We fight hard, we give it our all, straining our muscles and shouting in dismay; struggling through the mud to push with all our might. No matter our effort, we are utterly defeated. We should have heard Sergeant Geni and carried on, but we just had to be stupid and stop. So we pay the price as I tumble backwards when a something heavy impacts my thighs. I inexorably go down, seeing the bodies of the dead lying around me, frozen and still as I can’t regain my footing. My inevitable fall ends in the grasping, wet alien dirt. I feel like I have no strength left to fight on.

At least we were beaten by a mighty foe: a truck stuck in the mud.

Oh, you thought it was an ambush and an epic death? Don’t be silly. We just stopped to help one of our wheeled trucks who got stuck in the blue, alien mire; it was carrying a bunch of casualties in stasis and they flew all over the place. They might force me to write this, but don’t you ever expect I’ll make it a straightforward read, no sir.

And I’m very sad to break the childish dream some of you might still harbor about commonplace flying cars. Tracked vehicles are still widely used back home. Walks Softly wouldn’t budge about the fliers when the Earth Council brought them up. He said that only very developed planets and cities can establish something like that, setting strick controls. If a car was a weapon, a flier is a fucking missile — and Carries a Longcannon would be dead before he let those on civilians’ hands.

“But… I wish,” I mutter, laying still on the annoying mud. And no, grav-cars are not the same thing. They can only float a small distance over the ground; they are floaters, not flyers.

Oh, I should talk about Carries a Longcannon and her counterpart, I guess. They are the most popular figures back on Earth according to the last poll I bothered to check. The Walker and The Carrier we call them, and these are toasters *BZZZT* worthy of respect — sorry, that was just me bothering the VI, it gets strangely protective over those two. Anyway, they are the two ranking Unity’s officers in the Solar System. Walks Softly was the one that negotiated Earth’s admission into the Multi-Unity Alliance, convincing nearly all bullheaded world leaders. He reigns supreme over Orbital 1, helping our never-seen-before breakneck development along. Unemployment is on a record low throughout the planet, and the people love him for it.

The Carrier is the ranking military officer, and her fleet has captured or destroyed many small xeno raids on our vulnerable home-planet, earning herself the moniker of Grey-Hunter. Carrier is the one in charge of building our planetary defense grid. By herself, she quelled the burgeoning panic of abductions when they were confirmed to be true. People also love her, and she’s the main reason we still have many volunteers joining up. It’ll be a pain in the ass when the Chippers get out of basic training, but you can’t argue with more troopers being a good thing when the galaxy’s as cutthroat as it is.

As Diego helps me out of the mud, I shake my head to the truck’s frightened corporal, a man with an accent so thick I’d bet even the translators would have a hard time. And those things can understand even useless shit like Latin and Esperanto. People from the countryside can be hard to understand, and in a nation the size of a continent like Brazil you can bet there is a lot of countryside to spare.

“Sorry, paulista. Call HQ for back-up,” I say, tapping two fingers to my ear. A paulista is a poor sod who’s born in the rich state of São Paulo.

“Yes, sir. But you’ll stay here with us till help arrives, won’t you?” he asks me, wide-eyed.

“I’m afraid no, fella. I’ve got a special mission. No way I can stay.”

“But, Lieutenant! They say there might be infiltrators behind our lines! It’s only me and private Acosta driving, we’ll be sitting ducks!”

Diego is busy peering into the stasis-beds while Jones keeps watch from the top of our vehicle. Cainã sullenly tries to get himself rid of the mud, and doesn’t that bring a grin to my face even if I’m caked in that same shit? I look back to the young (as if I’m much older) corporal, and motion to my truck.

“Alright, paulista, hop in the back. We’ve wasted enough time already. Your truck and the stasis-beds aren’t going anywhere. The Barkers now better than to mess with them.”

He starts to complain, but I pull rank and we’ve now got two passengers on the back. We hear stories about fronts where brain-burning is a common practice, but there’s nowhere so hardcore around this planet — we often trade back prisoners and bodies with the enemy to restore our forces. And even if private Acosta was unlucky enough to be born in São Paulo, I won’t leave him hanging. Remind me to tell you more about the rivalry between Cariocas and Paulistas - Brazil’s best city (Rio) versus our biggest (São Paulo) some other day. I’m a completely impartial source, of course.

“At last,” huffs Diego as we get back together on top of the cab, the large werewolf patting the mounted gun with affection.

“If you think that truck was frustrating, wait until we have to deal with the Market,” I warn him, looking darkly ahead at our quest.

“What’s the big deal about this market you keep rambling on?” Diego asks, puzzled, as our truck glides toward our main base in the region, passing through forested areas that could very well be on earth - except for their varied, fantastic colors in their trunks and leafs. “You just go there, ask for stuff, pay it, and then get the stuff, don’t you?”

