Freya blinked and found herself sitting on her butt, still on the ramp. She found herself leaning on someone and, when she turned around, she spotted Gunny, no Captain Thompson, behind her. Cursing, she pulled herself back and stood up. Captain Thompson smiled at her with an amused expression.

“Can you answer my last question or is it gone?” Thompson asked, still smiling.

“Fulfill the contract.” Freya replied instantly.

“What was the contract?” Thompson asked, with a little frown. “He better not have sacrificed an entire population, or worse.”

“Sorry, Captain. I have no idea what the contract was.” Freya replied, feeling a bit sorry for letting her Captain down.

“No worries, these things happen.” Thompson replied, looking off into the distance. Her smile faded away.

“This is amazing.” The PsyOps agent said, making both Freya and the Captain turn around to see him standing at the top of the ramp.

“Just so everyone is aware, what happened right now is classified black. No one can talk about what they saw here, on pain of being court martialed. What was said and what you saw never happened. Trust me, you don’t want to know what the Federation will do if you tell anyone.” The PsyOps agent said, looking out beyond both Freya and the Captain.

Freya spun around to find everyone looking at her. She cursed as she realized that she must have said everything on the command channel. That meant that everyone heard what she said, which also meant that they saw her act weirdly. She turned to her right and spotted her team. They too were looking at her like she was a freak.

“No, it wasn’t a prophecy. She’s a chronos clairvoyant. She read the past. It already happened, so having this many people hearing it won’t do anything to invalidate it.” The PsyOps agent said over the command channel. Freya turned back around to find him looking back at Mother, who was still sitting at her station.

“It’s probably why she hasn’t been snatched up yet.” The agent said, as he turned around to look at her. “Most chronos clairvoyants have more than one psychic ability. Too bad you’re not a telepath. You would have made a great agent.”

“Enough.” Captain Thompson said, cutting the rest of the conversation off. “Mother, get your butt out of my chair. Go lead your platoon. Since I’m here, I might as well start working. Agent Smith, or whatever your name is now, I still need that intel. Focus on what the contract was and how to complete it. The rest of you, get back to work. Do I really have to tell a bunch of marines we are in a combat area, potentially exposed to our enemy?”

That made Freya wonder where the hell Captain Thomson had come from. She knew she was in the only clone that had been spawned, so that left the question of where the hell Captain Thompson got a clone to get downloaded into. Looking at her mission timer, she noted that it had only been two minutes since she had been spawned. Respawn pods could only create a clone every five minutes, so unless the captain had somehow spawned a clone without letting Freya know, she had no idea where she had come from.

She did quickly turn and make her way to her team, though. Thompson was a captain, and Freya was not going to disobey an officer's order, even if she had no idea where said officer came from. She slid into a foxhole with Lurch. It was what they practiced setting up if there was a chance they would be here a while. Since the foxholes had been dug, Freya imagined that they would be here for at least an hour or until whenever they got in contact with the local resistance again.

“So you’re a psychic.” Cannon said over their private, team channel. “That makes so much more sense now.” Cannon and Monkeyman were in the other foxhole, about fifteen feet away. Freya set her rifle down at the edge of the foxhole thinking about what to say to her team.

“Yeah.” Freya said, looking through her scope, not wanting to see Lurch’s expression.

“Is that why you can shoot so well?” Lurch asked, in a tone Freya couldn’t understand.

“Is he angry?” She asked herself, too cowardly to look up from her scope.

“It helps, but I was always a great shot.” Freya replied.

“This is awesome!” Monkeyman said over their channel. “You’re not just a shiv, you’re a shiv with future powers.”

“Monkeyboy, just… shut up.” Cannon replied.

“It’s Monkeyman.” He muttered back.

“Is there anything you can tell us about the future?” Cannon asked.

“No.” Freya replied, still scanning the empty gray desert in front of them. “I'm not allowed to talk about what I see in the future. It could affect the outcome. The less people know about it, the more likely it will happen.”

“How many times have you seen the future?” Monkeyman asked, sounding really excited.

“I. Can’t. Talk. About. That.” Freya said, getting annoyed.

