Chapter 6
The armory was dead silent.
Pierce pressed play on a small device.
Static filled the room.
Then a man’s voice came through.
Weak.
Ragged.
Captain Reed.
“Hayes saved us... Matthews pushed us in blind... tell my wife... tell her Hayes did right...”
The recording crackled.
Then ended.
Luna’s breath caught.
For seven years, people had whispered that she let Reed die.
For seven years, she had remembered his blood and wondered if he blamed her.
Now she knew.
He had used his last breath to tell the truth.
Luna looked down.
Her hands trembled.
Not from fear.
From grief finally allowed to move.
A tear slipped down her dusty cheek.
She wiped it away fast, but the room had already seen it.
Nobody laughed.
Nobody even breathed loudly.
Colonel Pierce closed the device.
“Captain Reed’s final statement was withheld from the original investigation.”
He turned to Matthews.
“By your office.”
Matthews’s face turned gray.
“That recording was corrupted.”
“No,” Pierce said. “It was hidden.”
The legal officer stepped forward.
“General Matthews, you are being relieved of command pending formal investigation for falsifying an official report, obstruction, retaliation, and conduct unbecoming.”
The words seemed impossible in that room.
A general being stripped of power in the same armory where he had tried to strip Luna of her dignity.
Matthews looked at the soldiers.
The same soldiers he had expected to witness Luna’s shame.
Now they witnessed his.
“You cannot do this,” he said.
Pierce’s voice stayed calm.
May you like
“It’s already done.”
Read Part 7 to find out what Luna said when Matthews tried to call her a hero one last time.
