[IC] Via Stellarum

[Penny]

The hatch tore from the dropship with a screech of tortured metal, that might have come from some ancient depiction of hell. The sudden sucking rip of the outside air tore one of the sergeants out through the breach, his wildly flailing arms vanishing into the darkness. Everyone 121st Volunteers was screaming. Many were also puking. Kyra managed to keep herself out of the second category only by virtue of herculean will power and having not eaten anything in longer than she cared to remember.

The dropship hurtled downwards in a freefall that pushed Kyra back into her uncomfortable seat. That was actually a good sign because it meant that the cheaply built space to surface craft was still underpowered, which gave it at least some chance of not being a coffin for its reluctant cargo. Despite the name the 121st were anything but volunteers. Almost to a person they were revolutionaries, criminals, or in Kyra’s case, other undesirables who had been given a choice of enlisting or serving a prison term that started at life and ended at a considerable shorter, if not preferable sentence.

The emergency lights flickered on and off like strobes giving her brief glimpses of the terrified faces of her fellow recruits. She wondered what her own face looked like, blonde haircut to a military buzz, blue eyes wide with terror, fine features draw back into a rictus of horror that made her face hurt. She had accepted that death was a likely outcome of this mission, but in fairness she had expected to die plowing into the surface of Kyzon. The sudden flicker of a plasmabolt bathed the cabin in painful blue light, the near miss reminding her that she might die even sooner than that.

“We have to get out of here!” the conscript beside her shrieked as he ripped at his restraint harness. A massive crash shook the ship and something flashed through the man, transforming him from screaming recruit to a pile of ruined meat that sprayed arterial blood over Kyra as she squeezed her eyes shut. A better constructed vehicle would have been torn apart by a hit like that but the lander, little more than a thin steel box with for drive motors, was flimsy enough that the rounds punched right through it.

The kick of the landing thrusters slammed the deck into Kyra without warning, only three of the four engines managed to fire and the resulting misalignment pitched the lander end over end. The world kaleidoscoped in a cacophony of screams, rending metal and clattering equipment before a colossal boom snapped Kyra back in her seat. The emergency lights flickered once and died, plunging the interior of the ship into silence and blackness broken only by the drumming of distant gunfire and the sobs of wounded and dying conscripts. It took Kyra a long moment to realise that she was still alive, vertigo assailed her as she realized she was hanging upside down. The dropship had turned turtle in its frenetic tumble and come to rest on its back. Gingerly she reached down to her belt, relieved to find all of her limbs were still attached, and drew the short cutting bar from her belt. Lifting it to her shoulder she sawed at the harness that held her, feeling the woven plastic fibers begin to part. She didn't dare power up the cutting bar, as her hands were shaking so badly she was likely to cut herself. After a few stroke the harness gave way and she dropped to the ground with a painful crash. Enough light was spilling in through the gaping wound in the side of the ship that she could find her way out. Crawling on her hands and knees she collapsed to the ground outside the wrecked ship. Taking her first breaths on a new world.

[Nevix]

Alekhine IV had been a beautiful planet, once, he was told. A wide variety of ecosystems, thriving plant and animal life, the whole nine yards. But, it had tons of mineral wealth below its surface and it became little more than a mining node to the various galactic empires and corporate conglomerates. Edwyn wasn't sure if the planet looked torched on account of the many battles over the years that had been waged for rights to the planet's resources, or if the extraction of those resources was what had done it. Either way, what was once healthy and normal had been made bare, stark, and ugly.

Where they were, anyway. Supposedly there were areas, in Alekhine's southern hemisphere where you could trick yourself into thinking that the rock was hospitable. Not here. Here, on some nameless continent where the 121st had been ordered to assault a well-defended drilling station, the soil had been made tough, sandy, and infertile. A number of trees still stood and even more lied flatly on the ground, toppled from their stumps, but they were dry and bare. The earth was jagged and broken in many places, as though the ground itself was out to get you. No signs of life beyond the 121st, the well-lit metallic drilling station in the distance, and the pockets of soldiers and anti-aircraft guns that were scattered on the ground between the two.

