Birdsong woke Toni from an uncomfortable sleep. Stiffly he unhugged his arms from around his rifle and took a good look at his surroundings. Not much had changed since he'd fallen asleep, except that it was presently a semi-comatose Sueli who was guarding their prisoner. Kaiser was already fully awake and smiled widely at Toni in unspoken greeting. Toni nodded in return.

He was beginning to find it difficult to dislike his prisoner.

"You awake, Toni?" Hannah asked with a smile, already on her feet as she checked her travel pack.

She and Kaiser must have common relations, he mused. He smiled in return.

"Looks like I'm the only one who wasn't. Are we eating before we're leaving? "

"We're eating like we're moving. Fast and light. Need a hand up?"

He didn't really need any assistance but accepted it anyway. He enjoyed the fleeting moment as his hand held hers.

He had a nagging suspicion that he was setting himself up for bitter disappointment in the future.

They breakfasted on what was left of their first day's combat rations; Toni had managed to hoard an energy bar and most of his milk from the day before, although he offered some of both to Kaiser just as Hannah had yesterday. Kaiser gratefully accepted, his bindings having temporarily been removed to allow him to feed himself. The remainder of his comrades contented themselves with their own leftovers, although Ray raided his second day's rations for its chocolate cake.

As soon as they were finished, the group set off in the north-westerly course they had been following over the last two days. Toni no longer knew what time it was; Ian's watch had stopped working, killed by the twin EMPs from that awful day. And so they presently had no choice but to bow to the rhythms of nature itself. Somehow that simple act of submission to the forest's biological pulse had afforded Toni a more fitful sleep than he'd enjoyed in his lifetime, in spite of the hard ground. The only hitch was the knowledge that the winds from Thaumantias' eye were not too long away.

In only five days, Capicua would find itself at the perigee of its orbit with Gliese 667C, by which time the heating desert air at the supercontinent's center would begin to rise and radiate towards the terminators. As that happened, the cooler, more humid air from the Crescent Ocean would be pulled towards the subsolar pole; the ensuing violent winds were well-known for making life difficult for any unsheltered creature. The tempest would abate as the planet swung out to its apogee and the humid air would finally condense into a dense, continent-wide cloud, and by the 26th of June the diluvian rains would begin to fall.

It was not by coincidence that MEWAC Command had timed the Wild Rose campaign when it did. No one wanted to fight in hurricane winds, much less test their Suits flotation specs in battlefield conditions. But now Toni's small troop was on the move in a deeply-furrowed forest, unprotected and with wounded among them, the plantation land having been left behind by the end of the first day's march.

"Hey, Ian. Wasn't there a road from the plantations to Lograin on the maps?" Toni asked as they marched in single file.

"Why do you want to know?" Ian inquired coldly.

"It would be nice if we could be surer about our heading, not to mention that the road will be easier to travel on."

"And risk being seen from the air? I prefer the forest, thank you. We'll just have to find another way to home in on the base."

"I –" Toni suddenly stopped in his tracks. Slowly he began to walk again, thinking with every step.

"I think I know how we might do that," he finally said before continuing. "Those comm devices we were allotted, they have a range of a couple hundred clicks. We could use them to relay our position –"

"Except they were fried by the nukes, Tones," Ray interrupted.

"Did you even read the manual, mate? They're hardened against that. Our model might not have the GPS option, but each unit has a pendant cable about two meters long, and they're interconnectable. If we link all our cables, spread them out high enough and connect them to a comm unit, I'm sure we could extend the range by a few hundred clicks!"

"Optimist," Hannah cut in.

"It might actually work, why don't we try it now," Ian said to Toni's surprise.

"Wait a second," he countered. "We're way too close to the EarthFeds for that. Right now we'll have far greater chances of betraying our position than of contacting Lograin. Besides, what would the base do even if they knew we were here? Send a rescue mission? We're only about sixty clicks from where we got our asses kicked, remember?"