“Oh, right.” He replied. “Sorry.”

“Can we just do our jobs and forget about all of this?” Freya asked, wanting really bad to look at Lurch, but worried about what she would see.

“Sure, but can you warn us if something bad is coming down the pipe?” Cannon asked.

Making a decision Freya replied. “Nothing that I’ve seen had anything to do with you guys.”

“Awesome.” Monkeyman replied. “Wait, is that a bad thing?”

“Shut up, Monkeyboy.” Cannon said over their radio.

“Monkeyman.” He replied. “It’s pronounced Monkey Man.”

“Sure thing, Monkeyboy.” Cannon said, almost immediately.

Freya ignored them, even though Cannon was acting way out of character. She pulled back from her rifle scope a bit and looked over at Lurch, who was beside her looking down his scope. He must have sensed her looking at him because he did the same thing. He looked at her for a second before raising his fist. Feeling herself smile, Freya reached out and bumped fists with him before turning back to do her job.

Second Squad finished setting up the defences not long afterward and settled in after digging foxholes in front of Freya’s squad. With mines in front of both squads and auto turrets behind them, the ship was protected as best as they could make it. The dropship guns were silent and not moving. That didn’t mean that they were not active. They were. She had activated them herself. The only thing that wasn’t activated was the artillery cannon, and that was because the cannon had a very small firing angle. If Mother, or rather Captain Thompson, wanted to fire it in a different direction, they would have to move the entire ship.

Thoughts about what she saw and what it could mean swirled around in Freya’s head. She knew why the last emperor of the Terran Empire did what he did. He was an entitled ass who lost his mind. She knew from what she saw that he had planned for humanity’s downfall when it became clear that he would lose control of his empire. From history, she knew he had committed suicide by erasing all of his personal data. Not to say he didn’t try to escape - he did, but the virus that had been set off to capture him had been too fast. Historians believed, when he found he could no longer leave the digital world, he erased himself. From what she saw she believed them.

That left her thinking about the contract he had agreed to with the Ketica. What did the Ketica want? Was it some kind of colonial agreement that humanity would avoid certain planets or was it some kind of cargo that they had to give them? There were just too many possibilities that trying to narrow it down was much too hard. The good news was that they now knew the start of the problem. They just had to figure out the rest, and hopefully this war would end. It was too bad that they couldn’t just ask the Ketica. They Ketica would not listen to anyone they deemed untrustworthy.

“Wait, does Thompson know that?” She thought to herself, feeling fear swell up inside of her.

“Captain, do not try to communicate with the Ketica!” Freya said over the Captain’s private channel. “We are untrustworthy, they will not talk to us. All it will do is give our position away.”

“A bit late on that warning, Magic.” Thompson replied wryly. “The good news is that I routed the attempted communication far from us. Let’s hope they can’t track it back to us.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Freya replied. “Didn’t think about it until just now.”

“Not your fault, I didn’t give you a proper debriefing.” Thompson replied. “Any thoughts on how to communicate with them to make them listen with us?”

“They won’t talk to us until we make ourselves trustworthy again..” Freya replied. “I don’t know why being untrustworthy is so bad to them, but it is. The feeling I get is that it's their worst crime. They won’t stop coming for us until we are all dead, or we show ourselves to be trustworthy again. That I know for a fact.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Thompson replied. “If you can think of anything, don’t hesitate to call me on this channel.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Freya replied with a smile. “It’s good to see you again, ma’am. I can’t wait to go hunting with you again.”

Thompson laughed over the radio. “Let’s hope we won’t have to. I hope to figure out how that bastard screwed us over before too much shooting happens. I get the feeling that if this war gets too hot, then we lose the chance to end this thing in peace for a very long time.”

Freya looked out as Thompson keyed off the channel. She had that feeling as well. What was worse, was she had the feeling they had already passed that point. She was not sure if it was just her fear, but the feeling was there.