The typical per-mission casualty rate of the 121st hovered just around 20%, normally. Of course, that was an average. He could remember times where they had lost only a handful of people out of the whole division. He could also remember missions like this one. Eight dropships had carted them to the surface. Two had been blasted out of the sky, leaving no survivors, and two or three more had been damaged and crash landed. This was bad, but probably was a part of the plan. The mercenary company that owned the 121st, and all the soldiers in it, knew that they were cheap and expendable. Quite probably, they'd been sent ahead just to soften the defenses so that legions of better-trained, better-equipped, actual volunteers could finish the job. This was unfair, of course, the sort of robotic utilitarianism and profit-oriented policy that he'd fought a war against, once. Taking a stand against the injustice had just exposed him to more of it, and so he'd learned to keep his head down.

"O'Byrne!" A harsh, sharp shout snapped Edwyn out of his thoughts. He turned to look, and saw Sergeant Reyes waving viciously at him. Maria Reyes was in her later thirties and tough as nails, one of only a handful of people he really recognized from when he'd been forced to enlist, a little more than a year back. He'd heard she was a cop once, and that she'd beat a suspect to death with her bare hands. It might have been total horseshit, but he believed it. "Get your ass over here!" Edwyn raced over from where he'd been, just outside of the dropship's interior, past some makeshift tables where people were busy setting up comms equipment and the like.

"What do you need, Reyes?"

"I need you to take five people and go check for survivors at the south-west crash site, corporal." She said, turning around and not waiting for a response. Edwyn cocked an eyebrow.

"Er, Sarge, I'm not a-"

"You are now. Felix caught some shrapnel to the jaw when we took that AA round in the air. If you're that terrified of a little fuckin' responsibility we can make it temporary, but you're a big kid now, O'Byrne. Get a move on." She walked away before he could protest. He swore under his breath and ran to grab five people. New one's, people he didn't know. He wasn't expecting trouble, but he wasn't going to be responsible for getting a buddy killed.

As they hustled to the crash site, he caught a glimpse of himself in the small part of his rifle's metal reciever that was still clean enough to be reflective. Tired green eyes, and dark hair and stubble that were both long enough to get him reprimanded if there was an inspection soon, but there was never an inspection. He stood at least a couple of inches taller than even the tallest of his five companions, his fatigues just a little too short in the sleeves on account of the length of his arms. His attention was pulled away from himself, however, as they approached the smoking wreckage. He grimaced, the outlook for anyone who was inside wasn't terribly promising.

He ran over as he saw someone crawling from the wreckage. A soldier, a woman, one of their own. He helped her up and gave her a quick glance over to make sure that she wasn't bleeding profusely or that a bone wasn't sticking out somewhere, not that he was qualified to help if that had been the case. He didn't recognize her, but whether she was new or whether they had just never ran into each other, he couldn't be sure.

"I'm pri- er, Corporal O'Byrne, from Dropship 3. Are you okay?" He said, slowly, maybe a little too loud for how close they were standing. "Do you know if there are any other survivors in there?" He pointed toward the wreckage. He wasn't super confident that there would be, but if she'd made it out, maybe others had, too.

[Penny]

Kyra shook her head, although more to clear it than in any acknowledgement of Corporal O’Byrne. The sound of machinery tearing itself to bits and the distant hammer of guns made it difficult to hear anything from the dropship. She opened her mouth to say something when a sudden deafening crack nearly threw her from her feet. The dropship ran like an enormous struck bell and showers of sparks flew crazily skyward, incandescent red and white with traces of burning metal. A moment later a second strike and a third punched into the stricken dropship, filling the inside with ricocheting shrapnel that cut equipment and conscripts to pieces with equal indifference. Dirt and loam sprayed up in wheel barrow sized scoops, heated dirt and stone prickling and burning through the supposedly ‘flame resistant’ uniforms.

Kyra divided sideways and rolled into a nearby ditch cut by run off from the infrequent rains. She swung her weapon to bear on the threat, following the illuminated path of the tracers back to its source. On a distant hill top she could see the starburst muzzle flash of a heavy weapon probably mounted on a heavy vehicle. Although it was far out of range, she swung her rifle onto it by rote and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The mechanical lock out was still in place, the conscripts weapons were locked before they were issued, to be unlocked only by their officers when the reached the ground. It was a polite fiction that this was to prevent accidental discharges during the drops, the truth was that the conscripts might otherwise find turning the weapons on those same officers too tempting.

“No one left alive,” some shouted, maybe Kyra. More weapons were firing, apparently the men who had come with O’byrne had unlocked weapons, though the range was still far to great for their weapons to be effective. One of O’byrne’s men grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her backwards.

