109 hangar crewmen, including ordnance and reactor handlers, handling officers, launch & retrieval crew, QA, and UNREP "powder passers." 76 mechanical and electrical engineers, servicing the UFR Artaxerxes's hull, her autosystems, and of course, her flight of warmechs. 44 crane, lift, blast-door, airlock, and drop-gun operators. 36 nuclear engineers. Seven crewmen per gun turret and torpedo bay. Fifteen bridge staff, including the captain and his helmsman. Thirty navigators, airspace traffic controllers, and communications officers. Nineteen physicians, surgeons, dentists, nurses, and cybernetics engineers. Four logistics officers. Sixteen liaison officers. Fifteen clerks. Four chaplains. Twelve cooks. 28 janitors.

Six hundred and six personnel, all laboring day and night to keep two fireteams—that is, eleven 'ADAMAS' warmechs and eleven pilots—in the sky; greased and ready for combat. Gan appreciated the irony: from a certain point of view, he and the other four on his fireteam had 55 crewmen (each) assigned to personally keep them trim, fit, fed, rested, and getting where they needed going; that many maids and majordomos could staff a few bromine-barons' mansions back home. That many miners could keep a quarry open for a year. Each of them practically had an army to pamper them. And yet, when it came time to wake up for these ever-important missions, the best the Artaxerxes could muster for an alarm bell was—

"MISSIONNNNNN!"

—Ana Calypsi, smacking a titanium plate with a ball-peen hammer.

"COME ON, EVERYONE, UP AND AT 'EM! THE MISSION'S HERE! WOOOOOOOO!"

Ripped from the warm, tranquil womb of sleep, Gan found himself cradled, with the same quiet protest as a toddling, afterbirth-slick foal, in a familiar steel chrysalis: the paint on the floor worn down by his invariable flat-footed shuffle from bunk to toilet to sink and back. From the toothbrush in a beer mug sitting on top of the hot water pipe, to the Down with the Dogs poster (the collector's edition released on the album's tenth anniversary—with the band's blonde, buxom mascot straddling a rattlesnake) duct-taped above the porthole, to the crusty old bomber jacket hanging from a hooked locker handle, everything was where he had put it, and seemingly where it would sit forever if allowed, like it had been trapped in aspic and forgotten in the back of a forlorn refrigerator. Gan ached; not because his mattress was thin, or his sheets cold, but because the cold, rigid steel floor waited just beyond them; and beyond that, the cold, unyielding vacuum of space, through which he'd soon be floating in a different, even more cramped chrysalis of steel, glass, and worn-down padding. He groaned, quieter than the neverending groan of the hull and the strain of its copper arteries gushing with coolants and jettisons.

He heard Ana's fist rattling a door across the hall from his. Soon she would be haunting him. And this alone—the spite—would have to suffice once more for motivation. Peeling himself forcibly away from his bunk, he braced, landing on rolled ankles and springy knees. At once the floor began to sap away with his warmth. Tiptoeing over to the door, Gan dared not peek through its rusty, squealing peephole. He only waited to hear the telltale signs: the clang of jump boots on metal grating first, then her fist against iron. Of course, she was still chirping away: "ARE YOU ALL DEAD IN THERE? COME ON, YOU'RE ALL SO GORGEOUS ALREADY, HOW MUCH BEAUTY-SLEEP COULD YOU NEED?!"

Once her auditory assault-and-battery had finally reached his door, Gan knocked right back at her from the other side. "YEAH, YEAH, WE GET IT," he barked.

She only giggled back through the hinges—"Mornin', Gaaaaan!—" and skipped away on inch-thick rubber soles to the next door down. "C'mon, commander, that's enough cat-nappin' for you ..."

Gan propped himself against the wall and groaned a second time. One would think the weight of the world would be easier to bear in such low-gravity places. "How the hell does she do it ..." he murmured.

"She's still in her twenties," grumbled Yrma, who was finally stirring in the bottom bunk. All knotted up in her bedsheet, she freed her left arm, and held it up just long enough to read the digital interface on her clock before letting it drape over the side of the bunk once more.

"Are you implying I'm old?" Gan said.

"Gettin' there. As fast as anyone. Pass me my leg."

Gan picked it up from against her locker, a cruel room's-width away, and handed it to her by its rubber peg. "I dunno about that. Not with your fifteen-year head start on the rest of us. What time is it?"

"It's 0247 Universal. And thanks a lot," she answered, growling and grunting as the muscles ached and creaked in sliding the cup over her stump, and fastening the clasps to her thigh, then threading the metal leg through the leg of her flightsuit. "Hrrk. At least when she wakes us early, she wakes us early enough for MidRats."

"Sugar and carbs are ... one consolation," Gan groggily agreed.

"Careful," she replied. "One day you'll go to bed 'getting old,' wake up the next and learn you're there. That's when all them sugar and carbs catch up to you." She clapped her belly as if to prove she was the cautionary tale, and indeed the impact rippled in her skin. But not much. Under her loose skin Yrma was mostly muscle. Muscle and vinegar.

Yrma's laugh was raspier, huskier, than Ana's. She didn't smoke, and the scars spanning the left side of her leathery, loose torso were shallow, no more than skin-deep, which left Gan to wonder at times whether her dad had smoked, or an invasive cybernetic in her throat had degraded over the years, or if she'd contracted a lung sickness long ago on a faraway strip-mining colony. Not that it amounted to anything more than curiosity in the night; he'd never hold the answer, or the question, against her. Through all the static and the degradation, no matter the mission or the miles, the rasp of her voice was unmistakable. Irreplaceable.

"I think that day will hurt you more than me. What will you do with yourself once you can't call me 'beanpole' or 'noodle-neck' anymore?"

She chuckled again. "I'll just have to switch to calling you 'doughball.' C'mon, Gan, let's get outta here." Quietly they zipped up, laced up, and threw on their leathers, kicking up against the wall out in the corridor as they brushed their teeth and ran fine-tooth combs through their hair. They were the first ones out there save for Ana, with whom they swapped "Mornins," and after they ducked back into their bunk to spit and rinse, Yrma had a question for her. It was the type of question to warrant checking both ends of the corridor for eavesdroppers; leaning in close, close enough to smell the mint oil on Ana's breath; and stoking Yrma's voice down into a low, smoldering pit of coals.

"I've been meanin' to ask: are you okay? You know—with a new bunkmate?"

"Of course!" Ana lilted. But a graveness soon conquered her face, and cast her gaze to the green and yellow lines painted on the otherwise naked steel of the corridor floor. "Or ... I'll get used to her easily enough."

Gan and Yrma didn't have to say anything; their gazes sufficed in squeezing down on her for more juice.

Ana, looking either ashamed of something (how easily she acquiesced to this interrogation, or how she was in some way "betraying" the rookie by saying this), or, at the least, worried that the subject of their illicit dialogue might overhear it, continued quietly: "How do I put this? I don't know. When I'm trying to sleep, and my eyes are closed, I can ... just tell that it's not him. F—For example, when he had a glass of bourbon before bed, he'd always be swirling the glass. The ice hitting the crystal ... clink, clink, clinkle. I got used to falling asleep to that sound, but she doesn't do that with her cup. And ... oh, and her footsteps are lighter, too; I think she puts socks on to walk around during lights-out. So I can't even shut my eyes and pretend that it's him. You know? All the little things like that that she does. Or doesn't do. They make me ... sad. It's like even his memory is being ... no. That's too far. I shouldn't say that."

Yrma stepped closer, her fleshy foot encased in rubber and leather and her sterile, surgical-steel peg alternating on the hard floor, and rested a heavy, callused hand on Ana's narrow shoulder. "If you ever wanna switch bunks—"

"Oh, no, I couldn't!" Ana insisted, shrugging herself away. "Thank you, but you're still mourning, too. Everyone is. It wouldn't be right."

Ana visibly anguished as several raging forces came to a stalemate inside her: should she resort to gratitude or to empathy? Stay on this path of obstinance, perhaps overcoming the grief sooner, if more painfully; or double back on her assurance, take the bunk across the hall, and give herself the sort of time she clearly wanted? Needed. To forget their former teammate and fallen comrade. Seeming ready to sound off her next excuse, Ana's face lit up with a moment's epiphany instead. "... Oh, and no offense, Gan! It's not that I'm avoiding bunkin' with ya! It's just—"

"I know," he said, to spare her from her own explanation. "If nothing else I'm sure she appreciates it. We're all teammates—her included, starting now."

"Right," Ana said, as much to herself as to him, with the glimmer of fresh, newfound determination. She inspired easily. "You're right."

"Besides," Gan continued with an impious smirk, "would Scyto have wanted anyone to be late on his account? You've got three more to muster before we can eat, Ana. Including your new bunkie."

