Chapter 2 - two sides of the same coin.

  Verses for a Shadowless Planet – Excerpt – Timothee Deveriagne

  They say that once,

  when the first sun still hesitated to rise,

  a woman crossed the fields of Tau Ceti.

  She wasn’t looking for anything,

  only to follow the line that separated sand from sky.

  The wind spoke to her in voices of water,

  and in the mirrors of the ground she saw faces that weren’t hers.

  She walked to where the air bends,

  where light grows dense and birds hang motionless.

  There she stopped.

  The second sun woke,

  and with it, the shadow of her body vanished.

  The colonists say that if you travel far enough,

  you can find her footprints pressed into the stone,

  still warm,

  as if the planet kept them out of love,

  or for fear of forgetting.

  The inside of the evacuation ship shuddered with each adjustment of the thrusters, a low hum seeping through blackened metal walls as if the hull itself objected to still being in flight. The air was charged, not with recycled oxygen or the smell of burned gun oil, but with a dense silence, saturated with guilt, that is born only after chaos. A silence built atop the roar of explosions, orders shouted with broken voices, and the screams no helmet could muffle.

  The soldiers were scattered through the compartment,dirty, wounded, hollow. Some bled in silence, others didn’t move except for the reflexive tremor of exhausted muscles. No one spoke. Only the deep buzz of the stabilizers and the rhythmic clank of metal on metal reminded them they were still alive.

  Reis was hunched against the wall, helmet between his knees, turning it slowly with his fingers as if the motion could lend meaning to what he’d just lived. His chest rose and fell with effort; the wound in his side throbbed with every breath, but he barely felt it. Physical pain blurred behind the shock,behind the image of the base in ruins, bodies piled in the dust, the certainty that some who’d been with him that very morning no longer existed.

  The sound of shrapnel still rang in his head. Bullets hammering off metal structures, the whine of assault drones before they spewed plasma, the roar of a separatist tank tearing through a barricade as if it were paper. And the screams.

  He’d seen Garlan fall with his chest opened by a spray of shrapnel. One fragment had ripped off half his face, exposing a crimson cavity before his body hit the ground. Verko didn’t scream, but his mouth moved, forming words that never made it out. Reis had looked at him a second too long. A second that nearly cost him his life.

  Then there were the ones who did scream. The ones dragged away, burned alive in the tongues of flamers, or caught by artillery strikes as they tried to run.

  The smell was the worst. An indelible mix of burned plasma, sour sweat, and flesh cooking under the suns of Tau Ceti IV. The attack had begun before local dawn, when his squad,kids fresh from training,was sent to secure a radar post near the Kyross valley. They’d been told it was a “deterrent reconnaissance mission.” With each passing day, Reis believed more firmly they’d simply been bait to divert the fight to the West.

  Make noise, irritate, and die,nothing more.

  No one said it that way, but they knew when they saw their tactical maps were outdated, the cover drones never arrived, and the perimeter shield went dead with the enemy’s second shot. It wasn’t incompetence. It was the plan.

  The enemy fire had been surgical,mortars guided by satellite intelligence, cannons mounted on four-legged tanks that slid over the sand like giant insects, and scout drones with thermal vision that harried them even as they tried to withdraw under cover of smoke. The separatists knew exactly where to hit. As if they’d already been there.

  Tau Ceti IV was supposed to be a safe operation. That’s what they’d promised a year earlier. But what they found was a field of death and dust, beneath an atmosphere that pressed on their lungs as if they were breathing through a sponge soaked in rust.

  He closed his eyes for an instant. Tried not to hear the echoes of battle. He couldn’t. Tried not to see the separatists advancing with surgical precision, as if they knew exactly where to strike. He couldn’t.

  He thought of home. That was better. A blurred picture now, a memory worn thin with every mission, every week spent in this hell. Tau Ceti was stripping even his ability to remember his own life.

