EVERYTHING PAST HERE IS SPOILERS: Under the Hood

AIRAGHARDT: FROM PLAY TO PAGE

It’s safe to say that everything past this point is SPOILERS. So, if you’re still reading the book, don’t look too much farther!

“ULTIMATELY, MECHANICS MATTER.”
  This is what I decided the moment I signed the contract to write for Infinity. I wanted to tell a story about my favorite factions, a fish-out-of-water tale, a weird “found family,” all that–but I knew I also couldn’t get away from bringing the manga-inspired science-fiction action to life on the page as well. I wanted the Infinity fandom to be able to look at the words on the page and extrapolate the flow of combat through ARO and two-part short skills. And to do that, I was going to need to faithfully represent the troop profiles that inspired these characters by highlighting their unique skills, equipment, and weaponry.
  And so, I built a list.

  Using a Caledonian Volunteer Spec-ops, I built Wil out as what he’d appear as on the page and priced him around ~37 points just to average out the list and keep things workable. He fills the spot that I’d normally bring McMurrough in, same as how Llowry, Bell, and Fionnlagh being a Boarding Shotgun instead of a Chain Rifle would add up to about one Uxia McNeill. It’s not the best list–I don’t think it’d be very competitive, all said and done–but that it had a fireteam and a host of solo operators worked great for the narrative that I wanted to tell.
  I played about five games of Infinity with this list against various opponents, including myself. A lot of little rules interactions never made it into the book–at one point, Alastair tanked both saves on an E/M grenade; Fionnlagh berserk-chained through four Taigha; Saoirse CasEvac’d Alastair through suppression fire and lived; and Wil died, died, died every time I tried to use him as an active-turn Rambo piece. While the last one did bleed into the book a little with Wil’s “Pain isn’t Pain” motto and his propensity for getting his ass kicked, the rest were sadly left on the cutting room floor as the book evolved.
  However… many others absolutely did. Weathering four edits, five beta readers, my editor’s edit, and all the final checks, parts and pieces of these games went all the way from the LGS table to your hands.
  Below, I’ll go over some of the encounters in the book and write a play-by-play of the order expenditure and rolls that went into the conceptualization of each scene. Perhaps you might’ve even noticed the N3 rules conundrums that inspired some of them? I definitely skewed N3 whenever I could–call me a grognard, but that’s the game I played and loved and the one that was in my heart when I started penning Airaghardt.

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Wil vs. Keyes, Ch7 pg56-57

  When I first decided to write this confrontation, I knew it had to be between something ridiculously deadly in the Shasvastii lore, and also, something most players had already heard of. Since Noctifers and Speculo were right out since I didn’t want to escalate too quick, I leaned on the humble Shrouded instead–specifically, the boarding shotgun profile, which I downgraded to a light shotgun for drama’s sake. And of course, Wil is using Bell’s crusty regular pistol instead of his AP Heavy Pistol, aka the Detour, to even the odds.
  Of course, even when it’s 1v1, the characters should still feel like they’re playing Infinity. Giving them both 2 Orders per round sounded tight enough that I’d be forced to make sure both sides made big plays that would end the confrontation within a page or two tops, keeping the pace brisk and the action going.
  From here, I’ll go over the scene line-by-line and explain the mechanics under the hood and decisions that went into bringing the game to life on the page. Hopefully you can find this brief skirmish between these characters interesting–the rest of the game played around this cat-and-mouse would later form the basis for the entirety of the conflict in Chapter 29.
  So, with no further ado, let’s get into it:

Keyes jerked back. His hands jumped.
  Wet, stinking fur slapped Wil in the face. Red stained his vision, covering his oculi right as he startled the Kremen up and fired twice.
  Footsteps rushed away. Two misses.   

  Previously, Wil has approached the bothy window by declaring Move-Move. Now, he declares Move to walk into contact with the wall to see inside. Keyes is prone on the Bothy floor below the window, and reciprocal LoF is established. Keyes declares Dodge; Wil declares BS Attack with his Pistol. His MSV1 is busted at the moment and only cancels the Low-Vis, but not Keyes’ mimetism, giving him a -3 from modifiers and a +3 from range for a nice B2 at +0.
  Keyes on the other hand is still suffering the -3 from Low-Vis, so he’s 9 to Wil’s 13s. Unfortunately, a critical success sees Wil losing track of his opponent as they Dodge around the wall.
  Unfortunately, Wil’s out of orders. It’s Keyes’ turn now.

  Fifteen rounds remained in the Kremen.
  Wil strained to listen over the drumbeat of his heart. He wasn’t ready for this. Exhaustion had taken its toll on him from the infection, from his escape. Steady pangs in his abdomen bled through the rising adrenaline. His mouth was dry. Tongue, sandpaper on his teeth. Keeping the pistol level seemed an impossible challenge with the persistent shake from the cold and the twinge in his knuckles.
  He stepped back. Dead leaves crunched underfoot.
  The empty air around the corner of the bothy glimmered.
  A shotgun blast shattered the silence. The stone wall beside him exploded, and Wil scrambled for cover, plunging behind the bothy corner and into a pile of spiny, flowering vines. The planks of a disintegrating planter box obscured beneath the green dented his ribs.
  A second shot scoured the eaves from the overhang and showered him in splinters. For an instant, Wil had eyes on Keyes’ silhouette, and then he was gone again, ducked behind the cabin.

  Keyes’ Lieutenant Order is spent using Recamouflage. He then edges out onto the bothy corner to see Wil. Wil knows he has a light shotgun, and knows about template mode, so he chooses to Dodge–and Keyes fires in hit-mode twice to try to cancel it.
  Low-Vis kicks Keyes down from 18 to 15, and Wil goes from 12 to 9. Worse, Wil goes from 9 to 6 thanks to Surprise Attack. Miraculously, somehow, Keyes only scores one hit and one miss–the true Infinity experience, IMO, of throwing dice on absurdly high numbers and still somehow failing.
   In Resolution, Wil makes the ARM 13 roll (2 ARM, -3 Cover). Failing Guts, he falls back behind the wall into Total Cover.