Ana straightened out, bristling. "Ah!" she cried. "Thanks for reminding me! Chlotho! Ke—"

"We're up." Unceremoniously, the two shuffled out: the team leader, who, though grim-faced, her single eye glowering at nothing in particular, looked scarcely worse for wear, knotting the sleeves of her flightsuit around her waist, goosebumps ridging her full-sleeve tattoos. It was Chlotho, callsign Romeo, who emerged like a voodoo-zombie, shambling, groaning—even teasing his hair into its typical cowlick, dual-wielding a comb and a wad of pomade for the purpose, seemed an automated act, performed entirely through instinct and habit. After sliding into his flightsuit, he'd forgotten to zip it up.

Gan scratched his scalp. "I guess that leaves one more. Well," he corrected, eyeing the other dude, "one and a half."

"I'll go wake her," Ana whispered, slinking off toward the last door on the left fore-ways.

That's right; earlier Gan had ruminated on the 46 engineers, seamen, and other personnel per mech pilot aboard the Artaxerxes. But through an instinct and habit all his own, his math had been wrong: it wasn't just the five of them anymore. Despite all their hopes (and delusions) to the contrary, they couldn't leave that top bunk in Ana's room empty forever, as some kind of memorial; they had corporate hierarchies to please. Bottom lines to meet. A fireteam needed six mechs on the ground, not five. And it was this way for a reason.

To Gan, it only seemed a bit ... soon. To be acting like nothing was wrong. Like nothing had ever happened. To replace what they had lost. This rookie ... and insult to injury, she was making them wait for her.

The sun shine across the fancy room floor and on to a young lady face, she then hears her alarm going off, it's 9:10 AM, It's morning and she got a fancy ball party to prepared. The young lady brush her hair as she thinks what preparation should the party have, what food she should pick and so on and so for. She looks her dress that her father pick out of her, it was a yellow dress with short sleeves and a fabric flower on the hips. The young lady scowl and roll her eyes, she hates the color yellow, she don't mind it at all, she just hates how it looks on her. She more of a dark navy blue type of girl, but for now she has to bear it, it's only one night after all, she can go through it.

The young lady then hears a soft knocking on her door "Come in" As the door open, she sees a little head pop out with a sweet smile "Good morning, Rosie!" A girl, who looks like she can be fourteen, enter the room with her beautiful blush-pink dress. The girl run towards the young lady and give her a morning hug "Good morning to you too, Clementine" Rosie say to Clementine with a warm smile. "Are you excited for the party? I am! But you know that already" Clementine say in that exciting tone in her voice that Rosie is familiar with. "Yes, I am excited too. I been a long time since I see my old friends, it would be nice to catch up on what they been doing" Rosie would have add air quote on the word "Friends" but not in of front of Clementine...Maybe when she older.

"I wonder if I get to met my prince charming. We lock eyes on the ballroom floor, our hearts pounding with love and then next you know, we dance and dance until midnight." Clementine say as she dance with the air while Rosie is chuckling, her young sister read too many of those old stories, that may Rosie fault though, she always read them to her before she goes to sleep "Well don't get your hopes up too far, Clem. What if you hate the way he talks? What if you hate the way he wears? What if you hate the way he eats? What if you hate the way he picks his nose?" "Picks his nose?" "And eats it?" "Ewwww! Rosie, don't say stuff like that!" Clementine say with disgust but laugh escape from her mouth and then the two sister start laughing.

Rosie wish that she was young again, eyes full of wonder and her mind so naïve, now her eyes full of dread and her mind so tired. She not looking forward to this party at all. Her "friends" are not that interesting, her dress is ugly and uncomfortable, and worst part is the young gentleman interacting with her and always do the same, damn, thing like "Hello Rosalina, I'm so-and-so from so-and-so. my father runs a company called so-and-so, I see that your father runs a company too, do you want to make some company babies?" UGH! Rose hates that! But she got use to it and maybe, someday, her young sister will get use to it too.

"Clementine, come over here! I need you!" Dahlia, the oldest sister, yell out from the hallways "Ok, I am coming! See you around, Rosie!" Clementine say with a young smile as she dash out of the room. Rose smile then fell from her face as she look outside and see birds flying, she wish that she was those birds, flying without a care of the world, go wherever she pleases and no one telling her what to do....But that dream seems far away at this point. The birds start wising their morning songs, Rose doesn't the songs, they are rather peaceful actually but they do sound annoying this morning. It's almost like they are saying-

---

From the loud yell from her roommate and smacking something with a hammer, Rose jump out of her bunk bed and fall on to the hard floor, follow by groaning in pain, this is her mornings now.

Rose lay on the floor for about two or three minutes, trying to ease the pain from her body, mostly her face, she wouldn't be surprise if someone would come in here and think that she is unconscious...or dead. What would her new crewmates would do to her body if she did die here, would they held a funeral? Saying something like "Alas! Poor Rose, I knew her not so well."? With her tombstone saying "Here lies Rose, A rookie to a nobody who died"? Rose shake her head, she got to stop thinking about those bad scenarios, they would probably give her wrinkles.

Rose finally got off the floor, already late to her first mission meeting. Rose open her closet, seeing that her clothes are mix up with her roommate clothes, with a sigh, she dig up to find her black sleeveless high collar shirt and black pant. Before heading out, she look at herself in the mirror with stern expression and takes a deep breath "Ok...First day, first mission. Be prepared, Rose. Expecting the unexpected" Rose say to herself as she fix her short black hair. With nod of determination, Rose heads out of her room...Only to find her roommate opening the door. "Oh! Um, Hey Ana. I was just getting ready, did you sleep good last night? I didn't wake you up did I?" Even though she was wearing socks during lights out, Rose hopes that she didn't make a bad first impression toward her crewmate.

Ana clip-clopped over to her door and braced herself. If her new bunkie wasn't in the mood for her mission, or she hadn't slept well last night (from all the excitement zapping through her veins, no doubt!), or even if she wasn't a morning person, then Ana would just have to be perky enough for both of them; it'd rub off on the rookie soon! So she braced the door by both her palms, and shoved against the rusty hinges squealing in protest, completely confident in her methods.

"Gooooood MORNI——AH! ROSIE!"

Throwing their door open with all the bombast of a grade-schooler running home to show her parents the A- she got on a math test, Ana learned much too late what awaited her just on the other side. As her bunkmate, "Mowgli," sprawled backward, extremities flailing, spine and skull shuddering across the diamond-plate floor, Ana's instinct was to rush to her and dote. She needed a few seconds to remember she was still holding the hammer and the backplate, which she scampered away to place delicately in their spot in the corner. Then she could hurry over to her bunkie and kneel over her in a panic.

"_{Good going, Ana. Real smooth, idiot!} Rosie baby, are you alright?! Hey, that's a heck of a spill you just took. Tell me where it hurts! Is it here?!"

Like a baboon preening for fleas, small, soft hands patted under Rose's ears, behind her shoulders; no thought whatsoever for how much more it would hurt once she found the site. "Oh. Hey, An ..." Rose was muttering. "I was ju ... did you slee ... ? I didn' ... wa ..." By the time the spinning stopped, and the ache in her skull had receded enough to let her see again, all she could see, hovering over her, was a head of black hair gathered up in a sweatband; soft, narrow shoulders inside a sleeveless white tank; and Ana Calypsi's big, blue, slightly stupid eyes gawking down at her. The hands were pestering her face now, pinching her cheeks and peeling back her eyelids, probing for any life behind the fog of a mild concussion.

If falling on to the floor face first from bunk top wasn't bad enough, then bumping toward your roommate and falling on to the floor and giving you concussion was the icing on the Rosie cake. Rose try to form some words to her bunkie but all it come out was muttering, her head is still dizzy from the crash, but soon enough, that dizziness went away and her vision is back to see Ana looking back at her and from laying on floor from her perspective, she kind of look like a high schooler, does her roommate get those complements all the time? She probably got some secret admirers in her crew, hopefully not the creepy ones...Ahh, who Rose thinking, she probably does.

Rose finally get up from the floor, trying to get her footing together "I'm fine, I'm fine. I need that wake up call anyway" Rose say with a yawn "I hope I'm not making everyone wait too long, plus I'm hungry as hell. Let's go eat" Rose say to her bunkie as she head out of her room and to where everyone is. "Good morning, everyone. Sorry for the wait, I was too busy talking to the...Floor" Rose say to the crew while trying to joke, which she kind of feel that died on the inside. Talking the floor? Seriously Rose?! That the best joke you can come up with? That probably your new callsign, Floor, why better then Mowgli.

Ana stuck around long enough to help Rose from the floor, and hold the door for her. She even had the decency to look remorseful while she did it. And when Rose had finally managed to navigate her way out of their room, dizzy and delirious like it was her first day on a starship, replete with space-sickness and oh-one vertigo, she found the others kicked up in the hallway, waiting for her.

