Freya sighed as she looked over the nothingness around her. Everything was grey, and aside from patches of green here and there it was like looking at the same bland thing over and over again. Once when she was a teenager she had taken a trip far to the south with her grandfather. It had taken them two weeks in her grandfather's broken-down truck to get to where they were going. The place her grandfather took her was an old, abandoned bunker that dated back to the war. The bunker had been in the middle of the desert that seemed to go on for days. It had somehow survived the bombings, and was clear of most of the war’s most violent leftovers. She remembered looking out into the desert as they passed through it and seeing the same thing like what she was seeing now except that the color of that desert had been tan while this one was a blah grey.

She checked on the timer for the respawns, and signed once more. “Thirty-four seconds.” She thought to herself as she looked back towards the grey sameness of the foriegn desert. She was not sure why she was so disgusted with the desert here, but it felt so boring. Which she admitted, after the exciting retreat from the mountain, was very odd, but she felt the same way when she saw the camp back on the October. She hated this desert. She hated everything to do with this desert.

Monkeyman and Lurch weren’t talking anymore. Cannon had split them up. She had placed them on watch on either side of the dropship while they waited on Drake to get respawned, and tell them what the plan was. She was glad they weren’t arguing anymore, but was worried that they weren’t talking.

Ever since she had abruptly left the Monarch without saying goodbye to Mon and the others she had been feeling off. She missed One and Done along with their Mechs. She missed Toast and his steady presence. She missed Patterson and even Tike. Even though Tike had been annoying, and believed in a lot of crap, there had been times when they had a lot of fun together. She even missed being at Chivia’s, and hanging out with Dusty and the gang. She did not miss the stupid tank game though. She wondered nostalgically where they were and if they were all doing ok. She mentally wished them well.

“This desert sucks.” She muttered quietly to herself, feeling depressed.

She was never more glad to hear her computer dinging to tell her that the first batch of respawns were complete. She really hoped Drake had something up his sleeve for them. She wanted to be out, and moving around. She didn’t care if all he had was for them to just wander around the desert, and look for the civilians. She wanted to be out, and doing something beside sitting here watching the blah desert forever.

“Status report.” Drake asked over the command channel a few seconds later. Freya started wiggling her foot in anticipation as Cannon reported what had happened, and what they had done. When she was done catching Drake up on what had happened he spoke again.

“Understood. I took the risk and had the rest of the platoon zero themselves out when I saw the dropship leave.” He said over the command channel. “I did not want to lead the enemy to the ship.”

“What risk?” Freya asked herself, then less than a second later answered herself. “If they had denial spheres anywhere near any of the teams, then they would not be respawning. They would have zeroed themselves out for nothing.”

“I am fairly confident that the civilians were not on our mountain. The reports I’m getting from Fred say that we were the only squad to have contact with the enemy. Their missions are just about over with no luck. He wants one team on the ship guarding it at all times. For now that's everyone. Once we get the rest of the teams up and about, I want Second and Third teams to head out, and do a grid search for the civilians. I’ll send a waypoint with your grid to your team leads. You all will head out once the rest respawn.” He told them.

Freya mentally cursed as she realized that they would be staying on watch for another five more minutes. She really didn’t want to be here anymore. With a frustrated huff she readjusted her gun and scanned the horizon.

“Nothing. With a bit more of nothing, and a huge chance of nothing coming in later today.” She snarled to herself as she scanned her sector. She was facing northwest with the desert mostly in her sector. Cannon was on the other side of the ship, and on the opposite watch which had the mountains in her sector. If the constructs found them, then it would be from the mountains on Cannon's side. Cannon had given her permission to turn around, and fight.

If they were attacked from her sector while she was shooting on the opposite section, that would leave Lurch the only one to respond until she could turn back around. He was the only one who was guarding them from being flanked as he was on the same side of the ship as Freya was. On her mini map she saw Drake and the rest of the respawns leave the dropship and quickly fill in the holes of their perimeter watch. She noticed that he stacked the mountain side more than he did the desert side. Which she admitted made sense. It also negated any reason why she should turn around if they were attacked. She was annoyed at being taken out of the action.