Ian looked somewhat annoyed but didn't insist on the matter.

"Got our asses kicked, for sure. You know what I keep thinking about?" Ray asked.

"Getting your rifle back?" Ian ventured.

"Nah, it's in good hands so I've no worries. Listen, I was thinking about what the Screamer told us in the casern before we deployed ..."

"And what was that?" Sueli asked, apparently clueless as to what he was talking about.

"What, he didn't talk to the femmes? Guess that goes to show what he thinks of you, ha! He told us that first contact would probably only end in one of two ways: easy victory or crushing defeat. And he told us to run like hell if it was the second."

Hannah wrinkled her nose at the answer.

"I'm kind of glad he didn't visit us, then. It's not very useful advice. If you think about it, that's exactly what we did all by ourselves."

"It would have been worse if you'd stood your ground, don't you think?" Toni interjected. "Which begs the question. What happened so you ended up fighting the African? Weren't you supposed to be the rearguard?"

"We were the rearguard. And that's exactly where we were attacked. Either Davos punched through the van, or he took it out altogether, 'cause he reached us before any retreating front-liners did. And you, Toni? How did you end up fighting Kaiser here? Weren't you supposed to be retreating as well?" she inquired, entertained by his sudden apprehension.

"I, uh, had some difficulties finding the retreat axis ..."

His reply was followed by a low chuckle from Kaiser.

"Yes, Sergeant Miura, indeed you appeared to have confused west with east, for when I found you, you were quite a few kilometers in that direction ..." he declared.

"Really, Major? And just what was he doing there?" Hannah inquired in mock seriousness.

"Why, dear lady, he was trying most diligently to kill me," he laughed.

The answer seemed to take her aback, and she raised her eyebrows at Toni questioningly.

"I was lost ..." he replied in a monotone as Kaiser chuckling softly.

"Nice, Tones ..." he heard as Ray clapped him on the shoulder.

The march became silent as they fell into a routine, the terrain challenging them as they moved into a land deeply gouged with natural spillways. There were fewer trees there, the space occupied by several bush species that formed an almost impenetrable tangle in some places. Toni knew the spillway, having crossed it in the opposite direction, and he also knew that it extended for over fifty kilometers. After several failed attempts to advance over the terrain, and then along the convoluted spillways themselves, he had finally proposed that they move north until they found the trail opened up by Main Force's passage. The proposal was gladly accepted, and before long they were northbound.

The group's failed attempts to penetrate the broken land had cost them half a day, and by the time they reached the flattened ground marking Main Force's passage, the wildlife was settling in for slumber. They camped in a particularly dense clump of trees on a hill, in a location that afforded them ideal overwatch of the trail below.

Their difficult progress, along with the decision to abstain from lunch in order to preserve rations, had begun to take its toll on the group. Only Kaiser kept his spirits up, despite having no choice but to share their hunger. As the cadets nibbled on salty biscuits, drinking water instead of milk or juice so as to have something for the following morning, Kaiser spoke of Earth and of the other planets that presently harbored terrestrial life.

He spoke about the first missions to Alpha Centauri A, Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani, which had succeeded in establishing multinational colonies on Earth-like planets.

He spoke also of the second wave of colonization, initiated thirty years afterwards, when the world economy had finally begun to recover from collapse. The second wave had focused on the colonization of the more numerous Red Dwarf systems, and so Mankind had extended its influence out to Bernard's Star, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, Lacaille 9352 and Gliese 1061, All falling neatly inside a twelve light-year radius of Earth itself.

Then came the mission to Gliese 667C, the only privately-funded initiative of the lot. 667C's colonization was the most expensive to date at four Trillion Euros, having been conceived and carried out by a mega-conglomerate of Japanese, Korean and European manufacturing companies, with employees and stockholders serving as colonists.

The following centuries saw the consolidation of human presence in all locations, all under the auspices of the United Nations.

And then four hundred years ago, it had all come to an abrupt end.