Corking their laughter and smothering their smiles were the two tallest of the group: an older woman with a cybernetic leg, the rest of her sun-bleached and suntanned, whose corded, tatted arms were knotted across her chest; and a leaner, sculpted man, with a ponytail and bangs styled into a heavy cowlick, still teasing the zipper of a flightsuit riddled with patches and insignia as a paper target is riddled with bullet holes. Two more looked less amused: a shorter, leaner man with aviators hanging from his collar and a mullet draping past his shoulders, and a muscly girl in an eyepatch, a fringe bob, and a wifebeater. Rose's hiring manager had warned her about a "cyclops" on the ship, as humorless in R&R as she was ferocious in battle; this must've been the commander whose good side she belonged on. If she had a good side ...

The shorter man shoved a hand through the overflowing abundances of his slightly oily hair. "Making our usual first impression, I see," he said, tinges of a sigh in his voice, and of an accusation in the stare he leveled at Ana. That got a crack out of the two who'd been trying not to laugh.

"Shut it, you," she growled with a shake of her fist. "Me and Rosie are already best friends. Isn't that right, Rosie?"

Rose was finding it increasingly difficult to speak with Ana's arm thrown around her neck, and her fingers pinching her cheek.

The mullet swept across his shoulder as the skinny one rolled his eyes and shifted them sidelong to his NCO. Visibly unpersuaded, his sharp, angular, aristocratic features, rigid as if sculpted from alabaster, only flinched enough for him to ask her: "How long until launch?"

"If the engine people and the nav people all did their jobs last night," eyepatch girl replied, briskly and dourly, "we'll be over the insertion site in four hours."

"Big 'if,'" sighed the big lady, wearing her cynicism as naturally as she wore her scars and her patina, both earned in half a dozen tours-of-duty or more. But if she really had survived that much time among the lowest-bidder contractor work, and the bullshit uniform inspections and the dress-downs, the inefficiency and the mismanagement, then she had every damn right to be jaded, Rose reckoned, as she walked up behind Rose and clapped her and Ana on the backs. "But the rookie's got the right idea: enough yap, it's chow-time."

Chow. As the others turned and marched in quiet, tired solidarity for this, one of their few material comforts aboard a PMC dropship, not all of them were wearing attention-grade articles, but of those who were, Rose saw the fireteam's insignia—her insignia—blazoned there on the backs: a tiger in sinister-rampant, its claws sunken into the nose of an AMM-3 "Cestus" missile with which it wrestled: glowering, grimacing, the exhaust nozzles shoving hard against the hindlegs of its flesh-and-bone opponent, rear claws sinking deep into the soil, exhaust burning yellow-hot. Amidst the pale smoke and the tatters of a banner which had been torn to ribbons in the struggle, read the team's threadbare credentials: "1st Battalion." "5th Airborne Mechanized Armor Squadron." And in red cursive, "Fireteam 9: 'The Fightin' Tigers!'" It was the first time Rose had seen so many of this patch all in one place, but also the first that she'd seen it in motion, and in full resplendence; not hanging from her bedside, not splayed out over her workbench as she sewed it onto the back of her flight-jacket, not even reversed in the mirror as she sprained her neck seeing how it looked on her. She was finally walking among them. As one of them. And the colors proved it beyond any doubt.

Her teammates led down the cramped and labyrinthine corridors to an escalator, which they walked aboard without reading where they were or where it would send them; the Artaxerxes was said to be a hair over three klicks long, and these five men and women were more familiar with Rose's new home than she was, a fact she'd have to avoid overthinking if she didn't want to go crazy getting lost in this place. Still yawning, stretching, and swiping the rheum from their eyes, while trying to salvage themselves from the ravages of sleep, they settled into the guardrails and began to watch the ship go by.

Although Rose is in a chock hold by Ana, at least the two ladies are best friends already. Rose is kinda worry though, she did hear that someone used to sleep on the top bunk under Ana before they....Passed. Rose just doesn't want Ana to hate her, thinking that she is replacing her bunkie, or everyone crewmate. The train of those worry thoughts were cut when a big lady clapped Rose and Ana on their backs. Man! This lady may pop Rose back cause that was a hard clap! Hot damn! Rose then walk her crewmates for chow, which is a good thing for Rose cause she is hungry. Maybe what space does, making everyone hungry super fast.

As she walking with her crew, there it was, her insignia in all it glory. She feel like a kid watching fireworks for the first time, but instead of fireworks, it's fireteam's insignia. Rose feel rather small while looking at all of them, people actually made these things by hands, human hands. Is this what Rosalina been missing in her life while she being cooped up in home while her father is trying to make some deals with powerful people and trying to put her in arrange marriages.....She wonders how siblings are doing, do they miss her? Clementine probably miss her the most while Dahlia and Evander pretend that Rose doesn't exist....How many years has it been? Rose stomach then growl, telling that they are hungry. "Soooo umm...What are we going to eat?" Rose say to the crew.

"Oh, you know," said the man at the front of the procession, his hands stowed in pockets and his back slouched against the sliding handrail of the escalator, "foie gras, filet mignon, fatty tuna sashimi, oysters Rockefeller ... the usual spread for us rock-sta——ow, shit!"

The big lady struck him, too, but with less of the same joviality and camaraderie as which still rang out from Ana and Rose's spines. Aiming to avenge herself of some inconsolable temptation, avenge herself she did, with a punch to his deltoid which sent him reeling, grimacing, and clutching in his hand a muscle which may just as well have turned to jelly. The others responded in their turns——giggling, scoffing, shaking their heads in pity (they knew, some firsthand, how hard Yrma could hit)——but Rose could not ignore a certain ... forlornness, with which they dismissed this play-fighting. Because whatever childhood dish or haute-cuisine classic it was which came to mind for each of them, it was 2.7 trillion miles away, in the smoky, lantern-lit alleys of Europa, or the idyllic windswept fields of Venus, unattainable and inimitable in the canteens and mess halls of the Artaxerxes. For a single moment they reminded Rose of frontier settlers, weary for butters and creams, custards and wine sauces; the comforts of distant places. But in the next these expressions were gone, smothered under soldierly stoicism.

She couldn't imagine food which was that demoralizing, even if it came from cans and cartons.

"What's the deal, anyway?" asked the big lady, seemingly to change the subject before the dread of breakfast made her grumpy. "We should've been briefed by now."

The commander led the charge off the escalator. Not stopping to wait for any stragglers, she replied with a beefy shrug, "All we've got is a distress signal from a vanadium mine down in the Aronnax Trench. A big megacorp interest, so Streymoy handled the negotiations for us, and ..."

"And here we are," Yrma sighed.

"So what'd it say?" said Ana, hurrying into a trot to catch up and listen in. "And, why did so little intel make its way to us?"

Her gaze tore expectantly from one senior to the next, as if to gauge which one was likeliest to answer her, and aim her question accordingly. It only so happened that Gan, trailing behind the group at a casual pace, had paused by a porthole to quite literally stare into space. His narrow eyes, black as spilled ink, didn't wander; they had settled upon something specific out in the starry sea. He put a fingertip to the quartz-glass. "That."

Ana blinked, processed the reply, and wandered over to the porthole to press her nose to it. "Wh—Whoa!" she exclaimed, breath misting against the window. "Team leader, we're not seriously airdropping into that, are we?!"

"We are if we want our 2.4 million credits," the team leader said plainly.

"Crud," Ana grumbled, "we do, don't we?"

They did.

Rose almost trip on her own step when team leader said 2.4 million credits....2.4 million credits?! That much?! Hot damn! Rose wonders how many credits does each members have, a lot probably and for this certain curiosity on how rich everyone is, Rose starting feel some memories going on. After she left her home many years ago, she got no money in her pocket and the only way to move around is to get some part-time jobs, which back then, she was terrible at, she can't cook right, she was a terrible waitress, not great with gardening and all that kind of stuff. After selling her very expensive jewelry for some few bunks, Rose used to think maybe this was a bad idea, if she just suck it up and summit to her father's order, she wouldn't be living on the streets back then....But that part was over, this is her life now and she is sticking to it.

Rose and the crew finally made it to the mess hall, where they are greeted by glorious food. Rose was the first one to enter and grab something and although she is somewhat grateful at least, she can't stop thinking about home, thinking on what Clementine, Dahlia, Evander and her father eating right now. Damn dream, already messing up her morning. Why is she having those dreams lately? Those are not even dreams, they look like flashbacks of her past, she just hopes this won't be a recurring thing and won't sabotage her future missions. As she eats her can food, Rose wonders what her mission is going to be, it will be her first time riding insignia and just pray to god that she won't screw up and be a failure.

