Freya sighed as she looked at the black rock-like thing while it spun briefly before settling down again. She had been out here an hour now and she was getting a little annoyed. She knew she would be covering the stupid rock for a while, but an hour? That was a bit much. She scanned the horizon behind the rock, but, like she expected, there was nothing there.

Since she had been watching the rock spin once every four to six minutes she had come up with a few ideas on what it was. Her best guess was that it was some advanced spy construction they hadn’t seen yet. It was also bigger than just the rock that peeked above the surface of the ground. She had checked it with her scope.

The construct had about three feet of itself hidden under the ground. It looked like a weirdly-shaped stingray. The top of the thing, which was exposed, was maybe three or four inches wide. Then, from the nose hidden under the ground to the end of the tail was three feet long. She guessed it was about two feet wide from wing to wing. The wings themselves were pointed, but Freya didn’t know if the pointed tips were a weapon it could use or if it was just how the wings were made. Either way, it looked bigger and, with the tail, deadlier than the one she had fought against in the sim missions.

She was looking out at the horizon, but had zoomed out so that she could still see the construct, when the waypoint changed. Well, the waypoint didn’t change, but there was writing on it now. It said to not look at the rock for ten minutes then look at it. Completely confused, she looked to her side and saw Lurch looking at her. He shrugged at her, looking just as confused as she was. She turned to Monkeyman who did the same. She looked at BT behind him, but the new guy was too professional to turn around and look at her.

Not knowing why, but not willing to disobey an order even if it looked like someone was playing a joke on them, she did as she was asked. She made sure to not look at the stupid construct as she scanned behind it. At ten minutes, according to her mission clock, she turned back to see the construct was still there and had not moved. It even spun for her.

Then the wording to the waypoint changed again. This time it told her to back away, and, without being detected, look for more of them. The message gave her grid coordinates as well. Freya, not wanting to sit around any longer, started low-crawling backwards. Beside her she could see her teammates move with her.

They low-crawled for about a hundred feet before Freya felt it was ok to stand up. Her team did the same. With a quick check on the coordinates she turned around and headed to her grid. She did look back, but the construct was still there, not moving from its spot. With a quick look at her team to make sure everyone was on the same page, she led them forward.

About ten minutes later, Lurch chirped his radio. Freya immediately froze and crouched down looking for what had made Lurch chirp his radio. After scanning the immediate area she turned around and looked at him. He tapped his helmet then his left wrist. She got his meaning and flipped through the feeds for his drone. The second feed, the one she was not monitoring, was focused on where the construct had been. She hadn’t really paid attention to it since they left, and now she wished she had. The construct was gone.

She motioned for Lurch to send the feed back to Command. He have her a look that she interpreted as ‘do you think I’m stupid’. She waved the look off then motioned at her wrist asking for what time did he notice it leaving. He returned with a shrug. He flashed five fingers at her. She took it that he hadn’t been monitoring the construct either.

She looked past him to Monkeyman. He gave her a shrug as well. She finally looked to her left at BT. He looked so confused that she didn’t bother trying to ask him the question. Lurch’s second drone was already high in the air looking for it. She motioned for him to write a message out on the feed. He gave her a thumbs up, but didn’t move to do anything. From his attitude she guessed he already had sent off a message.

She sighed, hating the fact that she had no idea what else to do. In the end, she stood up again and motioned for them to continue, knowing her only other option was to break radio silence, which she was very hesitant to do. The last thing she wanted was to show the enemy where the bunker was. They either got their message or not. She had to hope she was doing the right thing otherwise she was putting the bunker in danger. Her leadership training told her to make a decision and go with it and that was what she did.

They came across another stone roughly six miles away from the first one's location. She dropped a waypoint and they all settled down like before, but her waypoint got changed roughly a minute later telling her to continue on her search. She got up again and made a wide path around the construct to continue on. This time, she made a point to keep an eye on the feed of the bio construct. She changed out feeds every minute or two between the feed which watched the construct and the one that circled around them, giving them a view of what was around them.

Not long after that, they stumbled onto another one. She motioned for Lurch to have his drone bounce between the two. He nodded his understanding and she continued on her search. She stumbled on four more constructs as they completed their grid search. Lurch had to send up four more drones as, one by one, they reached their expiration time and self-destructed. Somewhere in that time two of the constructs had moved, which made three constructs that were now missing.

