<blockquote>


    Will-to-Power.


    Betelgeuse Sakar''s will to revolt against his destiny manifests as the power to endure all attempts at control.


    Betelgeuse Sakar''s will to purge control over his companions manifests as the power to disrupt the power to compel.


    - Incunabulum Manifold Tag #3079-1710-00002398


    </blockquote>


    It was fifteen minutes after they had taken to their allocated beds when Betelgeuse first realized that the members of the Saltilla Third Brigade were shooting them hostile stares. They murmured and whispered and laughed amongst themselves as did all comrades-in-arms, but always when the Jegorichians crossed the aisle abutting the Saltillans'' beds did the latter fall into a sullen and suspicious silence.


    And now that he could compare them side by side, Betelgeuse found the Jegorichians generally fairer-skinned than the Saltillans, and there appeared to be several other crucial physiognomic differences besides. The Saltillans, for one, had flatter noses and broader faces borne of peculiarly flared cheekbones, whilst the Jegorichians had thinner, more aquiline noses paired with higher cheekbones.


    ''However, both Saltillans and Jegorichians are short compared to Earthlings,'' he mused, canting his head sideways. He sat at the edge of his bed and kept his exosuit close beside his foot, his fingers fiddling with the crinkled wrapper of a melted chocolate bar. The overhead lights beat down relentlessly and, occasionally, tortured moans would travel to him from those dire places hidden behind the orange curtain.


    Voke had been allocated the bed beside him, with Thete taking the bed across the aisle. She was sitting on her bed too, Thete, wincing as she pulled a bandage tight over her splinted right forearm. A Rejuvenator helmet sat upon her head, and now and again she would look over, causing Betelgeuse'' left temple to burn where he supposed she was staring at him. She had taken an uncommon interest in him ever since he had broken Major Storr''s compulsion over her, an interest which bordered on hostility.


    The man who had taken the bed to his other side, PDF PFC Gelam Shentor, proved that low morale made for loose tongues. He''d begun muttering bitterly to himself in a foreign language, and when Betelgeuse, his face half-obscured by a translucent non-rebreather mask, asked him "whatever''s the matter" he resumed his breathy execrations in Common, cursing "Pilix" and "Cock-tain Kelokrill" and "that slimy Sylas that fucking us Jegorich-rajul in asshole like monkey".


    "Whozzat?" Voke asked, creeping up to the foot of Betelgeuse'' bed and taking his seat there.


    "The President, yeah?" Gelam scoffed, curling his whiskered lip back so that his unbrushed teeth were exhibited to all and sundry. "I hear he is Saltillan man, and he wants nothing more than for us to die. It is why they make Jegorich First the decoy, yes? And they make other Jegorich Brigades front the other force! Such a man they make President, is any surprise that this is outcome?"


    "What''s that really about?" Betelgeuse breathed, sucking in another lungful of concentrated oxygen. "Seems you and the Saltillans over there have it out for each other."


    "You Taffy and Earth-ian do not understand. How will you understand the many many years of problems those Satillans give us? They are low-born and greedy. They take everything, even old names. They take many things from us and they keep taking."


    "It''s evident there''s bad blood," Voke remarked drily. "But then it''s almost in the nature of Man to have bad blood with his neighbor."


    "Yawa? Wallahi?" Gelam had a puzzled expression and was clearly baffled by Voke''s pronouncement.


    "So you hate them and they hate you," Betelgeuse summarized. A memory rose unbidden to his mind and he remembered the man who had talked to him in the Saltilla square, the man in the woolen jacket who said he hailed from Jegorich. Did he harbor the same cathexes as Gelam?


    He shook his head to clear it of cobwebs. He was getting sleepy.


    "Hah! They do not know hate like we rajul do. And we have much to hate…" Gelam hissed, then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.


    "There are some very wise and learned men of Earth that tell us it is not so healthy to hate," Voke said. "The way of God is the way of forgiveness, you see… I think there are many things much better to spend time on than hate."