She cursed at herself for being so grumpy. She had no idea why she was this way. Normally, she was fine on a mission. That made her wonder why she was acting this way. Sure, she knew she missed her friends, but she was on a tryout mission. They all were, so why were she and the others so grumpy? She had no answer for that. She absently wondered if it was some kind of psychic thing being aimed at them by the enemy. She dismissed the idea, because according to her training, the Ketica didn’t have that capability. That didn’t stop her from imagining them creating some super-special support construct just for that purpose.

She was deep into her fantasy imagining a spy-construct-like thing that would send out psychic signals turning them all against each other. She imagined the construct having two small fleshy antennas growing out of the head part of the construct when she got a notification that the second round of respawns were complete. Freya smiled at herself as the last of the squad had been respawned.

She still had to wait until she was relieved from watch, but that didn’t take all that long. She ran up to where Cannon was so very eager to do something. As soon as Monkeyman and Lurch joined them, Cannon motioned for Freya to go ahead and lead them. Smiling happily, Freya led them away from the ship, and towards the waypoint that Drake had assigned them. As they walked away she noticed that her team was not the only one leaving. One other team was also leaving. She did note that Drake assigned his own team to stay behind with the ship.

That made her think about how it didn’t make sense for her to be the only pilot. She was a scout at heart. Sure, she knew she was a sniper now, but still that meant that her, and her team would be gone far more than anyone else in the squad. If something happened to her, then it would take five minutes for her to respawn. That was five minutes where the ship would be vulnerable. To make it worse, what happened if she was out of contact or on a critical task, and the ship was being threatened? Would they have to recall her, or let the ship get destroyed? It made her think how unsuitable she was to be a dropship pilot.

“Drake knew. That’s why he was surprised I said I was a sniper. How can Mother make me the platoon pilot? Where does that make any sense in any military tactical doctrine? We are only a half mile from the mountain we know for sure that the constructs are on. I should be hanging back with Drake's fireteam in case we have to move the ship.” Freya told herself as she walked away from her ship. In the end, she had no answer as it didn't make any sense, and didn’t bring it up because she really didn’t want to stay behind.

She pushed it out of her mind and focused on her job. It wasn’t her job to make decisions like that. Her job was to find the civilians, and trust in Drake's leadership. So that was what she did. She kept leading her team in hopes of completing that part of the mission.

Freya led her team through the grey desert, avoiding the green algae areas, throughout the rest of the day. It was long and very boring, as they searched one grid-square at a time looking for the civilians. The problem, Freya admitted to herself, was that there was nowhere out here for the civilians to hide from the Ketica and their constructs. The desert was mostly flat wasteland that went on forever except for the three mountains behind them.

Freya guessed that the horizon was roughly three and a half miles away with no obstacles in any direction except for the mountains behind them. There were no trees in sight. No rocks that stood out. Nothing but the endless hard-packed sand that they were walking on. That meant that the only place the civilians could be hiding was the mountains, but by now the other squads had to have finished searching. They would have been recalled long since if they had found the civilians. So where were they?

Freya stopped when Cannon called for a rest. The sun had just set, and Freya did the math. She came out with the day being eighteen hours, two minutes and a couple of seconds long. If the day was equal to the night, which she doubted, then the complete planetary rotation was thirty-six hours and four minutes long plus a few seconds thrown in. As she sat drinking her nutrition drink she thought about just how much she didn’t know about this sim planet. They were given just the bare essentials of the planet in the info dump. Most of the usual information was left out, like how long an average day was on the planet, or that there were algae spots all over the place.