"Relax," the big lady chuckled. Rosie suspected, being just ahead of her in the chow line, that she would've been due for another one of those thunderous, bone-shattering claps between the shoulderblades, except that those ham-hock-like hands of hers were already clutching an aluminum mess tray. "That's for the whole ship, not just us. With our pay-grades these days, we'll get about ... three and a half percent, I think? Still, that's a few thou to blow on a hotel room and a tight little twenty-something once we're back on Titan, right?"

"And some better room service," grumbled someone further back.

"What, you mean you ain't livin' the dream already?" the big lady called behind her. "Voilà: confits of green bean and dredged chicken, served with a potato purée, a chicken pan sauce, and elbow macaroni béchamel. Bon appetit, everyone."

With every step Rosie took along the counter, another exhausted, bag-eyed cook dropped another scoop of slop into another little squared compartment of her tray. In the end there were a mushy mint-green slop, a lumpy pale-gold slop, a fluorescent-yellow plasticky slop, and an oily, golden-brownish-black slop; each smothered in either cheese or gravy. If she was to believe the presentation, the cooks on this ship had fed the afternoon shift a half-succulent southern dinner, only to reach down their throats an hour later, pull out the masticated, half-digested goop, and spoon it back under the heat lamps to serve again to the graveyard crew, like aproned, paper-hatted robins shoving chewed-up worms down the gullets of their chicks.

Still, although the others grumbled and groaned, they received their ice-cream-scoops of mush and carried them to a table and shoveled them down all without complaint. And as Rose steeled her gut and took her first apprehensive bite, suggestions of an oversalted fried chicken flooded her mouth, and thus her memory, and the other piles—pigfaced effigies of buttered mashed potatoes, mac 'n cheese, and steamed vegetables—proved similarly bearable. (It was no worse than what she'd eaten in cafeterias at private school, at boot camp, or even at her old space-station.) Then again, it was only her first day; she might have ten days, maybe two weeks before she couldn't stomach it anymore, and she'd be thrashing against the ship walls desperate to bore right through the hull, airdrop down to the nearest moon, and chase down the nearest bowl of fresh tonkotsu noodles. She thought back to how desperate she was for a real cup of coffee about halfway through basic, half a lifetime ago, not that instant powdered shit.

As they ate, Rosie noticed her new team paying the window bay no more than a fleeting glance each; even though Neptune was a great blue blob set among the stars as a royal sapphire is set among smaller diamonds; even though her other moons, Hippocamp and Proteus and Triton-3, tumbled along their orbits in plain view of the humble crewmen shoving mashed potatoes and greasy fried chicken into their ungrateful maws; even though, down on the surface of Triton-5, grey clouds and choking black clouds streaked across the pocked surface like the moon wore a zebra-hide cloak, utterly swallowing, in its chaos, the battleground below. She would be there soon. She would fall through that storm, land among its gusts and pressures, and do what the mission demanded of her. For one-sixth of three-point-five percent of the bounty, apparently.

When she came to, ripped away from the yawning expanses of space and returning to her hard little seat nestled among 150 such seats crammed inside the Artaxerxes's fore canteen, the others were still bullshitting; about their one-rep deadlifting records, about the hotties up in the comms room (and about how lucky a "sunnuvabitch" named "Druid" apparently was for getting to work with them), even what they were going to eat tomorrow. (Ana and the shaggy black mullet, arguing for variety, hoped for tacos; pompadour and the big lady put their votes in for chili dogs and grilled cob-corn.) They really weren't noticing this, were they; the way Triton's surface roiled and frothed like a boiling sea? Even Ana appeared to have forgotten all about what she'd shoved her nose to quartz-glass to see.

"Oh! Sorry...I was little hungry after I woke up. I couldn't help myself" Rose say to the big lady with a nervous chuckle. Great job looking like a greedy person, Rose, great job. But whatever Voilà is, it does at least sounds delicious, better then what she got while being homeless for a few years, she used eat noodles, all the way to eating a very small bread, that was a size for a pair of glasses. With all that excitement for breakfast turn to disappointment when cook give Rose pile of slop...Huh...Rose guess there is some sarcasm in space after all. Rose sit down with her crew, while looking at the been pass off as food. as she took one bite of it, she almost spit it out but with pure will, she swallow it down with one gulp. There was no way she can spit out the food in front of everyone, including the chef that work on it, they would probably heartbroken if they saw that, so all she can do is to be grateful and eat the food....For the rest of her life....Now she wish that she has pockets.

As she and her crew, Rose noticed that everyone is looking at the window bay, where she spot Neptune in it blue glory. Rose read about Neptune in her studies and only see pictures of it, but she looking at the real thing, it kinda overwhelming for the small Rose as she looks at the big planet. Pretty soon, she is going to go on her mission with crew for the first time, Rose wonders how well she will do. Will her time do well and get those credits?...Or will she failing and be a failure? Maybe if she can some jokes like everyone here, maybe she can fit in. "Hey, I got a joke for you guys. What kind of music do planets enjoy singing along to?....Neptunes!" Rose laugh at the joke, hoping that everyone laughs too.....But she was the only one laughing. She then bury herself under the table to hide her embarrassment.

---

---

Rosie is feeling once again, overwhelmed as she sit on her cockpit in her talarius RSS9 aka her "Fire Ant". She really don't want any scratches on it, but then again she is going to battle, she is going to end up with a bunch scratches. Rose then jump when she hear something in her cockpit. Oh shit, did she broken it? She then sigh in relief when it was only the radio.



As she turn off the radio, Rose can't help but to smile, at least she finally made two friends on her first day. With a deep breath and breathing out, Rose hold to her handlers, gripping as tight as she can, she was ready, ready to take on anybody on her first mission!

Gan reckoned if they didn't have to sit in on four and a half hours of bullshit briefings tonight, then he might as well get a shower and a nap in. He slipped into his bunk still damp from the humid, opaque-grey steamer room, his hair a birdsnest of shimmering curls, and when he woke, it was at the end of a metal peg-leg kicking the cot frame. Yrma was already packed away into her flightsuit, jump-boots, and bomber; she swung the cylinder on her Mateba Model 6 to check that it was loaded, then shoved it into its shoulder-holster. Her grizzly-paws made that hand-cannon look like a regular old gun. Not how she got her callsign, but it was certainly a fitting one, in more respects than one.

Once he was dressed, Gan pressurized his suit around his wrists, neck, and ankles, and confirmed that his comparatively tiny Smith & Wesson 19 was loaded, and with .357 Magnum instead of the .38 Special he used at the range. It was. And with nothing left to do but to get it done (okay, and take a piss before strapping in), he sealed the door behind him. The other two doors also had been clamped, leading to Gan's suspicion that he was about to be the last pilot to the hangar. Unless one or another CO had snared Commander Voldova in their bureaucratic web, and she was off grudgingly kissing ass somewhere on the upper decks ...

Ordnancemen, nukies, and air officers scurried from place to place in their scramble to be done before the launch. Crawling over the mechs via ladders and cranes and cherrypickers, they reminded Gan of Hebrew slaves building a pyramid, or—as the enormously wide walls, distant ceiling, and vaguely humanoid metal titans played with his perceptions—of termites repairing their nest of mud and straw. Tiny, fragile animals crawling over the flesh of dormant giants. Giants which awakened even now, as pilots and mech-captains alike, visible through cocked-open cockpit canopies, initiated start-up codes and eased their steel beasts into loading stations and lift-hooks. Great chutes guided autocannon belts into the shoulders of Ana's FLI 'Hellion' as men on ladders shoved Chariot warheads into missile tubes. They clambered between the slats of Chlotho's A3-37 Phalanx's heat jettison ports, too, scrubbing soot and grit from the chambers. As for Gan's OW35s 'Basilisk,' cloven-footed and bent-backed, a misshapen leviathan, a ceiling-mounted crane had guided an enormous, fallopian-tube-like power cable to the charging port in the rear of the unit, and two more were still slotting copper capsules into the nape-mounted particle cannon, and tungsten darts into the flanks of the arm-mounted railguns. Gan swept his gaze across the Basilisk's loading bay; he and the person he sought out noticed each other at about the same time, the latter jogging up to meet him. They saluted each other.

"Master Sergeant Bosphorus," said Gan. "At ease."

"Lieutenant Szilard, sir!" the master-sergeant replied. "Welcome back. Your warmech is ready for final inspection. We're only loading up the ordnance, and topping off the superbattery. Sir."

Florian Bosphorus's rosy, callused hands offered Gan a clipboard, whose contents he glanced over lazily. Under the seat of his baseball cap, hairpins kept Florian's shaggy brown bangs out of his eyes; the very best tidiness he could muster for combat dress. "What are we doing about the joints?" Gan asked him.