  Camouflage. Not thermo-optical. Bioquantronic. A Shrouded—a guerilla surveillance unit dedicated to spearheading sabotage efforts. But Shrouded didn’t wear human faces, so then this was what, a Speculo Agent? The hell could they do?
  Wil’s exhaustion evaporated, replaced by a rush of sickening electricity. His breath quickened, heaving in the crushed flower pile’s acidic tang. He refused the urge to make space, to flee for the forest. Gaining range would’ve been smart if Keyes wasn’t better armed. A geist-assisted shotgun’s smart ammunition could detonate at long or short range, making its threat variable and impossible to predict. Worse, he was surrounded by a field of dead leaves, and only one of their footsteps made sound.
  There had to be an angle Wil could press for an advantage. Something nearby.
  The Kremen? No—low caliber, no stopping power. Dive into the bothy? Close-quarters with zero cover versus a weapon optimally utilized in a choke—yeah, great idea. The animal corpse, twitching beside his leg—what he’d be in ten seconds if he didn’t do something.
  A swathe of small, dark shrapnel pocked the wall. Flechettes.
  He paused. Looked again. Low-tech, low-yield. No evidence of armor-piercing coating. Closer to nails than razors. Nothing like the shot he’d seen on Paradiso, buried in the walls of their checkpoint after the Dāturazi’s failed charge.
  It was human-make. Light, 20-gauge tops. The shotgun from the Balena. Purpose-made to dissuade an Antipode, not for warfare. Ariadnan. Outdated. It’d only load three shells at a time.

  The above is, IMO, indicative of a VERY Infinity-related interaction: Keyes’ player said he has a ‘shotgun’ in the ARO phase, and now that Wil’s player can spend orders, he’s asking questions about Keyes’ troop profile. He learns that it’s not just any shotgun–it’s a light shotgun–and about Keyes’ mimetism and stealth. Keyes’ player explains the true danger here is allowing Keyes’ to sneak around behind him for a free shot with Camo and Stealth, but Wil knows there’s also a real threat in being outranged and baited. After all, Wil’s shots can only do 1 Wound in ARO, and Keyes’ has regeneration–trading with a template is probably the smart thing Keyes will try next since these two only have another 4 orders each before the end of Round 3, and the game.
  (Yeah–I’m going that abstract.)
  As an aside, when Wil feels the ‘quickening,’ it’s both a Highlander reference and a signpost that his turn is about to begin. At one point I joked to Arizona Infinity that miniatures can feel when they generate an order, and this is me taking that in-joke to fruition.

  If he provoked a salvo, he could close the gap before Keyes managed a reload. Jumpy as he was, cornered without a proper firearm, he’d probably mag dump anything that moved. Just needed a poke in the right direction and reflexes faster than his reload.
  Wil stifled the steam in his breath as he edged to the corner. Careful, like threading a needle, he popped two shots around the bend and flinched back.
  The stone clustered with nails. Grit scattered into his face, and then again.
  Two shots. No third. Bait untaken. He snatched up the dead rabbit, hedged his bet, and tossed it into the clearing.
  Mid-flight, it vaporized into pink mist.
  All pretense of subtlety abandoned, Wil ripped around the corner and stormed Keyes’ cover. A single line etched in his HUD there indicating a possible camouflage silhouette, and he filled the space with bullets.

  Wil Moves to the edge of Cover to see Keyes. Keyes’ knows that if Wil hits him twice, there’s a very real chance he’ll die, forcing a draw–and he wants to win. So instead of templating, he declares Shoot.
  They trade AROs. Neither hit, neither succeed.
  Then, Wil attempts a very old N3 trick, something used often long before N4 cleared this interaction up. What’s happening here is that Wil is Idling in Keyes’ Zone of Control before he declares Move in order to force Keyes to make an ARO. The only legal ARO here is Idle or Change Facing, and so Keyes’ declares Change Facing… and Wil Moves directly into silhouette contact, forcing a Close Combat.
  I have done this roughly one-million times with JSA and the day I learned you can declare BS Attack without LoF and still shoot as long as it’s legal in Resolution was pretty much the worst day of my life.

  Gore spattered the bothy wall. Leaves crushed and scattered without sound. Atop them, bioquantronic camouflage crackled and died, revealing Keyes’ sagged semi-human shape. His mandibles squeezed together like smashed spider legs and went limp, ejecting a sloppy wad of chewed rabbit. Violet oozed from the hole in his throat down across the shotgun, alien blood steaming in the cold.
  It didn’t have a smell.

  Keyes’ turn begins, and all he can do is Dodge or CC. Neither matter–the roll fails either way–and Wil successfully Close Combats Keyes with his Pistol. One DAM 11 hit sans Cover later, Keyes is unconscious at Wil’s feet… waiting to Regenerate, and make for the woods.
  You can find out how that ends in the rest of Chapter 7. Unfortunately, this blog post is getting kind of long and I really want to hit another example before I cut myself off!

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The Noctifer and Malignos, Ch22, pg162-164

  First, a little bonus: the Shasvastii list that goes up against the MacArthurs at the Brume in Ch22. Combine a Haris of Haiduk with a defensive Nox fireteam, plus a few skirmishers and an assassin, and it looked good enough to run the game mode they’re essentially playing here: Decapitation.
  Canny readers will notice something interesting about this list that turns out to be really important in Ch 35. Call it my own weird brand of foreshadowing if you want. 🙂
  However, right now we’re focused on just one small skirmish: Wil and Neil vs the Malignos and Noctifer in the ambush that begins the chapter. Funny enough, the interaction that inspired this back-and-forth happened in a very different game than the Decapitation match that became the rest of the conflict, so you’ll notice the profiles don’t quite match up.

  This one’s a little less straightforward, but still pretty heavily confined by the rules. We begin with Bell being shot dead and Wil being thrown onto the defensive, scrabbling for cover just for a hope of survival.

  Wil hurled himself onto his belly beside Bell’s still body before he could think. Two thumps soaked into Bell’s ribs and a third sheared his tweaked nose, coating Wil’s sleeve in a splash of discolored cartilage.
  No reports, no muzzle flares. Just the rip of air, heralding the impacts. High-tech suppressors.
  Shasvastii.
  He crawled into a run and beelined for the boulders. Puffs of turf on the forest floor corralled him, forced him behind a tree. His shoulders coated in bark chips. Needed harder cover.
  Rifle off his shoulder. Safety off. Loaded. He tied his belt in a knot and reclipped his holster. Wil spun up his comlog, and static roared back. Had he left Vern’s repeater range, or was this a hacker running Oblivion on him? No way to tell.
  Wil checked around cover. Couldn’t establish a visual.

  A hit and a successful ARM sends Wil prone in the clearing, having failed Guts with no Cover within 2″. Unfortunately for him, his opponent’s turn is now over–two orders, and then a scot-free Recamouflage thanks to Wil’s Prone state breaking LoF.
   As his turn begins, Wil declares Move and beelines into cover. When neither of his enemies declare ARO, he Dodges just in case something weird is about to go down, and ends up good.
  Then the problem starts: he leans out and back in to see his opponent’s Malignos and Noctifer in Camouflage and they don’t shoot. He declares Discover, and fails–just like that, his turn is already over.