They hadn’t completed their search when night fell. They were ordered back to the bunker. Freya led her team back, stumbling onto two more constructs. It worried her as she realized that the desert was littered with the things. She wondered how many of them they had passed on the way to the bunker. She hadn’t been paying that much attention when she had been running from the mountain valley to the bunker.

Drake met them by the dropship. There was a line of marines who weren’t in their platoon passing boxes of what she recognized as nutrition drinks from the printers on the dropship to each other along a line down the bunker stairs. As she watched them she remembered her small unit tactics instructor talking about how food was the most important thing to an army's sustainability in the long term. She wondered just how bad they’d got if they were pulling that much foodstuff from the printers. She wasn't sure how long, exactly, the Ketica had been on the surface of the planet, but it had to be several months. That made her wonder what had happened to all the printers that had to have been on the planet.

Drake waved at them and motioned them towards the bunker. “Good job, guys.” He told them as he opened the bunker doors.

“Thanks, you have any idea where those constructs went after they moved?” Lurch asked, as they started down the stairs towards the main part of the bunker.

“They didn’t move. They're still there.” Drake replied with a small smile. “That there is some funky alien tech right there, if you ask me. From what we worked out, the only way to find them is by someone spotting them with unmodified eyes. Current theory is that anything electric, like say wetware mods in the eyes, can’t see them. Once an unmodified person spots them, anyone can see them just fine until you look away for ten minutes or so. The crazy part is once they are not hidden anymore, anyone can watch them. Once you uncover them, they even appear on the drone feeds for as long as someone is watching them. Lose sight of them for over ten minutes and they're gone, and you have to start all over again with biological eyes physically at the site to uncover them again for you.”

“How?” Freya asked, not completely sure that Drake was joking or not.

“That’s what's driving everyone nuts.” He told her excitedly. “We have no idea how they’re doing it. For now, Mother wants us to just mark the locations down. We’ve already sent the information to the October. There hasn’t been any response, yet.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Lurch stated, sounding just as unsure as Freya did a couple of seconds ago.

“Nope.” Drake replied, shaking his head. “Get some rest, Mother wants you back out there tomorrow. She wants all the scout team out there marking them all. We’re doing a rotation so no one gets overly exhausted and starts making mistakes. You all have six hours downtime before you’re up again. I’ll show you where you can get some rest.”

They followed Drake down the stairs to another open door which had a warning label about toxic gasses. “This place is a drainage waystation.” He told them, as he dodged some marines who were standing by the door passing boxes to each other down into the room.

Freya nodded as she led her team into a large room that was filled with pipes. She knew from her practice missions that Colonial Services were draining aquifers of ammonia and replacing them with clean water. Some aquifers were naturally occurring, while the others were either constructed or being constructed as time went on. There was a whole system buried under the ground all over the planet that was slowly washing and cleaning the soil of ammonia. This was just a waystation towards a huge plant somewhere downstream, where the ammonia would be taken out of the water and sent back upstream to be put back. The platoon even practiced tactics for using the system in various different ways.

The floor was made up of metal grating panels placed above the pipes below. Someone had removed a bunch of the panels so that people could find places to sleep in between the pipes. The pipes went down roughly a hundred feet, with metal gratings making several floors in between the first floor and the last floor, which was being filled up with food supplies. She led her team down a few floors to where she found Second Squad’s scouting team getting up. She gave them a nod as they shuffled past, and found an empty place to rest with her back up against a large pipe. She was out in seconds.

Freya opened her eyes as someone shook her shoulder, what felt like a few seconds later. She saw Dess from Second Squad standing above her. She was the team leader for first team, which was a weapons and assault team. That was the same for every squad though - first team was always the weapons and assault team. They did exactly what the name implied. Second team was the demo team, whose responsibility was building things, blowing things up, and driving ground vehicles for the entire squad, if they were traveling as a squad. And finally the third team, which Freya was a part of in First Squad, was the scout squad. Those were the squad specialties, but they were all capable of doing the tasks of the other teams, just not as well.

As soon as Dess spotted that Freya had opened her eyes, she started talking. “Mother wants your team up. There is a situation that just kicked off. Not sure of the specifics, but there are civilians involved.”