“Why the hell did Mother not give us more information? Is this normal for a tryout in a spec ops platoon? If it is then it doesn’t make sense. If this was a real mission then we would have that information already. Unless this wasn’t a human world, but they said it was. Why else would there be civilians on this planet?” Freya thought as she drained her drink, and pulled the empty canister out of her suit. She took off her backpack and tossed it in before she replaced it on her back.

“Hey Cannon, is it normal when you try out for a spec ops platoon that they don’t give you all that much information on the planet your missions are on?” Freya asked quietly. They were all lying facing away from each other with their feet at the centre of the circle, so they could cover all directions in case of an attack.

“No.” Cannon replied, sounding surly.

“You find it weird that they didn’t even tell us how long the planet's rotation is or that there is algae that stains armor?” Freya asked.

“Yes.” Came the reply

“This could be a brand new colony, or maybe the planet is going through terraforming. The terraforming idea makes more sense, though. All sorts of odd things happen when you try to terraform a planet.” Lurch replied.

“They told us that this planet is being terraformed as part of the briefing.” Monkeyman said, still sounding grumpy.

“Oh, yeah.” Lurch said, sounding embarrassed.

“Terraforming doesn’t speed up or slow down a planet.” Freya replied, thinking. “So why not tell us basic information like that?”

“Mother making this harder on us?” Monkeyman said, sounding a bit less grumpy.

“Nothing about this tryout is making sense.” Lurch replied, sounding irritated. “The wave mission was really stupid. Spec ops platoons don’t participate in actions like that, or most don’t. Our makeup is all wrong for that. This search and rescue mission is more normal, but the makeup of our platoon is all wrong for that. We have too many heavy assaults, and not enough scouts for it.”

“They could be looking to cut more assaults than anyone else. If so then this mission makes more sense.” Monkeyman offered.

“Then why the wave mission?” Lurch asked. “That mission was practically made for heavy assaults.”

“What if they are looking for a well-rounded spec ops platoon?” Freya asked.

“There is no such thing as a well-rounded spec ops platoon. Each platoon is made up with a very specific job in mind.” Lurch replied. “Sure, you can do multiple missions on ops, but you don’t create a spec ops platoon that can take on a wave mission and do a search and rescue mission. They require very different templates to make them both work.”

“What do you think, Cannon?” Monkeyman asked. “You’ve been in longer. You have to have an idea on what's going on.”

“I have a feeling I do.” Cannon replied.

“Well, don’t leave the rest of us out of it.” Monkeyman replied. “Tell us.”

“That would violate operational security, and you’re all dangerously close to that.” Cannon replied. “Everyone up. Lets keep going.”

Freya felt horrified as she realized that Cannon was right. They weren’t supposed to even speculate about the platoon’s mission, and they had just done that. It just happened. They were at first just talking about this mission, and somehow ended up talking about the platoon’s real mission. Freya remembered Mother talking about court marshalling people who violated it. As she stood up all she could think about was getting in trouble. She had never been in trouble before besides that one fine back on the Monarch, and that one was strupid. She worried about what was going to happen.

“Calm down, Magic.” Cannon said quietly over the radio. “If you were going to get in trouble you would have already been informed. Just stop talking about it. Now slow down, and keep a tighter formation.”

Freya looked back, and noticed that she was much further ahead than she was supposed to be. She did as Cannon asked, feeling relieved that she wasn’t going to get in trouble as she realized that Cannon was right. The October would have sent her a notification warning her or just plain telling her that she was in violation. Feeling better she focused on her job.

They walked the grid for four more hours before Cannon called for another rest. This time when they sat around no one talked. Cannon wanted them to get rest, so she put them on 50/50 sleep rotation with two people awake and two people asleep. Cannon took the first watch with Monkeyman. They were only stopping for four hours. That meant that Freya was only going to get at most two hours of sleep. Not wanting to waste them she closed her eyes as soon as Cannon told her what shift she was on. She drifted off to sleep not long afterwards.