  No time to hesitate. Seconds to act, and he needed help. A shout would draw attention but wasn’t urgent enough. Didn’t want to chance luring someone into the crossfire. Had to make his situation crystal clear.
  Wil leaned out and drilled three shots into a tree.
  An instant later, the trunk beside his neck exploded. He skittered back, impact throbbing past the layers of his armor. Bad guess, but the report would bring the MacArthurs running, and he’d learned something besides: By the angle of the shot, the shooter was shifting position, using the hill as natural cover. Forcing him to turn. Opening his flank. All signs pointed to a partner, waiting in the wings for an opportunity to present itself. If Wil didn’t want to find out what happened at the end of the rodeo, he’d need to risk his neck and buck the lasso.
  First, distance and cover. He launched to his feet and bolted, aiming for the buried boulder he’d climbed on his approach. Silent puffs of moss and dust trailed him but didn’t strike home, and he scrabbled into better cover. Knelt behind the granite with safety on one side, he could respond, turn the fight—
  A shockwave from behind sent the leaves crazy-dancing. An ex-plosion at camp. The morning silence shattered as shouts became screams, drowned out by concentrated gunfire.
  They’d been caught in an ambush.
  No help was on the way. No plan from here. No use saving battery on his MSV. Wil spun up his dial, confirmed settings, and the world smeared into infrared, shapeless save for a single bluegreen silhouette crouched atop the bough of an Ariadnan fir a hundred meters out.
  He knew that grim reaper getup anywhere—Noctifer. Shit. Spitfire. Shit.
  But that wasn’t where the shots had been coming from.
  A humanoid shape ascended the hillside, barely visible in its pur-ple hues in comparison to compared to the surrounding technicolor wilderness. TO Camo—thermo-optical, heat-shedding, designed to render multispectral technology useless. By the bucket shape of the helm, a Malignos. Legendarily undetectable. Nightmarishly untouchable. Its long coat fluttered, rifle primed, and it opened fire.

  The Malignos begins to circle Wil’s Cover wide, aiming to flush him out with a failed Guts roll in order to put him into the Noctifer Spitfire’s LoF. Two orders of shooting before the Malignos goes into Suppressive and the game is halfway over.
   Wil begins his turn and just goes for it. He runs. The Malignos tries to gun him down, but Wil is focused on Dodging. With his second order, having moved out of the Malignos’s LoF but remained in the Noctifer’s, he declares Discover intending to use the special Discover+Shoot maneuver.
   The Noctifer reveals itself and Wil realizes he’s screwed. He expected a short-range gun, but the Noctifer is packing SWC. Luckily, its not a Missile Launcher, but… still, a Spitfire isn’t good.
  Actually–the Malignos has LoF on where Wil is now. Is there another place he could Discover+Shoot my Noctifer from? No? Is it okay with you then if I have my Malignos take an ARO? Okay, thank you. They’ll both shoot. You can split burst if you like.
  Wil chooses to Dodge.
  (If you haven’t had this happen while playing Infinity… I don’t know how to tell you that you’ve been playing another game, somehow.)

  Wil ducked back. Muted gunfire drilled the stone. Suppressing fire from the Spitfire above swept centimeters above his scalp, keeping him pinned. Their footsteps made no sound, but Wil knew the Malignos was growing closer, closer—
  A red-white shape hurdled the bushes into the clearing. Neil, with his chain rifle in both hands. He staggered to a stop, transfixed by the blur that stood over his dead friend’s body.
  An impact caught the kid center mass. With a flash and a spark, Neil toppled face-first into the dirt.
  Wil dropped the Strela. Lunged out. Gloved fingers found Neil’s backpack strap, and he dragged him two-handed into cover.

  Of course it’s the Shasvastii turn again. They move up, fire, go into suppression, play it extremely safe as they close in on their target.
  Then Neil comes right through the terrain having chained together 3-4 Dodges during the Reactive turn. Finally, he sidles out into LoF of the Shas and gets shot for his troubles.
  Of course, he’s ARM 1 (seriously–look it up, in a kilt and a jacket, their ARM is equal to a Fusilier’s) so he passes ARM with a natural 20 roll and willingly fails Guts into Cover.
  Now, this is something that actually happened, and the explanation came about directly at the table right after the successful roll. How do you explain stuff like this in the narrative? Another challenge of directly translating tabletop to paperback, but, well, I thought myself very clever for breadcrumbing the Teseum dogtags up till this point.

  But before they were totally clear, Neil sucked in a ragged breath and belted a litany of vulgarities so thick, so impossible to understand, it must’ve been what made him bulletproof. He lurched to a stand, leveraged his chain rifle over the edge of cover, and screamed, “Gie off my friend, ye bloody knock-kneed invertebrate cunt!”
  The Malignos jolted back, chittering, and the crack-flash of the chain rifle swallowed it whole. Sizzling white-hot shrapnel embedded in the dirt, the trees, the hundred pureed chunks of flickering thermo-optical camouflage that’d just been a Shasvastii.
  Flank clear, Wil vaulted the boulder and zeroed in on the infrared blob of the Noctifer. Deep breath. Slow and steady. Aim over speed. A Spitfire tracer sliced the fantail of his duster, scant centimeters from his thigh, and only then did he pull the trigger.
  Two rounds hit the tree; one disappeared. Gore drained onto the bough below. The Noctifer wobbled, but it refused to die.
  Instead, Wil’s visor did.
  The heavy crack of a large-caliber weapon sent Wil to his knees behind the stone. He wrenched the visor from his face, squinting for the telltale signs of camouflage—pressure, motion, distortion. But the Noctifer was gone. The tree branch was empty.
  He scanned the tree, the woods, pulse hammering into overdrive. “Neil! Where’d it go, did it jump?”
  Neil panted, keeled against the boulder, and pointed. Blurry air heaped at the foot of the tree, purple blood pooling atop an invisible mound.
  “Who—”
  Boots crashed through the underbrush, chasing a whirl of sunfire hair. Saoirse sprinted out from the thicket, Mk12 in hand, backpack jumping on her shoulders.