    "You are preaching to me?" Gelam raised an eyebrow, incredulous. "You are yet to know the ways of Desert. Saltillans are descended of the Ayish-Bejana, whose practices are alien to the code of Earth and enemy to the ways of Ahman. You will see that hate is the only response that is natural and wise."


    Voke shot a glance at Betelgeuse. Even through the translucence of his non-rebreather mask the latter had a downcast expression and seemed to have drifted far away from the conversation.


    Gelam suddenly took to his feet, pulling up his loose-fitting inner pants up so that the waistband wound across his bellybutton. He looked at them out the corner of his eye with an expression pregnant with implication, and then sauntered away lazily in the direction of the beds across the aisle where the Jegorichians appeared to be congregating, leaving his exosuit on the floor before Betelgeuse.


    "So…" Voke began, once Gelam was safely out of earshot. But he trailed off, for want of a topic of conversation.


    A yawning silence interspersed, because Betelgeuse did not seem to feel like talking, and because Voke did not know what to say. Voke could see half of Betelgeuse'' penal brand and it looked reddish and not altogether healthy.


    Then he saw Betelgeuse lean down and secrete a shiny piece of foil like a wrapper into his magazine pouch, the one hanging below the exosuit chest-piece. When Betelgeuse raised his head again there was much there that Voke did not fully understand, and much besides which reminded him of sadness.


    After several more moments, Betelgeuse'' bloodshot eyes swiveled to regard Voke. One of his hands was adjusting the non-rebreather mask over his nose and mouth while the other held aloft an oxygen canister such that Voke could see clearly the reading on the dial by the nozzle.


    86% concentration.


    Voke took this to mean that Betelgeuse wanted to hear what he had to say, although he couldn''t be sure.


    "... I''ll just come out and say it. What is the compulsion? How are you able to withstand it? And…" and then Voke trailed off, unsure whether to touch on what Cacliocos had warned was ''secret''.


    Betelgeuse was no longer looking at Voke. His head was bowed and his eyes were closed.


    "It''s what happened with Strionis, wasn''t it? I heard from Alisha back then, that Strionis took you, Lawrence, Frederica and Douglas into the Pit. It must have been then. And somehow you broke free of whatever the hell that was," Voke pushed.


    Silence.


    "B.T. …"


    "Come off it Voke. It''s as simple as higher-grade Incs controlling lower-grade Incs," Betelgeuse muttered.


    "It doesn''t make sense. That''s exactly what doesn''t make sense. The grading has always been artificial, B.T., artificially created by Man to order what are rightfully God''s creations. It is Theli''s to order, not Man''s. I don''t believe it could be so simple."


    "Doesn''t matter what you think. And last I remember the School of Theli agrees with the supremacy of Golden above all else. … Anyway, it''s a practical reality we all have to live with," Betelgeuse returned, his eyes still closed. He had placed the oxygen canister back down on the bed beside him.


    But Voke had a point, he thought to himself, because he had himself always considered the ordering to be controversial in certain respects and not definitively set in stone. If the ordering of Incunabula was not always clear, didn''t it make the mechanism by which the compulsion was imposed all the more nebulous?


    "It''s something else. It can''t be the Incunabula. And you. How have you managed to combat the compulsion?" Voke continued pressing.


    Betelgeuse opened an eye and tilted his face slightly toward Voke. He observed, beyond him, Thete''s intense glower. The woman was thinking something.


    A crash echoed somewhere far away and its reverberations were deep and bassoon-like. The ground trembled. Nobody paid it any heed.


    "You know why," Betelgeuse blinked.


    "Betelgeuse…" Voke squinted, then scrunched his face up thoughtfully. "Unless, of course, you manifested—"


    "I much rather think about how we can get the blackbox out of our suits," Betelgeuse interrupted him. "We need to find out where and what it is."


