0500 Hours

South-east of LZ

Joana Austin struggled through the thick undergrowth. Even though she did enjoy her new surroundings more than the urban wasteland her old home world had been, she did have to admit that she wasn't the biggest fan of all the insects buzzing around her head and the thick shrubbery tugging on her with every step.

Her smartpad was showing a slowly growing dot on the preliminary map the drones had created earlier. She knew that the slowly pulsing dot was where the drones had reported the weaponry container landed. The drones' receiver had picked up the ping signal the container was sending out, but it couldn't get a good view of it, because it was totally obscured by the jungle-like forests thick canopy. And, she had to grudgingly admit that, she could probably walk right past it without seeing it at all, because the shrubs around here were so thick.

The undergrowth around her suddenly disappeared when she stepped into a mid-sized clearing. The ground and tree trunks were free from branches and shrubs. It looked like someone had cleared the area of the annoying shrubbery to set up a camp. An almost circular space, about 20 meters in diameter, had been cleared of the undergrowth and three expertly hidden fresh fire pits had been set up.

She quietly whistled through her teeth, as she walked onto the clearing.

"Why is it not on the drone map," she quietly asked herself, while pulling up the map on the pad mounted on her forearm.

The drone footage didn't show any sign of it, even though it should have been easily visible. She looked up, to check if the canopy may have been covering up the artificial clearing. Right, she thought, an entire army could be sitting under this canopy and we wouldn't know. I bet the canopy is high enough up and thick enough to even block out heat signatures.

She marked its position on the preliminary map and trudged on through the cleared patch at a faster pace. After all, the undergrowth wasn't slowing her down anymore. She couldn't entirely put it out of her mind though. Who had camped only a kilometer from them last night?

23 Hours earlier

40 km South of Clupea

Free State of Andona

Lieutenant Tomos Kiomuts had never planned on becoming a soldier, let alone an officer in the Free Andonan Army. When he was born to a gunsmith and a weaver 24 years ago, it was basically already set that he would become a gunsmith like his father and his grandfather before him. He had grown up on the outskirts of Clupea, a small town located in the foothills of the Andonian Mountains. His home province Andona had been poor and the duke, acting as its governor, had been more interested in whoring around, than in taking care of his subjects. Nonetheless, he had been kept in power by the might of his liege, the Queen of Lerwik.

When the Kingdom of Lerwik, of which Andona was the southernmost province, and the Ossetian Empire, south of Andona, went to war over some insignificant insult, the people of Andona had had enough of it. Their duke and most of his family died an 'unfortunate' and 'accidental' death and the newly founded citizens assembly declared Andona an independent state. The Kingdom was in the process of losing the war with the Ossetians, who, unsurprisingly, were quite happy to support the young state in its strive for independence. Long story short: The Kingdom lost not only the war, but also Andona and the Ossetians were content with keeping the new state as a buffer zone between itself and Lerwik in the north.

Tomos Kiomuts parents had been killed by Lerwikian troops during the short but bloody war of independence. After losing everything he had held dear, Tomos had joined the young democracies military, not much more than a citizens militia during the war, shortly after his fourteenth birthday.

That had been ten years ago. During the last years he had risen from the rank of militiaman to Lieutenant, commanding his own platoon of 50 light infantrymen. He was quite proud that his unit was one of the few already equipped with the new flintlock muskets.

"Lieutenant! Wake Up!" Kiomuts was startled awake by the urgent shouting outside his small tent. He hastily crawled out of his sleeping sack, scrambled to his feet without bothering to dress properly and grabbed his sword and pistol.

"What's going on," he asked the man who had burst into his tent. He was giving his best to ask in a casual, almost disinterested tone. Always show that you are in control, he had learned, during his officers training.

"Heard shots to the south-west, boss," the middle aged non-commissioned officer said in his Andonian slang, while nodding in the direction.

"Shots," Kiomuts repeated quietly, "any guesses to who it is?"

"Doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard, boss"

"Then how do you know that it's gunfire," Lieutenant Kiomuts asked, while he gave him a moderately exasperated glare.

"Well, what else would it be, out here?"