Freya nodded her understanding then asked, “Where is Mother?”

“On the dropship.” Dess said, as she turned and walked away.

Freya quickly woke the others up, and started up the ladder towards the first floor of the waystation. She found Mother on the dropship with Thompson. Mother was standing behind the seated Thompson at the Command and Control station. They were both watching something on the screen. Mother turned around as soon as Freya walked up the ramp of the dropship.

“Magic, good - you’re here.” Mother said as Freya walked up to the station. “I need your team to get to the reclamation plant. There are a bunch of civilians and militia trapped, with the Ketica on the way. Cannon is already there and is calling for backup. We need to move everyone here as fast as possible.”

Freya nodded her head, but was more interested in what the feed was showing as she looked over Thompson’s shoulder. There was what looked like a cross between a hairless wolf and a Tyrannosaurus rex running in a pack of about fifty members. The constructs had large, thick hind legs and tiny arms in the front which, from the looks of what she was seeing, were doing the steering as it ran hunched over but on two hind legs. The arms would reach out every couple of seconds and push lightly on the ground, moving the construct’s body in the right direction. The construct’s face looked like a wolf’s, in a way, because it had what looked like a dog's snout. It was the oddest thing she had ever seen.

“Can do.” Freya replied, still looking at the feed. “This the only enemy?”

“No, just the closest.” Mother replied. “You have about half an hour to get there and move them before they get there. We’re going to flush you and your team down the pipe to the plant with a cable and some cocoons. Once you're there, we’ll shut the flow off. Get the civilians in the cocoons and we’ll reel them back here. You won’t have enough time to get the militia members out, so you’re in for a fight. You’re going to need to kill those things as fast as possible while we send you back the cocoons. Get the militia out, then retreat yourselves.”

“How long do we have until the constructs get their reinforcements?” Freya asked, looking away from the weird wolf-like constructs.

“Ten to twenty minutes.” Captain Thompson replied. Freya turned back to see that the Captain had switched the feed to show a bunch of huge, six-legged, armored elephant-looking constructs running in a huge pack. Behind them were what might be the lizard constructs that shot mortars out of their backs, except that they were bigger and looked tougher.

“Why didn’t we fight these in the practice missions?” Freya asked, pointing at the feed.

“Aliens progress in their technology just as much as we do. Never expect them to be static. That way lies defeat.” Thompson said, sounding like she was quoting someone.

“Any other questions?” Mother asked.

“What happens if we get overwhelmed?” Freya asked. “What’s the backup plan?”

“We can’t expose our location or the dropship.” Mother replied, shaking her head. “You can scatter and retreat to this position. I‘ll have a team heading that way to reinforce you. The problem is that the closest team is team three from Second Squad. They’re looking for spy constructs along this line. That puts them about three hours out right about now. My suggestion - don't get overwhelmed. Any other questions?”

Freya looked over at her team. They all shook their heads. She turned back and shook her head as well. Mother nodded in return.

“Good, let’s get this thing going. I have Dess setting everything up in the waystation. Move out.” Mother said, turning back to the command station.

Freya did as she was ordered. She found Dess and Maddog at the bottom of the waystation, setting up the cocoons. The cocoons were rigid, white, plastic tent-like things that were about eight feet long and just big enough for one person to fit in comfortably. They were normally used in accidents when marines, or really anyone, got their environmental suits compromised while in dangerous environments, like space or a very toxic planetoid environment. They were used to keep a single person alive and isolated from a dangerous environment until they could be evacuated. Maddog was setting the cocoons up while Dess was attaching them together.

They had a fairly large pipe open and had set up the cocoons along the pipe near the entrance. Freya looked in the pipe as she walked up and noted that it was full of fast-moving, light-yellowish fluid. The opening itself looked like someone had cut open a maintenance hatch until it was big enough to fit a cocoon into the top of the pipe. On the floor beside the pipe was a wrench with a long, but thin, cable.

“I’m done.” Maddoc said, standing at the far end of the pipe.

“Give me a sec to get everything connected.” Dess said, sounding distracted as she tied off the second to last cocoon. “Why don’t you guys get in, and we’ll send you off as soon as I’m done?”