Monkeyman woke her for her turn on watch. She rolled over and adjusted her rifle a bit better before she settled down. She scanned her side of them, but saw nothing. She relaxed, but didn’t take her eye off her scope. The only thing noteworthy was that there was a very large algae area in front of her. It was the largest patch she had seen so far. She wondered if it was a pond like the one she fell in on the mountain, not that the pond in the mountain was this large.

“You have a drone out?” Freya asked Lurch quietly.

“Yeah, you want the feed?” Lurch replied.

“Sure.” Freya returned, and a second later she got a live feed from Lurch’s drone.

She took turns scanning through her scope, and watching the drone’s feed. For over an hour nothing showed up. Freya kept looking at the large algae patch in front of them wondering if it really was a pond. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She took her eyes off her scope and looked for some small rocks. It took some digging into the hard packed sand, but she found a few rocks that might have been limestone. In any case they were very light, and crumbled easily in her hand. She looked back through her scope, and tossed the first rock. It fell short.

“Stupid light weight rock.” Freya mentally scolded as she searched for another rock.

She found one that was slightly larger than the first one. It was still lighter than she was expecting, but heavier than the first one. She looked through her scope, and tossed the rock. This one hit, and she heard a splash as it hit. The Drone which was flying overhead on Lurch’s side quickly spun and zoomed in on the sound.

“Sorry, that was me.” Freya said, feeling embarrassed. “I wanted to know if that patch had water under it or not.”

“You scared Tom’s butt hole clean. Warn me before you do something like that again.” Lurch told her. She noted that he didn’t really sound angry, just maybe a bit jumpy. Freya smiled at how vulgar he had been.

Time seemed to drag on and Freya kept watch. As she scanned the algae pond in front of her wondering just how deep it was, she thought about tossing another rock in, but knew that wouldn’t tell her how deep the pond was. Then she got the bright idea to switch her scope through different settings to see if she could see through the algae. The algae blocked most of the views but the last. It was the one she used to see through walls. It penetrated the algae with ease. It showed that the pod was only about waist deep. Which she noted was not as deep as the one on the mountain.

She was running her scope around the pond, looking at the bottom, when she found the civilians. They were in an underground cave. They glowed in her scope like bonfires in the dark. She counted about thirty of them, and they were all huddling with each other. At first Freya didn’t understand what she was seeing. She knew they were people-shaped, but they were underground on the far side of the pond. She thought her scope had failed somehow. She looked away from her scope and checked it, but the diagnostic showed green.

“Hey, Lurch?” Freya asked looking back through her scope.

“Yeah?” Came the reply.

“You got a drone that can go underwater?” She asked him. “Whatever ammonia mixes with on this planet, I mean.”

“Sure.” He replied.

“Ok. I think I found the civilians.” Freya told him.

“What?!” Lurch nearly screamed.

“Sit rep!” Cannon shouted over the radio suddenly.

“I think I found the civilians.” Freya said, turning back to see both Cannon and Monkeyman wide awake and scanning their sectors.

“Not funny, Magic.” Cannon said relaxing. “You can just wake us up normally. You don’t have to play games.”

“No, really. They’re in that pond over there.” Freya replied, pointing towards the pond with the algae over it.

“I’m going back to sleep. I still have twenty minutes.” Monkeyman said, letting go of his rifle and rolling over.

“Lurch. Send your drone under that water.” Freya said, giving him the coordinates. “They’re in an underground cave.”

“You better not be joking, or I’ll zero you out,” Cannon replied. “Lurch, do what she asked.”

Freya watched as the drone changed directions and headed towards the pond. Lurch took it easy as it got close to the algae before slowly slipping it into the water. The quality of the feed sucked until Lurched changed it to dark vision, then the pond lit up fairly well. It took him about a minute to find the entrance to the underground cave. It looked like a hole in the side of the pond about three or so feet across, and about two feet wide. There was a very dim light coming from it that only appeared on the feed once the drone got to the very edge of the hole. The drone slipped into the hole, which led to a four foot long tunnel that angled downwards before rising upwards again.