I outright laugh at his innocence, confusing the werewolf further. “Not the market, wolfy, The Market.”

“Spit it out, hombre, what’s the difference?” Diego pokes me, annoyed.

“The market you’re thinking about is the Unity’s general store. All the basic, cheap equipment we can get there — easily. But the Market separates men from boys; that’s where we get the really good stuff — if we can, that is.”

“Was that how you got me my Helena?”

“That’s a 1/10 on your naming sense, Diego. Christ. Yeah, that’s how I got you your shotgun. Got it from a retired veteran that got addicted to gambling and was in the red at the Eleventh Hour, dodging the Cartel’s collectors. I tried not to rip him off too hard, but the Market’s the Market,” I say, shaking my head.

“Quit being so cryptic and tell me how it works already, asshole.”

“The Cartel runs the show, so you can expect it’s nothing good. They have an establishment back at our HQ. We have to hand over our items and they get beamed up to a Cartel trading ship on orbit. Then I have to plug in and chose between a series of virtual auctions, bidding with the credits they’ve assigned me.”

“Well, that doesn’t seem so bad…” He shrugs.

“Not so bad? This thing is evil and addictive, believe me. And if your auctions fail through and you bid with more credits than you’ve actually got… Death, serfdom, enslavement — everything is on the table. It’s actually the only way to become a slave in Unity’s lands. The Market is the major cause of quartermasters casualties throughout the galaxy. Pure, sheer evil. But a necessary one.”

“Fuck, that does sound kind of dark…”

“Tell me about it, Diego. I know most don’t think much about us, but an army needs its quartermasters to thrive. The Market is not a game, we can’t fuck around. Wars have been lost for much less. You know the tale about the crooked nail… A smith apprentice lazes about and does shitty work, but his nails go into a horseshoe. The horseshoe ends up on a messenger’s horse, and the messenger gets a vital letter to deliver, one that can decide the war. But because of the faulty nails, the horseshoe falls and the horse is injured. With a lame horse, the messenger can’t deliver the letter in time, and the war is lost. Imagine that in a galactic scenario.”

“Hells…” He starts getting the whole picture. “7/10 on the storytelling,” he can’t help but to quip.

“Fuck off. It’s so serious that we have to go to obligatory counseling after three visits. The Market messes with your head. This is how you take the true measure of a quartermaster”

“Best of lucky, buddy… But tell me, how fast do the items you get arrive here? You want to return today, right?”

“Minutes. The Cartel has a proprietary line of relays throughout the galaxy to achieve nearly instantaneous delivery. No one has managed to copy it, not our Multi-Unity, not Manarun or the Framework. And not for lack of trying. And the virtual time in the Market is accelerated, so it shouldn’t take long if things go according to plan.”

“I can see how that instantaneous delivery could be very advantageous… The Cartel is strong, but not that strong. Why hasn’t anyone taken it by force?” Diego asks me after pondering the information for a while, always monitoring the land with his mounted gun.

“Everyone else would gang up on anyone who got that technology. People know they can negotiate with the Cartel, but other powers… Who would the Manarun Amalgamation listen to? They’re zealots, if you treat your vanillas’ even if minimal rights…” I exemplify, shrugging.

“Ah, yeah… The Galactic scene is pretty fucked up from what I her. The Multiversal Framework only cares about breaking the fabric of this universe, the Droid Sophocracy only cares about philosophizing over droid dominance. The Multi-Unity and the Paladin Swarm might be more agreeable, but no one would trust such influential players…” Diego nods, agreeing with my train of thought.

“Yeah, you see my point.” I nod. “None of the major powers are reliable. All the AIs would happily back-stab each other if it suited their goals, but talking and agreeing? Not so much.”

Ah, I should say that the Barkers are members of the Paladin Swarm — and no, they are not all insect-like people. Their founding AI does hail from one such species, so that explains the name. It’s very hard for me to imagine a insectile paladin I must say *BZZZT*, but that’s the galaxy for you. You might think this information belonged in the first chapter, but what the fuck do you know? The powers that be are too great to pay attention to the Delta 413th Army, much less individual people. So why should I care about them as long as they don’t make our lives harder? Think of them as quasi-Gods whose moves you can neither predict nor resist, only survive if you’re very lucky.

The Unity and the Swarm butt heads for every piece of worthless real state they can find, so many poor sods like us are left waging unenthusiastic wars through their borders. The fighting we’ve seen this week has been the hardest I’ve ever seen since we got here - and it still wasn’t more than fighting over minor FOBs. I hope things settle down though, an escalation would be bad for business — my business of staying alive.

We stay in companionable silent for a while, and we’re getting close to the main base when Diego decides to strike up a conversation again.

“Hey, Barro, remember the people that fought with us at the Armory?” he asks out of the blue.

“I didn’t get the time to really meet them, but I do remember some. What about them?”