A devastating war, the kind that could only arise from an exceedingly long peace, was fought between Earth's Social and Capital Blocs, and had resulted in a draw. Which was one way of stating that both had been remarkably successful in nuking each other into oblivion. The world population abruptly slimmed to a mere billion, the number eventually falling to half that in the first ten years after the exchange. There had been survivors, but the global trauma caused by war led the earthlings to focus on domestic matters over the following three centuries.

Until the planet's ultimate unification under the Earth Federation.

In a frenzy of activity, mankind reestablished contact with its colonies, extending its influence beyond the planetary surface to the Moon, then to Mars, and then finally to the remote stellar outposts.

After their meager dinner, the group agreed to password-and-counter-password procedure and settled in for the night, Toni as usual being the first to draw watch due to his injuries. As he sat there, watching Kaiser sleep and trying not to think about the throbbing pain in his arm, he felt a mild itch behind his ear. Giving the skin there a light scratch, he felt his driving patch slide easily into his hand. He held it there, noticing in satisfaction how, after six days of use, its surface was no longer sticky.

In retrospect, Hannah probably hadn't saved his life when she warned him not to remove it. Although the principal withdrawal symptoms from the patch's Clonidine component was dangerous hypertension, he had already lost so much blood that his body probably would had welcomed it. But would it have been worth the risk to find out? Probably not, he decided. Too many novice drivers had stroked out due to having removed their patches before their time. As a rule, the patch would need to be replaced by another so as to keep their Clonidine level up, or the patch would have to remain attached for another three days, releasing the drug in ever more diminutive doses to attenuate the withdrawal symptoms. He wondered how many years it would take before his brain finally adapted to Suit locomotion, thus sparing him from medication.

He wondered whether he would live that long.

They had no way to measure the passage of time, and so Toni spent much of his watch walking in circuits around the camp, having as usual found that he was unable to remain still for very long. Fifty slow circuits later, something caught his attention and he looked skywards.

His eyes saw nothing except for the treetops. His ears, however, warned him of a faint buzzing sound from the sky above them. He wondered who the drone belonged to. Remembering his binoculars, He quietly removed them from his travel pack and descended the high-ground they were camped upon until the sky opened above him. He then heard a faint percussive sound from above and found that he wouldn't need the instrument to discover its source.

High in the sky to his north-east, he made out a distant black bloom that dissipated as he observed it, and from which a long, thin trail, as delicate as one penciled by an artist, curved downwards towards the ground. As he continued to watch, the falling object disappeared into the forest, and before long his eyes were rewarded with a rising plume from the skyline.

He tried to gauge the distance with his rangefinder, but found that it was unable to measure distances beyond ten thousand meters. Mindful of his duties, he returned to the campsite and confirmed that Kaiser was still asleep. A long while passed by before Toni shook Sueli awake to be relieved.

In the following morning, Toni informed them what he had seen on his watch. An argument quickly followed.

"I told you, I didn't see any other drone!" Toni declared angrily for the second time.

"But there could have been one. Which means you could have been seen ... which means Lograin might already know where we are!" Ray exclaimed hopefully.

"There's no indication that it was on our side," Sueli retorted. "The other drone, if there was one, could have been EFF, which means you might have given us away ..."

"The way it fell made it clear it was coming from Lograin. And how many times must I say this? There was no other drone!" he huffed.

"Was it coming from Lograin, or returning from there?" Hannah asked softly, her almond eyes narrowing.

Toni hated to admit it, but he was deeply regretting having abandoned the camp at all. They were right, of course. The optics of most UAVs were quite capable of picking up his figure if it contrasted clearly enough with the background. And it had been cloudless at the time, so his shadow would have been obvious.

That was just the sort of detail that Air Recon software was designed to pick up. If the Capicuan UAVs were that good, he dreaded what capabilities the EFF drones might have.

