“Well, this is going to be a challenge.”

Captain Inaba scanned the bay from her vantage point high atop the nearby bluff, as another shuttle landed and began disgorging additional soldiers and supplies. “And you can forget about digging in on the beach; even if we placed fighting positions above the high tide mark, we’d still have the water table to contend with. Might as well give the troops bars of soap and a rubber duckie while we’re at it.”

Gunny Satou grunted in agreement. “Pillboxes on the ridgeline then, Captain?” she suggested.

“Best we can do,” she agreed. “Have the Pioneers begin surveying immediately. Sooner we can secure this beachhead, the better.”

“Aye, Ma’am,” the first sergeant nodded, making a note. “Also, we’ve gotten word from Fiddler.”

Inaba cocked her head. “Let’s hear it.”

“They’ve finished their preliminary analysis of the system, and filled in a few gaps,” Berger explained. “Seems we’re about three days from the equinox, which coincides with those full moons Bidras’nassa was talking about. It’s setting them up for one hell of a King Tide, and when you couple that with the unique geography of this bay, we could be looking at a swell of thirty meters or more.”

The captain gave out a low whistle. “Make sure that gets disseminated. And it explains how it became their spawning grounds.”

“Yes ma’am, it surely does,” the first sergeant nodded, as they gazed out over the water.

Rúna scrambled over a nearby rock pile as they secured the perimeter. It was only temporary; something more permanent would have to wait until the brass came up with a plan. A stiff breeze came in off the bay, cooling them down and saturating everything with fine silica grit. She glanced over to where the captain was issuing orders, as she wrestled with something that had been gnawing at her since their meeting with the Sonoitii the day before... something she hadn’t been able to pin down.

“All right, that’s far enough,” she ordered, as the team came to a halt. “Dig in here. Nothing fancy, just enough to get your belly in. I doubt we’ll be here long.” No sense scraping out full positions they’d have to abandon in a couple hours.

“Hey, check it out,” Kai exclaimed, as he ambled over to join her. In his hand he held out a battered power pack, probably from an energy weapon. Rúna picked it up and examined it, brushing away the dirt to look for markings.

“Can’t tell who made it,” she said after a moment. “Must have come from one of the previous outfits.”

“Most likely,” he agreed. “We’ll probably find all sorts of trash out here that got left behind.”

Her head snapped up like a radar going active. “Shit,” she cursed, “that’s it.”

“That’s what?” Kai said in confusion.

“I gotta talk to the captain!” she shouted, turning and jogging for the cluster of officers and senior enlisted, leaving her bewildered squad leader in her wake. She arrived at their location less than a minute later.

“Captain Inaba, we gotta run a sweep,” Rúna blurted out as she came skidding to a halt.

The older woman raised an eyebrow. “Care to elaborate, Corporal?”

Wordlessly, she handed over the power pack. “Sergeant Kai found this while we were setting up the perimeter. It’s from one of the other merc outfits.”

Inaba gave it a quick once over, before passing it to the first sergeant. “I suspect you’re right,” she agreed, “but what was that about a sweep? We’ll be sending out patrols once we’re situated.”

“If I’m right, that won’t be enough,” she cautioned them. “It was something Bidras’nassa mentioned that stuck in my head, but it wasn’t until I saw that pack that it came to me. It said that they’ve been hiring mercenaries for years, and they kept getting betrayed. Something about that bugged me, but I couldn’t figure it out, not until just now.”

“And?” the captain prompted.

“Ma’am, think about it,” she urged. “If you knew how valuable those eggs were, and you figured you wouldn’t be coming back, wouldn’t you leave something behind? Something that might help you sneak back in, or booby trap whoever took over?”

Captain Inaba winced before pinching her nose. “Goddamn it all to hell,” she snapped. “We should have thought of that.” Her head snapped over to the first sergeant. “Get the colonel on the horn,” she ordered, “he’ll need to hear about this immediately. I suspect we’ll be seeing a rash of instructions coming down from higher about this, but there’s no reason we can’t get a little proactive. I want full EM-band sweeps started immediately, and we’ll need to get Fiddler and the shuttles started on overhead recon flights. I want ground-penetrating radar, motion detectors... the works.”