Not long after their conversation, the guy called Strife, the leader of the resistance on Karma, called again. Freya’s armor did not have the powerful encryption systems that her ship had so, when he called over the radio, all she got was buzzing sounds. Luckily, Lurch had a device to decrypt it. He fed the conversation to his holo tablet and let Freya read it with him. The communication was the same basic setup with four to five words and one number at the end. Lurch’s holo tablet deciphered it as:

Strife: “What can we do to help you?”

Captain Thompson: “I need a location of any Ketica. Not constructs, but their masters.”

Strife: “My people have not reported any Ketica sightings. I will ask around.”

Captain Thompson: “Thank you. Do you have any immediate needs?”

Strife: “Food. Weapons. Ammunition.”

Captain Thompson: “We can help. Send us everything you have on the invasion. Give us a list of what you want. We will send you a drop point with everything we can spare.”

Strife: “Thank you. Do you want the location of the marines stranded on this planet?”

Captain Thompson: “Give us the location and com codes to them.”

Strife: “Sending them now. Luck. Strife out.”

Captain Thompson: “Luck. Out.”

Freya expected them to move right away, but it was over an hour later before the order to take down their defences came. She watched as Second Squad took down what they had put up. She kept them covered while they did their job. She felt a little guilty for not helping, but rationalized it as someone had to keep them safe while they did the job. She did wonder, if they were moving, how Captain Thompson was going to move all of them. Mother’s method had left them a squad down.

“Okay, listen up.” Mother said, once Second Squad was taking down the last few auto turrets. “Scout squads, you are to take different routes to the waypoint. Stay under active camo at all times. You have six hours to get to the waypoint. Cannon, with me. Magic, you’re in charge of your team. I’m sending you BT as a replacement. That is all.”

Freya looked up as Cannon climbed out of her foxhole. She gave Freya a nod before she ran towards the ship. Freya then found herself looking at Monkeyman who had a big smile on his face. He gave her an eager nod and she nodded back.

“Ok, let's get these foxholes filled back in then we got a run ahead of us.” Freya said, trying to sound in charge, but she could feel that failed right away. To her relief, her friends obeyed her immediately and without giving her any grief.

As she pulled herself out of the foxhole to help Lurch, she wondered about the last team. There was one scout team per squad, so that made three scout teams. A full squad is four teams. So, unless they were having some marines get very close to each other, the ship would be overloaded. It would limit what the ship could do if it had to evade the enemy, but other than that it wouldn’t hinder the ship being overloaded like that. At least Fred had an officer on board who would get in trouble instead of him. He couldn’t use the excuse ‘the needs of the mission’, like someone in command could if things went wrong.

Freya looked up when a huge man came running up to them under active camo. She had seen him before, but rarely ever talked to him. He was a heavy assault in the ambusher template track from Third Squad. He stood at the higher end of six-foot-something, and had muscles like a professional weightlifter. He carried his huge gun in his left hand like it was nothing. As he came running up to them he had a big smile on his face.

“Hi guys.” He said over their talk-around channel. “What do you need me to do?”

“Help us fill in these foxholes.” Freya replied, pointing at the mostly filled in hole in front of her. He grinned in reply and took her trenching tool. He proved his worth as he quickly filled in the hole and moved over to help Monkeyman. Less than thirty seconds later, everything was done. Freya accepted her trenching tool back and put it away.

“We got six hours and a long way to go. No point in waiting.” Freya said, checking her mini map. They would be able to make it, but she would have to run at a near sprint the whole way.

She was not sure about the others’ strength, but hoped it wouldn't be a problem. She was just glad she had upped her strength before this mission. She led her squad out past the dropship’s active camo and started to run. Like she told her team, there was no point in waiting. Soon after, another team joined them which started a domino effect, until the last team left the protection of the ship’s camo. Not long after that, the ship took off and flew past them at a high rate of speed. The scout teams split up after that, with Freya’s team heading in a northerly direction.

Freya ran, holding her rifle in the crook of her arms. The ugly, white sun beamed down on her, but her armor AC was up to the task of keeping her cool. She focused on her breathing like she learned to do in bootcamp. Breathe deep breaths instead of shallow ones. Like the turtle and the rabbit. The turtle could go on forever, but was slow. The rabbit was fast, but couldn’t last like the turtle could. Breathing fast was not what she needed here.

