“Are you still sure we’re headed the right way?” Ayna asked.

“I am still sure,” Saketa told her.

She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t feel like going through the process of trying to make someone understand the things that her people knew through ancient culture. Language was insufficient for explaining the way the planet’s energies flowed, and how her hard-earned radar sensed the corrupted funnel they were being passed into.

She mostly kept her eyes closed, trying to feel out the fight ahead as the hours passed. She’d been trained to find calm even when surrounded by noise and chaos, but she was weakened and there was a lot of noise in the crowded car. At least she could allow her body some rest, and so she mostly sat still and waited.

The train stopped in town, saw off some passengers and took in new ones, and then kept on going. The sun vanished into the horizon and the planet’s collective angst got steadily more intense. News was travelling, and so was the Sixth. People knew what was coming, and no matter how precise or restrained the Alliance might allow themselves to be, there would be civilian casualties.

There was another stop, and at the third one she opened her eyes. She didn’t have much of a vantage point to take the population centre in, but even so she noticed the sparse lighting, and the scorched foundations where a couple of houses had recently stood. She closed her eyes again, but of course didn’t need them to hear the battleships roaring by.

“Are you picking any of this up?” Vanaka asked Fredrak as the train started up again, with a fresh supply of high-strung and gossipy natives.

“The fleet is almost within range,” Fredrak replied. “The exchange is almost upon us. The rest is just guesswork and fear.”

“Aren’t there shelters?” Ayna asked. “I think I caught something about underground shelters. I’m just thinking of… uh… afterwards.”

“There are shelters, yes,” the agent replied. “But they are most likely already full. The wilderness may be the safest place right now.”

Afterwards. After the Exile lay dead, and hopefully the Alliance would move in to take the planet. Saketa didn’t dare think about it. She just looked ahead. To the west. To the fight.

She could tell when the shooting started. The effects rippled through the waves, like a slow-moving chill passing through a body. The shouted voices in the car came a few seconds later, as the news travelled all across Ciinto Res via electronics.

“It has begun,” Fredrak said somberly.

The train went through a long stretch with no stop; no new people and nothing to break up the simmering tension building up amidst the wound-up passengers. And it was on this stretch that the battle could first be seen with the naked eye.

The passengers pushed for the windows in a chaotic mess, and some of them yelped or shouted out loud. Saketa felt and heard her companions turn in their seats, and with some reluctance she opened her eyes and took a look for herself.

The sky was virtually cloudless and most of the stars were out, shining brightly against a deep blue background. The blasts could be glimpsed in between them, like little winks. It was all much too far away for any noise to reach the ground, and without context it would have looked beautiful. Like a far-off celebration. But this was the initial battle with the orbiting platforms. The ground-based cannons stayed silent; the Sixth was still out of their range.

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Even so, an explosion briefly lit up the night-shrouded plain, in a population centre of some sort. It hadn’t been an incoming shot. It had been a detonation. Whether it was a sleeper cell of Alliance saboteurs or simply a local resistance, the time to strike was now. There would be more of these, all over Ciinto Res, wherever people had the will, daring and equipment to trip up the occupiers.

Fortune to you, warriors.

Losan looked grim and Fredrak looked calculating, exactly as Saketa had come to expect of them. Vanaka looked quietly frightened, and Ayna seemed on the edge of disbelief at what she’d gotten herself into.

“Focus on your bodies,” Saketa said, as she turned back around and closed her eyes.

“What?” Ayna said.

“Focus on your bodies. Measure your breaths. Think about the feel of your seat, your clothes, the state of your limbs. Ground yourselves in the physical, lest your minds spin off on their own.”

“There’s an idea,” Vanaka mumbled.

The general chatter died down to a significant degree, now that everyone had a spectacle to occupy themselves. Of course, the waves had nothing to do with noise, and their intensity only grew. It all felt quite familiar.

Saketa didn’t keep track of time, but she guessed it might have been two more hours before the train finally slowed down for a stop. They were at the end of the line, but not far enough.

There was no point in trying to rush for the door. The crush of people had to have its way, and so Saketa simply waited for them to shuffle out onto the platform, and so did the others.

It was another city, or town, whichever it was. The lighting was too limited to give it away. Saketa’s only concerns were the connecting train further into the west, and the team of armed soldiers.

They wore a variation of the Authority uniform. Local recruits, most likely. And they were confronting passengers as they flowed across the platform, slowing them down with angrily-shouted orders and brief stops.

She couldn’t tell what they wanted, and got something of an impression that they weren’t sure themselves. It looked more like they were trying to seize some measure of control in a dire situation, by searching for enemies.

Fredrak took the lead and approached the soldiers, looking bent over, exhausted and strung out. He babbled in the local tongue, and to Saketa’s ears at least he seemed to manage the accent, as well as the semi-panicked demeanour.

Whatever he said, the soldiers seemed content to let him pass, and the group followed closely on his heels.

Between the platforms was a utility area that, among other things, sported a digital map setup. Saketa accessed one, and was grateful to find it user-friendly enough to compensate for her technological blind spots.

Close as she was now, she could decide on the train they needed to reach the Exile and his place of power. The track came to a stop on the outskirts of a minor city, and the distance matched what her senses were telling her.

“This is it,” she said to Fredrak. “It is… is the train taking off soon?”

The man ran his hands over the controls for a few seconds, then pointed to the third train over.

“It’s that one,” he said. “I think it’s…”

He fell silent and listened to the announcements coming from a speaker system. It was live, not a recording or a computer voice, as evidenced by the stops and hesitation. Some train yard employee was every bit as nerve-wracked as everyone else.

“Yes. It seems they will be taking off in a few minutes.”

“People want to reach their families,” Losan mused quietly.

“Go ahead,” Saketa said. “I will catch right up.”

They did go, joining up with the messy line that was forming. Saketa found the backwards function and returned to the map of the city. She even found a translation switch, and discovered that its name was Unnu. A bit of fumbling allowed her to switch from a view simply of streets and other travel routes, and to a view of the city itself.

Her attention was swiftly drawn to a significant open space, close to the outskirts. Sitting in its centre was an odd tower, made of hewn rocks arranged in increasingly smaller floors as it rose to the sky. It was old, weathered and much repaired, showing signs of different eras of building styles. It no doubt held a significant place in local culture, and Saketa knew she’d found her battlefield.

This was the place of power, where the future would be decided, and the screen even gave it a name: The Tower of Kanato.

With that in place, she hurried on after the others.