Kiomuts would have trusted the experienced non-com with his life and he'd done so before. So he wasn't inclined to disregard Elgar Teld's opinion. "Alright," he said while walking to the sentry position his small troop had set up in the south-western direction. Around him, he could hear the quiet but unavoidable sounds of his soldiers waking up and preparing for whatever was to come.

"We'll break camp and march towards the south. I want two scouts to ride ahead along the riverbank!" He turned his head to Teld and motioned for him to see to it.

"Yes, Sir," Teld answered sharply, turned on his heels and marched off while barking orders into the twilight.

Kiomuts listened to the two men before him intently. His scouts had just returned from the south-west and met up with his unit, which had been steadily moving in a south-western direction for the last few hours.

".. Two Ossetians. I'm certain of it, sir", the leader of the two-man scout detachment was just finishing his report.

Kiomuts looked at his senior non-com, standing to his right side, who returned his look worriedly.

"And they were shot? Any thoughts on who did it? And even more important on what the hell they were doing on our side of the border?"

"Not exactly, sir," the older of the two soldiers replied.

"What's that supposed to mean," Teld asked, while glaring at the soldier.

"Well," the younger of the two started, "I think they were doing reconnaissance for a larger unit, but the thing that's really disconcerting is how they died."

"Yes?" Teld was, as usual, quickly annoyed by piecemeal answers.

"They were… executed by someone," the younger soldier said, shooting a glance at his older partner. He produced two small, rounded, hollow pieces of metal.

Kiomuts took one of them and held it up against the sun that was slowly rising behind him.

"What is this…," he whispered, more to himself than to the men around him.

"We don't know," one of the scouts said,"we found the two pieces next to the bodies."

0515 Hours

South of LZ

Ca. 40 km South of Culpea

The weapons container had been a lot easier to find than she had expected. Luckily it was in pretty good shape and had come down in a large bushy patch surrounded by large trees. No one was likely to ever find it here.

She took all the guns and ammunition she could carry and filled one of the backpacks included in the container with it. Then she did her best to camouflage the container with the remaining gear, grabbed her personal pack and the backpack filled with the equipment and started the track back to the LZ.

0530 Hours

South of LZ

Ca. 39 km South of Culpea

Rose De Clare was walking a few meters behind Freddie Morris, when he abruptly stopped.

"What is it," Rose asked from behind him, while coming closer, "can you see it?"

"Yeah," Freddie answered sadly, "at least what's left."

Rose finally arrived next to him and was able to take a look at the battered container in front of them. Its matte gray skin was crumpled in at multiple points and the back wall appeared to have been ripped off. Some of its content was obviously damaged beyond repair.

"Well," Rose said, showing her experience by keeping her voice level despite the setback, "we better get started. I figure we've got good chances to save at least the data storage unit."

"Yeah," Freddie answered while stepping up to the destroyed container,"but that'll probably be the only thing we can save. Look at this," he pointed at the smashed remains of the transmitter unit, "I'd have better chances building a working transmitter out of an AR90s onboard computer."

"Can't be helped," Rose said, "just take what we can use and we can get back to the LZ. I can't wait to get out of this godforsaken forest."

"Amen to that," Freddie replied, as he pulled the data storage unit out of the receiver. They had both heard Specialist Austins' update regarding the fresh campsite she had found.

Close to 30 minutes later Rose and Freddie had retrieved what was salvageable, namely the receiver and the data storage unit. They had hidden the container's remains under a thick net and covered it with dirt and shrubbery.

"What about all the stuff that was ripped out of it while it came down," Freddie asked.

"We have to leave it be for now," Rose answered, "we'll have to hope that none of the locals stumble over any of it. If we search for it now, we won't leave this forest for another week or so." Freddie nodded understandingly and they both began their march to the meeting point near the LZ.

1900 Hours

Meeting Point LZ

38 km South of Culpea

Rose and Freddie were the last to arrive at the meeting point. Joana had been first, bringing a neatly packed backpack filled with one sniper rifle, one modified long range version of the assault rifles most of them were carrying, as well as a machine gun, two shotguns and less than lethal EPS throwers for all of them. When Terry had commented on her haul with, "are you planning to start a war," she had given him a wink and pointed at Julie's arm.

"It's your job to patch us up. It's my job to make sure you don't have to."