"Alright, it is a remote possibility," he admitted, trying for some damage control. "But don't forget that our friendly UAVs were knocked out around these parts as well, and from enemy ground fire. They've got something like a laser platform that does that from a distance. But this raises the possibility that the EFF could field drones to search for us, so I suggest we move parallel to the Main Force trail instead of on it."

"Toni, that's obvious. And now we must skip breakfast and move out on the double. Right, Ian?" Hannah suggested.

The looks they were giving him were like knifes in his gut. They moved out without further delay and even Kaiser looked sullen. That shouldn't have affected Toni in the least, but somehow it did. After all, the Earthling was his Catch, and in his mind that made it almost obligatory for the man to respect him.

Their intention to move parallel to the trail proved impossible for the same reason they had searched it out in the first place. Before long the group was moving along the four meter-wide path, exposed and in a great hurry. Toni occupied the rear, trying to ignore his shame as Ian pressed on at the head of the column with Kaiser following closely behind.

As the march progressed, Hannah fell back slowly until finally she was marching beside him.

"You know, Toni ..." she mused. "If it wasn't for your occasional fuck-ups, you'd probably be a very reliable soldier."

"Yes, princess, you could be right about that ..." he answered bitingly.

She flashed him with a quick grin before continuing.

"Have you noticed anything odd between Ian and Kaiser?"

"What? Besides Ian hanging on his every word? Besides Ian insisting on personally taking him out to pee all the time? Wait, you don't think they've become ass-mates, do you?"

"Not anything like that ..." she answered vaguely. "You're a heavy sleeper, so maybe you didn't notice, but when Ian's guarding Kaiser in the night, they talk a lot. Too much. Whatever his family connections, I don't trust Ian and I don't like where this might be going ..."

"Welcome to the club ..." he began, but Hannah softly shushed him.

"Which club? Ray doesn't suspect much. Certainly Sueli doesn't either, I think. I mean, she's clever and all, but she's barely keeping up with current events."

They marched quietly for a while, scrutinizing Ian and Kaiser as they walked side-by-side.

"Talking to him about this is pointless ..." Toni finally said.

Hannah only nodded.

"My arm isn't hurting as bad as it was," he lied, "so maybe I don't need to be on first watch anymore. Ian was on last watch this morning, so he can do the first tonight and I'll go after him. Only I won't sleep while he's with Kaiser, I'll keep an eye out for an escape. You're usually before him, so on the other nights you can eyeball them after your watch. What do you think?"

She gave a slight nod and returned to her place in the line, leaving him to think dark thoughts about his senior for the remainder of the morning.

They lunched ravenously among the trees, arguing over how they would feed themselves for the remainder of their trek. The group had been traveling at a pace of about forty kilometers per day, but much of that had only been roaming. Ian estimated that it would take at least twelve days of marching before they came within pickup distance of Lograin. He also decided that whatever time was lost due to the winds could be compensated for with Toni's comm idea. Whatever happened, however, all agreed that if they didn't get free of the forests before the diluvian rains began to fall, their chances of survival would dissipate to zero.

But if they had twelve days ahead and only two days of rations left, then the obvious conclusion was that they would eventually have to forage for food. After an inconclusive debate, the discussion was postponed and they set off for the trail once more.

It proved to be a grueling afternoon. Kaiser's usual contingency of covering his head with an undershirt proved insufficient to protect against the sun's UV light, and his black bodysuit absorbed IR light as effectively as tar, slowly cooking him inside. Added to that, they soon found themselves moving along broken land. Their prisoner finally collapsed after a valiant effort, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

For the remainder of the afternoon, the group was forced to carry the earthling on their backs, the effort pushing their already taxed bodies to their limit. Toni, preparing for his pitch to do the second watch, refused to be exempted from carrying him, although he suffered greatly as a result.

Notwithstanding the need to stop occasionally to trade packs and prisoner between them, the group made good time, and by the time they were nearing the end of their day, they had cleared the spillway land and moved into the cooler, shadier forest beyond. Finding a small depression that hid them from their surroundings, the cadets settled down and began to treat their afflictions.