  He thought of his mother. How she cried when the enlistment letter arrived, how she tried to smile at him when he boarded the recruit shuttle. “You’re going to be strong, my love.” But her voice shook. Reis remembered the way she hugged him at the spaceport, as if she could keep him, as if her body could interpose itself between him and the war. A clumsy illusion, the kind any desperate mother clings to.

  His father had been different. Spoke little, stood firm. But his eyes said everything. It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t hope. It was resignation. As if he already knew Reis wouldn’t come back. Reis was already a ghost to him.

  Now, on the ship, he realized his father might have been right. He’d never wanted to be here. Few of them had.

  He opened his eyes and looked at his helmet, still in his hands. Four years earlier he had pictured himself at the academy for space engineers. He wanted to build ships, not die in them. He wanted to travel to distant worlds, not incinerate them. But here he was,fight or die.

  They called them the Duty Generation. They applauded them and called them heroes. But it wasn’t duty. They weren’t heroes. It was a crime.

  The war wasn’t only stealing his future. It was taking his past. All he had left was the absurd hope that if he survived another year, maybe the war would grow tired of him.

  A groan of metal pulled him from his thoughts as someone dropped into the seat across from him.

  Reis looked up with a start.

  An older veteran, his face scored by old scars. He wasn’t one of them. His unit had been evacuated last week. Rumor said he’d come from Khor Station, where losses had been lighter. Now he watched the new survivors as if they were ghosts unrelated to his own tragedy.

  The man scanned the cabin, his expression barely containing a mix of weariness and disappointment. Then his gaze fixed on Reis.

  “Who’s in command here?”

  Reis didn’t answer at once. He swallowed, feeling the weight of the nearby soldiers’ eyes. He cleared his throat, though it didn’t stop his voice from coming out too faint.

  “I am, sir.”

  The officer regarded him with doubt, clearly expecting someone older. But there was no one else. They were all like him,young, broken, terrified.

  “You’re the lieutenant over these soldiers?”

  “Yes, sir,” Reis said, trying to sound steadier than he felt.

  “Age, lieutenant?”

  “Twenty, sir.”

  The man exhaled heavily and shook his head.

  “And then they wonder why we lose. Incredible…”

  Reis didn’t answer. What could he say?

  “Who else?” the veteran rasped, looking around. “Who’s left behind?”

  No one responded. Reis felt everyone was waiting for him to speak. But the words wouldn’t come. There were too many. Too many names, too many faces he’d rather forget but couldn’t.

  “You there, Lieutenant?” the man pressed, looking at him directly now.

  Reis swallowed, feeling the weight of each lost soldier crush his chest.

  “We lost almost everyone,” he murmured at last, barely audible. “It’s just us.”

  The officer exhaled deeply,disappointed, but not surprised.

  Reis looked at him. Not with hatred, nor admiration. Only with a kind of exhausted recognition. As if for the first time someone had said aloud what everyone knew but no one wanted to accept.

  “And now?”

  The officer stood, adjusting his armor.

  “Now you wait. And you pray your next battle takes its time getting here.”

  The ship shuddered again. The sound of the engines throttling down seeped through the hull. Soon they’d land at an intermediate base. Not the main one. They weren’t welcome there. Shattered youths don’t inspire morale.

  Reis leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He felt another tremor, but it wasn’t the ship,it was his right hand. He used his left to press it down until it hurt.

  Better wounded than timorous.

  Spokesman Kael Durnan moved through the remains of what had once been a mining city. Natural crystals jutted from the ground at impossible angles, huge translucent columns of deep blue that caught the light of the binary suns in blinding flashes. It wasn’t the same pure, clean blue he’d seen in the capital; these were iridescent, feral tones that swung from intense violet to emerald green with the slightest shift, as if alive and reacting to the soldiers’ passing. Here Kael knew the uniform, tidy, reassuring color that coated the capital was artificial. They’d likely altered it to reflect stability, order, and control,everything this distant region seemed to reject. Even aflame, Velghart was a beautiful city.

