They encountered no further patrols and reached the outpost before evening fell. Outpost 13 was a smaller mound that had been subjugated not long ago. It was wedge-shaped, far taller than it was wide, with short stumps of feeder towers running down its spine. It was cement grey rather than the virulent black of Mound Euler, and stood like the ominous gravestone of some forgotten giant, crumbling away in a backwoods cemetery, cratered and pockmarked by scores of holes where shells and grapeshot had impacted.

Rene had been part of sieges before, as an ammo hopper in the artillery, and he could well imagine how costly this one had been. The unique shape of the mound would have meant that any advances would have been focused along a brutal, narrow front, where any advantage in numbers enjoyed by the attackers would have been negated. Usually a mound had several entrances through which one could spearhead an assault, pouring into the tunnels from a dozen different directions, but that hadn’t been the case here. Given the smaller population of the Amits, they had only ever needed to construct one gate. He shuddered to imagine the relentless carnage of such a battle, with men and Amits both pouring their numbers into a slaughter of single-minded purpose. He wondered how they had ever managed to take this place, until he saw the segment of the eastern wall that had collapsed entirely. It would have taken a great deal of ordinance to crack open. Even from a distance the walls appeared thick and imposing. He imagined entire weeks spent pounding the place into submission with mortars and heavy canon, engineers making combat runs to find lines of weakness, then directing their fire to hammer home relentlessly on these until finally the place had given way, collapsing all at once in a great thundering sheet of shattered stone. Even now he could see the cross-section of the mound exposed in all its beehive complexity. Amits in their thousands must have spilled out from such a wreckage, cringing at the sudden light of the suns piercing their dark abodes. Then infantry would have poured through, putting them to the bayonet before they could wriggle themselves free of the debris.

It would have been a bloody affair, and he wondered why he had never heard of such an action taking place.

Since then the current occupants had shored up their defenses. Wooden scaffolding spanned the areas of worst damage, brick and mortar replacing the crumbling dolomite. A feeder tower with cracks running down its length had been converted into a commanding keep from which the maws of several cannon peeked out, covering the approaches from either flank. Stout palisades now ringed the outer defenses, constructed in dog-toothed patterns to break the impact of a charge and provide overlapping fields of fire.

They came up to the main road. Along this at regular intervals stakes had been pounded into the ground, onto which the skins of dead Amits had been impaled, desiccated scales rustling in the wind. These grisly trophies dotted the area for several miles around. It served to inform Amits of other broods who might think to try and claim the mound that the place was now occupied by dangerous predators. Once a month a scent detail would make the rounds, splashing over the ground buckets of sharp, pungent death-warning-fear pheromones extracted from dead Amits.

At the palisades they were challenged by a man wearing a steel shod helmet. He saluted them and asked:

“Names and purpose, please.”

“Sollem Deschane, 3rd Pathfinder Regiment, Navigator. This is Ensign Rene, my assistant. We've just completed out mission and are here to give an urgent report.”

The man peered down at them, saw a pair of disheveled, exhausted men, blood smearing the insides of their sealant suits, with barely enough strength left to stand. He saw the tattered stripes on Deschanes shoulder pad, immediately saluted once more with a clatter of body armor, shouting:

“Aye, sir! Open the gate! We need medical corpsmen here!”

The relief was almost unbearable. The gate unlatched and men rushed to help them as they sank to their knees in the mud, finally safe.

“Don’t know about any mission, but you look to be in an awful state,’ the man said, “How’d the two of you made it this far on your own?”

“There were more of us yesterday,” Rene said heavily.

“Who is the ranking officer here?" said Deschane, doggedly getting back to his feet.

“Admiral Prota, sir.” said another trooper.

“Take me to him. With dispatch!”

They were half guided, half carried to the pressure gate, a broad circle of steel that hissed as the airlock within equalized with the outside. The entrance was on the northern edge of the wedge, where it protruded forward at a height of several stories from a barbican. Broad bolts thick as a man’s arm slid back and allowed them in. As it closed behind them and the chamber depressurized once more, men in full cleaning gear came and emptied buckets of decontamination fluid onto their sealant suits, scrubbing them with long handled brushes. A second batch of cleaners peeled off their masks and sealant suits, and for the first time in four days they felt fresh air make contact with their skin. The second door opened, and they entered Outpost Euclid.