    "We''re all in it together. Including," he gestured toward Thete with his chin, "Sergeant Jutson over there."


    Seeing Betelgeuse'' gesture, Thete lowered her gaze.


    There was a sudden commotion at the front of the section and Betelgeuse and Voke turned to see Entuban emerge from the pleated orange folds and march down the aisle, a large bucket grasped in each of his thick palms. An emotionless Cacliocos stalked silently beside Entuban. Betelgeuse scrutinized the lineaments of the young company commander and realized that his features appeared to be a blend of both Saltillan and Jegorichian.


    And some moments later a ruddy Douglas came traipsing through the curtains behind Entuban, a battered and charred railgun held in his hand, totally oblivious to the strange stares which the Saltillans cast in his direction.


    "Resup here!" Entuban boomed as he came into the midst of the Jegorich First Brigade. Betelgeuse saw the Jegorichians who had been huddling at the opposite aisle perk up and direct their attention toward their company''s Sergeant Major.


    Entuban came to a complete stop beside Betelgeuse'' bed and beckoned toward the men and women of First Battalion, First Company. Calcliocos, by contrast, continued walking down the aisle past the Jegorichians'' allotted beds, eventually disappearing behind the white curtains at the far end of the section.


    "Grab your magazines and refill medicals here," Entuban instructed, placing the buckets on the floor. "Ah, Sergeant Jutson, you can grab the caffeine pills and Proxyamine stims for your guys. Two each per person."


    "... Unless Don''t Blink here needs no pick-me-up," he chortled deeply, turning to Betelgeuse and attempting a wink that didn''t quite land the way he hoped. To Entuban''s other side, Thete removed the Rejuvenator helmet and walked up silently toward the aisle, her expression vacant.


    "Don''t mind if I take some, Staff," Betelgeuse responded, his voice muffled.


    "You guys have fought hard already. It is a pity we will see more before this long day is over," Entuban sighed. "And I go by ''Entuban''. So please."


    Betelgeuse bowed his head, affecting a smile beneath his mask. He stepped forward and mixed in beside a thin-browed woman and a man with a tonsure, scooping up pills and stim-syrettes from the bucket, taking his, Voke''s, and Douglas'' share and making back towards his bed, ignoring Thete.


    "Thank you, Entuban," Thete said, coming up beside that massive man so that the difference in their heights became that much more salient. "Is it confirmed that we''re going to be redeployed?"


    "Yes, in the Ninsei mine-shaft. We''ll join the rest of First Battalion downstairs, then we push out with a TAF Brigade. They give us tanks and APCs so it is not so bad." Entuban turned to Thete, in the process inadvertently jostling with his thick shoulders the woman with thin brows. "Oh, yehna, Misha," he apologized, grabbing instinctively at her upper arm to steady her and keep her from falling. She put up her other hand and rolled her eyes, clearly used to Entuban''s clumsiness.


    As she did so, Betelgeuse stared at the scar that ran the length of that woman''s forearm, wondering if the cause had been a Chimera arm-scythe, and as he thought this he found his own forearm scar itching.


    "Take one caffeine pill. Save the other for later," Entuban instructed, addressing the Jegorichians.


    Caffeine. An interesting and expensive drug.


    He lifted the non-rebreather mask over his face and brought the caffeine pill close to his eyes. The thing was white and ellipsoidal and smelled rather stale. Its surface was smooth save for the characters ''RMS-N-117'' embossed across its side.


    Around him he observed the Jegorichians popping the pills. Deciding that nothing more could be gained from further scrutiny, he followed suit, feeling almost immediately the exhaustion and drowsiness slough off his bones…


    <hr>


    Their siesta lasted no longer than fifty minutes, and once Cacliocos returned they suited up and began moving again, past the white curtain and the sections of the Factotum that still wallowed in carpets of dust perhaps centuries thick. The building ran longer than a kilometer in length, and First Company eventually passed into unlit sections flanked by pallets of broken crates and towers of boxes made of cardboard or plastic and stamped with faded ink. They followed the straight path down the middle, tracing the imprints of a million boots that had tread and retread that length into dimness and then darkness.