  Neil uses the last order in the group to go out and Chain Rifle the Malignos. Sure, it’s got regeneration, but it doesn’t want to die–and of course it biffs its Dodge.
  Wil spends a Command Token to gain a single order through O-12’s Prestige and goes out to fight the Noctifer with his AP Marksman Rifle. MSV1, range, Cover, Burst 3 vs Burst 3–it comes down to luck of the dice and the Noctifer suffers a Wound.
  However, Noctifers are Dogged. So it doesn’t go down.
  But it’s Wil’s last order, so… it dies as the game ends. Why? Well, Saoirse shows up and shoots it in the back, of course…

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  Hopefully, these examples made sense and helped you see through the thin veneer of fiction into the nitty-gritty Infinity mechanics beneath.
  Next time, I’ll translate some of the climactic battles of the book back into Infinity the Game, explain how I tried to characterize Natural Born Warrior versus Natural Born Warrior, and go over my math on how many Wounds a horse has versus how many Wounds a Caliban can deal in one Order.
  As always, take it easy and thank you for reading!

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Novel Excerpt

AIRAGHARDT: FIRST 15 PAGES

NOISE. PAIN. HEAT.
  Harness straps vised Wilhelm Gotzinger’s powered combat armor’s joints. Debris washed across his faceplate. Gauntleted fingers squeezed divots into both armrests, deforming the steel like clay. Information read-outs flickered across his heads-up display, projected on quantronic lenses: 195 km/h. 15-degree angle of descent. 3,650 meter elevation and falling fast.
  A missile—they’d been struck by a missile.
  Smoke clawed into the Balena through the gaping hole in its side. The multispectral visor he wore cut past the billow, painting the transport’s interior in burning golden lines. Across the cabin interior, Rajan tangled in his seat straps. Limbs awkwardly folded by the centrifugal force, he jostled without resistance. Unconscious.
  Beside him, an empty chair. The diplomatic aide, Rajan’s assistant, had vanished. Wind screamed against the blown cabin doors, and her unfastened seat belt flapped between the armrests. No trace of her presence remained.
  Wil wedged himself into his seat and tensed his legs until his bones bowed. Anything to keep blood in his brain where it belonged.
  The alarms blaring from the cockpit and the desperate grinding in the port nacelle died at the same time. Total silence, save for wind cut with the Doppler chop of loose maglev and his own pitched breathing against the inside of his helmet. Shards of polysteel and glass hissed along the floor as the Balena’s nose pitched down, pattering against his boots.
  Shadows careened past. Daylight flickered in the windows, erratic. Branches scraped the hull. The winglet of the Balena bashed into some-thing and rebounded, juddering his ribs, his neck, his collar. Another collision. Something splashed across his chest. Not water. Needles, from a fir tree, or whatever passed for a fir on this godforsaken—
  The Balena struck ground.
  Skipped.
  His seat danced wild. Bolts came loose. Another shock, and the harness snapped.
  Wil speared into the ceiling head-first. Ribs crushed. Head torqued. A jerk, a snap, and an urgent cold followed after—numbing agents, auto-injected from his armor. Artificial muscle ripped along the surface of his neck. No chance to flinch, to embrace the hurt. Shards of the overhead light coated the sleeves of his duster.
  Going back down wasn’t half as pleasant. Neither was the second time up.
  On the third drop, a thrum raced along the soles of his feet. Red flicked to green in the corner of his HUD, and on next impact, his boots clamped down on the flooring and fixed him in place. Magnetic anchors, intended for zero-g conflict in deep-space Circulars. Before he could consider thanking the Knights of Santiago for making them standard-issue on an ORC, a loose chair rebounded off his face and sucked out the open cabin doors.
  The transport skidded, jumped. The sky spun. His stomach sucked into his throat, then vice-versa. Polysteel fuselage crunched and tore overhead, underfoot, all around him. Sunlight lanced past the holes in the Balena’s exterior, darkened, lit again.
  The roll slowed.
  Stopped.
  Arms dangling, Wil hung from the floor. His duster’s hem brushed the other contents of the churned Balena interior puddled two meters beyond his fingertips. Steel. Plastic. Glass. Everything sharpened to daggers save for some oxygen masks.
  Pain. Lots of pain, along his jaw, his shoulders, behind his ears. Freezing anti-kinetic fluid oozed along his collar, dripping into the mess below. If the reserve in his gorget had burst, it meant he’d only narrowly avoided breaking his neck.
  The cabin doors were long gone, lost far behind where the transport had turned into a crayon on the rocks. Outside, boreal wilderness stretched out in all directions, surrounding the dry, rocky riverbed they’d landed in, like something out of a holo-ad for scented candles. A carpet of vibrant moss coated bark and stone alike, and it was very quiet.
  Too quiet. Loose wiring sparked silently in his peripheral vision. Debris shifted without sound. Wil tapped his breastplate. Nothing. His sensors must’ve short-circuited, lost audio outside his armor. Examining his helmet by feel, he found both of his radial antennae wrenched out of shape, the right dangling by a single stubborn bolt.
  Wil queried his geist to open his faceplate. Servos whirred loud above his cheekbones, and it didn’t move. That they made sound at all meant they’d been compromised. Desperate to listen and fearing fire, he reached for his helmet’s manual release. Something too blurred to read in his HUD switched color, and the thrum in his boots went quiet.