“Fall B..!” his words ended with a wet crack as a round cut him in half, spraying Kyra with hot blood and bits of fragmented body armor. The hot taste of blood was on her lips as she trembled, breathing rapidly as her body began to lock up.

“RUN!”

[Nevix]

Edwyn had learned the poor bastard's name. Goddamnit, he'd learned his name. His last name, anyway. Daly. Shorter guy, young. Really young. Couldn't have been older than nineteen or so. The boy had talked almost the entire hike to the crash site, and Edwyn had sort-of half listened, just managing to catch his name. He'd had a kind of monotone, faux-low voice that made it clear he was trying to sound older than he was.

And now he was in two pieces, and very dead.

"RUN!"

Someone had shouted, he wasn't sure who. Whoever it was had the right idea, though. The sustained fire from the vehicle across the way was tearing them apart. After the shots sank into the dropship and after Daly got sawed in half, one of his other men, one of the ones whose name he didn't know caught a shot to the face. The others started running, and Edwyn held his rifle in one hand and grabbed one of Kyra's arms with his other.

"We need to fuckin' go!" And he started running after the others, heavy rounds slapping into the dead soil around them. He fully expected the shooter to get lucky, for a stray round to catch him in the leg or the chest, but it didn't happen. Not this time. Not today.

---

By the time they'd gotten far enough away to no longer hear the gunshots, they'd lost another. Of the five men Reyes had ordered him to take, three were dead. There were four of them, now, including himself and the survivor from the dropship. He took a seat, hard, on a dead tree trunk. There were lots of dead trees, here, some fallen and others still mournfully upright. This place must have been a forest, once. Edwyn allowed himself a brief moment of self-pity as he examined his situation. So far as he was concerned, he'd gotten three people killed. They had a bit of a hike to get back to where Reyes and the others, were, too. He put his head in his hands, silently counted to twenty, and then forced himself to stand.

There wasn't terribly much that Edwyn O'Byrne was good at, but lately he'd become quite adept at forcing himself to keep moving. He knew that if he stopped for very long at all, he'd never get moving again. It was true of his thoughts, his memories, and it was true of sitting there on that trunk.

"Right, then, everyone's weapons unlocked?" He looked around at his companions. "Mine are fine, but I don't have the authority to unlock anyone else's, someone can have my sidearm if they need it." He sighed, and decided then that he was going to commit himself to keeping at least these three people alive. "Oh, and, uh, names. We can drop the sir and ma'am shit, now. You can call me Ed, Edwyn, or O'Byrne. I don't much care." He scratched the back of his neck, trying to see a way forward in his head. "I figure we can take another two or three minutes here, catch our breath, and then we need to book it back to the main landing site. I think it's, ah, due northwest."

[Penny]

Kyra came to a stop beside an ancient and rotting tree. The bark was covered with a patchy fungus that phosporessed very slightly. A few of the trees still sprouted sickly looking leaves, hard curled things which looked distinctly unhealthy, but these were in the definite minority. In the distance the rumble of heavy guns could still be heard and the sky flashed blue white as with distant lightning. Each time the sky flashed there was a soft hissing sound in the communication beads they wore as the RF squelch of plasma discharge cut across the spectrum.

From what little briefing anyone had bothered to give her, she had gathered that this operation was supposed to be a surprise landing against minimal opposition. If that had been the case, then the element of surprise had been well and truly lost. Alekhine IV was deep inside Corporate space, it wasn't some frontier world that needed an extensive garrison to protect it. That meant that the Corporates had the jump not just tactically but strategically, none of which boded well for the surprise assault that the League had planned.

“My rifle…” Kyra began but before she could finish the sentence one of the other soldiers pressed one of the cheap electromotive slug throwers into her hands. The telltale glowed green indicating that the weapon was live. Kyra opened her mouth to ask where it had come from before realising that it must have been taken from one of the fallen troops from O’Byrne’s dropship.

“I’m Kyra, Kyra Sloane,” she said with a sweep of her head to take in the small group of soldiers. All of them were equipped as she was, simple grey green fatigues with plastic/ceramic body armor stenciled with the unit number. She thought she recognised some of them from their abbreviated basic training but couldn’t be sure.

“Sloane?” the soldier who had passed her the rifle asked cocking an eyebrow.