The others spread out behind her. She kept an eye on BT, but with all of the strength mods he must have he didn’t seem to have a problem with keeping up. She guessed that she was still the slowest member of her team. It bugged her, but she didn’t want to waste mod points to go faster. She didn’t plan on being a ground pounder forever. She liked being a pilot, and wanted to be a better one in the future. It still sucked to be running close to full sprint like she was. To keep her mind occupied, she watched the feeds from Lurch’s drones as she ran. They didn’t show anything, but it did take her mind off of her running.

Time slowly passed as Freya led her team across the ugly desert. The weight of her armor and all of the supplies she carried started to affect her. She mentally went over everything she was carrying, and decided that, besides her medical supplies or maybe her sabotage tools, she had nothing she wanted to get rid of in the future. She hated it, but she thought she might have to increase her strength again.

She checked her mini map and noticed that her team was ahead of schedule. Not by much, but enough to give her a bit of pride. She couldn’t see the other teams on her mini map as they were too far away. She had her sensor drone out, but, again, it was mostly useless as Lurch’s drones were far more effective. Still, she remembered what Jesus had told her way back on the Monarch. He had said it was one of the most effective tools a scout could have. It had helped her in the past, and she knew it would help her in the future.

Time slowly passed and she found herself getting lost in the rhythm of running. She kept an eye out, but her thoughts slowed down, the thumping of her feet on the hardened dirt of the desert keeping in time with her breathing. She found her rhythm as she breathed deeply over two steps from the belly, not the chest, and breathed out over one. Keep her head up. Swing her arms from the shoulders, not her elbows. Repeat over and over. Her troubles faded away as she lost herself in the Zen of running.

She paid attention to her surroundings and the feed from Lurch’s drones, but mostly she let herself float along, her mind as still as she could make it. They ran, eating up the distance, as time lost meaning. They didn’t stop or slow down, they just ran with Freya in the lead.

The hardest part was when they got close to the waypoint.

It wasn’t that she was overly tired. Her health was keeping her up and running, and her strength helped her with her speed, but the distance jolted her out of her Zen. The desire to slow or go faster was getting harder and harder to ignore. She wanted to rest, but at the same time she wanted to get the run over with. She knew that both of those thoughts were a trap. Going faster at this point meant she would get tired too fast and would have to stop. Going slower would make meeting the six-hour time limit harder to hit, if not impossible. The best play was to run at the same speed as she had been running.

What made it worse was that another team came in range of the drone, and they were ahead of them. She really had to fight down the desire to increase her speed to beat them. She told herself that it wasn’t a race. They didn’t have to be the first ones there, but her emotions fought with her head. She really did want to beat them. In the end, she lost her mental battle and increased her speed. She still failed to reach the dropship before the other team, but not by much. She ran past the outer edge of the dropship’s active camo about four feet behind the last member of the other team. They were, she noted, from Unicorn’s squad.

She slowed to a stop as she took in her surroundings. The ship had landed right beside what reminded her of a storm cellar from back home, except it wasn’t sticking out of the ground. Instead the doors were laying flat on the ground. The doors were the same size as the storm cellars she was used to. They were roughly four and half feet wide and maybe six feet long. Both doors were open and a bunch of marines that Freya didn’t know were walking around, along with her own platoon members.

She wondered if they were from the doomed diplomatic ship. Marines were almost never stationed on a planet. That was the army’s job. She knew that Strife had to have sent the coordinates to the marines from the diplomatic ship, but for them to be this close to their LZ was a bit strange. It didn’t give her any odd feelings in the back of her head, but she still felt it odd. She was still thinking of how the marines got there when she spotted Mother. She was deep in conversation with a marine that was not in their platoon. Mother ended her conversation and turned to look around, like she was searching for someone.

Mother spotted them as they walked up towards her, and moved in their direction. “Good, you're early. Magic, Thaddeus. Take a five minute break, then I want you two to patrol five miles out, and opposite sides. The enemy has been sniffing around this area several times in the past few weeks. They somehow sneak past the drones so keep an eye out for anything under active camo. I’ll get your relief in four hours. Don’t take hostile action if you can avoid it. Hide, if at all possible. Understood?” She asked them.