  The ceiling rushed up to meet him. The cushioning of his armor’s interior wasn’t enough to soften its full weight crushing atop him. His shoulder bore the brunt, folding inward. More pain. Immediate. Severe. Sprawled atop the debris pile, Wil weathered the sprain until his armor recognized the injury and replaced it with fresh, cold numbness.
  Painkillers made his head spin. He coughed. “Fuck.”
  Breathing through the fresh pain, he took firm hold of his helmet’s release and pulled. As the bodysleeve of artificial muscle around his throat slacked, the world came alive. Above him, the mangled engine chattered. The cabin roof groaned, struggling to bear the weight of its floor. Inside the paneling, electronics sizzled and popped. A low wind rattled the pines, whistling the myriad wounds in the Balena’s hull.
  The smell came next, the sickening tang of metal-on-metal churning inside an earthy stench he hadn’t breathed since their withdrawal from Karnapur. Nothing like Maya sensaseries, or the chlorine-washed alleys of King’s Den, or the proving grounds in the Aquilan outback flush with greasewood and pittosporum.
  Wet. Alive. Untamed.
  Dawn.
  Wil fumbled his duster off his face and rolled to his knees. He tried to stand, but the servos in his greaves whined, impotent. Blown. Any amount of movement meant deadlifting a hundred kilos of ORC Combat Armor. Wasn’t as if he had a choice. He groped above for a handhold to haul him to his feet and touched something soft.
  Rajan. Blank-faced and swaying. Unconscious, but breathing. His vitals blipped in the lens of Wil’s left eye, edging toward critical. Brushing the young commercial attaché’s suit jacket aside, Wil saw why. A small hole punched into Rajan’s charcoal-matte designer vest, no larger than his thumb. Blood dripped along the embroidery, riding the threads to soak in his beard.
  His geist scanned the injury: a long, tapered piece of the transport’s hull had pierced Rajan’s ribs and stuck snarled in his diaphragm. Move the injury by centimeters, and it would’ve grazed through the meat of his flank. The other way, center mass, instant death.
  Unlucky.
  He shoved aside the insults from the heliport and worked to untangle Rajan. The job outweighed his personal feelings. He just hoped that when someone reviewed his lens footage later, they’d consider his hesitation shock and not deliberation.
  The partition window to the cockpit had cracked but hadn’t left its frame. In the midst of undoing a buckle, Wil craned his neck to see through the shatter to the other side. The pilot’s seat was missing. Through the empty windshield, beyond the Balena’s nose, a smear of red terminated in an upended chair. Tilted onto its face upon the rocks, two legs stuck out from beneath it—or what was left of them.
  Beside the gap, Keyes swayed upside-down in the co-pilot’s seat, his chest a pincushion for all the shrapnel Rajan hadn’t caught. Blood drooled up his face without a heartbeat to propel it, mouth gaped in a perpetual scream.
  The metal-on-metal stench intensified. Fire. Getting away from the explosion hazard seemed a smart first step. The second was finding a place to hide. Whoever had put a missile into their transport didn’t do it because they’d wanted to take prisoners.
  Harness undone, Wil drew Rajan across his aching shoulders like a sandbag. No time to favor a side or keep a gentle hand. Limp by limp, Wil distanced himself from the dying Balena, wobbling on the uneven riverbed stones.
  Wil spun up his comlog dial from his wrist-mounted unit, feed painting across his contact lenses with his helmet disconnected. He scanned for secure channels. Nothing but snow. A distress call sent direct to the comms array back at the DRC-9 failed, and again a second time. Jammed? Hacked? No way to tell, but—
  Ten meters from the crash, Wil fell. He struggled up and made it another three before he hit the dirt again. Branches slithered overhead, blurred leaves soaking up the rays of Dawn’s alien sun. The way they moved put the taste of paper on his tongue.
  A concussion. The anti-kinetic gel hadn’t soaked the full impact.
Soft staccato beeps signaled the arrival of undesignated targets. Hostiles? Friends of their ambusher, no doubt. No clue how they’d closed on them so fast across the mountain terrain or what they were armed with. Red lines on his lenses traced movement vectors through the overgrowth. Shifting, blinking. Focusing on the visual feed churned Wil’s stomach and threatened to bring up the morning’s sour coffee.
  He struggled to his full height and groped for his MULTI Marksman Rifle.
  Gone.
  With a weak double-tap, Wil queried his geist for it, expecting its outline to highlight within his lens’s field of view. Nothing. Some small hope urged him to scan the crash site, praying to find it lying atop a rock under a sunbeam or something.
  He didn’t. It wasn’t.
  Maybe he should’ve joined the Military Orders, after all. At least then he’d have a goddamn sword.
  Wil drew back his trench coat and unlimbered his pistol. Sixteen rounds of more than enough for anything he’d ever seen on the battlefield, save for that time with the Kriza Borac—or the two Sù-Jiàn—or that gaggle of fucking Yuan Yuans—
  Metal scraped metal. A massive lupine shape ambled atop the crumpled Balena. White fur. Bared fangs, broad and sharp. In its curled claws, a primitive knife, wide and long as a human leg. Its silvery sheen caught the light as it drew to a two-legged stand and growled.
  An Antipode.
  Beneath the multiplying alerts of incoming hostiles, a notification flashed in Wil’s peripheral vision. It was one he’d only seen once, back when he’d first requisitioned his armor, before he’d been taught how to plug tertiary systems into the ORC’s onboard battery. Something his instructor on Aquila had promised that the Hyperpower’s bottomless war chest would never let them see.
  LOW POWER.
  In the corner of his vision, movement.
  A blitz from the side.
  Just before his visor died, Wil raised his pistol and opened fire blind.