“You aren’t that fucking Jayser we heard about are you?” before she could respond he grabbed her head and wrenched it sideways, revealing a small metallic implant just behind her left ear. Jayser was a slang term for a small minority of people born with a genetic abnormality that affected their pineal gland. Janikov’s Sarcoma , or J syndrome, had been unknown before humans were exposed to the hostile environment of jump space, the interstitial void between the infinite bubbles of the multiverse. Most fetus that developed J syndrome spontaneously aborted early on in their development, but those that survived exhibited a number of strange mental abilities, low level telepathy and minor telekinesis as well as debilitating migraines. Most major world in the League required prenatal screening and abortions when the markers for the conditions were found. Those that made it to adulthood with the condition were implanted with damping chips to suppress their abilities and, more often than not, ‘enlisted’ into volunteer units. Although the kind of things a Jayser could do were very limited, wild stories circulated among the gullible ensuring that prejudice ran high,

Kyra drove her knee up into the soldiers groin sending him staggering back. He cried out in shock and began to lift his weapon, but before he could bring it to bear, she drove the stock of her newly unlocked rifle into the side of his helmet sending him staggering back against a tree trunk. She swung the weapon to her shoulder and sighted down the barrel at his chest. The electromagnetic accelerators whined slightly as the weapon came to its read status.

“Yes I’m the one you heard about,” she growled through clenched teeth. The metallic implant buzzed slightly at her hig

“And if that is a problem for you, I can make sure that you don’t have any problems to worry about every again.”

[Nevix]

"Cool it, Sloane!" Edwyn snapped, when he saw her level the rifle. He'd watched the whole ordeal, and had been about to step in and say something when the other soldier, Edwyn thought his name might have been Ushkov, grabbed her, but thought better of it after she put him on his ass. It was a fight, they were bound to happen, and he was going to let it play out. Then, guns started getting pointed. "We're all on the same side." He looked to the man against the tree trunk. "Isn't that right, Ushkov?"

"I ain't working with no fuckin' freak." Ushkov was talking to Edwyn, but his eyes were trained firmly on Kyra. Something in the space between fear and anger in his eyes. Edwyn took a moment, then, to really study the man. Ushkov was older than him, he guessed, but by how much was hard to tell. He was bald, with a nasty-looking scar on his neck. Edwyn didn't know his story, but he didn't seem like a man that was used to losing fights.

"I've been surviving shit like this for more than a year, and I do not intend to die on this goddamn rock because you're scared of Jaysers, Ushkov!" The edge in Edwyn's voice surprised himself. He figured his words were probably fueled by his own fear, his own anger. He guessed you didn't need a reason to live to be afraid of dying. If he survived the only future ahead of him laid in more battles, more near-deaths. But as bleak as that was, dying amongst strangers on a planet that no one would remember in twenty years felt bleaker.

"I ain't scared of shit." Ushkov said, finally looking away from Kyra to spit at the ground, presumably to punctuate his point. Edwyn allowed himself a slight grin at the man's expense.

"Good. Then there'll be no more problems?" He met Ushkov's eyes, and when Ushkov didn't respond he sighed and amended his words. "No more harassing your squadmates while we're in enemy territory?" And then Ushkov grumbled in agreement and stood up, purposefully not looking at Kyra. He felt a little guilty. He didn't have a problem with Jaysers, personally. He'd had a cousin with J Syndrome, but he'd drank himself to death on account of the migraines. He'd taken a soft stance, with Ushkov. But the last thing he needed was someone who hated him watching his back. Besides, Kyra was very clearly able to take care of herself. "And, Sloane, try and keep that thing pointed toward the people who are getting paid to try and kill us."

---

He'd been a leader, before. Back home, on Manifest. A union rep, and then a revolutionary. He'd lost the taste for it, after all of that had crumbled, and he was surprised to find that he still had any kind of ability to do so. Then again, it was easy to lead when the fear of getting gunned down if you made a wrong move hung in the air. Scared people were easily led, as any of The League's high councilors or any of the corporations boardsmen could tell you. Still, though, he almost wept with relief as they neared his dropship. Reyes could find someone else to play corporal.

[Penny]

Ushkov shot her a final glare at her as Edwyn turned away. Kyra blew the scowling man a kiss that made his face turn blotchy as it mottled with rage. Several of the nearby troops snickered though Edwyn either didn’t hear or pretended he didn't. It probably wasn’t a smart move to antagonise someone who might be in a position to save her life, but then it wasn’t like the odds of any of them surviving the next few hours were anything anyone would bet on.