  The air was dense, steeped in bittersweet aromas like burned copper mixed with something organic, viscous, barely tolerable. The atmosphere clung to his lungs with every breath, as if it meant to stop him from moving forward. Fallen smokestacks cast misshapen shadows over the ground, figures stretching like specters toward a horizon crowned by black, knife-like mountains. Blades of obsidian, indifferent to the fate of those who tried to tame this wasteland that clearly wasn’t theirs.

  Among the strange crystalline formations, phosphorescent rivers cut paths through eroded earth. Fluids glowed with their own light, revealing an intricate network of planetary veins that radiated an unsettling vitality. Kael understood, with a shiver, that this planet wasn’t made for them; they were invading something they didn’t understand.

  Reports said the mining city had at least three tunnels connecting to the central plain,natural entrances, deep, impossible to trace from the air. Taking it wasn’t only symbolic: it meant cutting the oppressors off from covert transit to their supply nests. It also explained why the orbital bombardments the day before had flattened the outer approaches and left still-smoldering marks at the edges of the terrain.

  Kael passed a fresh crater: fragments of still-hot shrapnel and pieces of a light exoskeleton. Probably a young squad. Word was another front to the north had fallen. Maybe they’d been evacuated. Maybe not. No one was going to confirm it.

  A few meters away, separatist soldiers worked in silence, moving among wreckage with mechanical motions. They threw up makeshift barricades with twisted metal while others escorted civilians toward a clearing. Cables ripped from mining machines, half-melted batteries that crackled with each shift. No assistance drones, no cargo exoskeletons,everything depended on bare hands and rusted tools; anyone outside the Universal Government knew only hard work got things done.

  The passage of hostages briefly broke the camp’s muteness: a woman with a locked jaw, covered in dark dust; an old man clutching what little he could carry; and a girl holding a frayed scrap of cloth as if it were the only thing tethering her to reality.

  A hideous stench, far too familiar, cut through Kael’s thoughts.

  Dozens of bodies were piled without order or care,torn uniforms, burned flesh fused to melted armor, severed limbs displayed grotesquely as primitive warnings. Some corpses had skin carved with separatist symbols; others had been brutally mutilated and scattered to maximize visual horror. One soldier lay with his eyelids cut away, face frozen in a final expression of terror; another’s skull was split by a blunt impact, splintered bone exposed to the planet’s heavy air.

  Kael felt a stab of revulsion, but forced himself on. He’d seen enough horrors not to stop, though that didn’t mean immunity. War doesn’t anesthetize you,it only makes you fake indifference to survive.

  The battle had ended only hours ago. Smoke still climbed the toppled chimneys, and the hum of recon drones vibrated in the distance. Over the radio, the auxiliary commander’s voice had cracked through the static: patrol, search for survivors, take prisoners. And if anything useful turned up, report it.

  Kael descended a slope of hardened dust, his squad behind him. No one spoke. Boots sinking through twisted metal and broken crystal were the only sounds.

  Chuet walked at his left,a young corporal, shorter than Kael, eyes always alert, jaw tight. They’d been together for weeks. Little needed saying. Kael rarely said much.

  “Spokesman,” Chuet said without turning. “About a hundred meters, bearing three-five-north. Balmoreans.”

  Kael angled his helmet that way.

  In the distance, on a far rise, a group in red-and-black armor marched as one body. They didn’t move like humans. The Red-and-Black Devils, as known as they were hated.

  They weren’t mixed with the separatist squad. They had their own perimeter. And their own logic.

  “Don’t approach them,” Kael said, voice neutral.

  “Report them to high command?”

  Kael shook his head.

  “No. I don’t want to owe them anything.”

  Chuet nodded and snugged his rifle to his chest.

  The group split into three cells. Kael took the eastern flank with three soldiers at his side. Chuet circled the half-buried metal structure to the south.