CHAPTER ONE

ONE DAY AGO...

  Joan of Arc extended her gauntleted hand, smiling like the Mona Lisa. 
  Wil dismissed the advertisement. 
  The hologram froze and flickered away, receding into the display underneath. There, clad in power armor, Joan sheltered a trio of children in her fortified embrace. A beatific halo shined from behind her braided blonde hair, and a sword weighted her hip. Knights of the PanOceanian Military Orders always carried swords, and their de facto leader was no exception. 
  Text scrawled below, floating in mid-air: SUPPORT THE NEOTERRAN INTEGRATION FUND! THE HYPERPOWER UPLIFTS ALL CITIZENS EQUALLY! And below the loglines: TRUST ALEPH. ALEPH IS YOUR FRIEND.
  The jury was still out on that one. 
  On a more civilized planet where MayaNet was abundant, skipping an advert might’ve triggered any number of competing ads to take up the free space on his lens instead. But the MayaNet signal at the DRC-9 was unusable at its best, and one loading wheel spun into another before his geist dropped signal and dimmed.
  The expansive hallway windows gave a vantage point over the Dawn Research Commission, and he scanned it from above. Personal dormitories and scientific research labs lined the forested mountainside, interconnected by a network of narrow switchbacks and elevated walkways that overlooked the still, dark expanse of Loch Eil trailing over the horizon far below. Sparse, boreal wilderness crawled along the loch’s rocky shores and blanketed the bordering mountains in resilient greenery. Above, where the clouds met stone—snow. 
  And if not for Wil’s multispectral visor, that incredible panorama would’ve ended a meter from the glass in an impenetrable wall of fog. Myriad feeds on multiple spectrums supplied the foundation for his geist to make a digital best-guess, compositing shared photographs, surveillance data, and algorithmic assumption into something more poignant than flat gray.
  Not quite real, but real enough. 
  The peripheral of his visor indicated incoming movement, ten o’clock. Wil scanned the lobby, his geist already estimating the height and weight of the two unknowns ascending the staircase from the third floor. Male. Large. The Dawn Research Commission insignia glowed atop their security vests, projected in AR. Not soldiers, or SWORDFOR Kappa, but corporate security. CSUs. 
  Their social clouds were open and easily skimmable: The tall one was Fontaine; the shorter, Ghent. Both wore mirrored shades, sported crew cuts, and followed military-adjacent meme-tags chock full of guns, glitz, and glory. 
  And if they were allowed to carry anything but stun pistols and telescoping batons, they would’ve been half as threatening as they thought they were. 
  Fontaine squared with him like the armor was an open invitation for posturing. “Hey, big guy. You the new secretary? Where’s Melantha?” 
  Wil nodded to the door to the executive suite behind him. “She’s inside, with Counselor Odune,” he said, voice turned deeper by his helmet’s vox. “If you’ve got an appointment, you’ll have to wait.”
  Ghent hooked his fat thumbs in the armpits of his security vest. Unlike his friend, he seemed worried, almost reticent. “About how long?” 
  “Didn’t ask.”
  “Be a good lad and knock for us,” Fontaine said. “Won’t be a minute.”
  “Take a seat,” Wil said. He dropped his hands to his side, closer to where his pistol magnetized to his hip. “Wait your turn.”
  Fontaine’s smile wavered. “Real helpful.”
  “I aim to please.”
  Ghent pulled on Fontaine’s shoulder, and they made for the seats across the lobby, shooting glances over their uniformed shoulders. Halfway there and five meters away, words clicked into place along the bottom of Wil’s field of vision. 
  [FONTAINE, PETER]: WHERE DOES HE THINK HE IS, THE ÖBERHAUS? WHAT A PRICK.
Odune’s fourth-story admin building lobby wasn’t the seat of the G-5 on Concilium, true, and maybe full arms and armor was a bit much. But it hadn’t been his choice—Wil had dressed to Rajan’s expectation, no more, no less.
  The vacuum-tight suit of artificial muscle and fiberweave underlaid beneath the plating of his ORC Combat Armor bulked his silhouette from six-foot-four to Not to Be Fucked With, and the calf-length duster he wore over it bore battle scars from six different systems—particulate ammo, explosive rounds, plasma bursts, worse. 
  The MULTI Marksman Rifle he carried was a SG-A2 Schärfe II, top of the line, interlinked to his visor and armor via his geist. With his multispectral visor overlaid on his four-eyed helmet, its gaze sharpened into something predatory, like the eagle of his old unit’s namesake: The Aquila Guard. 
  The crème de la crème of PanOceanian officers, masters of tactical acumen and wartime strategy. Leaders. Warriors. Their motto: In Omnibus Princeps. First in All Things. When an Aquila Guard put boots on the ground, it was usually the first sign the tide was about to turn in PanOceania’s favor. 
  He’d been one, once. Not anymore. 
  In truth, the visor was on loan; the duster, a keepsake; his MSV, privately acquired. Probably shouldn’t have put it on, but Rajan insisted—apparently, being escorted by an Aquila Guard was better optics and ‘venned with his halo’ more than the Orc Trooper Wil officially was, and for a man like Rajan, aesthetics always trumped practicality. 
  The two CSUs fell into the minimalist square couches, gesturing to their geists on their private haloes. With two flicks of their wrists, their ruddy, mirror-shaded faces blurred, words replaced by unintelligible electronic scratching. Their clouds derezzed, leaving only a few scant legally required identification codes visible in the empty nothingness of their social media. 
  They’d blacklisted him.
  But the closed captions on the bottom of Wil’s vision kept translating their conversation.
   [GHENT, HESSEL]: I WAS HOPING WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO SEE THAT COWARD HERE.
  Though Wil was blocked, his multispectral array wasn’t. Its onboard geist read the breath cadence and movement of the lips and larynx of those within his field of vision, supplying his comlog with enough data to extrapolate the faintest whispers into intelligible subtitles. 
He could’ve raised a privacy screen. Been discreet. But while on security detail, Wil didn’t have the luxury to drop his guard for privacy’s sake, and he’d just been informed he was a cowardly prick otherwise.
  Face artifacted into a pixelated mask, Fontaine sighed. “Don’t tell me that’s him.” 
  “In all the disappointing person,” Ghent said. “Wilhelm Gotzinger III, worst Guardsman in the history of the unit.” 
  “I thought Aquila were s’posed to be good,” Fontaine said. 
  Ghent chortled. “Not this one.”
  “Then what’s he still doing in uniform? Didn’t he get court-martialed or something?” 
  “Should count his lucky stars, then. Back in the old days, deserters got executed, mark my words.”
  Fontaine’s heart rate must’ve jumped; Wil’s geist pinged the pistol on his hip. “You saw the footage, right? Fourteen effing people.” 
  “Fourteen effin’ people,” Ghent echoed. “Doesn’t matter how many Shasvastii he’s killed, get me alone in a room with him and I’ll make him wish he died back on Svalarheima.” 
  Fontaine pounded his fist on the table, posturing. Ghent escalated to casual death-threats. Wil comfortably tuned them out. 
  The Shasvastii Expeditionary Army. Tall, gangly slug-skinned aliens infamous for their guerilla fighters and nightmarish saboteurs, deadset on clearing a path for the Combined Army and its leader, the Evolved Intelligence, to put an end to free will in the galaxy. 
  Despite Fontaine’s assumptions, Wil hadn’t ever killed a Shas. Just two of their Q-Drones. Never even seen a live one, at least not close enough to look them in the eyes. All he remembered of that day was plasma flares, frost smoke, and fleeting shadows. 