They moved through the forest of diseased trees in a loose knot. In theory they ought to have spread out into a skirmish line, but with their limited training the comfort of being close to other humans was more of a concern than the proper tactical deployment. Distant gunfire continued to boom, though the volume of anti-air fire seemed to be slackening, replaced instead by the distant booming of artillery striking something well over the horizon.

They reached a more or less intact lander beside which a stocky looking female sergeant was shoving men into a loose tactical column. The stenciled name across her back read ‘Reyes’. As their group emerged from the trees she spun to face them with a look that hovered somewhere between rage and relief.

“O’Byrne, glad you could be bothered to join us,” she snapped, arching an eyebrow to indicate her surprised that so few had returned with him. She must have been hoping for the extra bodies from the second dropship, and it clearly stung for her to see Edwyn returning with fewer troops than he had began with. The remaining soldiers in her column looked back and forth, muttering to each other in tones of concern.

The original plan, as it had been explained to Kyra anyway, was that two full platoon would be involved in their attack. It looked as though they had only half a platoon left, unless the other two dropships had been forced off course rather than destroyed. As the thoughts formed in Kyra’s mind a communications tech ran forward, a heavy comm array strapped to his back.

“Sergeant! Captain Brady says we are to continue as ordered, pick up stragglers as we go!” Kyra remembered seeing Brady, a fat an unhealthy looking officer, the sort of rich mans by-blow who was good for nothing else but shoving into a uniform and shipping far away from public embarrassment. She wondered if he was on the ground or if he was safe in one of the troop ships in orbit. Assuming the troop ships were safe of course. Intelligence hadn’t said anything about a Corporate Fleet in the area, but then Intelligence hadn’t said anything about their being enough soldiers on the ground to shoot the dropships to shit either.

[Nevix]

"Damn it!" Edwyn saw a rare moment of non-composure from the sergeant, and as he watched her look over her meager column of men he saw something that might have been fear. Reyes was always coarse and irritable, but she never seemed like this, somehow off-balance. But almost as though she knew someone was watching her as closely as he was, she took a deep breath and leveled her voice to address the comms tech. "Is he fully aware of the situation here on the ground?"

"Yes, sergeant! I told him everything, but he wants this station taken." There was some bitterness in the tech's voice. This was news he took no pleasure in reporting. There was some grumbling among the column as they heard this, scattered jeers of the various derogatory names and remarks normally applied to Brady, most of which concerned his weight. Reyes turned on them, but her gaze didn't shut them up as it normally might have. Taking the station was a fool's endeavor, and they knew it. They didn't want to do it, and Edwyn didn't want to either, but he understood two very important things.

Firstly, he knew there weren't many other options. They couldn't wait for reinforcements since none were coming and since their position became more dangerous the longer they stayed put. They couldn't desert, because they had no means to leave the planet and even if they did, they would be blasted apart by their own fleet as soon as they broke orbit, seeing as the 121st had a zero-tolerance policy toward deserters. Secondly, he didn't think that Reyes would disobey an order. As good of a leader as she might have been, she liked structure, liked order. Maybe her sense of duty was misplaced, but if Brady wanted an assault, Edwyn assumed that Reyes would give him one.

"Alright, soldiers, break for five! Check your gear, and then double check it. We move as soon as we're ready." Almost too stunned to mount resistance, the soldiers grumbled again and the column dispersed. Edwyn stared incredulously at Reyes. Eventually, she caught his gaze and waved him over. "What's your problem, corporal?" She spoke lowly, an edge in her tone. Edwyn might have been intimidated, at one point, but having seen a few men die earlier that day had hardened him, at least for the moment.

"My problem is that you're sending us straight to hell, here, Sarge." He said, without much expression. A statement of fact. Reyes seemed blindsided by his frankness, at first, before anger twisted her expression.

"That sounds like sedition."

"Are you not afraid of dying?"

"Of course I'm afraid. But I'm a soldier, O'Byrne. I follow orders." Reyes narrowed her eyes. "I need you to keep doing the corporal thing, Felix went septic. Webley thinks he's dead within the hour." Edwyn blinked in surprise. Felix was a career merc who'd been bounced around between units and companies for various offenses, mostly relating to his tendency to drink heavily. He'd only been with the 121st for a couple of months, and he was a lazy, mean old bastard, but Edwyn had liked him. "You're taking an actual squad this time. That Jayser you found is with you." She trailed off, not wanting to say 'because no one else will take her.' Edwyn sighed, and nodded, the temporary spurt of defiance gone.