“I’ve heard that Oswaldo - Corporal Cariri, that is - should be released from the hospital today. Let’s see if we can give him a lift when we return, all right?”

“The mage, right? Sure, we can take anyone who fits on the back of truck. But, fuck, that air blast to the face was nasty,” I grimace as I recall the Digger’s surprise magic attack that took the Cabriola spellcaster out of combat.

“Yeah, broke his neck and back. Thank god for med-nanites.” Gushing over our nanites is a common pastime among soldiers — better than worrying about the horrific weapons and magics that can cause us to need them in the first place.

“They really are amazing. I’ve heard one conserved a missing patrol grunt’s brain for two days until they finally found him in the bush.”

“Oh, they can do even more… Hey, look, there’s the base!” Diego points as Cainã starts slowing the vehicle to stop for an inspection at the gate.

The walls are tall and well manned, full of automatic emplacements and spell-canons as well; they extend over the distance farther than my eye can see. They are made of some hardy, fast-to-build metal composite I have no clue how they make — we call it synth-metal. Cracking open base’s fortifications would be a nightmare — they probably saw us much earlier and had various forms destruction trained on us in case we did something stupid. After a brief check, we’re allowed through. Soon, we divest ourself of Acosta and his fellow who go report to someone in charge about their truck.

There’s heavy traffic in the base and I can see that part of it are many new regiments, fresh from Unity’s basic training. There are penal eastern-Europeans’ regiments with their civility collars (neo-nazism is a sure ticket for the ‘jewelery’), south Africans’ and even a regiment from the many small, islander Pacific nations. There are some weird *BZZZZT* mythics around and I wonder if they’ll ever fight along the 2nd Brazilian Regiment. Command tries to keep units grouped by familiarity (hence the Mexicans and North-Americans close to us), so probably not anytime soon.

Cainã, I have to admit grudgingly, is not a bad driver; he skillfully weaves our way through the chaos. After nearly twenty minutes, we’re on our first stop - the General Stores. There’s a ridiculously big warehouse in front of us, but we head to a small building besides it, the Quartermaster’s Lodge. I’ll have to deal with Lieutenant Colonel Polanski, a fellow Carioca and my boss.

“Diego, Jones, come with me — bring the g-cart,” I command as I get down from the gun emplacement and point Cainã to a parking spot, warning him to keep his eyes on our vehicle. Quartermasters have grubby hands, you can’t leave anything useful unattended if you hope it’ll still be there when you come back.

Whenever I have to meet with the Lieutenant Colonel, I wonder about his family name. You see, on the 19th Century, attracted by false promises of marriage and employment, many polish girls embarked to Rio in hopes of a better future. They found themselves instead forced into prostitution to such a large extent that people identified them and many others that came later from neighboring countries as Polacas, from Poland. I digress, but I have warned you I like my history before.

We expect to be here for so long that Polanski has outdone himself with the Lodge, making it look one of those old houses you can find in the on Rio’s central district; the two-story ones where the ground level is a store and the second a living place. The Lodge follows the logic, with the open first ground having offices and essential supplies like grav-carts. The residential level’s small balconies can double up as firing positions - this is an army facility after all.

We can see some sort of hubbub is brewing as we approach, and Jones asks: “Is it always like this?”

“No, Private, it is not. Something is wrong,” I reply.

“Quartermasters are a fragile people, Jones. Don’t make loud noises or they’ll scatter,” Diego ribs me.

“Yeah, damn shame when we have to fight Diggers because you can’t do your only job: meat-shield your betters,” I shoot back and he reacts in mock dismay. His certainly smartass response is postponed as we start hearing the voices and the people inside start turning and noticing us.

“Hello the Lodge,” I half-shout, trying to find Polansky or another ranking officer amidst the bunch to report to; I can’t find any. “What has got you boys and girls so riled up?”

One of them takes the lead, a sergeant I know and like - Nalba Souza, an honest 'nordestina' (north-easterner) type. “Lieutenant, sir! We think there might be trouble, the Cartel called Lieutenant Colonel Polanski to the Market…”

“Shit. What is it?” I ask, frowning and getting angry. No one seems to want to be the bearer of the bad news. “Spill it, sergeant Souza,” I command.

“The word on the grapevine is that someone entered the Market without clearing it by us, but we had no one here but the Lieutenant Colonel with the training to go in before you arrived, Lieutenant. People are saying it must have been one of the spook—, I mean, one of our intelligence operatives.”

“Message the LC, I’m going there,” I order, firm but unhappy. There are so many idle hands that I order them to get me all the supplies they can and load them onto my truck before heading away, my face lined with worry. Things might have just got even more complicated. Will I be able to solve it? And can I return in time with the supplies for Geni’s celebration? Goddamned spies, the meddling bastards only bring us trouble.