CHAPTER 1 — THE PATCH THAT SHOULDN’T EXIST

The morning sun had not yet burned away the dew when Captain Lana Ashford stepped into the mess hall at Fort Bragg. Her movements were precise, quiet, controlled — the kind learned by people who understood that being noticed could sometimes get you killed.

Her ACU uniform was textbook perfect. To any casual observer, she was just another logistics officer starting her day with eggs, toast, and black coffee before drowning in spreadsheets and supply chain reports.

But Staff Sergeant Caleb Drummond was no casual observer.

He lounged in the corner with his drill instructors, a smirk already lifting his mouth. Six months running the recruit training program had made him the self-appointed king of this part of the base. He fed on attention, and he wanted everyone to remember it.

Lana filled her tray and turned to find a seat.

Then Drummond saw it.

The patch.
Right shoulder.
Faded green fabric.
Gray stitching worn to near dust.
A smeared silhouette of a badger.
And one word clinging to life:

RELENTLESS.

“Hey, Captain!” Drummond’s voice boomed, cutting through the mess hall. Conversations died mid-sentence.

Lana didn’t stop walking. Didn’t turn. She moved with a calm so steady it made Drummond’s pride shrink. Which only made him angrier.

“I asked you a question, ma’am,” he said, dripping sarcasm. “That patch? Never seen it in any regulation manual. Buy it at a Halloween store?”

Lana set her tray down gently. She took one steady breath before turning to face him.

“It’s just an old training patch, Sergeant,” she replied evenly. “Nothing special.”

Drummond stepped closer — three long strides until he could see the faded badger shape. He read the word aloud with a mocking grin.

“Relentless. Cute. So what unit is that? I’ve worked with Rangers, Airborne, hell, even Delta. Never seen anything like it.”

He leaned in, his finger hovering over the patch.

“Mind if I take a closer look?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Lana said softly.

But he touched it anyway.

The moment his finger brushed the fabric, Lana’s eyes hardened.
Not with anger.
With something colder.
Sharper.
The kind of darkness people carried after surviving things others couldn’t imagine.

She didn’t move. She simply stared at him — until Drummond felt something unfamiliar coil in his gut. Fear.

“You should sit down,” she said, voice so soft the room had to lean forward to hear it.

Drummond forced a laugh, though it cracked midway. “What, is it cursed or something? Relax, Captain. It’s just a patch.”

But Lana had already turned away, sitting with deliberate calm.

That was when the mess hall doors opened.

And every soldier fell silent.

---

CHAPTER 2 — TWO WORDS THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

General Marcus Harlan stepped inside — the man known across the Army as Iron Jackal.
A legend wrapped in scarred skin and iron authority.
A man who had broken warlords and enemies with the same cold efficiency.

His eyes scanned the room.
Found Drummond towering over Lana’s table.
Narrowed.

“Problem, Sergeant?” Harlan asked, his voice like gravel dragged across steel.

Drummond straightened, wishing desperately he could vanish. “No, sir. Just curious about the Captain’s patch.”

Harlan’s gaze shifted.

He saw it — the faded badger silhouette on Lana’s shoulder.

And for the briefest fraction of a moment, the general’s face softened. Something like recognition — or grief — passed through him.

The entire room held its breath as Harlan walked toward her. His boots hit the floor in slow, heavy thuds, each one echoing like a countdown.

He stopped beside Lana.
Looked at the patch.
Looked at her.

And spoke two words that froze the world.

“Badger Squad.”

A ripple of confusion swept the room.
A hush fell so deep even the lights seemed to dim.

Lana set her fork down. “Sir.”

Drummond frowned. “Badger Squad? What the hell is that? Some kind of joke?”

General Harlan ignored him completely.

“I thought none of you survived,” he said quietly.

The air tightened. Soldiers exchanged glances, tension crawling across their skin like static.

Everyone knew what it meant when a general recognized something that wasn’t in any manual, any briefing, any official history.

It meant it wasn’t supposed to exist.

Lana’s jaw tightened. Her fingers brushed the edge of the patch — not as an officer, but as a survivor.

“Most didn’t,” she said. “But a few of us carried on.”

Harlan nodded once. A gesture heavy with respect, sorrow, and unspoken memory.

Then his gaze snapped to Drummond — a glare sharp enough to cut bone.

“You don’t mock that patch, Sergeant,” he said. “You salute it.”

Drummond’s mouth opened and closed uselessly. His face went crimson. With trembling hesitation, he raised his hand and saluted.

The mess hall rose with him — dozens of soldiers standing in unison, saluting a patch they didn’t understand, but somehow knew mattered.

Lana stood and returned the salute — crisp, controlled, disciplined. But behind her eyes, a storm broke open.

---

CHAPTER 3 — THE TRUTH THEY BURIED

Memories clawed their way to the surface:
Dust-choked nights.
Ambushes in the dark.
Screams swallowed by desert wind.
Faces she’d buried.
Names she whispered only in nightmares.

General Harlan lowered his hand.

“Tell them,” he said softly. “They deserve to know.”

Lana hesitated. She had spent years hiding behind paperwork and logistics reports, burying her past under the weight of bureaucracy.

But now — the ghosts demanded truth.

She faced the room.

“It started in Kandahar,” she began. “Badger Squad wasn’t official. We were an experiment. Six men. Two women. Sent where no one else could go — and where no one was expected to come back.”

The soldiers leaned forward, the room utterly still.

“They called us ‘relentless’ because that’s what we had to be. First month, we lost half the squad. Ambush in the desert. They came at us in waves. We held until sunrise.”

Her eyes dimmed with memory.
“I carried Vega out on my back. She died before dawn.”

A muscle in Harlan’s jaw twitched.

Lana continued.

“After that, every mission blurred. We stopped counting days. Stopped counting kills. We only counted the ones we lost.”

Her voice lowered.
“By the end, only three of us were left — Ortiz, Maddox, and me. We were ordered to destroy a weapons convoy. No intel. No backup. Just us.”

She swallowed hard.

“We succeeded. But Maddox didn’t make it. Ortiz was taken. I survived because they dug me out of the sand two weeks later.”

Silence blanketed the hall.

“The Army erased us afterward,” Lana said. “Cleaned the records. Buried the missions. Pretended we never existed.”

She touched the patch.

“This is all I kept. Every fray is a memory. Every thread is a face. RELENTLESS isn’t a motto. It’s a promise.”

General Harlan reached into his pocket.

And revealed his own patch — a jackal, battered, faded.

He placed it gently beside Lana’s.

“You’re not alone,” he said.

Something inside her cracked — not broken, but released. For the first time in years, she breathed without the weight of silence.

Then applause erupted — not loud, but powerful. Respectful.
A tribute.

Drummond whispered, almost reverent:

“Relentless…”

And Captain Lana Ashford — survivor, ghost, symbol of a squad the world forgot — allowed herself the faintest smile.

At last, the truth lived again.