  Kael wasn’t supposed to patrol. A spokesman rarely did. But after weeks of miscoordination and absent leadership, he’d learned the only way to understand a front was to breathe it.

  Ten minutes of silent searching. A collapsed building, still smoking. Old mining tools. Civilian clothes. Nothing alive.

  Until Chuet’s voice crackled in his comm.

  “Spokesman. Found them. Come.”

  Kael doubled back toward the rendezvous. A caved-in tunnel awaited him. Chuet crouched by a makeshift opening.

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  “Inside. A family. No resistance.”

  Kael descended without hurry. The air was dense and the heat stifling.

  Inside the shelter, lit only by his visor’s glow, he found three figures,a middle-aged man, a woman with weathered skin, and a girl. They were coated in gray dust and dried blood. They weren’t tied. They didn’t need to be.

  Kael stepped closer.

  “Names?”

  Silence.

  “Were you residents of this sector?” he pressed.

  “We… we only wanted to survive,” the woman whispered, not looking at him.

  The girl clung to her. Her eyes were swollen, but she didn’t cry. Kael wondered if she had the faintest idea what was happening.

  The man edged forward, threadbare dignity holding.

  “We had no weapons.”

  Kael studied him. Saw no lies in his eyes. Only defeat.

  “Out.”

  The family hesitated. Kael cursed himself before forcing his voice to a shout:

  “Out. Now.”

  Outside, before the charred remains of their city, Kael stopped in front of them. He looked at the father. He looked at the girl.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, kneeling before the girl. He tried for a gentle tone, but couldn’t hide the fatigue splitting him inside.

  The girl didn’t answer. She tucked behind her mother’s leg. The mother’s eyes burned with a hatred as sharp as the crystals around them.

  “She has nothing to say to you,” the woman snapped, stepping between Kael and her daughter.

  Kael nodded, drawing a deep breath. His words came out like a murmur.

  “I have a daughter too. She hides behind her mom just like you.”

  The girl peeked out for a heartbeat, but her mother didn’t let the connection last.

  “You think that matters?” the woman bit out. “Everything we loved is dead. Everything. And you come to talk to her about your daughter? How dare you? Bastard.”

  Kael nodded and breathed hard.

  War hadn’t made him cruel. Nor kinder. Only faster.

  “Look at your mother,” Kael said.

  The girl hesitated. Kael forced a smile,the same one he used with his own kids.

  “Look, really, I have to give her a present, but you can’t see it yet. It’s a secret.”

  The mother frowned. The girl obeyed. Kael knew it was time. He raised the weapon.

  Three shots.

  Nothing more.

  Kael lowered the gun. The father fell first. Then the mother. The girl crumpled without a cry. The wind dragged a strand of ash over their bodies. No one moved.

  Behind him, Chuet said nothing. Just looked away.

  Kael holstered his weapon without ceremony.

  “I trust you understand my reasons, Corporal,” he said, meeting his eyes. Chuet nodded. “In the same way, I expect you to keep the same silence I would keep with you.”

  Chuet didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. They moved on, side by side.

  The binary sky was beginning to darken, but the crystals kept shining beneath the broken earth. As if the entire planet refused to forget.

  The evacuation ship broke atmosphere with a dry shiver. The ash clouds that blanketed the southern hemisphere fell away, and soon the planet’s dirty blue yielded to the absolute black of the void. Only then did Reis grasp that they were still alive.

  He peered through the compartment’s small semicircular viewer. From there he saw the Universal Government’s Strategic Station K-9: a colossal orbital platform hanging like a parasite over Tau Ceti IV. It wasn’t a ship; it was a suspended city,a logistics base with floating hangars, command towers, scan zones, and defensive rings rotating in mathematical sync. From afar it seemed motionless. Up close, it was a living machine.

  An automated message received them:

  “17th Unit evacuated. Damage reported. Disembark authorized at Dock 12-C. Proceed to secondary gantry access. Partial medical assistance enabled. Priority category: low.”