    The light picked up again at the end of the Factotum, where a buzzing generator chugged petroleum and spewed a thick exhaust staining the walls a fungal brown. The generator was hooked up to a lift which looked large enough for forty, and First Company stuffed themselves into it with that characteristic love-hate relationship with tight spaces all soldiers shared.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    The elevator was a cage of transparent tempered glass fitted with translucent plastic doors, and when it shivered downward out of the opaque band of aluminum they were suddenly plunged into a vast darkness spotted with minuscule motes of light, the light tracing a path which snaked out into an unknown and unknowable topography.


    Betelgeuse, finding himself next to one of the elevator''s sides, brought his face closer to that clear surface until his visor bumped against it and drank in the colossal scale of the mining-tunnelway that had usurped the horizon.


    ''It''s larger than the Stin itself,'' was all the coherence he could muster in the face of that gargantuan volume.


    A circle of pink and rose, large and dim, shone upon the floor of that man-made shaft many leagues down, and as they descended Betelgeuse saw tessellations of centipedes upon the ground begin to resolve into long canvas tentages that seemed themselves to melt into rock, the tentages discernible only because of the lanterns hung at their edges.


    And now he could see people, thousands of them, many of their headlamps blazing pale tunnels of light, all of them gathered in formation or running around hectically or tending to their sputtering machines, termites shoring up the edges of the termite kingdom.


    They were falling faster and the sides of the cage were clacking anxiously against the sides of the shaft. The darkness looming before them was larger and emptier than he thought, and he wondered briefly where all the excavated material had gone—so much earth had been moved, and it must have been an immense place to be able to contain all of it.


    It was perhaps hundreds of meters from the ground when it occurred to Betelgeuse that the touchdown was likely to be rough. They were going too fast.


    "Brace," uttered Entuban, and in the span of a few short moments all bodies were connected to each other by arms lacing into the crooks of other arms and hands fastening themselves onto the plastic rib atop their shoulder pads.


    They hit the ground violently and Betelgeuse felt his knees buckle. The whole mat of soldiers crushed into the ground. The floor reverberated and a crack spidered down the middle of that pane of tempered glass. The dim ceiling-light flickered and went out. Someone was yelling or moaning loudly in the darkness and it took Betelgeuse a moment to realize that the sound was muffled because it wasn''t coming through the comms. The arm-brace loosened and Betelgeuse raised himself back to his feet.


    "Venna broke her leg," Entuban reported tersely, and Betelgeuse could see the hulking figure raise himself to his full height and switch his headlamp to maximum brightness. The rest of First Company followed suit and visibility was restored.


    "Venna?" Cacliocos croaked, and Betelgeuse heard his labored breathing filter through the company comms-link.


    "Corporal Tajiran," Entuban transmitted. "I carry her myself. We casevac to the FUP and see if Medicae take her."


    "Shit, man, they can''t even make the lifts work properly," came an exasperated complaint.


    "Sergeant Belekov, you seem to possess a wealth of knowledge you can''t wait to share," Cacliocos transmitted. "From now, the company comms shall only be used to communicate tactical information. Am I clear?"


    "... Yes, sir," Belekov drawled in return.


    "Section Five, any injuries?" The voice was Thete''s, transmitting through the section comms-link. A chorus of no''s, from Voke, Douglas and then Betelgeuse.


    "I second the Sarge, actually," Douglas added, snickering. Betelgeuse rolled his eyes.


    "Absolutely incorrigible," Voke sighed, and Thete snorted in response.


    First Company extricated themselves from that damaged cage of plastic and glass, and when Betelgeuse stumbled out onto a rough and dark shelf of granite he thought he had landed on a different planet entirely. Larua couldn''t be seen from out the colossal hole in the subterranean sky, though its light .