“BT, you in the first one. I’ll go second. Monkeyman, then Lurch.” Freya told them, pointing at the cocoons she wanted them to take. She walked up to the one she was going to use and hit the open button on the small flexible screen that was on the top of the cocoon. The cocoon unlocked itself and she pulled back the top in the same way she would pull back her blanket on her bunk. She climbed in and pulled the top over to the other side to close it. The rest of the top followed from where she pulled it until the entire top was closed above her. The rigidity of the cocoon kept the top off her like a tent. The soft light by her head in the cocoon turned green, meaning that she had a good seal.

“Done.” Dess said over the radio a few seconds later. “You guys ever wanted to know what a bullet feels like?”

Before anyone could answer her, Maddog called out laughing over the radio. “Fire in the hole!”

Freya was jerked forward then was pulled down into the pipe as Maddog, their medic,finished pushing BT forward into it. She had a brief flash of Maddog’s face as she was pulled along behind BT into the pipe. The medic had a huge grin on his face. If she wasn’t scared of hurting herself on the outer edges of the pipe she would have given him the finger. Instead she grabbed her shoulders and closed her eyes as the fast-moving fluid pulled her down the pipe.

She opened her eyes a second later and found herself in complete darkness, swaying back and forth in the pipe. She could feel the cocoon collapse on her a little bit as the pressure of the fluid pushed in on the cocoon. The rigid plastic of the cocoon collapsed until it was a few inches from her face. She knew that it was designed that way when faced with an outer pressure stronger than the inner one and the more it collapsed the stronger it got. A display on the inside of the cocoon in front of her eyes had the atmospheric stats of what was going on inside in glowing letters and numbers. It was designed to reassure the person inside the cocoon. Most of the time it worked.

The swaying got worse as she traveled down the pipe. Freya nervously looked out of her cocoon at the darkness around her as the noise from the fluid that was rushing by her cocoon got louder by the second. She grabbed her long gun with a death grip. She had taken it off her back and placed it by her side, with her left arm around it, when she got in the cocoon. Her Irish Nester rifle was still attached to her back, and she was regretting leaving it there as it dug into her back.

The feeling she got as she shot down the pipe wasn’t as bad as shooting out of a troopship in a OTIDS, and hurtling down towards the surface of the planet, but at least she could look at a live feed as she did so. Here, everything was dark except for the softly glowing numbers that told her that she had enough oxygen inside the cocoon to last her for months. Not that she needed that oxygen. She had her own in her armor which could last much longer than the cocoon. To take her mind off of her situation, she started to hum a song from when she was growing up. It was a stupid song about a wolf and winter nights.

The trip down the pipe took about ten minutes. She didn’t know exactly how fast she was going as the gentle swaying got worse to the point where she was completely spinning around the pipe at times, but she did have a rough idea. Based on her mini map, and how rapidly it changed, she guessed that she had to be going over a hundred miles an hour. Maybe much faster. She gave up on trying to do the math when she completely spun around the pipe for the third time.

About two thirds of the way there, the fluid around her started to drop in level. At first Freya started to panic, fearing a hole in the pipe; which brought up all the things that could go wrong with what she and her team were doing. But then she realized that her speed was also decreasing. Around the ten minute mark, the fluid dropped so low that they were barely moving. Here she started to get worried about being stuck in the pipe. They had to be several hundred feet under the ground. She had images in her head of being trapped forever there when she saw a light in the distance. She and her team slowly flowed along with the fluid until they reached the light, where she saw an armored fist reach out and grab BT’s cocoon and pull it up. Her cocoon bumped into his as Monkeyman’s cocoon bumped into hers.

She watched as BT was pulled out of the pipe. Her cocoon, being attached to his, was pulled along with it. She felt her cocoon stretch a bit as Monkeyman’s cocoon was pulled along with hers. Then she was out and someone in a hazmat suit was opening her cocoon. Freya climbed out as soon as the top was pulled to the far side.

“I should’ve asked how they were getting us out of the pipe.” Freya said on the talk around channel to her team, as she climbed out of her cocoon.

“Ehh, the worst that would happen is that you and your team would have been dumped into the main tank. From there all you would have had to do is climb out with your cocoons.” A voice that Freya recognized as Cannon said over the same channel.