"Sir?"

"The soot-storm. Won't all that particulate work its way into the joints and seize them up?"

Florian turned to look at the mech as if that question had only just occurred to him. "Uh, thankfully most of your joints use a closed-hydraulic system ... You can thank Apollyon Arms for that ... As for the hip rotator and the ankle servos, we can hit those with some nanospray for you. A temporary fix, but it should work long enough to get you back for maintenance."

"Do that, then." Gan peered back down into the checklist, giving it a sneering look so he'd look like he was being serious. "Projections say we'll be back in three days. Will you and the other jacks be joining us for drinks once we're dismissed?"

"Three days," Florian mumbled, "three days ... ah! Shit, that's the petty officers' poker game. Sorry, Gan; I've already bought a seat at the table."

"That's 'Sorry, sir,' while we're at our stations; but that's alright. Next time," Gan assured him with a clap on the back.

A long, quiet moment, quiet despite the mechanical hiss-whir-clang of the hangar, whistled between them. Florian dismissed himself by shouting, "Hey, blueshirt! Get the nanospray, double time!" and whisking himself away to the last of his work. Chuckling, Gan armpitted the clipboard and climbed aboard the wire lift to the cockpit, where, after giving Florian one last salute from up atop the mech, his systems check began with running the dials and dry-firing all the weapons systems. This done, it was time to jack in; so he removed his neckplate, braced against the inevitable wave of nausea, and inserted the neurolink into the port in his nape. At once sensors and actuators and gyroscopes burst to life, and, gripping the twin cyclics, Gan flexed his mech's extremities, clenching and releasing, extending each limb as far as its servos and sheaths allowed before bottoming out, taking a few steps fore and back once the handling officer directed personnel and machinery away from the platform. It was a quick inspection, Gan's check-marks added unhesitantly to the list beside Florian's; Florian and his hangar boys did good work. Other than not waiting until Gan had closed the cockpit to hit the mech with nanospray; he had to rip away from his seat and slam the canopy shut so he wouldn't get blasted with industrial-grade aerolubricant so soon after taking a shower.

Carefully directing his mech down the white line painted on the floor, pausing to let munitions carts and other smaller vehicles go by, Gan found himself checking the empty bays beside his. As expected, he would be the last one onto the catapult, except for the commander's Armageddon-class 'Sword of Damocles,' still unmanned and thus lifeless as the officers gathered by its feet and the handlers wriggled over its body; and ... ah. That must've been the rookie's mech. Unmistakably Talarius-built, with its awkward little flipper-feet and its pot-bellied little reactor torso—some kind of recon model, but Gan didn't know which one right away. Pulling his own mech closer, he figured he'd get a look at how his newest teammate handled herself; maybe throw her a thumb-up for confidence. Peering out his cockpit and into hers, he certainly wouldn't have hoped that she was chatting with someone on the radio, all giggles and smiles. She'd been cracking wise since this morning, too. If Gan was going to be working with this girl for the foreseeable future, trusting her with his life and being willing to rescue hers, too, then she was going to have to prove she was taking this seriously.

She didn't seem to have even started her systems check, either. And sure, maybe those scouter-mechs were easier to catch up—fewer weapons and all that—but ... was this really how she was gonna behave on her first day?

Maybe she's already finished her check ... ? I mean, I was excited on my first day too ...

Before he overthought it, Gan urged the Basilisk forward, and into the next available catapult bay. Of course, it was just his luck, after one revelation, to then immediately be placed next to ...

"HEY, GAN!" he cried from one cockpit to the next, cupping his hands over his mouth to amplify himself over the ambient industrial noise.

"WHAT?!" Gan cried back to Chlotho.

"FIVE HUNDRED CREDITS ON ME DOWNING MORE BOGEYS THAN YOU."

"WHEN WILL YOU GET SICK OF GIVING ME YOUR MONEY, MAN?!"

"WHEN I'VE BEATEN YOU!"

"Oh, great ... FINE. MY NEXT SHORE-LEAVE IS ON YOU, THEN, SINCE YOU INSIST."

"DON'T BE SO SURE, GAN; THIS IS THE ONE! I CAN FEEL IT!"

From the fist-pump he gave himself next, shouting something this time too quiet to be heard over the mechanical din, Chlotho seemed unwilling to back down from his own fruitless challenge, strapping himself in starting with his airlock helmet, and then his harness. Gan waited until he saw the commander, traversing the hangar toward her colossal Sword of Damocles, to do the same.

"Supposedly you felt it last time, too ..." he grumbled, also inaudibly.

The frame of his mech shook as something clunked into his back, and then his withers; looking to his left, great mechanical claws were affixing a parachute and a jump-pack to Chlotho's A3-37 Phalanx. Ana and Yrma's mechs, already so equipped, stood idling and at the ready.

"Hehehe, what's a tomato, got him good." Rose say to herself as she is hopping out to get her equipment. Then out of nowhere, Rose gets the feeling that someone is watching, she turn to see a long-haired man looking her. As first she thought he just checking to see if she ok but looking at his eyes further, it almost like he is looking at child, a naïve one. "Ummm...Hey...I was just, um...Just chatting with Druid. He was checking if my radio was working and then we starting joking....About t-tomatos...He was t-talking about this pizza thing a-and...I'm just going to get my stuff." Rose say to the long-haired man as she awkwardly walk away from him and his mech.

Why was he looking at her like that? Rose is one of his teammates, does he have any fate in her?....Does he hate her? That's it probably, everyone in her team probably hates her, including Ana and Druid. Sure the two are acting friendly towards her, but deep down, they look down on her, being new and unexperienced. Rose is just being friendly, is that too bad? She is just trying to make a good first impression, Rose thinks that probably not good enough she guess....It like home all over again. As she walks back toward her mech with her equipment, Rose looks at her team mech and stop to admiring the metal titans. She then quickly notice on how everyone match their mech perfectly, with get great leadership and strong will power, the leader rides a AMG Mk II, Ana rides a Fessler-Bagwell MLI, perfect armor protection for someone who want to protect her friends. Then there Rose's mech, her Fire Ant, although it doesn’t much weaponry, it incredible speed, it a perfect match for Rose. She doesn't know she feel so connected towards her mech, maybe it feels so small compare to everyone mech, wants some respect and gratitude from their peers, wants to get out there and make a name for their self, they want to be hear instead being ignored, they want to be heard.

With new sense of determination in her mind, Rose hop on her mech and close mech door. Rose will show them, Rose will show that she is just like all of them, show them that she is a part of Fireteam 9!

The crane wouldn't move until Gan was strapped in, so he made a quick, unceremonious gesture of pulling up his hair into a lazy tail, pulling his helmet down from the ceiling by its tubes, locking it in and pressurizing. He harnessed himself to his seat, and secured the socket around his neurojack plug. Having freed the strut propping up the canopy, he then closed that, cocooning himself completely in leather, steel, and aluminum glass. As well as a cockpit it was, in a certain way of thinking, a crucible: a young pilot would either strangle and kill his claustrophobia, emerging stronger from the mech as if from metamorphosis; or he would panic, shut down, and crack, like impure steel emerging from the foundry, or a shoddily spun clay pot from the kiln. For some reason, the rookie pilot struck Gan as one subsumed within this struggle, which struck him as odd; didn't Morrigan Group, or any private contractor for that matter, give first pick to pilots with long and storied careers; the ones who'd survived a few campaigns, won a few distinctions and ribbons first? They hated pouring precious time, and precious money, into training green-gills when there were vets lining up at the door, ones already seasoned on taxpayer budgets. So why was the young blood behaving like she didn't know her mouth from her asshole and her brains from a bowl of oatmeal?

And more importantly: what the hell had Streymoy seen in her when he let her in? Did she have money connections? Had she snaked her way along a path of know-a-guy nepotism until it reached one of the COs? Or, was she secretly a piloting prodigy ... despite appearances?

Guess we'll find out, Gan ruminated as he wrestled a cyclic to and fro, waving his Basilisk's starboard barrel and thus signaling to the boots on the platform that he was ready for hoisting. Almost immediately there was the rumble of a crane arm; then the seismic clunk of an enormous winch, its whir more akin to a groan as, awakened blearily from a titanic slumber, it began to unspool a cable as thick as an oak round. When, thus, a cargo hook reached down from the girdered firmament as if to bestow a blessing from its iron palm, it joined to a slat between the shoulders of the Basilisk. Now the winch whined, despite its terrible size and power; it strained against its own weight, and those of the rigging, the cargo hook, and the 130-tonne walking gun to which they were coupled. What other weapons platform—no, what other human project at all—could have culminated from forty years of materials, R&D, testing, QC, lobbying, contracting, and engineering? What else besides an ADAMAS warmech could have demanded that starships be equipped with such extravagant and excessive machinery, the stuff of Atlantean myth, just to lift it to another deck, or pluck it from a planet? For the same cost as a single of these units (never mind the infrastructure accommodating it), Morrigan Group could have fielded a whole battalion of armored infantry, including artillery and power-suits for support. And yet they chose Gan and the other fou—... five. Because once Gan and the others landed, they, whoever was down there, would witness firsthand what even a single fireteam of mech pilots could achieve. Six ordinary people, riding in the shirt pockets of their behemoths and leaving entire legions trampled in their wake.