  Reis didn’t react. Didn’t even frown. He just adjusted his helmet under his arm and waited for the hatch to open.

  When the pressurized access engaged, a metal tube descended from the coupling platform and sealed to their hatch with a wet hiss. The door slid aside with a screech far too slow for everyone’s urgency. No officers waited. Only a holographic sign that read: “Transit Corridor – Level 3 – Provisional Barracks.”

  They walked the gangway in complete silence.

  On the other side, the station’s clinical bureaucracy awaited,sterile white light, polished corridors reeking of antiseptic, identity sensors integrated into every door. Omnis scanned their vitals unbidden. The walls pulsed with an almost imperceptible thrum, as if even the metal breathed control.

  Two medical drones drifted over, guiding the worst off toward a secondary infirmary.

  “Only grade-three or higher receive immediate treatment,” a flat automated voice said.

  Reis didn’t argue. He watched two of his soldiers be carried off while others simply sat in the corridor, waiting for what they knew wouldn’t come.

  One of the squad’s youngest, Jevin, leaned against the wall, eyes open but seeing nothing.

  “This is how they welcome us?” he whispered to no one in particular.

  Reis only nodded. It was his first time up here too, but he already suspected: there was no room for emotion. Only figures, outputs, projections.

  A screen lit above them. It showed charts of active operations, supply lines, heat maps over the planet. No mention of their squad. No thanks. No recognition. Just a faint line with a unit code and the words: “Pending reorganization.”

  At the corridor’s end, a logistics officer received them with a floating tablet, never lifting her eyes from the screen.

  “Lieutenant Reis, your squad will be lodged temporarily in Block M-4, compartment 18. You’ll meet with senior command at 0600. Until then, rest. Do not leave the sector.”

  Reis signed digitally without reading. The woman had already turned to receive another unit.

  On the way to the barracks, murmurs began. Small gestures. Mute complaints. Fear wrapped in fatigue. No one knew how long they’d stay. No one knew if they’d go back down. They only knew the Universal Government had extracted them, but hadn’t saved them.

  Reis paused just before entering their assigned module. From there a side viewport showed the planet. Tau Ceti IV turned slowly in the dark like a wound that wouldn’t close.

  A distant hell. And at the same time, the only place they still existed.

  He went in without looking back.

  The air in the briefing room was cold, dry, recycled so many times it had lost any trace of humanity. The walls were sterile metal plates, unadorned, with nothing of identity beyond the holo-panels dominating the central table.

  War had no face here. No smell of blood, no echoes of screams, no bone-deep tremor after a near blast. Only statistics floating in the air, digital maps blinking with real-time data, and the controlled voice of an artificial intelligence reciting losses with the same indifference it used for ammunition levels.

  Reis entered with an uncertain step. No one announced him, but everyone looked, sizing up the young lieutenant barely past twenty. His uniform was dust- and blood-streaked, his armor damaged, and the helmet in his trembling hand.

  The officers were already assembled,men and women in spotless attire, gleaming decorations, and the chill of those who had never directly known the brutality of Tau Ceti.

  Colonel Ardeval, a man with a square jaw and hard eyes, watched him with impatience.

  “Lieutenant Zinerman. Situation?”

  Reis set his helmet on the table carefully, almost ashamed.

  “They overran us, sir,” he said softly, avoiding eye contact. “The 17th suffered heavy losses. The separatists took the whole area. We couldn’t hold them.”

  A brief, awkward silence followed,not surprise, but confirmation. The screens had already told them everything. They wanted to hear it from him so he could feel the weight of admitting defeat.

  Commander Erian Dalt, immaculate in his neatness, laced his fingers calmly.

  “The 17th is full of recruits, Reis. We couldn’t expect them to hold long. What did you think would happen?”

  Humiliation swelled in Reis’s chest, but he said nothing.

  “Maybe with more support, we could have…” he murmured.