  Ads for Eco Cars, reruns of the Myrmidon Wars, and The Go-Go Marlene! Show, ONLY ON OXYD! played in sequential order on the holo-ad’s surface until Joan returned, arm pleadingly outstretched. “The Shield of Skovorodino safeguards—” 
  “Sure,” Wil said and dismissed her for the fiftieth time. 
  The office door sighed open, and Rajan and Counselor Odune sauntered out, followed by their respective assistants. Their social media halos floated after, bombarding Wil’s datasphere with high-res images of space-station charity galas, crystal-clear Varuna beachfronts, and eccentric Concilium fashion shows. 
  Wil jumped to attention, returning to the SecDet routine ingrained in him on Aquila. He scanned for hostiles on three different spectrums, squaring his body to shield his charge, painstakingly aware of every minute notification that skimmed past his lens. 
  Rajan snapped his fingers twice. “Oi, Gotzinger! Stop spacing out. Come over here and say hi.” 
  Despite Wil’s suggestion to come prepared for the rugged terrain, Rajan had insisted on dress shoes and a suit. After ten minutes planetside, both were tinged brown at the fringes from mud. A domotic shimmered the embroidered orchids on his undershirt with pink and blue light, and his eyes swam with technicolor mandalas, garish even for cosmopolitan Neo-terra. Not real. Geist-assisted programs, only visible in AR. But Rajan enjoyed those kinds of things—they distracted from his medium height, the one thing he couldn’t biosculpt without spending a fortune for a custom Lhost. 
  Standing beside him was Administrative Counselor Xandros Odune, the official liaison to O-12 for the DRC-9 Dun Scaith. He was bigger than the photographs suggested, as tall as Wil in his armor but much, much thinner. His nose was blunt, and a snowy pallor lined the edges of his dark, clean-cut hair and beard. Compared to Rajan, the simple ivory-white three-piece suit he wore nearly glowed, woven with self-cleaning fabric that kept the color bright.
  Odune flashed a hollow smile, and the two of them traded double-taps on their extended forearms. “Captain Gotzinger, my word.” 
  “Only for a moment, sir,” Wil said. “Lieutenant now, I’m afraid.” 
  “Mea culpa,” Odune said. “A pleasure.” 
  Something itched in the back of Wil’s head, a kind of déjà vu. Intrusive. He dismissed it along with Odune’s granted level-two social access—a quick glance confirmed it was mostly PR shots and blurb biographies, puff pieces about Odune’s spearheaded efforts to secure funding, settlers, and scientists. How he R&D’d the prefabricated housing pod’s mountainside stabilizers on his own dime.
  Wil had read it all already on the Circular to Dawn. After Kurage, building an outpost in the wildlands of Planet Dawn had been unpalatable to most investors, and Odune had graciously taken advantage of that.
  “I must admit, Rajan,” Odune said, “I was expecting Yearwood’s replacement from Neoterra to be another stodgy, boring old mathematician. Instead, this conversation has been the highlight of my year.” 
  “You must be glad I showed up a few weeks before your corona-tion, then,” Rajan said. “A whole delegation of donors from Neoterra flying straight to your doorstep—and one hell of an honor, if I read the release correctly?” 
  Odune scoffed. “Oh, spare me. Honor? Only another useless accolade from Bureau Gaea and the Dawn Research Commission, soon to join the others collecting dust on my mantel. Like you said before, it’s all bullshit.” 
  “The check it comes with better not be,” Rajan said and fell into a competent impression of human laughter. 
  Wil trailed back to surveying the adjacent rooftops, glad that neither of them could clock his twinged patience through his helmet’s face-plate. 
  Wrists clasped behind his back, Odune approached the fogged-out windows. “A new frontier. Scientific discovery. Cultural exchange. Those are the true rewards. And while a soirée is welcome, in the end it’s but another frivolous ribbon.” Suddenly, he broke out in a wide grin. “You know, you should attend. Liven things up.” 
  Rajan cast a sidelong glance at Joan on the holo-ad and grinned wolfishly. “I heard you were expecting a surprise guest.” 
  Odune cracked a single, thundering laugh. “Oh, please! As much as I wish that were true, I can’t imagine the Maid of Orleans would take time from her busy schedule after the Second Resurrection to deliver a simple Exceptional Civilian Service medal. Absit omen, dei gratia, hm?” 
  “Yeah, gratya,” Rajan mumbled, bemused. “Agreed.” 
  Joan of Arc was a Recreation—ALEPH’s approximation of the historical figure from the 15th century, downloaded into a Lhost body and trained in the Order of the Hospital at Skovorodino on Svalarheima. The greatest tactical mind in the PanOceanian army, a military leader whose presence on the battlefield always signaled imminent victory. She was as much the real patron saint of France as Achilles of the Steel Phalanx was the real conqueror of Troy, but there was something Wil found inspiriting about her rise from the lowest rung of the Knights Hospitaller to her place as the figurehead of their nation’s military—even if that was what she’d been made for. 
  Judging by Rajan’s momentary leer at her literal breastplate, he didn’t share the same admiration. While his religious affiliation hadn’t been registered in his file, what was present confirmed the cover matched the contents: rich father; multiple arrests before adulthood; purchased Ivy-League degree; nepotism hire. The rest hid beneath redactions on redactions, expunged records, and settlements. 
  The last guy had somehow been worse. After a full year of ghosted negotiations, Yearwood dropped off the grid rather than return to Neoterra and face his superiors or the media. 
  Honestly, Wil didn’t blame him. He’d rather get shipped back to Paradiso naked than face another wall of WarCors and their camera drones. 
  “If time allows,” Odune said, “you should consider spending a few nights in Mariannebourg once the clan introductions play out. No modern city in the Human Sphere compares.” 
  Rajan fiddled with his cufflinks. “If we have the time.” 
  His assistant—a thin, artificially pretty woman who’d introduced herself to Wil as hmph—brightened. For the first time since he’d met her aboard the Circular to Dawn, she pulled away from AR. “I’ve heard the diaspora culture in urban Merovingia is mad lindy. Cravats, scarves, berets. So cute.” 
  “The French are a fascinating bunch,” Odune said. “Intellectual, spiritual, fashionable. Much more interesting than our rainy neighbors here at DRC-9, and much less plaid.” 
  Everyone laughed again. None of it sounded real. 
  A dark-haired bodysculpted beauty scowled her way out of Odune’s office and over toward Fontaine and Ghent. His secretary, Melantha—another hmph if not for a courteous double-tap. Beyond the open door she’d left, Wil caught a glance of four highball glasses surrounding a half-empty bottle of Caledonian whisky and a marble chessboard. White was playing a perfect game; black, not so much. 
  Odune must’ve smelled blood in the water. He traced Wil’s gaze and grinned. “Not too shabby, hm? Rajan gave me a run for my money, but I can always tell when someone’s geist is playing for them. You dabble?” 
  “No, sir,” Wil said. “Had a CO back in the day who made everything a chess metaphor. Pawn this, en passant that, castling this. Called everything a gambit, or a mate. Kind of ruined it for me.” 
  “Alas,” Odune said. He clicked his tongue as the hallmarks of a quantronic distraction ran across his face, and changed gears abruptly. “Rajan. Captain Gotzinger. I apologize, but something came up. Let’s take an adjournment, and after you return to Dun Scaith, you can tell me how the meeting went?” 
  “If you keep the champagne ready,” Rajan said. It sounded painfully forced.