Back in the 20^th Century, the semi-automatic handgun was christened "the great equalizer," allowing the small and the feeble to protect themselves from tyrannical strength. But inside a mech, David could rend Goliath; slaves could topple not just masters.

Empires.

For a time, the four mechs swayed in the pull of the ship's artificial inertia drives, and things, despite the industrial-mechanical chaos, were peaceful. Four became six as the Commander, and then the rookie, made their way to their docking stations. (How the ship rumbled and rattled, now! Through the cockpit window Gan saw Commander Voldova's two-legged, four-barreled 'Sword of Damocles' as vividly as he felt its apocalyptic footsteps shuddering through the floor, the winch, the crane, the cable, the Basilisk, and then into his cockpit, such were their immensity.)

Twin downward-facing camera feeds, intended as an anti-infantry measure, instead showed Gan a sequence of thumbs-up, flags, and beckons from the enlisteds at his own mech's feet, conveying that it was ready to receive the final piece of its loadout. And within moments it began to close in around him: two halves of a rifled iron-vanadium shell, coupled at the seam and then clamped shut. Gan surrendered himself to the internal darkness; and silence, as his radiovisual feed slowly sank into a sea of white static, neither penetrating nor escaping the ferrous cage now blocking it from all sides. Gan only knew when he began to move from the way his stomach sloshed against his ribs, and his brain against his skull, as the cargo crane pulled him along its dolly, swinging him just slightly at every directional lurch of the heavy cables. Now it was only him in here; no voices on the radio, no faces in the video feeds, like he was a pearl clutched possessively in his dark, cool little oyster, with only displays and dials to light his way, and his own breathing to battle the silence. The quiet turned some pilots anxious, itchy, desperate to burst free; from their harnesses, or their helmets, or the cheap alloy shells which protected them and their machines from atmospheric burning. Gan understood the feeling a little. Admittedly, he liked a bit of music to pass the time in what he could only liken to a gently humming, temperature-regulated, slightly-too-chilly purgatory. Even now, he reached down into a center console, past a Chinese copycat of an 1897 trench-gun stowed barrel-down in its holster, to run his finger over a collection of cassette tapes stashed beneath. Making his choice, he crammed the tape into the deck, dialed back the volume a hair, and settled in for the ride, which, as it happens, had just begun in earnest.

There was a gentle lurch as, once again, pulleys ached and cables strained in dropping the weight of the durasteel monster. It especially strained at the bottom, when all that weight had to come to a stop; only the walls of the launch conduit relieved these machines of their labor, rifling inward until they braced flush against the anti-atmo shell. The cargo hook released its death-grip on the Basilisk, and retreated into the ceiling, and made way for the hatch above Gan to slide shut, truly trapping him in the ductwork guts of the Artaxerxes.

A terrible hissing drowned out the music, for a time, as vacuum pumps drew the air out of the chamber. The hatch below him opened. And this—the waiting—was the worst part, Gan reckoned; not knowing just when it would happen. But he'd done this enough times that he didn't bother bracing his stomach anymore. He liked to think it had long been annealed against all manners of gravitational roughhousing.

So he waited. And waited, with only the faintest spike of dread running through his blood. Until, simultaneously, the rifled walls loosened, and an explosion-propelled plunger shoved the Basilisk out the launch port and into the thermosphere.

Although she feels safe in her cockpit, Rose can't help but to feel a slight discomfort as she feels her mecha moving around. Rose then feels tumble in her seat and feels her stomach drop as her Ant Fire falls. She did hear that this is normal for every mission, Rose just has to get used to it, she suppose....But she can't get these bad thoughts out of her head, what if her parachute burns and then she dies on impact? What if her mecha catches on fire from the speed? Sure, metal can't catch on fire but what if it does?

The bad thoughts were cut short when Rose heard something on her radio, she can't make it on what it is, is her radio broken?....Wait, It almost sounds like music but different? With curiosity on what type of music it is, Rose pushes some buttons on the radio to get a better sound, only to hear the voice of Druid.

---

---

Rose's map depicts a base of roughly hexagonal shape, with two entrances on the northernmost and southernmost points of the walls, respectively. On either side of this base, someone, presumably the Commander, places two markers. Point Alpha she places further to the north, in an area roughly flat but in places hollowed by quarries and blast pits. Point Beta she places further to the south, where the purplish-grey moon-rock, according to the topographical lines, forms rough, jagged hills.

---

---

Rose then turn off her radio and clinch on to her seatbelt, knowing that even if it will be only her and Hothead, she'll be somewhat alone for awhile.

Hurtling through the near-vacuum of the thermosphere, the giant "bullet" encasing the Basilisk turned and tumbled freely, with no care at all for the stomach, or the brain sac, within. Gan braced every muscle he could, even down to the curl of his toes; held his breath, except in tightly controlled, tightly rhythmic bursts, ignoring the instinct which burned in his lungs. His vision swam and splattered as he focused dead-ahead on a seam in the cockpit window. Biomechanically speaking the blood deprivation was no worse than piloting a vector-jet back on Daedalus-1. But encapsulated in iron and isolation, with the radio waves crackling on a dead channel as he tumbled toward the moon like a meteor, or a living bomb, wreathed in burning plasma ... Gan was thankful for protocol, else he'd start to think. And thinking led too easily to mistakes. Any and all of which flirted with disaster at 200,000 feet.

Focus. Calm. He'd just entered B-flight; as the atmosphere thickened around the falling shell, it riveted through the rifling along the sides, slowly stabilizing the butt up and the point down. Now Gan was truly like a bullet, spinning only along a single axis. He was falling faster, too; hotter. As the air inside the cabin approached equilibrium with the outside superoxygens and fluoroblankets, a barometric needle in his instrumentation array ticked down. Focus. Calm. Through the torrent of blood rushing into his skull, and the spray of black colors in his capillaries, he had to eject when the air outside was thick enough to create the drag he needed, but not so thick that the Basilisk's legs would burn up in all the friction. He reached up for the handle. He had to eject soon ... soon ...

Now!

The trigger ignited pockets of plastic explosive stuffed into the seams of the anti-atmo shell, bursting it into two halves which now free-fell into burning oblivion. And with the help of a few engineering miracles, the jump-rockets and mech-sized parachute also kicked into action; while a great fiery plume wreathed about the Basilisk's feet, and kevlar cloth unfurled over its head, the deceleration shoved Gan into his seat, and the blood back down into his legs. The radio similarly burst; the shell, something of a Faraday cage when cocooning a mech, now glowed and shrank as it streaked toward Triton-5. All of it reached Gan now: Druid taking the mission way too seriously, like usual. The idle crackle of the Commander's channel, not speaking until she absolutely had to. Grizzly's laconicism. Everything as it was meant to be. Except for the seventh voice on the radio; one unfamiliar in its singsong, sarcastic cadence.

Gan stayed quiet and nodded along while the Commander assigned him to babysitting duty. But on the inside, roiling like the very soot-storm into which he now faded from view, he wasn't so sure. Maybe she trusted him more than the others to get the rookie all caught up and tested. Or maybe the plan had merely turned out this way. Either way, if the rookie cracked under the pressures of her first mission, both of them would need bailing-out. And Gan's PPC and twin railguns, despite their power, couldn't fight for the both of them.

The mist and the ash-like detritus now swept over the mech; past the cockpit, almost like gentle mists rolling down a mountainside. Gan switched off the radio, again struggling to break through a wall of prickly static; and for a time he was alone in the grey. Though the parachute strained and labored, the Basilisk herself weathered the hostile winds of this place almost gracefully, well-anchored and well-weighted. With every sweep of the storm she swayed a little more, almost—almost—like a hammock. Certainly, compared to the chaos of a free-fall through low orbit, then the tossing and reeling from a parachute and a set of jump-jets (now empty), and the orange-hot glowing in the Basilisk's feet which, according to the automated systems overseer, was within "nominal" temperatures, Gan could almost take a nap out here. But an untold number of minutes later, drifting aimlessly through the grey silence, the cockpit suddenly rumbled, and outside there was a great burst of unsettled debris and dust. He had landed. Pressing a few buttons to jettison both the parachute from his anchor on his withers and the rockets from his back, leaving these to be buried under the dregs, Gan stepped forward a pace and swept his hip joint 360 degrees, both to test it and to check whether he had landed nearby anyone else. No. Manually he couldn't see even two hundred feet ahead, and in these two hundred feet, quietly and suffocatingly, only the storm greeted him. And with the radio picking up nothing beyond these powdery, dry walls ... there may just as well have been no one else on the moon at all. Maybe the besiegers and the besieged had already killed each other off, and the rest of the fireteam had vaporized during the drop. The darkness, the silence from the radio, and the eerie howls of the wind battering against the cockpit only enforced this illusion.