“Aye aye, ma’am, I’ll start making calls.” She shook her head. “Gonna be tough, not knowing what to look for, or if there’s even anything at all to find.”

“If something got left behind... and I think we have to assume that something did, until and unless we’re proven wrong... then you’re right, it could be anything. Landing beacons, jammers, weapons caches, minefields, hidden bunkers... as of now, it’s all on the table.” She paused for a moment, reaching out and gripping Rúna’s shoulder. “Damn fine work, Corporal,” she nodded. “You may have just saved us from getting bitten in the ass.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” she blushed.

Inaba smiled and then jerked her head. “All right, we’re on top of it, you have my word. Back to it then, corporal.”

“Aye aye, ma’am,” Rúna acknowledged, recognizing she’d been dismissed, heading back to the line where first squad was still digging in.

“You mind telling me what that was all about?” Kai demanded upon her return.

She quickly filled him in, bringing him up to speed. “I apologize for running off like that. I knew I had to warn the captain ASAP.”

“No, you did the right thing,” he said finally, “though next time I’d appreciate a head’s up.” He shrugged, shaking it off. “Moving on. Walk the perimeter with me.” He headed for Alpha’s first position on the far right, where they were tied in with 2nd Platoon, as Rúna tagged along beside him. Doc Svoboda was there, digging out a rock.

“You gonna help me with this?” he asked.

“Not just yet,” Kai replied. “Gotta check on a few things first.”

“See, this is why I hate sharing a fighting position with the squad leader,” the medic groused. “I get stuck doing all the work.”

“Hey, you want to swap positions with Tawfiq, just say the word,” the sergeant offered. “I’m sure he’d love to hand off the machinegun.”

Svoboda just shook his head. “Pass. You’re not sticking me with that damn anchor.”

“That’s what I thought,” he chuckled as the pair moved on.

“What if he’d taken you up on the offer?” she asked him.

Kai shook his head. “Never happen. He enjoys being the medic too much. Unfortunately, I think he likes to bitch even more.”

“Troops gotta blow off steam,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as they arrived at the gun position. Tawfiq was muscling the weapon into position, while Rivka sketched out a range card, marking key points in the landscape where an enemy might gather or take cover. “Talk to me,” he told them.

“Had a hell of a time getting the gun leveled,” Tawfiq explained, “it just flat-out refused to cooperate. But I think we’re good now.” He patted the side of the weapon for emphasis.

“Glad to hear it,” Kai nodded. “Rivka? What are we seeing?”

“Got some dead spaces,” she explained, pointing them out on the map she’d drawn, “including a small ravine. Solid cover if someone were to get in there.”

Rúna peered at the drawing, committing it to memory. “I’ll have the new kid coordinate with you,” she told them. “Time to find out if he’s as good as they say on that grenade launcher.”

As deadly as they were on the battlefield, a machine gun could only hit what it could see. It couldn’t fire around corners or on the other side of a hill. For that you needed an indirect-fire weapon like a grenade launcher, something to lob rounds over obstacles or into craters, though aiming a weapon of that type was a great deal trickier.

“Let’s hope so,” Rivka drawled, “cause otherwise we’d have to go out there and dig ‘em out. Can’t say I’m a fan of that.”

“Me either,” Kai agreed. “One way or another, we’ll back you up.”

With that they moved over to Bravo’s sector, starting with the position Rúna shared with Private Arthur. With the help of medical nanites, Becca had mostly recovered from her injuries, but she still wasn’t one hundred percent. She’d put her to work supervising the Newbie as he dug out their position.

“How’s it going?” she asked her.

“Eh,” Becca shrugged, wavering her hand in the ancient comme ci-comme ça gesture. “Fair to middlin’, I guess. It’s coming along.”

A practiced eye swept over the position as Arthur stood up and wiped his brow. “You have any questions about digging in?” she asked him.

“No, Corporal,” he answered. “The Lance Corporal has been showing me what I need to do.”

“Glad to hear it,” she nodded. “When you’re finished here, I need you to check in with the gun position. They’ve got some spots they’ll need you to cover.” She toed the grenade launcher leaning up against a rock with her boot. “You feeling confident with this?” she asked.