“Hey Cannon.” Freya said, as she looked around the plant. There were about twenty to thirty civilians standing around, looking worse for wear. Some of them were holding on to very little kids and babies. She frowned at how many there were.

“Hey Magic.” Cannon replied. Freya turned and saw her opening Lurch’s cocoon and helping him out. Before Freya could say anything else she noticed Cannon reach back in and pull out a bunch of folded up cocoons.

“We need to get these set up.” Cannon said, pointing at the cocoons. “I need Magic upstairs along with Lurch. Monkey and BT, can you guys set these up and tie them together? As soon as you’re done we can start sending them to the waystation.”

“It’s Monkeyman.” Monkeyman grumbled quietly over the radio, as he took a folded up cocoon and opened it. “BT, tie this up with ours. I’ll get the rest ready.”

After making sure they were going to be ok, Freya followed Cannon up the metal stairs. “This place is huge. We got over a hundred of those tanks, with hundreds of pipes coming in and going out in all directions.” Cannon said, waving at the huge silver tanks that took up much of the plant.

The tanks themselves were about fifty feet wide and maybe thirty tall. She could see that they were arranged in ten rows in the dim light of the plant. The rest of the plant, from what she could see, was filled with pipes. Freya looked up as she followed Cannon up the stairs and noted that there were five floors to the plant. That made her wonder if the plant was above-ground or not. She couldn’t see any windows. She hoped it was below-ground, but doubted it, as she couldn’t see a reason why Colonial Services would bother to bury the entire facility.

Cannon led them up to a small office on the first floor. “Lurch, I need eyes around the facility. Mother is watching through the October’s satellites, but I need a better picture around us. Magic, let me show you what we’re up against.”

“Understood.” Lurch said, as he passed them and ran up the stairs.

Freya looked around as they climbed the stairs. She noted several men and women in various different civilian clothing wearing rebreathers. The rebreathers, she knew, were only good for a dry or semi-dry environment. She knew they would leak in the pipe, so that meant they had to use the cocoons, which was bad. She noted just how thin the door was, when Lurch opened it and went outside to launch his drones.

Cannon stopped by a console and brought up a schematic of the plant. Freya frowned as she saw that she had guessed right about how Colonial Services made the plant. It was mostly above-ground with only one floor underground. The underground floor was the same floor where they were currently trying to evacuate the civilians. Looking at the plans of the building, Freya’s frown got deeper as she realized just how bad a situation they were in. There was no fence around the building. The plant had eight entrances, and, going by how thin the door was, she guessed the walls wouldn’t hold up in a combat situation.

“How many cocoons did we bring?” She asked Lurch over the radio, hoping he knew.

“Including ours? Twenty.” He replied.

“How long do you think it will take for them to winch them to the waystation?” Freya asked him.

“Best guess: twenty to thirty minutes.” Lurch replied.

“How many people do we have to evacuate?” She asked, turning to her former team leader.

“Sixty-eight, not including your team and me.” Cannon replied. “Look, I know you're the team leader of your team, but I have some ideas. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Boobytrap the doors. Set up a sniper's nest here on the roof.” Freya replied, pointing out a position where she would have some cover while still being near a ladder in case she needed to evacuate inside. “Set you here, and BT here. Have Monkeyman here, and Lurch on the opposite end.”

“Well, yes.” Cannon replied, looking surprised. “We have a lot of ammonia and nitrate as well. I’m sure Monkeyman can fix us some nice explosives. I’d say place mines all around the perimeter, and if he has one, put an auto turret here.”

“Lurch, once you're done, I need you back downstairs helping BT. Monkeyman, I need you up here as fast as you can. I want mines all around the building, plus Cannon has some goodies for you.” Freya said over the radio.

“Can we use some of your militia to help the civilians?” Freya asked, looking at Cannon.

“They're good people.” Cannon replied. “But they would need someone to show them what you want.”

“BT, I’m sending down some militia. I want you to train them on what you’re doing. They’re going to replace you, so make sure to do a good job.” Freya told him over the radio.

“Send down a team for BT to train up.” Freya told Cannon, as she looked back down at the console. “Did I miss anything?” Freya asked, not looking at her.

“Not yet.” Cannon replied with a smile.