Prometheum fumes made the sky above Landing Field Bravo shimmer in the pale light of Balor's distant star. The upper atmosphere was filled with scudding cloud and a light snow would have been falling had it not been for the constant jet wash of Imperial Landing craft as they ferried the 2nd Gendarmes and the 91st Langeroth down from orbit. The lift engines created an almost constant background rumble which made conversation difficult without raising ones voice. The landing field itself was better than many the guard employed. It wasn't unusual for combat deployments to take place on empty fields, but that always ran the risk of accident and delay, particularly for heavy equipment and armore. On Balor however the problem was obviated by the need for the mines to lift out their product to orbit or to the hungry factory hives that ran along geothermic faultlines like pearls on a string. Landing Field Bravo lay beside a vast open cut mine which sank dizzyingly in a series of concentric ovals cut into the rock. The pit was so deep that the only way Sel could establish scale was to compare the tiny toy like vehicles she saw at the bottom to the hulking two story monsters that lined the north end of the field. Towers of girders and wire netting rose from the pit forming vast lifts which could haul tens of thousands of tons of vehicles and ore up to the pads where bridges of reinforced metal and rockcrete linked them to the landing field and outbuildings. The scale of the thing gave Sel the creeps. An open sightline that stretched over a kilometer wasn't something any scout felt too happy about. 

Not that the view beyond the landing field made her feel better. At all lattitudes Balor was cold, but at this lattitude it was cold and dry for the vast majority of the time. The landscape rolled away in a series of low hillocks cut with gulches and ravines. A faint greyish powder that was a combination of snow and permafrost dusted it though it didn't seem to impede the growth of tough looking grasses and large patches of moss and lichen. Skeletal looking trees with long dagger shaped leaves grew in groves dictated by a logic that would take a Magos Biologos to explain. Sel sat behind the wheel of the cargo four she had been assigned to, slouched into her jacket against the constant enervating wind. It wasn't cold exactly, though it certainly would be once anyone went out beyond the thermal washed ferocrete of the pad. Sel considered their meagre cold weather gear and scowled.

"Corpral Seldon!" Sel hunched down lower into her jacket, hoping against hope to avoid notice, but the call was repeated a second time and she was forced to look up to see Sparks and Elara hurring across the ferocrete, breath steaming in the chill air. Both women were smoking lho sticks and the lit tips bobbed like will o whisp as the approached.

"Ladies," Sel greeted them as noncomittaly as possible.

"We were wondering..." Sparks began but Sel held up a hand to cut her off.

"That sounds like a question for Seargent Crispin," she retorted and Sparks blinked in confusion.

"You don't know what I was going to ask!" she objected. Sel plucked the lho stick from between Sparks' lips and took a drag, grinning around it in a way that suggested that this was entirely her point. Despite the fact that she was only attached as a driver, and that as a punishment, the entire platoon seemed hell bent on making everything her problem, as though the only way they could relate to a non-com was to force her into the chain of command as quickly as possible. In private moments Sel had to admit she was slowly losing the battle but she was no quitter.

"Anyway we can't ask Seargent Asprin because he has been yelling at Vane and Kelkin for the last twenty minutes about not having their boots laced up properly," Elara put in with a frustrated shake of her head. Sel took another long drag of the lho stick then passed it back to sparks as she breathed out a long, thin, trail of smoke.

"You know, using an offensive nickname for a Seargent might be a bad idea if you were talking to an officer," she suggested.

"Fortunately, as I have already mentioned, I'm merely an assigned driver with no command authority what so ever," Sel pressed, attempting to beat the hint into the two women.

"We just need to know where you want the chimeras parked until we get orders to move out," Sparks added with a nasty grin. Sel lay a chilled hand across her alread wind chapped face.

"Fine, fine, get them up by those prometheum tanks and top them up before anyone thinks to put a guard on them, then get lagered up on the northen approach there. Ill try to find out from the LT..." Sel trailed off as Kayden came striding out of the command tent. 

"Sorry, duty calls," she told the other two women and waved at Kayden as he tapped his way across the ferocrete with his cane.