves by joining the attack on Third Platoon.

  Filson’s pulse quickened. The Raiders and Lobos weren’t just stuck. They were fucked.