    ''Curious case of thalassophobia,'' he thought, remembering the first and only time he had ridden Earth''s cross-continent maglev, remembering the nights he had spent staring into the dark waters of the Pacific. The waves had been sheened with glowing bands, and the light caught on those scallops of oil very much like the way the light had caught on Frederica''s forehead. When the waters burbled he imagined sailors drowning and skeletal hands reaching from out of the darkness and monsters like titanic plesiosaurs biding and breeding in unknown depths.


    ''Or maybe, speluncaphobia?'' He found his mouth dry as he squinted uselessly into the dark maw of the cave looming over them.


    "Strength accounted for," Entuban reported, brushing past Betelgeuse. Venna was cradled in one of Entuban''s thick arms, and her form was so small in comparison to Entuban''s that it looked like the giant was holding a pomeranian.


    "Move out," instructed Cacliocos, once Entuban had made it to the backside of the contingent.


    Cacliocos took the lead at the head of First Company, and they passed into dimness, darkness and then into brightness once more. Betelgeuse could feel his soles warming up, as though below the cave ran the ancient capillaries of a hypocaust. His suit''s conditioners hummed loudly, and he wondered if it might be reaching its limit.


    "Hotter?" he remarked, picking his steps carefully across the uneven ground.


    "Lava tubes run below," explained Thete, turning to Betelgeuse and interacting with him for perhaps the first time since Frederica, "they dug down and when it didn''t make financial sense to continue downward they went sideways."


    "It''s massive… how far does it go?" Voke asked, raising his head and shining his headlamp ineffectually at the fathomless cave.


    "It''s a web of tunnels that branches chaotically, and it stretches very, very far. But I don''t know the true extent," admitted Thete. "It''s a hot topic back in my hometown, because the subterranean mines are now so extensive that even slight tremors cause large portions of the upper crust to collapse."


    "It wasn''t in the infomentaries," Betelgeuse pointed out, skirting a small whinstone protrusion.


    "They don''t tell us anything important," grumbled Douglas, his railgun slung over his back and clattering noisily against the shell of his exosuit''s battery pack.


    "Supposed to be restricted information, but it''s an open secret as far as Desertians are concerned. The Chimes are also into it, and last I was hearing they''d dug out a massive hole in the southern hemisphere," Thete said, raising her head at the gradually intensifying sounds of human activity. They were nearing the Allied Forces'' FUP and a mass of soldiers could be seen scurrying about.


    They returned to the sea of humanity and the darkness dissipated with the endless streams of shunting light. The soldiers here had more distinctly Earth-like features—shorter foreheads, smaller eyes, longer limbs—and were generally far taller than the soldiers of First Company (save for Betelgeuse, Douglas, Voke and, of course, Entuban).


    A multitude of TAF platoons doglegged through the maze of shifting bodies and cut across Betelgeuse'' path, jostling the Jegorichians and splitting the line comprising First Company into several sections. In their arms were hugged fuel cells, jerry cans of petroleum and ammunition crates. They were all in a hurry and, as they passed, Betelgeuse glanced into their visors and tried, unsuccessfully, to commit to memory every anxious face.


    "Listen up. Our line is breaking up. Make for the tentage second from the end," Cacliocos transmitted flatly. Betelgeuse turned. Entuban''s shoulders seemed far away behind them and when he returned his gaze to the front Betelgeuse could no longer see the forward-most section of First Company.


    "Keep moving," Thete instructed, nudging Betelgeuse in his back.


    It was many minutes of shoving and squeezing before Section Five arrived at the tentage near to the edge of the FUP and close to where an incredibly long column of idling APCs ended.


    Beyond the FUP a reconnaissance team had marked out a path with sticks hung with LED lanterns, and the route wound and snaked through the ominous darkness and over a flattish terrain before turning a bend many kilometers out into the massive cave and disappearing from Betelgeuse'' view.