Rose still clenches on to her seatbelt as her mech starts to shake again, she hopes that at least her parachute is not burnt up, can things even burn up in space? Maybe so, there have been space battles years ago Rose believes, from the stories that her mother once told her when she was young. When the mech was first made, people first thought that they could send it in space, so they did....And then it got blown up. (Which is a pretty normal thing when people try to send things to space) Rose wondered how did everyone react to this new tech that scientists made? She wondered how many countries saw that and be 'You know what? Let's make that, but better?' and there has been a lawsuit or war since then, Rose sigh, somethings never change huh?

The thoughts of history were cut short when the mech made a bump that almost caused Rose to almost hit on the top of the cockpit. She then pulls herself together and sees through her window, she's here, she has landed on the moon.

After jettison her parachute, Rose looks around of her surroundings and sees nothing, she then turn on her radio and hear static "Hmmm...Still unconnected" Rose say to herself, it may take awhile until her partner land here, so she might at least keep herself company....But what if HotHead already land here? What if he went rogue and just abandoned her out here? He does look like a maverick rule-breaking type to her. He could at least tell her before walking off on his own, leaving her alone....Or maybe he just hates her that much. That's it is it? He met her one day and decided that he hated her. Rose was just trying to get along with everyone, is that so wrong? Trying to fit in? Maybe he'll convince the team to hate her too, since everyone knows him for a long time, therefore they agree with him.

What if they are on the battlefield? Rose's mech blew up, she tried to get out of the cockpit while everything is burning up but it was no use, she stuck! Rose try to call HotHead to save her, save her life!....But he didn't come for her, he left her there to die. Her team would do that as well, just leave her behind....Just leave her behind like always...Her friends leave her behind. Her father left her behind. Her older brother left her behind! Her older sister left her behind! Her mother leave her behi-



Rose cries out to herself. She start breathing very heavenly as tears starting to form around her eyes, she then try to calm herself as she start counting "One, Two, Three, Four..Five..Six...Seven....Eight.....Nine.......Ten........Ok...I'm calm down now, no more bad thoughts" Rose say to herself as she wipe her tearing eyes and start doing breathing techniques. She always does this when she feels overwhelmed or overthinking bad thoughts. Rose learned this technique from her mother, the family was at some fancy event, Rose didn't remember what it was, but a six year old Rose was so overwhelmed with the loud music and crowd of people that it caused her to melt down. While her father was talking to his fancy friends, her mother took her outside and helped her count until she calmed down. Rose has been doing that ever since, it really does help her a lot, specially when she was homeless.

As Rose finally collects herself together, she pulls up her map and sees two red dots, the one in the center is her, while the other may be Hothead. Rose concluded she got here before Hothead, now all she can do is hope and pray that this mission goes smoothly without her partner leaving her behind.

The empty jump tanks and the heavy-gauge parachute cables fell to the ground, landing with thuds inaudible in the cockpit and agitating an inert layer of moon-dust which the ravenous, shrieking winds then whisked away. Gan left them there to become Triton artifacts, buried under decades and centuries of such wind-storms as they refused to rust away; or the scrappers' and the salvagers' next meal as they hauled it away to a smelting plant. But leaving them there was still risky. The storm would not bury the refuse and the scrappers wouldn't cut it up and cart it out before a patrol found it, if the patrols wandered out this far from the base. Hopefully, they didn't. Hopefully they marched tighter circles around the quarry, to keep watch over their prey, and stick together through the storm.

Engaging in an evasive maneuver, Gan three-sixtied his surroundings. Fruitlessly. Maybe. The short field-of-view and the frizzling optics and the cloudy-white wall beyond the glass did little to persuade him that he hadn't been seen or happened-upon while he fell; but that being the case, he still belonged on the move, before a scout or any kind of straggler came back with his buddies. He'd just have to trust OpInt, a decade-old map, and the split-second judgment of his commanding officer, wouldn't he?

At the least, the whirls of dust and soot would blur his tracks. And conceal his coming.

The empty tanks and the parachute faded deeper behind him with every thundering step from his hydraulic metal feet. Now only rock cradled them on his eastward journey. Rock and powder. The rookie had gotten the raw deal in all this, Gan realized; in her light, sporty, corvette-like little mech, she would arrive at the RV point minutes before him, and there she would wait, alone, unguarded. He, on the other hand, would arrive to an ally waiting for him. If she hadn't wandered off to make snow-angels, that is. Yeah, on the radio she'd been all "Roger, roger, roger," but whether she was paying attention the whole time, Gan would be first to find out. Then again, in the hangar she was rushing her pre-flight, too, seemingly hurrying or even skipping key systems checks. What if he was overthinking this, and she was just another glory-hound like that smirking, pompadoured prick, Strauss?

Better than a space-cadet, I guess. At least a glory-hound, even if he bragged about it for months and months after, would pull Gan from a burning wreck when it came to that.

The thought of this—his Basilisk, charred and smoldering in the sub-oxygen atmosphere of this place—inspired Gan to double back again. After slowing the mech's forward momentum, he quickly backed up, and gave his hip joint a full 180 pivot; to catch any followers more subtly and quickly, of course, than if he had simply turned around. For another few minutes, he was satisfied. Surer that a smaller unit hadn't retreated into the fog to avoid being spotted, Gan righted his direction and his speed, again beelining to the RV point. Until another mech really did appear from the fog. It was ahead of him, having sat dead-still for so long that the quarry "snow" blustered from smooth piles clinging to its starboard leg and shoulder, its cold gun barrel; its entire right side. He zeroed in immediately, or at least as quickly as he could pivot. Aiming. Watching.

The mech didn't move, and showed no idling behaviors at all. The "snow" didn't shake away form its body as if from the rumble of an understressed reactor engine. Nor did little port flaps open and close with the various machinations of its coolant system. In death the thing was locked to stare north-westward, its back permanently turned from Gan's current position. He ventured closer.

"A Vitruvius?" he guessed just from its hulking, industrial shape. Getting closer and circling the thing affirmed this theory: someone had retrofitted it for war. The mining wheels at the ends of its arms were welded off, the stumps coupled to crude, blunderbuss-like gun barrels; on its shoulder, not a pivoting crane mount, but a wire-fed explosive launcher. As for the enemy, they had needed to drill through inches and inches of backplate to reach any of the critical pipelines or hydraulic valves ... but they'd done it. The digger-mech had bled all its coolant, Neptune-blue, through a circular gash bored into its flank. Various joints were also sprung, crimped, and crippled; maybe while bringing the enormous mech down. Maybe to make sure it wouldn't get back up.

With no sign of the pilot in the cockpit, the wound, or anywhere else, Gan turned himself around and hurried onward. More wreckage continued to tell this story on the way: these were smaller, more mobile ... more professional. The attackers which the gargantuan digger-mech had managed to pluck from the battlefield before they, too, hobbled it: tanks. APCs. A single mobile command unit. All of them scorched, empty, and dead, whistling as the wind jabbed through their many exit holes and blast craters.

When Gan crested a hill and saw a Talarius Fire Ant standing atop it, he would have been grateful first if not for having his thumbs over the caps guarding his trigger buttons. Damn it, the fog must've been getting to him; he could've shot her!

Rose sees the red dot, aka Hothead, moving towards her and her mech. She hopes that she knows how to move this thing, now that she thinks about it, she didn't have any proper training at all! Great, this is just great! She is going to make a fool of herself in front of everyone....Well, in front of Hothead. Rose wants to move the damn thing, but she doesn't want to damage the Fire Ant, and herself in the progress.

As Rose is ready to move, she sees someone in the mist. The mech looks rather bulker, has two cannons on it arms, and a another on the top of it head. Is that Hothead mech? A Apollyon Arms OW35s? She thinks it name is Basilisk? Although she doesn't know him that much, Rose thinks that Apollyon is a perfect fit Hothead. He seems like a person that wants to be stronger for his team, a somewhat secondary leader, which Rose hope to become someday. As Hothead moves closer to her, Rose finally figure out to move this thing. She slowly raise her mech arm, trying to wave a hello to him, but almost completely fell.