                          ⸶⸷


Outside, the administrative building loomed over the scattered prefabs and Ariadnan pines, shock white and brutally angular as Odune himself. 
  The drizzled beginnings of another freezing downpour spurred Wil’s assets across the muddy road to their waiting AUV—Ariadnan Utility Vehicle, an unholy union of armored personnel carrier, lunar rover, and racing REM. Uncomfortable, but better than a one-way ticket to the bottom of a ravine. 
  Rajan climbed into the back seat, salesman’s grin replaced with a glare. “I’m pissed at you, Gotzinger. Know why?”
  “Sorry,” Wil said. “Just a checkers kind of guy.” 
  “Not that,” Rajan snapped. “I’m the one chugging this shit raw while you sip on recycled air from that filtered helmet. I can feel the mold setting root in my lungs. It’s disgusting, puts me off my game.” 
  “Can’t be that bad,” Wil said. “The Ariadnans seem to love it.” 
  “The Scots, the frogs, the yee-haws, or the Ruskies?” Rajan said and slammed the door.
  Wil went around to the other side, opening the door for Hmph. She hummed noncommittally and climbed inside, engrossed in her invisible fantasy. With her halo set to private, it turned what could’ve been very specific motions in her AR game into strange, purposeless groping. 
  Back in King’s Den, they called people like Hmph zoners, so addicted to AR that they forgot the real world existed beneath it. Turns out that when you’re the grandniece of a Moto.tronica sub-executive, being a zoner was just another kind of profession. 
  When Wil slipped into the AUV’s passenger seat, Rajan started again. “You know, they got this motto here: Dawn is Ours. What an assumption. Who ever said I wanted it? Spare me the planet and leave us the Teseum, am I right?” 
  Teseum—the vital neomaterial that started the Quantronic Revolution, first discovered in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Difficult to find and expensive; the surface of Dawn was unusually rich in it. While the great minds of the Human Sphere harnessed the secrets of Teseum to fuel their dreams of ending scarcity via the Universal Teseum Cradles, or unraveled the mysteries of death itself to bring about the first Recreations and normalize resurrection, the Ariadnan Army used it to make especially sharp knives and bulletproof helmets. 
  Most folks back home considered it a waste. After the rediscovery of Dawn twenty years back, two-hundred-years after the the Ariadna’s landing, the colonists weren’t too keen on sharing—so everybody started taking instead. ‘Dawn is Ours’ was usually the last thing a Teseum smuggler heard before some bastard in a kilt gave him a lethal dose of it. 
  The limited-AI driving program carefully navigated the inclines back toward their accommodation. Muted prefab strip lighting cut through the fog along with a smattering of pedestrian shapes. Several times they banked into gray nothingness, floating on solid clouds until the mist faded and the ground reasserted its existence. 
  Rajan snapped his tawny fingers in Hmph’s face. “I’ll need a toxicology screening the moment we’re offworld and another antibiotic booster. I’m not taking a fungus back to my penthouse in San Saba, no way. Oh, and next time you want to share your shitty opinion? Don’t.” 
  She blinked several times. “I didn’t—” 
  “Mariannebourg, so cute,” Rajan sneered. “Are you a child?” 
  “Sorry, sir.” 
  “I bet you are. And if you marked down Odune’s god-awful party in three weeks, cancel it. If I’m still here by then, just shoot me.” 
  Shrank against the window, she returned to gesturing aimlessly, lips tucked in a pout. Her seatbelt remained unbuckled, and she made no motion to change that. 
  “Hey,” Wil said, low and kind. Waved. But beyond a brief flicker of annoyance, she didn’t register his presence. 
  Wasn’t worth the energy. Didn’t want her to feel like he was ganging up on her, too. 
  Rajan kicked back and fiddled with his cufflinks. They were different from this morning, pearl squares replaced by silvery Teseum studs. “You ready for the no-show showcase tomorrow, Gotzinger?” 
  “Ready as anyone can be,” Wil said. 
  “The MacCallums, the O’Brien, the Campbells, the Munro, and the MacArthurs. Five minor Caledonian clans in four-hundred kilometers, all squatting on Teseum deposits they can’t tap, all refusing to cooperate. You know what this place would be if the local yokels worked with us, instead of against us?” 
  Wil shrugged. “Loch-front resort?” 
  “Lake-front fucking resort.” 
  “They call it a loch up here, I think.” 
  “Tomato, tamaatar,” Rajan said. “The point is, it’s all bullshit. At the end of the day, the world runs on money, Gotzinger. Money! If only the locals weren’t too blind and backward to see it. It’s a goddamn travesty, is all I’m saying.” 
  “Maybe they just want to be left alone.” 
  “One drop of freedom isn’t worth getting eaten by wolves or dying of cancer, no matter how much tartan you dress it in. Ateks, man. Almost too stupid to live.” 
  A specific spot in Wil’s neck throbbed, embedded in his neck below his ear. Memories of cardboard, halogen lights, and wet black plastic sheets gave way to the rational desire to keep from a second court martial. 
  He cracked his knuckles. “Sure.” 
  “Well, strap in for the long haul,” Rajan said. “If my boss has his way, you and me are stuck on this godforsaken rock under Odune’s thumb until the day they run out of Silk on Bourak.” 
  Wil furrowed his brow. Forever wasn’t the assignment. Six months, they’d said. Diplomatic negotiations. Corporate elbow-greasing. Protection detail. A handful of quick forays westward for a cultural exchange with Caledonian clan chieftains, negotiating joint ventures regarding the Teseum mines, and then they were out of here.
  “What you’re thinking right now,” Rajan said. “That’s our plan. Their plan—PanOceania’s plan—is to keep us here until I get at least two of these five chump chieftains to agree to let in a drill team.” He licked his teeth and straightened his suit jacket. “AKA, never.” 
  Now, this whole scenario was starting to make more sense. This is where high command had sent them to disappear, the long-overdue coup de grâce on his career as an Aquila Guard in the Neoterran Capitaline Army.
  Wil could’ve danced. 
  He’d expected his long-due retribution from the NCAto be a permanent assignment to a space station on the Human Edge, or an arctic research station punched into a glacier, or some doomed bulwark on Paradiso. But on Dawn, there were actual trees instead of ones biomodified for aesthetics, and the air tasted crisp instead of refurbished. So it rained three-hundred days out of the year? So there was more mud than solid ground? Cold, wet, and permanently tinged with mildew was more than he deserved. 
  It was getting off easy. 
  But this wasn’t for him, was it? It was Rajan’s protection detail he’d been assigned to, and it was Rajan who would be stuck organizing meetings with disappearing Highlanders in perpetuity, glued to Odune’s side playing lapdog in a holding pattern. No nanoweave bed sheets; no sensorium pornography; no nitrocaine or nightclub bathrooms to bump it in. 
  He really must’ve pissed someone off. Likely the same guy who put all those redactions in his file.
  Rajan stared into the fog, brows pinched with uncharacteristic gravitas. “Tomorrow, after we go through the motions at Fort Resolute, I want to alter the flight plan and do a flyover of the southwest shore.” 
  “That’s restricted airspace, sir. Don’t think we can do that.” 
  Quantronic mandalas reflected in the AUV’s squat, dirt-flecked window. “Their plan. Your plan. Odune’s plan,” Rajan said. “I’ve got a plan of my own.” 

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