  Ardeval cut him off with a sharp gesture.

  “There are more important priorities.”

  Reis lowered his head.

  “Understood, sir.”

  Commander Var Hesker, a deep scar across his jaw, broke the tension by projecting a holographic map.

  “The immediate problem now is separatist advance. We can’t afford to lose more territory.”

  Reis stayed quiet, knowing what was coming.

  Ardeval marked three key points on the map.

  “Tau Ceti has three critical zones: the capitol, already lost; the undulating valley; and the coastal peninsula. The valley is essential. Omnis servers are located there.”

  Reis swallowed, interrupting timidly.

  “Sir, the valley is where we’re coming from. They… they shredded us.”

  Ardeval looked at him without emotion.

  “That’s why we’re launching a counterattack at the capitol. We can’t draw attention to the undulating valley.”

  Reis felt his throat close.

  “Will my unit be sent again, sir?”

  The colonel shook his head, coldly.

  “This time you’ll only apply aerial pressure on the southern flank. We don’t expect victory, only to keep them busy.”

  Reis heard the subtext. His life, and his squad’s, were a distraction.

  “I understand, sir,” he whispered.

  “Rest tonight, lieutenant,” Ardeval said, as if granting a favor. “At first light I want your unit preparing. The strike is in three days.”

  Reis stared at the holo-map, feeling a great weight settle on his shoulders. His upper teeth pressed down on his lowers with hatred.

  “Any questions, lieutenant?” Ardeval asked, a faint challenge in his tone.

  Reis shook his head slowly.

  “No, sir.”

  “Excellent. This time you’ll fend for yourselves. Don’t expect additional support. We’re counting on you.”

  Reis nodded, feeling the room grow even colder.

  Ardeval brought his hand to his chest.

  “Long live the Union.”

  Reis mirrored him.

  “Long live the Union.”

  The war on Tau Ceti was safe for no one, least of all for someone like him. But he knew he had no choice but to obey, because in the Universal Government, doubt was an unforgivable weakness.

  He left the room with slow steps, feeling the orders he’d just received stack on his shoulders like a load too heavy to carry. The corridor lights flickered faintly, casting long shadows that seemed to follow him, silent and constant as the uncertainty stalking him since he’d arrived on Tau Ceti IV.

  He walked slowly, trying to clear his head. Applying aerial pressure on the southern flank was suicide dressed in technical language that couldn’t hide the truth. He knew what they were asking. Senior command knew too, but no one seemed to care. Everyone played their part, and now he had to play his.

  His throat tightened with anxiety and he stopped, leaning a moment against the corridor’s cold wall. He closed his eyes, letting images of the last fight return, strained faces, enemy fire, Garlan’s lifeless expression as he fell among resonant crystals that threw back lights too bright for a battlefield. A brief tremor ran through his shoulders, a sharp pulse behind his eyes. He didn’t cry, he didn’t allow it this time, but the knot in his throat remained, constant and painful.

  He straightened, breathed deep a few times, and resumed the path to his squad’s compartment. As he neared the door, his face slowly recovered a rigid, military composure. He was conscious of his youth, of the lack of experience his soldiers surely saw in him, but he couldn’t afford to show weakness now. Not in front of them.

  He opened the door decisively.

  Inside, the soldiers were waiting in silence. Some sat on improvised benches, others stood, faces tired, eyes tense, awaiting orders. He felt the pressure of their gazes land on him like a silent blow. A young dark-skinned woman with a shaved head spoke up.

  “Lieutenant,” Alis greeted him, respectful, but not warm. “What are our orders?”

  Reis cleared his throat lightly, keeping his voice as steady as possible.

  “In three days we’re to carry out a series of air strikes to pressure the southern flank, particularly the Capitol. Our objective is to distract the separatists while other units try to regroup.”

  Silence fell at once. Some soldiers traded discreet looks, which Reis clearly noticed. Alis kept quiet, but looked ready to say plenty.