Terry had found the container with his lab and medical gear, which was probably the only one that had stayed relatively intact. He'd taken all the medical equipment he could stuff in his backpack and hidden the remainder in a hollowed out tree. He suspected that it had been hit by lightning sometime in the last year.

Harry had spent almost half the day looking for the DSU container. DSU stood for data storage unit, and the container with that name was one of the most important ones. It included the entire engineering and science database of the Empire of Faron. Unluckily for them, it was heavily damaged by the landing and even though Harry managed to retrieve all of its DSUs it would probably be very time consuming to restore the data on them. If they could restore it at all.

Julie had spent the entire day looking for the container with the basic equipment. Boring stuff like tents, shovels, solar panels and similar things. Even though she had found it, she had just hidden it. Most of its content would only become useful once they decided on setting up a base.

Once they had all made sure that the gear they had taken was in working order, mainly as a way to pass the time until Freddie was finished with decoding the last message from the GOLDEN CHARIOT, they gathered around Freddies larger pad to watch the messages video stream.

The screen lit up and showed the insignia of the Goldenscars for a second, before the screen changed to display their ship's bridge.

A young officer, Rose knew that she was the weapons officer of the GOLDEN CHARIOT, sat on the captain's chair. Her usually immaculate gray uniform was crumpled and her straw blonde hair was clotted with dried red blood on one side of her head. The bridge around her showed signs of damage and Rose was sure that she could see a puddle of blood in front of the captain's chair.

The young weapons officer started to speak:

"This is Lieutenant First Class Bekker, I am in command of the ship," she took a deep labored breath," for now. We are under attack. The captain and executive officer are dead. An unknown ship jumped us only minutes after we had dropped you off on the planet. Our working theory is that it dropped out of hyperspace on the other side of the planet and started shooting immediately once it came over the horizon. We have taken heavy damage and have to withdraw."

An alert interrupted her and she looked to someone outside of the camera's field of view and said something. The alert turned off a few seconds later. We will try to reach the navy base at Tannhauser Terminus and get help." She took a deep breath, "I'm sorry. We.. I had to make the decision to leave you behind, there is no way for us to pick you up. Sorry."

She looked directly into the camera one last time and the message cut off abruptly.

Stunned silence hung over their campsite. Rose was sure that she could hear the hearts of everyone around her almost jumping at her. After a few minutes of stunned silence, with everyone staring at the dark screen, Rose opened her mouth.

"We," she began,"have no choice. We have to carry on and hope that they will return for us."

"But," Harry said very quietly with a quivering voice, "what if they didn't make it?"

"It did cut off quite abruptly," Terry interjected.

Before Rose could answer, Julie bet her to it.

"It doesn't matter. If they don't return we have to stay here and if we have to stay here we can continue our mission. Whatelse could we do? And if they return, they can just pick us up. No harm done." Terry nodded, but his eyes were glassy as he still stared at the screen. A lot of the people they had known, some of them they had even called friends, had probably died and they hadn't even noticed.

"So that's why the satellites didn't work," Freddie said matter of factly. He was staring up at the starry sky.

"What?" Harry seemed a bit confused. "Why?"

"Would you leave the devices, some enemy ship deployed, flying around up there?" Freddie pointed at the sky.

They sat in the darkness for a long time, before they slipped into their respective sleeping bags one after another. They didn't even bother to start a fire.

"Where is Freddie?"

"Huh, what?" Joana looked at Rose wearily.

"Freddie isn't here," Rose answered, while pointing at his empty sleeping bag.

"Don't know, probably just went for a walk. Had to get away from it all."

Rose looked at Joana critically for a moment and stood up again.

"You're probably right. I'll go look for him," Rose observed the others climbing out of their sleeping bags and getting dressed. Harry took off the camera from his body armor.

"Hey! What are you doing!" Rose marched over to him briskly.

"What would we need these for now? No one is gonna watch it anyway," Harry responded while holding up the camera.

"Keep it on," Rose said to him. She had dialed down her tone a bit.

"We'll stream to the receiver in the drone container. That way we can upload the material as soon as they return."

Harry looked at her hopefully. "Do you think they will return?"

"One hundred percent, Harry." She only added the 'if they made it out' in her mind, smiled at Harry optimistically and said:

"I'll go and find Freddie. The rest of you, ready your gear. I intend to get out of this forest today!"