“Yes, Corporal,” he nodded.

“Well, now that we’re dirtside, I’ll see that you get some range time. I still want to verify for myself. Becca, keep him at it.”

“You got it,” the lance corporal replied, giving her the thumbs up as they moved on to the last position.

Yendrick looked up from his entrenching tool. “Am I getting Becca back soon?” he complained.

“You think it would help?” she snorted as Kai chuckled along with her.

“... No,” he grimaced, “but I can hope. I get she’s still recovering, but you know she’s milking it, boss.”

“Tell you what, I’ll have Doc give her a look,” she told him. “What he says goes... either way.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed.

“So... since we’re focusing on defensive ops, you know what that means,” she prompted.

A wry look came across his face. “A few midnight requisitions?” he grinned.

She held up her hands. “I don’t want to know. But if, say... some off-the-books materials just happened to fall into our lap, I wouldn’t be displeased,” she said casually. Kai was pointedly looking elsewhere, something that did not go unnoticed.

“Say no more,” he said with a wink. “Think you could... suggest a few things?”

“Hmm... a little bird tells me you might get a shopping list soon,” Rúna mentioned offhand. “I’d keep an eye out.”

“You got it,” he said happily. There was a reason he was their chief scrounger. He looked back down at the hole he was digging and said thoughtfully, “Maybe some explosives…”

“Hold off on that,” she cautioned him, “but if things play out the way I think they could... you just might get your wish.”

It was late in the evening, local time, when the officers and NCOs gathered once more in the Battalion command post, a prefab structure now filled to capacity as Colonel Holme took up a pointer and tapped the map.

“Ladies and gentlemen... let’s get one thing perfectly clear. We will not win this fight by conventional means.”

They were too well trained to spontaneously erupt into a babble, but there were reactions aplenty. They cast furtive glances about the space as they checked in with the others to catch their reaction.

The colonel remained unperturbed.

“Come on, I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. We’re anchored in place by the mission parameters,” he said, tapping the spawning site on the map, “and given that almost every other mercenary outfit in the business has been here at some point, that means they’ll know exactly where we are.”

More concerned glances appeared as he pressed on. “And to make things worse, if they come here in an even modicum show of force, it will force Fiddler to withdraw. Which means we lose the high ground. They can sit in orbit forever and rain down fire on us, and there’ll be damn all we can do about it. That’s reality. That’s our situation. It doesn’t matter how deep we’re dug in, how well we train, how committed we are to the fight. If they decide to simply overwhelm us from orbit... they will.”

The silence that followed was deafening. Finally, after waiting for someone else to step up, Captain Inaba rose to her feet. “Sir... are you suggesting our position is hopeless?” she said carefully. A nervous titter rippled through the audience as they collectively held their breath.

The colonel smiled. “Quite the contrary. I believe the odds are with us.”

The captain wasn’t quite able to keep the dubious expression from her face. “Then I am certain I speak for everyone here in saying we would love to hear your reasoning, Sir.”

Despite their reactions, he was unflappable as ever. “I said we couldn’t win by conventional means, and I meant it. Which is why we need to explore un-conventional tactics. We’re playing for time, people, never forget that. Every hour we can beg, borrow, or steal puts us that much closer to when the eggs hatch, and our contract is complete. All we have to do, is stall.” A fierce grin appeared on his face. “If we can do that long enough... we win.”

The CO from Fox Company rose to his feet. “Sir, even so... we’re looking at some pretty long odds here. Can I safely assume we have a withdrawal plan in the works?”

The Terran Marines they were descended from might have willingly fought to the death... say, in defense of Earth... but the Valkyries were mercenaries, not patriots. Survival trumped everything else, and if the situation grew too fierce, it was understood by all that retiring from the field was the only sane course of action.

Colonel Holme paused for a moment, picking his spot. “I have been in contact with Commandant Zakiyya, and spoken with her at length regarding our situation, and she has been fully briefed about our contract with the Sonoitii. After careful consideration, she transmitted her orders. I have them here.”

He removed a folded sheet from his tunic and unfolded it, glancing at the words briefly before he gazed about the room.

“Our orders... are to hold.”