  “With respect, lieutenant,” Miren cut in, calm, but with an unignorable firmness, “without ground support that strategy has already cost us many soldiers. Will we have any backing this time?”

  Reis drew a long breath, carefully controlling his expression.

  “Orders do not include ground support. I understand your concerns, I share them, but we have no other option.”

  Miren’s brow tightened slightly, voice still low.

  “Forgive me, sir, but then we need to propose alternatives. We can’t repeat exactly what failed last time.”

  Reis felt the tension coil in his muscles, but kept his composure.

  “These are the orders. I’d like to tell you something else, but I can’t. It isn’t my decision.”

  Alzar: the older of the group at twenty-three, years that looked like many more in his tired eyes and his early ginger baldness, lifted his gaze slowly.

  “Sir, when are they going to start listening to us up there? This strategy is failing. They should send more experienced troops, real soldiers.”

  Alzar’s voice wasn’t aggressive, but it carried weeks of bottled frustration. Reis felt a stab of guilt, knowing the words were true. He stayed quiet for a heartbeat, searching for a response. At last he spoke, firm, but not harsh:

  “I know, soldier. But this is what we have right now. I can’t change it, only try to get us through with as little damage as possible. We’re soldiers. We follow orders, even when they don’t make much sense.”

  Jevin, the youngest at barely seventeen, hesitated before speaking:

  “And what if it doesn’t work again, sir? What if…?”

  “We can’t think like that,” Reis cut in, gentle but resolute. “Doubt won’t help us now. You know the mission. We do what we can to complete it and come back in one piece.”

  Another silence formed, but less hostile this time, more resigned. The soldiers’ eyes dropped a fraction, accepting the situation. Reis used that pause to regain a shred of calm.

  “Rest while you can,” he said finally, more quietly. “We move at dawn.”

  He turned on his heel and left the compartment. Outside, he leaned his back to the wall, breathing slow and deep. The corridor lights still flickered faintly, in sync with the uncertainty he felt in his chest.

  He didn’t cry. He simply accepted the weight of responsibility in silence, knowing he had to endure, even as it grew harder each day to stay on his feet.

  And the war had only just begun.

  Kael Durnan came down the hill with his pulse controlled and his teeth clenched. The execution still floated in his head, if not in the air. He’d walked slowly, as if the descent could erase the prints of the act. No one asked. No one looked. Only the faint crunch of gravel under his boots accompanied the return.

  He watched in silence as his soldiers moved through the rubble, trying to reconstruct a semblance of order. Near a makeshift barricade, a young trooper tried to hoist a metal panel while a comrade scolded him for dropping his rifle. Beside them, a team attempted to repair a jury-rigged transmitter, trading tense, frustrated murmurs. The camp breathed with difficulty, fighting an invisible suffocation that grew more evident by the day.

  Kael stopped by a group resting around a small improvised fire, fed with fragments of what had once been military gear. They sat in a circle, sharing a couple of cigarettes, eyes down, expressions grim. Kael recognized Rudolph, his second, and young Div Kut, barely past seventeen.

  “Spokesman Durnan,” Rudolph greeted him, face marked by fresh scars. “Radio’s still dead. Without new parts we’re not sending anything.”

  Kael nodded, inspecting the transmitter’s guts. The pieces looked torn from half a dozen machines, a collage of technical desperation.

  “We do what we can with what we’ve got,” he murmured, lighting a cigarette. “And that’s already a lot. We don’t have an Omnis.”

  Rudolph clicked his tongue.

  “That’s why we should even the game.”

  Div Kut, his familiar stammering tone, asked,

  “Do you think we have a chance, sir?”

  Kael exhaled smoke slowly, watching it vanish into the heavy air.

  “If we don’t have one, we make one. That’s all that’s left.”

  Div nodded without fully understanding.

  “I… I understand. Thank you, sir,” he said, and slipped back to his spot without pressing further.