Another evasive three-sixty, and another sweep of the dark chaos of the storm, enveloping everything past a bubble of maybe forty meters. The presence of another—a supposed ally—had soothed Gan's nerves by now, but still he stuck to protocol. To routine. To muscle-memory, chiseled into his brain by drills and regimens. Because drilling kept his mind, or at least his eye, off the rookie, who he could swear he had just caught in his peripherals with one leg stuck out, arms flailing, as her metal behemoth threatened to slip out from underneath her and make a new crater in the hill they had mounted. Before he could ask the question (sparing himself from having to hear the answer), Gan slipped into an angle opposite hers, and a position slightly behind her, so that now they had eyes on the whole sector.

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He spoke with clarity, confidence, and purpose, despite anticipating (and receiving) no answer from his comrades; only a quiet, crackling protest from the radio.

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And now, to embrace the inevitable: after witnessing her temperament firsthand back on the Artaxerxes, Gan could only expect something truly asinine to leave his new partner's mouth. Another joke. More elbow-to-ribcage wisecracking from a girl they didn't know, and who had done nothing yet to earn that trust or respect. And yet who put on like they were already best buddies, like she was already a member of their live-and-die troupe. At this rate, Gan was wondering whether she'd get herself killed first or merely court-martialed. And how many of them she'd take down with her, too. And the last thing they'd hear on their radios as they went up in flames? That goddamned singsong voice, parroting their orders back at them with a halfhearted "roger that" or "got it" tacked to the end.

Just what the hell had Commander Streymoy seen in her when he gave her file the green stamp? And——Melger! What, had he not noticed any of the red flags while he was vetting this chick?! Or did he just ignore them and push her through anyway? Gan swore up to heaven and down to hell: if he was about to die because all the blood was in "Druid's" dick instead of his brain on recruitment day ... but before he could finish cursing his enigmatic handler and comms officer, Gan heard a sound which managed to surprise him even then, with all that pessimism pissing hot into his liver. Even as he thought he'd learned to expect the worst from this girl. A familiar blinking chime let him know that a new unit had just joined the channel. Either she had just turned on her radio, or she was ... Gan didn't know. Surfing for some fucking tunes before she remembered she had a job to do.

He swallowed a mouthful of spit, and with it, a mouthful of words best left unsaid. For now. For now, the seemingly ironically named "Hothead" returned to his usual cold, biting disposition, cloaking himself in its mysteries.

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He reached, slowly and deliberately, for the neurojack in his neck, plucking it. Underneath and all around him, his mech autopiloted itself into a stabilized idling position. Next he twisted the volume dial to the left until there was a click; a knife-like silence killed the radio, static and all, and the video feed contracted into a pinprick in the center of a now-dead screen. For a moment of his choosing, Gan was alone. He breathed. He opened up a side-console and reached in. First to break, shattered against the far wall and cascading from it in a shower of jagged glass, was an ashtray. Then a box of 12-gauge shells, now clinking against the floor and rolling into the corners. Gan tried to wrestle a cyclic out from its mount, and he punched the battle map screen until the pain pierced his gloves, tingling in his knuckles. He recoiled, and gripped the trembling hand. The straps of his seat hugged him too tightly to let him get up and walk off his rage, so he tore at them, too, and his helmet, and everything else that restrained him to this chair-shaped coffin and this cockpit-sized grave. But by the time he was free, Gan didn't want to go anywhere; what he saw was too vivid, too paralyzing. It was Scyto's face. In turns it curled and blackened as it went up in flames; it crumpled between jaws of buckled steel, and bled under the gentle kiss of broken glass; his beautiful, boyish eyes popped in the vacuum of space; he choked in the technicolor gases of Jupiter, of a nebula. Gan had to shove this face away by replacing it with others. The crow's-feet and the crinkle in Yrma's nose as she laughed. Ana pouting as Strauss teased her, always like children when they were together. Even the moody, stoic, quietly strong Ketherin Voldova, who watched her brood from afar. Which of them was Rose Synapse going to kill with her naivety?

But worst of all was not knowing who to blame. Who to be angry at. Was it Rose's fault, or was it Streymoy's and Melger's, who let her in? Or was it Gan's fault? Out in the corridors, in the mess hall, he could have chastised her for the wrinkles in her flight suit and the bangs hanging down into her eyes. He could've gotten her assigned to swab duty while the rest of them completed the mission. Hell, he could've challenged her to a sim match and learned all of this sooner! But he'd been too busy moping and being aloof, and now here they were. Trapped on this backwater moon with too little atmosphere and too many questions. With a teammate who was barely learning how to walk, never mind how to lessen the impact of a missile with a well-timed shoulder roll, or slice the pie on an unsecured corner.

These same questions already haunted the five teammates who remained from that first fateful day. Questions they all held close to them but dared not ask. Who could have done something differently that day. Whose fault it really was. They weren't ready for the answer. Not really.

No. No, not now. The others needed him to pull his shit together. Because he could shoulder-roll and slice the pie and more when it mattered. The others needed him to keep it together long enough to secure the hostages, save the base, and get back to the ship for beers and billiards. Anger and grief be damned, Gan had a job to do.

So he ripped open an MRE and wiped his face down with the provided towelette. He steadied his breathing. He centered his thoughts. He strapped himself back down into his chair, his helmet. He jacked back into the Basilisk. And he breathed one more time, shakily, before steeling his countenance and twisting the dial on the radio, reviving the whole array.

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No use losing it again. You're already stuck out here.

The only thing left to do was to fucking do it.

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Those questions and doubts were buried deep now. The soldier had taken over. Gan overrode a few map parameters and gave himself waypoint permissions. As he guided his steel lizard to the northernmost side of the hill's crest, overlooking and guarding a crater-pocked plain, he drew a thirty-degree line, starting at the hill's base (the bottom of a sheer rock face) and spanning far into the distance, well past the supposed latitude of the quarry. If Rose couldn't follow a straight line, then ... well, then he didn't know how else to try and help her.

He reached over for the opened MRE, a Scandinavian medley of crackers, pâtés, and jams, and began assembling himself a spread. It'd be a while until Rose could run into trouble, and even longer until she made contact with Alpha team. If she made contact. The sniper's most familiar foe had struck again. The waiting game had begun.

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Rose was about to say something to Gin but she doesn’t have words to say, all she can say was “….Over and out”. Rose sigh, putting her hands on her face as she reflect what he say ""Oh. and if it turns out you alerted the enemy by walking past the base with your broadcaster turned on, I'll kill you myself. Over and out."....He would kill her if she was spotted, her suspicions of him leaving her behind was right. UGH! She is such a idiot! Rose could have lied back there! "Have you plot a mech?" "Yes I have" "Do you have military record?" "Yes I do" See?! It wasn't that hard! Rose could have lie! Damn it! Her mother raised her too good!

....You know? Why bother? Why bother trying to impress him? Why bother trying to be friends with a guy who doesn't like someone like Rose? All she needs know is to focus on the mission, get back home safely, and probably impress her team, who knows?! Rose just so damn frustrated with him!.....One, Two, Three, Four..Five..Six...Seven....Eight....Ok, Rose is calm now. Turning off her broadcaster, (even turning off the lights inside of her cockpit, just to be sure) Rose move her mech slowly, and carefully around the enemy base, underneath the heavy mist.

The travel to her location takes a lot longer then Rose thought, but it was only get by without any enemy seeing her. It's her first day after all, she rather play it safe without getting killed.

When Rose thought everything is going smooth, she see a mech in the distance. One of her team in fact? No, according to her map, she not even at the RV Alpha yet, not even close. When Rose takes a closer look, her jaw hand wide open when she discover what the mech is....It was Quickdraw QKD-8X, an ancient first-gen mech.

"Oh...My...God..." Rose whispered under her breath, she can't believe it, an first-gen mech, in person! She read one of things in her book back when she was a kid! It's right there! In person! As much as Rose want to geek out right now, she really, I mean, really don't want to get caught by those things. They have very large guns that could destroy Rose and her mech, that and revolving autocannon and superlaser that mess her up at a short range!

But when Rose look that that the mech, their appearance looks so different. It's look so rust, blocky, and crude, it's was like if that mech was a old person in human form, so maybe it won't discover her location with the old tech it has. So if that the case, Rose could easily walk right past without any trouble. This theory was proven to be correct when Rose slowly walk past it....Oh my god she walk past a Quickdraw QKD-8X!

Rose want to talk to Gin about her exciting discover, want to geek out what she saw.....But she stop herself, thinking that knowledge would bored Gin, didn't care about what Rose say, telling her that telling him about this discover is useless and a waste of time. Rose sigh in a sad tone and carry on to her destination.

It's was a long and difficult travel, but Rose did it, she made it to the RV Alpha! She wonder if her teammates made it as well....Then again, they are more experience then, so of course they made it.