    Cacliocos was already there, standing under the canvas shelter and half-illuminated with light. It looked like he was exchanging heated words with a pale-skinned man whose bushy eyebrows, full, graying beard, and noble aquiline nose made him look rather imperious. Three horizontal bars were stamped over the top of his helmet, identifying his rank as Captain.


    Soon, the entire First Company had reached, and all of them waited patiently in section-level formation before that voluminous tentage. The lanterns hung at the edge of the tentages, leaving the insides dim and indistinct.


    Betelgeuse squinted, making out from the darkness a multitude of brown-plastic Standard-Issue tables and columns of comms equipment and rows upon rows of exosuited personnel hunched over computer terminals and clacking away at mechanical keyboards, the terminal screens flashing blue across their dead and emotionless lineaments. Their expressions were so vacant that Betelgeuse wondered if all of them had been subjected to the compulsion matrix.


    A long screen had been hooked to a horizontal beam, and upon it was projected in red: "CM TTR—12:39".


    12:38…


    12:37…


    The Captain and Cacliocos appeared to have finished their powwow, and the Captain stepped out into the light before First Company. Behind him another man bearing a Sergeant''s chevrons emerged from the depths of the tent and took his place on the Captain''s left. Two dull tones sounded through the company comms-link.


    Cacliocos stood by the Captain''s right, his expression paler than usual.


    "Jegorich First Brigade, First Battalion, First Company. I am TAF Captain Josiah Crowley, commander of the Allied Forces for this chasedown operation. It''s come to my attention that you lot are late. To be exact," the Captain turned to face the inside of the tentage, and the top of his helmet glinted, "seven minutes and forty seconds behind time. The rest of the Jegorich First have already left."


    Entuban bowed his head in an expression of deference that, for some reason or other, made Betelgeuse want to laugh. He resisted the urge. Entuban had set Corporal Venna Tajiran down beside himself, and the Corporal was leaning against Entuban and raising her broken leg off the ground.


    "I''ll have to mark this as a failure, understand? Fifty demerit points." Captain Crowley ran his eyes over the troops at attention.


    "Sir, we were on Tzevtao-retrieval—" Entuban began, making to provide some excuse, when he was brusquely interrupted.


    "Tzevtao?" Captain Crowley sounded loudly, raising an eyebrow and turning to regard the giant man as if intuiting that it was he who had spoken.


    "Aluaa for Incunabulum, sir" the Sergeant to Crowley''s right explained deferentially, canting his head slightly as he did so.


    "Unauthorized use of foreign language in an operational context. Clear breach of the Green Book. Seventy demerit points," Captain Crowley declared, his expression barely changing. Betelgeuse heard Thete coughing over the comms. "Who is company sergeant major?"


    "... I am, sir. PDF Staff Sergeant Entuban Kanos," Entuban bowed his head even further.


    "So it was you?" Captain Crowley looked at the giant and his face started cracking up and seemed to elongate like a horse. Soon he was laughing great and grating peals.


    "Unauthorized use of language at best affects operational readiness, and at worse facilitates insubordination; you agree, Sergeant Major?" Captain Crowley questioned, once he had mastered his laughter.


    "Sir, if you will allow—" Cacliocos began, turning to Captain Crowley.


    "Yes, sir," Entuban said, responding to Captain Crowley and in the circumstances interrupting Cacliocos. His face was almost parallel to the ground by now, but Betelgeuse could observe the man''s cheeks tensing. Was that blood running down his chin?


    "Interrupting your commanding officer now?" Captain Crowley furrowed his brows. "It does seem even more insubordinate, does it not?"


    "Sir, it is normal in the PDF. This is how we communicate," Cacliocos quickly interjected, bowing his head slightly. "The honorable Grand Marshal himself has championed the chutzpah of airing one''s thoughts freely and openly."