  Off in the distance, a pair of soldiers were singing, the same ritual song always heard when the Balmoreans took prisoners.

  “They will travel with Bagdur, they will travel with Bagdur…”

  Kael turned his head slightly. From a low hill he saw a group of them, nearly forty, descending the slope. They moved with choreographed precision, dragging bodies and hostages. Some laughed. Others shoved in silence. The song went on, emotionless, like a memorized military prayer.

  Kael looked away. Said nothing. But the Balmoreans’ presence bit into him to the bone.

  “They’re animals,” Rudolph murmured under his breath.

  Kael didn’t respond. He only vented smoke through his nose. Footsteps behind him prefaced a voice.

  “Durnan,” it greeted without courtesy. “I want a real report. Not something written by some logistics operator. What did you see?”

  Deshen Roq. His armor was spattered with dirt and dried blood. His gait was firm, his face carved from stone. A mat of black hair tried to cover several empty patches, but few noticed, his gaze was enough to make people avoid his eyes.

  Kael rose, flicking the cigarette aside.

  “Tunnels,” he said without embellishment. “Access from east and southeast. We’re reinforcing the entries. Needs deeper exploration, but they’ll surely lead to different points.”

  Roq folded his arms, weighing the words.

  “And the civilians?”

  Kael held his gaze.

  “Mostly under Balmorean control. Some are still alive.”

  “Anyone say anything useful?”

  “No, sir.”

  Roq nodded slowly.

  “Good. Orders from Devouir. We reinforce this position for the next 72 hours. After that, second contingent arrives and we prepare to clear the routes to the underground nests.”

  Kael listened, but only half. The image of the girl clung to his retina.

  “And if reinforcements don’t come?” he asked, testing the ground.

  Roq lifted an eyebrow.

  “Devouir’s handling everything. If the council trusts him, we do the same. Clear?”

  Kael nodded. He knew Roq’s vocal inflections well enough to hear the irritation.

  “On another note,” Roq continued, “I can’t keep one eye only on Velghart. If we push on toward Ciryan or Kharat, I’ll need someone keeping an eye here.”

  A brief silence. Kael hoped not to hear the news he suspected. Roq rotated a hand impatiently.

  “That would be you, Kael.”

  The image of the family didn’t leave him for a second. He felt no pride, no joy at the news. He felt… nothing.

  “Sir, I must note I’ve never served as regional commander over an entire continent…”

  Roq scoffed.

  “It’s like other operations, only with more ground to mind. Follow my lead and you’ll be fine, Kael. The Spokesman role was already too small for you.”

  “It’s an honor, sir. Thank you for your trust,” Kael said, offering a crisp salute.

  Roq dipped his head. He neither smiled nor gestured, but something in his movements told Kael he was pleased.

  “Get some rest, soldier,” he said. “We’ll settle a few days, then sooner rather than later we’ll need to plan the restructure.”

  Roq drew a small cigarette box from his jacket and offered one.

  “Anafola? You liked the mild ones, right?”

  Kael accepted. They lit up together, like old soldiers who no longer needed words to understand each other.

  Roq watched him a few seconds more, as if measuring something. Then dropped his voice.

  “You know, Kael? If you’re looking for an alternative to all this… you know you’re still in time to accept Operation Owl. It’s not too late.”

  Kael smiled, bitter.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I have to be firm on that. I have a family to go back to. I have a life to live.”

  Roq held his gaze a moment longer, this time with a hint of understanding Kael hadn’t expected.

  “Someday you’ll understand that choice is also a way of dying. Little by little.”

  He didn’t say it as a threat. He said it as a certainty.

  Kael stared at the blue crystal columns cut against the reddish sky. A distant planet. A killing field. A point in the war that would soon devour everything.

  And still, here he was. Like everyone else.

  For a moment he managed to think, retrace the last hours. He tried to block out the images that hurt him, as always.

  This time he couldn’t.