---

He went to go collect the members of his squad, and the first one he found was Kyra.

"You're with me, Sloane." He cleared his throat. "I, uh, asked to make sure Ushkov was put with someone else. You shouldn't have to worry about him." It was true, but he was sure that fact provided little comfort. Doubtless, a good chunk of the men shared his prejudices. Even if they didn't, if every single other squadmate was a forward-thinking egalitarian, they were still quite probably headed to their deaths. He realized, then, that as like as not they'd never have a real conversation, since one or both of them were liable to die within the next couple of hours. It was a sobering thought, and he wanted to talk, then. Ask her something about herself, so that he could connect her name in his head with something other than 'Jayser,' but he didn't. There wasn't time.

[Penny]

The western sky had begun to lighten as the surviving conscripts made their way towards their objective. The ecological disaster around them grew starker with the extra sunlight, the landscape must once have been a forest but the changes that wide scale mining had wrought had killed all but the hardiest trees, leaving only dead fungus encrusted tree boles reaching towards the sky. Some trees, those hardiest and best adapted to the new conditions still sprouted leaves, but they were twisted and unwholesome looking, as though they had passed too close to a flame and begun to curl up in the face of the heat. The landscape itself had suffered as atrophied roots could no longer combat the vicious downpours that came each rainy season. Long gulleys were cut back to the bedrock where rain swept debris and detritus into pockets in the rock substrate, piling up impressive conglomerations of dead wood and small rocks.

Going was slow as the platoon slid down the sides of the erosion cut trenches and climbed up the other side. The loose soil was often to pliant to provide much in the way of hand holds and they frequently had to divert along the dry watercourses to find a place where the ascent was easier. Kyra was glad that they hadn’t landed during the rainy season as she was sure progress would have been completely impossible. Even with the suppressor chip in her neck she could feel the ambient mixture of fear and excitement. Each time a distant explosion shook dust from the trees she could feel a momentary spike of fear and then a trough of relief. The gunfire seemed more sporadic and less intense than it had during the landing, perhaps because the heavy guns that had been firing at the drop ships were now silent. What rifle fire they did hear was distant, and uncertain in its direction given the broken nature of the landscape.

They moved in a loose skirmish line that buched and expanded as the terrain demaded. Kyra stayed close to Edwin on the right end of the line while Reyes commanded they left. She didn’t know if the formation offered any advantage other than to keep them from bunching together where an artillery shell or machine gun burst could cut them all down, but truthfully she didn’t much care. After an hour or so her only focus became the defile ahead of her and she focused only on crossing each of the jagged cuts in the earth.

When Edwin’s hand fell on her shoulder she started and looked up for the first time in hours. They had reached a small ridgeline covered with shorty scrubby bushes with pale blue leaves. The landscape on the other side of the ridge was markedly different, though no less depressing. Instead of the knife cuts and tree stumps there was a flat rocky plain Kyra was momentarily surprised to see such a difference in terrain but then realised what had happened. Heavy earth movers had scraped the ground bare, bulldozing the top soil into the valleys. Now she knew what to look for she could see the lines of discolored, vaguely purplish earth, where the spoil had been sprayed with chemical plasticizer to turn it into a kind of poor man's concrete, presumably to prevent it from being swept away by the rains. Perhaps two hundred meters from the ridge lay a large compound. It was the size of a small town and surrounded by a thick burm of plasticized earth several meters high. Vast derricks reached into the sky from the center of the drilling station like the armatures of artificial mountains. The great rusted towers thrummed with power, the drills and pumps working ceaselessly to plumb the depths of the poisoned world. Periodically jets of flame or steam burst from outlet valves with a rush audible even from the distant ridge. A pipeline of rusted metal stretched off over the horizon, carrying whatever they were mining to its distant collection point.

Kyra tried to think back to the briefing but other than the word ‘drilling station’ didn’t remember very much. More for something to do than any real notion of what she was doing, she lifted her binoculars to her eyes and dialed up the magnification to X64. The burm was a real barrier, studded with watch towers ever thirty meters or so, spindly looking cheap constructions, with sand bagged platforms atop them. There were two large gates on the walls perpendicular to the ridge, each of which was protected by a block house. At the southern entrance an armored vehicle of some kind was parked, its turret pointed off to the south though clearly not aiming at anything in particular.

“We are supposed to capture this place?” Kyra whispered to Edwin, her quiet an instinct rendered completely unnecessary by the rumble of the heavy machinery at work at the base.