Page 14 of Accidentally Fearless

"In paintball, the teams that win aren't the ones who hold ground at all costs. They're the ones who control where the fight happens. If you're fighting on your terms, you're winning. If you're fighting on the enemy's terms, you're losing, even if you haven't moved."

The team leader—a warrior named Korvis who had been fighting this war since its first year and whose silver-streaked scales spoke to decades of service before that—looked at his two squadmates. They looked back.

"Show us again," Korvis said.

I showed them again. And again. And a fourth time, using progressively larger groups. By the end of the first hour, I had two dozen warriors running repositioning drills on the training ground. And the sounds they made when they executed a maneuver correctly were—I was almost sure—the Velkorin equivalent of cheering.

The second day, I introduced the concept of the "halftime debrief."

"In a four-hour engagement," I said, standing on a supply crate because I needed the height, "you have one break opportunity. The honor code permits a thirty-minute intermission at the two-hour mark. You've been using that for water and medical assessment. From now on, you're also using it for tactical reassessment. During the break, squad leaders report what they've observed. I compile. I adjust. You go back out with a new plan."

"Adjusting plans mid-engagement is—"

"Legal. Article fourteen, subsection nine. 'Combatants may alter tactical approach during authorized intermission periods.' Your honor code says you can change the plan at halftime. You just never do because nobody ever thought to."

"The human reads more carefully than our own legal scholars," Zenir observed from the sideline, where she'd been focused on every session.

"The human reads everything the same way," I said. "Like it's an employee handbook, and somewhere in the fine print is the loophole that lets me leave early on Fridays."

That got a real laugh from Korvis's squad. Actual laughter, from warriors who two days ago had regarded me with the enthusiasm of a tax audit. I was winning them the same way I'd won every group that had ever underestimated me—by being so relentlessly good at my job that dismissing me became more effort than listening.

Vrex watched every session.

Not from a distance. He was on the training ground, running drills alongside his soldiers. He was an extraordinary fighter. Controlled power and a blade technique that made combat look like choreography. I watched him demonstrate a parrying sequence for a group of younger soldiers, his body moving with a grace that comes from decades of repetition. My brain did the extremely unhelpful thing of noticing the way his scales caught the light and how the bioluminescent marks along his forearms pulsed with each strike.

He caught me watching. His markings flickered bronze.

I looked away first.

On the third day, a senior warrior named Gorthal—the officer who'd challenged me on the observation platform—approached me after a drill session. He stood in front of me, easily twice my weight and a foot and a half taller, and spoke formally. "The repositioning technique. Would it apply to defensive formations as well?"

He was asking my opinion. The officer who'd told me I had no right to lecture them on honor was asking for tactical advice.

"Yes," I said. "Defensive formations even more so. Your current defensive posture is a wall. I want to turn it into a net."

He processed this and nodded once. "Show me."

By the time the training day ended, Gorthal was running his own squad through the exercises, his gruff voice carrying across the training ground. "The human said collapse and reposition, not stand there looking decorative. Move."

I was exhausted and wired, running on alien caffeine and the unfamiliar sensation of being listened to by people who mattered. Underneath all that, steady as a bass note, was the awareness that Vrex was watching me with that bronze glow in his scales. I chose not to look at him and we both knew exactly why.

On the last training session before the battle, that awareness caught up with me.

I needed to demonstrate the visual signal system I'd designed for field communication. The hand signals were simple enough on paper—specific finger configurations mapped to specific tactical commands—but the soldiers needed to see them from a distance, at speed, in conditions that approximated actual combat. Which meant I needed someone tall enough to be visible from the back of the formation to stand beside me and relay the signals.

Vrex volunteered. Of course he did.

"Stand here," I said, positioning him at the front of the assembled group. "You'll mirror my signals so the back ranks can see."

He stood where I pointed, which put him directly behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off his body. Velkorin ran warmer than humans, and standing in his thermal shadow was like standing near a furnace. His breathing was audible. The faint electrical hum of his bioluminescence was audible. Everything about him was suddenly, overwhelmingly present.

"Okay." I raised my hands. "Signal one—shift left." I held the configuration, fingers spread in the pattern I'd mapped. Behind me, Vrex raised his own hands to mirror. His arms extended past mine on either side—the size difference meaning his hands framed mine in the air, visible and enormous. He retracted his claws to blunt safety.

"Signal two—hold position." I shifted my fingers. Vrex shifted his. His forearm brushed my shoulder. The scales were smooth and hot. The contact lasted maybe half a second.

Every mark on his body flared bronze.

I didn't turn around. I kept demonstrating signals. My hands were steady. My voice was steady. My pulse was absolutely not, hammering in my wrists and my throat, because his arm had brushed my shoulder. The heat of it was still there like a brand.