The mounds were one of the few places where one could breathe freely without the cloying restriction of a valve. In the natural pockets of stale air that permeated the cave systems, mankind clawed its way to a continued existence. Great turbine fans turning endlessly in the feeder towers served to regulate the air flow and internal pressure, powered by the underground rivers percolating through the layers of soft stone. Without a contained, self-regulating environment and machines to purify the dwelling place a man would die within days, convulsing as the neurons of his brain fired in vain in an atmosphere oversaturated with oxygen.

Mound 13 was a young settlement, only possessing the most basic necessities. Rows of braziers hung from every doorway, framing passing faces in flickering orange light. Stacks of crates and supplies lined the corridors, bales of wire, nails and planks of rough wood littered the floor.

A small crowd had gathered by the entrance, led by a middle-aged woman in medical fatigues. At her signal several attendants bustled forward with stretchers. Deschane sent them back with a scathing look. He looked the woman up and down, and his jaw muscles twitched. If the woman saw this, she gave no sign of offense.

“Well met, lord navigator,” she began, “This way to the hospital ward, if you please.”

“Later,” he snapped, “Where is Admiral Prota? I was told he was in command here.”

“Sir, your medical situation takes precedence. Your wounds are quite serious.”

“Pardon me, but to the void with my medical condition. Madame, I’ve come a very long way to deliver a missive of the utmost importance, and I will not be put aside until I’ve had my say.”

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The woman’s eyes narrowed.

“Please don’t be difficult.”

“Difficult? If I don’t see him within a minute from now, I’ll show you precisely how difficult I can be. Respectfully of course, madame.” he said, in a tone that was anything but.

“It’s possible your eyesight might have been affected by recent trauma to the head. Not to mention whatever region of the brain that handles basic etiquette.”

She brought out from her field pouch a strip of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic solution, and came forward to clean his face. In the dim light of the flames Rene caught a glimpse of the pendant hanging around her neck, a thin blue rectangular wafer fashioned from some unearthly glass. Rene drew breath: she was an officer of the 2nd Command Echelon, almost the highest station in existence. The pendant was her seal of command, a relic passed down generations beyond count. It swung on its leather thong, caught the torchlight and broke it into a thousand points of light.

“Away with that, woman, or by the ancestors I’ll-”

“Sir.” Rene said quickly, with concern.

“Its Rear-Admiral Prota, actually. And it certainly isn’t ‘woman’.”

Deschane blinked, realizing the magnitude of his error. Despite himself, Rene hid a smile behind his hand.

“I must apologize. I presumed-”

“Yes, of course. Now, before I cite you for an infraction, would you kindly come this way? You can debrief me while we stitch your head back together.”

Deschane nodded with reluctance. They allowed themselves to be led away. As they walked it became apparent that the scars of war still lay thick upon the place. The walls were dotted by bullet holes and oddly warped surfaces where streaks of acid had been sprayed to dissolve both stone and attackers alike. Once they even saw the outline of a man, the moment of his death forever etched into the ageless calcite. From the cave entrances sets of shattered columns jutted like broken teeth, reminding them of the storm of violence that had once ripped through the place.

Despite all this, Mound 13 was beautiful. Its spare halls possessed a natural symmetry and decidedly pleasing dimensions that were out of place in a newly conquered mound. All around them, workers bustled about, busy making renovations that would eventually make the place home.

“As you can see, we’ve been rather busy around here,” explained Admiral Prota, “There’s much to do, and not enough people to do it. Why, we haven’t even explored the entirety of the natural cave system yet, not to mention all the segments the Amit added. There’s talk of us being made into a full settlement someday, but of course that isn’t possible, given the nature of our work here.”

“Your work?”

“I’d explain, but you’re losing far too much blood.”

The massive cut across the top of his head had resumed its slow red trickle. Deschane wiped his face and winced as his scalp stretched.

They went into a wide, well-lit room and Rene’s eyes widened. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Above them yawned three massive domes of the purest blue marble, like those of a great basilica, held aloft by elegant pillars and jagged friezes that overflowed like molten candlewax.

Every surface was pockmarked by endless tessellations, countless branching forms and geometric shapes that merged one into the other in pleasing harmony. But what really stood out were the stars.

The tip of every stalactite shone as a thimbleful of water gathered. For a long moment, before gravity took precedence, they hung suspended in all their adamantine brilliance, before the illusion ended, and they flashed downward in lightning streaks of silver.

“Nice, isn’t it?” said Prota, noting his reaction.