“Understood, ma’am.” Freya replied, glad that she had calmed down enough to talk without stopping to breathe.

“Move your teams out.” Mother said, turning away from them.

“The more you prove your the best, the more they ask you to do.” Thaddeus said to her over his armor’s speakers.

“Ain’t that the truth.” Monkeyman said, coming up beside Freya. “We were hoping that they would put you to work instead of us. Best laid plans and all that.” Thaddeus snickered and shook his head.

“I’ll remember that.” He told them, as he turned away to collect his team.

“I’ll remember that.” Monkeyman copied him, in a goofy tone of voice. Thaddeus gave him the one finger salute over his shoulder.

“Come on. Let’s get this done.” Freya replied with a sigh and turned around to go the other direction. Her team followed her.

“So what is this place?” BT asked, as he joined up with them.

“Bunker, I think.” Lurch said, looking down at the display on his arm. “It goes deep, whatever it is.”

“It can’t have an open comms port. You hacked in?” Freya asked, looking over at him.

“Piggy-backed on our platoon’s channel.” Lurch replied.

“That’s technically hacking in.” Freya told him.

“You want me to stop?” He asked, looking up from his arm.

“No, of course not.” Freya said, shaking her head and grinning at him. “Keep digging. I want to know everything about this place.”

“That ma shiv.” Monkeyman said putting his arm around her. “Never trust the man.”

“What man?” BT asked, sounding confused.

Freya tuned Monkeyman out as he started talking. She did start to jog to get into position though. Only because she saw Thaddeus had started to move faster on her mini map. She was not going to let him beat her twice. Her team kept pace with her as she took off.

She slowed to a stop once she reached five miles away from the bunker, and started walking clockwise, making sure to keep to that five-mile mark. They had traveled northwest from the mountains and the valley. She had been here before in a simulation while flying her ship, but the bunker hadn’t been there. She wondered if that had been a mistake on the October’s part or if she hadn’t known about it.

She was still thinking about it when her attention was drawn to some dirt about fifty or so feet in front of her. She froze and crouched down, not sure what she had seen. There was no movement around the dirt, like the spy constructs made when they were hiding. She slowly raised her rifle and looked around at the area that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. At first she saw nothing. Just grey dirt with a black oval shaped rock that stuck out. She passed over the rock and searched the area, but froze after a few seconds.

“Since when does a grey desert have black rocks?” She asked herself, as she tracked her scope back towards the rock.

She kept her rifle pointing at it for thirty seconds. She was just about to talk herself out of her suspicions when it moved. It didn't’ move in any direction, but stayed on its back while it turned slightly to face a different direction. She didn’t have any surveillance drones available so she couldn’t send the image back to the command staff. She did have Lurch though.

She turned around and pointed at Lurch. She made the hand motion for him to move up slowly. He nodded in reply. He crept up to her. She turned back to watch the black rock, but it hadn’t moved again. She felt Lurch put his hand on her shoulder. Using her AI, she wrote on her wrist screen, black rock. Then she showed it to him. As soon as he nodded to her she pointed towards where the rock was. He nodded again and started typing in the air. She knew it had to be his holographic tablet but she couldn’t see it. Then he gave her a thumbs up before picking his gun back up from where he had set it down. Freya raised her rifle and waited on orders.

Their orders came back about a minute later. They came in the form of a waypoint that pointed right at the rock. The writing on her mini map said ‘observe and report.’ She looked back at her team and motioned them to move up and form a semicircle around the black rock. She looked at Lurch and motioned for him to move away from her. He nodded and moved so that he was about ten feet from her. She looked around at her team, and nodded to herself as she laid down. Monkeyman turned away from the rock and faced the west in case something tried to flank them. BT went in the opposite direction and also faced away from the rock. Lurch faced behind them, and Freya moved her rifle so that she could look past the rock, scanning the horizon and the area in between it and the rock. She sighed as it looked like they were going to be out here a lot longer than she expected. She had a bad feeling that things were going to get a lot worse soon.