Freya watched as the light got brighter on the feed, but it was still really dim - enough that without dark vision it wouldn’t be all that visible. She watched as the drone reached the end of the tunnel, and popped up in the cave. The light was much brighter in the cave. Freya spotted the light source coming from a chem lamp at the far back of the cave. The colonists were all huddled around it.

“Monkeyman, get up.” Cannon said, making Freya jump a little. She had been so engrossed in what she was seeing that she had forgotten the others were there. “Magic did it again. We found them. Lurch, if you’re not already doing it, send the feed to command.”

“It’s already sent, but I can’t be sure they are watching it.” Lurch replied.

Cannon cursed then asked, “Is there some way to get their attention?”

As if they heard her, a new waypoint appeared right on their location on Freya’s mini map. Since they were already there, Freya guessed it was a platoon-wide waypoint. Freya then frowned when the waypoint disappeared for a few seconds before she nearly started laughing when it moved to where the civilians were. Someone had messed up a platoon-wide waypoint.

“Monkeyman, hand over some sensors. We are going to drop them all around this pond. Make it fast, people. Once we’re done, we are all going in. I don’t want to expose this location anymore than it has been already.” Cannon told them.

Monkeyman handed a small pile of sensors to Freya. She noticed they were the same ones she had bought him back on the October. She went away from the pond, and started dropping sensors about fifty feet out from the pond as she slowly circled it. Lurch went the other way while Monkeyman and Cannon dropped theirs closer. Soon the pond was covered, and they met up right above where the underground cave was.

“If your gun can fit in the tunnel, keep it, otherwise drop it at the tunnel’s edge. Make sure it’s out of the way so people don’t get tangled up with it. Magic, lose your main rifle. It’s too big.” Cannon said, pulling her big gun off her back, and tossing it into the pond near the entrance.

Freya sighed and did the same. Then she dropped her other rifle. It wasn’t as long nor as big, but it was still too big for the tunnel. She pulled out her pistol and carefully slid into the pond, wincing as the green algae stained her armor. She quickly ducked under the water and swam towards the tunnel’s entrance, not waiting on the others.

It was very dark under the algae, and her armor automatically switched to dark vision. It was still pretty difficult to find the entrance. Once she found it she quickly swam into it. Once she reached the tunnel’s exit, she slowly raised her head out of the water and looked around. The civilians were mostly asleep, but she did see a few who were awake. They weren’t very observant though and didn’t see her. She lowered herself so only her eyes were out of the water and spoke over her loudspeakers.

“Federation Marines. Don’t shoot!” Frya said, ready to duck back under the water in case they started shooting. She watched as a bunch of people woke up and pointed weapons at her, but no one fired, to her relief.

“Federation Marines.” She called out again. “We are here to save you. I’m coming out now.”

She raised her hands like she was surrendering and slowly rose out of the water. She was very glad when no one shot her as she climbed into the cave. She looked around at all the faces that were looking at her and waved one of her hands, hi. Behind her, Cannon slowly rose out of the water and stepped beside her. Not long after that Lurch came out, but Monkeyman stayed inside the pond just outside the tunnel’s entrance. It took Freya a second, then she realized he was guarding the entrance.

“Smart guy.” Freya thought as Cannon took a step forward.

“I’m Sergeant Torres of the Federation Marines. We are here to save you.” Cannon said.

Freya whipped her head around, and looked at her team leader. She had no idea what Cannon’s real name was until that moment, and realized that she never asked. The name on her armor was Cannon. Cannon turned to look at her briefly before turning back to the civilians. Freya wondered if she was related to her Sergeant Torres from the Monarch, or if it was just a common name. As she turned back to the civilians she repressed the desire to ask, even though she really wanted to know. She refocused on the mission, and tried not to let her curiosity get in the way.