“You’ve done magnificent work here madame.”

“Oh, but I can’t take credit for that. None of us can really.”

Rene frowned at this curious remark. He had never seen such a formation, not in all his lifetime spent beneath the ground. At first glance he had marveled at the hands and minds of those whose craft had shaped the place. But now he remembered that there was no way the working crews could have completed such a thing within a few weeks. He put it down as just another one of nature’s novelties.

At the end of the hallway men with picks carefully chipped away at a section of collapsed tunnel, supervised by an engineer.

“What’s behind that?” he asked eagerly.

“One of the sloping tunnels that run beneath the eastern segment where the collateral damage was greatest. We have yet to uncover most of them, but the engineers assure me that beyond this obstruction the tunnel ceilings remain intact. We’d try explosives but we’re afraid the whole place would come crashing down about our ears.”

They entered a small side chamber attached to the basilica, where cots had been arranged for them to sit upon. A medical orderly stood ready to receive them, needle and thread in hand. Deschane sat, wincing as they jabbed at his opened head wound, and delivered his report. Prota stood and occasionally nodded her head, her face devoid of emotion. Until, that is, they stated their estimation of the size of Mound Euler. Then she looked up sharply, asked:

“How large did you say?”

“Ensign, if you please.”

Rene produced the map.

“Madame, around here is where the primary towers are. The new cluster of secondary feeder towers were here. Assuming that the mound is of the usual ovoid shape, and that it’s major axis stretches between these two points, this would be its approximate size.”

He drew the outline with his finger.

“But that would make it-”

“Exactly. Greater than all our core settlements combined. And so,” concluded Deschane, “Given the magnitude of this threat, admiral, I must respectfully request that you evacuate Outpost 13 as soon as possible.”

“I understand. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. You are to be praised for having made it here in one piece. Both of you,” she added, nodding at Rene, who was surprised to be acknowledged.

“But you must understand,” she continued with a set look on her weathered face, “Retreat is not an option for us here at 13.”

Deschane sat up.

“It is not cowardice to withdraw in the face of certain annihilation.”

“Bravery has nothing to do with it. I suppose I had better tell you. I owe it to you for the men you’ve lost, if nothing else,” she sighed. “Navigator, why do you think Command sent you on your mission?”

Deschane shrugged.

“Overpopulation. Settlements Yohan and Gaus are at maximum capacity. The others will reach theirs soon enough.”

“No. Population factors alone do not warrant full-scale invasion of a large mound. It is too costly, and command does not waste lives when there is little of strategic value to be gained. And there is nothing around here worth the misery of claiming it.”

“Except for Mound 13,” said Rene.

“Correct.” She nodded with approval. “You catch on quick.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Navigator, your men died to keep 13 secure. This small mound is the sole reason that Command wants to push north.”

“But why?”

“As you may have guessed, your operation was the first step towards a wider offensive. To claim this mound permanently we must seize control of all surrounding areas, even if it risks aggravating the enemy into surface skirmishes.”

“Madame, what makes you think that they would confine themselves above the ground?”

She persisted, “Even so. 13 is too valuable to lose.”

“But why?” Rene broke in.

“Tell me ensign, how long have you fought the enemy?”

“All my life. Ever since they found a sealant suit that could fit me.”

“What is your opinion of their intelligence?”

They could adapt to situations and plan with meticulous attention to detail. They made tools, fashioning stone into lethal axes and spear heads. They were capable of highly effective communication, both tactile and pheromonal. They built labyrinthine structures that dwarfed any that man could make.

“They’re clever. Given time, they eventually learn. It makes them very hard to kill,” he said finally.

“But would you say they are sapient?”

He thought for a moment.

“No.”

“Really? Above all else, the Amit display an unwavering hatred of all things human. That they can commit themselves to the utter eradication of an entire species outside of their natural food chain is a clear indication of abstract thought, yes?”

“Forgive me, but what does this have to do with the deaths of my men?”

“That chamber of stars behind you?” she paused, a smile playing over her face, “For that’s what it is, I’m sure you had a similar impression. It isn’t natural. We certainly didn’t make it. They did, though why we are still struggling to guess.”

The orderly finished his work. They stood and returned to the star chamber, gazing about in wonder and confusion.

“All through the past year we have been rebuilding and cataloguing items of interest. Beginning to piece together the connotations of this place. What we have here is the first veritable proof of the Amit race possessing a culture.”