    "Is that so? Interesting interpretation of a Democratic concept. And I suppose it''s why that woman is out-of-formation and leaning against your Sergeant Major? A peculiar form of fraternization if ever I saw one," Captain Crowley remarked, narrowing his eyes at Corporal Venna Tajiran.


    "Sir," Cacliocos managed, imbuing the honorific with the appropriate amount of deference. "Corporal Tajiran''s broken her leg, sir. She needs medical attention."


    "I thought you just came from the Medicae?" Captain Crowley made a show of twisting around one-hundred and eighty degrees to look at the hanging screen within the tentage. When he turned back his lips were pursed. "Look, this is all getting very complicated. Corporal Tajiran will have to follow the deployment. Sergeant Major, you will allocate the seventy demerit points amongst the members of First Company currently present. If anyone dies, their estate will bear the relevant cost. Am I clear?"


    "Yes, sir." Entuban''s and Cacliocos'' voice overlapped as they transmitted over the comms, causing a screeching feedback loop that was quickly dampened by the exosuits'' automatic volume control.


    "Subaltern Cacliocos, First Company''s tardiness has meant missing the rest of Jegorich First''s moveout timing. As such, you lot will be attached to the TAF First Brigade. Specifically, let me get this right here…" Captain Crowley turned and walked several steps into the tentage to retrieve a dogeared stack of papers which had been stapled together, and, as he returned to his position, flipping through hurriedly. "There. TAF First Brigade, Second Battalion, Third Company… Platoon Two."


    Raising his head, Captain Crowley continued: "Subaltern Cacliocos, you will report directly to TAF Sergeant Metterrich Khvalynsky here, and you will address him as sir." The man beside Captain Crowley nodded toward Cacliocos.


    "Yes, sir," Cacliocos bowed his head again. The shadows covered his eyes so that Betelgeuse could not discern his expression.


    "Your platoon commander will be… TAF Subaltern Aldo Franklin," Captain Crowley said, referring back toward the manifest and fingering the paper with his thumb.


    "Yes, sir," Cacliocos repeated.


    "First Company is allocated APC numbers 2089 and 2090. Be on your way. TTR in one point five minutes," Captain Crowley stressed, turning his head and squinting at the hanging screen for the third time.


    Sergeant Khvalynsky stepped forward, a clean-shaven youngish man with close-cropped hair, serious eyes and slavic features.


    "First Company!" he bellowed. First Company stood at attention, save for Venna, who remained holding on to Entuban. "Follow me, double-time!"


    And Sergeant Khvalynsky burst from his position, skirting the tentage and making for the column of APCs with a speed so incredible it rivaled Thete at her fastest.


    First Company exploded into activity, with Entuban scooping up Venna and the whole group sprinting in formation toward the armor column.


    "What''s a demerit point?" Douglas inquired, falling in beside Betelgeuse and placing his palm onto the small of the latter''s back, exerting enough force that Betelgeuse was able to keep up with the contingent.


    "100 credits will be docked from your pay for every demerit point you accrue," Thete answered simply.


    "The fuck—" Douglas began, his head whipping around.


    "Stationary bandits," Betelgeuse managed, and his lungs started to fill up wetly as they stepped into the glare of the APC headlights.


    "—I barely get paid 50 credits a month! Aren''t there like thirty of us?"


    "They''re being punitive," Voke sighed.


    "Indeed," Thete returned. "Look sharp. Entuban comms-ed to say we''re loading up number 2090."


    The engines were roaring now, enveloping all their thoughts and perceptions in a furious rush of sound. The Plasma Leopard tanks behind had already started moving, their treads grinding loose rock into splinters and their barrels primed and glowing hotly.


    In that cacophonous trundle there was nothing for Betelgeuse to hold onto but Douglas'' steady hand pressing into his spine and guiding him toward the clanking machinery of the Allied Forces.