trapped behind enemy lines two soldiers must escape with a hostage that is playing them against each other.

The story is a bit of a three hander. The two soldiers start out as a team, neither of them are senior. Cut off they are heading to the border to escape. Only being grunts they don't know who or why this person is important.

One says torture, kill him and leave. The other is let's keep him safe. This is the split the hostage exploits. He tries to convince one he is a deep undercover spy. The team end up turning on each other.

One soldier is now trying to escape the enemy and his own guy. The other must escape and hide the truth about trying to murder the hostage.

It ends with the hostage being a bad guy after all which leads to the death of both soldiers.

Some of the scenes feel like a police interview room.

The idea behind a SciFi bent is it allows for some tech we don't have. Such as not being able to use communications otherwise being instantly found.

I think this would work better in a more tangibly real and familiar setting of a known war as appose to a scifi adventure in a non-real world.

The whole story is an analogy to the question; does the end justify the means. A sergeant once asked me if I would follow every command he gave me I said yes, he then asked if I would shoot a child at his command and I said no, he just replied think about it and I did. Later in my service I made a choice that to this very day I don't know if I should be proud or ashamed of.

The point is that if you are able to establish beyond doubt that both soldiers are the most dutiful and loyal soldiers in the platoon and therefor chosen to cary out this secret mission. Then infuse into the readers mind the idea that one of the two solders has reasonable doubt that the captured man is a good guy this would be enough to create stakes for him. Pin these stakes up agains a their sense of duty and you have a great dilemma.

The external goal would be to extract the target where as the inner goal would be to over come duty for sensibility and humanity. The internal goal could then inform the outer journey and change it to save the target instead of deliver him to the commanders.

my quick little try;
After a special forces soldier realises his captive target could be innocent he must fight his partner whilst trapped behind enemy lines to prevent them completing their mission.

Hope this helps.

What Richiev said. The prisoner has the more interesting predicament, the pivotal role, seems to have the bigger and more interesting challenge.

What's the dramatic question to be answered during the course of the story?