The day was sunny and warm. A little too warm to be walking carrying forty-kilos of gear, but still warm.

On the plus side, it wasn't raining.

On the left side of the dirt road, which at times was more pothole than road, was burnt and charred forest, with wide leaved rust colored fern fronds poking up everywhere. On the other side was the berm where the angled blade of the earth mover had pushed the excess dirt and rock when the road had been made then cleared last.

There was also a long lined of burnt out armored vehicles, some of which had plowed partway through the berm.

Beyond that was more charred forest, broken up now and then by the fallen walls of a ferrocrete building that had been been burnt till the lime had caught on fire.

Walking along the side of the berm opposite of the road were two Dra.Falten. One was in a rumpled uniform patterned in stripes of various green, unpolished heavy boots, with a hard-shell torso armor. The other was wearing a uniform that was slightly rumpled but otherwise pristine, dirty socks on her feet and a wide polished black belt around her waist. The rumpled one had their helmet hanging from their canteen, their rifle hanging down off of their shoulder from the sling, and a single bag hanging on his back from two straps and a rucksack hanging off the other shoulder and the hooks on the back of the hardshell armor. The other had two bags, both held in place by a strap over each shoulder, as well as a pistol in a holster on the belt.

The rumpled one was a male that was a foot shorter than the large female in the cleaner uniform.

"You should wear your helmet in case of a sniper," the female said.

"Then he'll just shoot me in the neck," the male said. He lifted his atmospheric mask up to his face, pressed the button on the small tank on his belt, and took a deep inhale. "Ah, that's the stuff."

"What happened here?" the female asked, pointing at the burnt out vehicles on the side of the road.

"Grenky striker ambush. Two months ago, after they finished providing security while FOB Misty Lake was being built," the male said. "Caught them in the open with their screens and anti-air down."

"Why?" she asked.

"CO decided that the chance of ambush was minimal and didn't want to put excess wear on the systems," the male shrugged. "You see it all the time. Wear on the components means the mechanics have to replace the part, which means its not deployable, which means the officer gets asked why so many of her tanks are inoperative, which means she gets yelled at."

The female frowned.

"The Grenky have been pushing pretty hard the last three months," the male said. He gave a shrug. "Probably push us and the Dommies off planet in the next year or so."

"We are the Dar.Falten Empire," the female started to say, her voice huffy.

"Captain, they outgun us, they have battlescreens on their infantry and we don't, they have battlescreens on their strikers and we don't, there's more of them, and they were preparing for this for years," the male broke in.

He jammed his hands in his pockets.

"It's just the way it is," he said, his voice low.

The female officer opened her mouth, then closed it.

After an hour or so the male sat down on the back deck of a carbonized APC hull.

"Take a break," he said.

"Don't give..." the Captain started to say.

The male was already digging in his rucksack. He pulled out two bagged meals, throwing one at the Captain.

She dropped it.

He tore his open, squinting as he looked at the labels. "Oh, score! Roasted frumfel meat with buttered popcorn stuffing!" he ripped into it and began tearing open the packets to eat with his fingers.

The female looked at hers.

Gepta Meat and Turga Nuts - Not For Officer Consumption

She looked at his.

Not for Enlisted Consumption

"Give me that," she said.

"No. You're lucky I even grabbed you food," the male said. He looked at her. "How long have you even been in country?"

"What? What does that have to do with.."

"How long?" the male asked, scooping more roasted meat and stuffing into his mouth.

"I have been here nearly a month," the female said.

"One year," the male said. He pointed the food package at the large cylindrical bag he had been carrying. "Before that, Charmeka-3. Before that: Bhrestikin-4," he said. "I got here two months after the Strevik'al jumped our settlers and our settlers jumped theirs."

He gave a snort, shoveled in another bite of food and kept talking even as he chewed.

"Turns out the Grenky settlers had false-flagged both of us," he said around a mouthful of buttered popcorn stuffing. "By the time we figured it out, the Grenkies were hitting us everywhere. I got here just in time for the New Moon Winter Offensive."

The female blinked rapidly several times.

The male took a swig off his canteen and went back to eating and talking with his mouth full.

"We were stacking bodies for sandbags, pouring water or pissing on the snow we covered them with to freeze them in ice," the male said. He tossed the wrapper away and ripped open another one. "Ooh, brownie with T-Bug chocolate chips!" he started taking bites out of it, closing his eyes and sighing as he chewed. "That was right when the Grenkies went to hvee weapons instead of their old plasma guns."

He tore open another pack, gobbling down the salad.

The female opened the main meal, flinched at the smell, then started eating petulantly.

"Busted from Operations Sergeant to Rifleman Fifth Class after the Battles of the Neufetter Eclipse," the male said. "Ordering the men to retreat from a worthless fucking hill after all the officers fucked off to the afterlife while I still had forty-percent of them almost got me summarily executed for cowardice."

The female nodded. "Was that your assigned objective? To hold that hill?"

The male nodded.

"Then I would have executed you," she stated. She put her hand on her pistol. "Why were you not?"

The male shrugged. "My endless good looks, boundless charm, and gigantic penis?" He went back to eating and after a moment stared at her. "You going to eat your food or shoot me? You need to decide on one before you can do the other, Field Captain Strechen."

The female glared for a long moment, then looked down at the meal. She ate slowly, gagging more than once on the foul taste.

The male, one Rifleman Second Class Tawtchee-9912743, took off his boots, hanging his socks from the rucksack and pulling out another pair that were warn and littered with darning patches. He wiggled his long toes for a moment then pulled on the socks and the boots.

He sighed, looking at the female's feet. "Those have to hurt."

Captain Strechen nodded.

The male sighed and got up, wandering down the line of vehicles.

"What are you doing?" the female called out.

When the male didn't answer she weighed getting up and finding out.

And maybe shooting him for disrespect.

She fantasized about that for a while, smiling to herself as she ate the disgusting food paste that passed for a meal.

The male came walking back, carrying a heat damaged rucksack that had a pair of boots hanging off of it. He bent down, measured the boots against the female's feet for a moment before she yanked her feet back, then got up and walked away again.

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"Where are you getting that?" the female asked on the fourth try.

"Tank crew storage compartments. Most of them had booze in it that exploded from the heat, some are full of melted crap, but I'm finding a ruck about every fifth one," Tawtchee said. He knelt down. "There, that one looks good."

"I'm not wearing the boots of someone who died," Strechen said, pulling her feet back again.

"Your choice," the male said. He sat down, took a few hits off of his mask, and then got up, gathering up his gear. He had pulled several field cloaks out of the packs and was busy tucking them into his own pack.

"Planet smells like ass," Tawtchee complained after another hit off his tank. He looked at Strechen. "Up you go, Captain."

"My feet hurt and I am still fatigued," she said.

"Sounds like a you problem," the male said. "I'll give you ten minutes, then I start walking."

The Captain thought for a long moment about calling the male's bluff.

She pulled on the boots, wincing at how they pinched her little toes, then stood up.

"Let's go," Tawtchee said. He started walking.

Captain Strechen ran to catch up, then started walking next to him.

He kept ignoring her questions, just steadily walking along next to the berm, skirting artillery craters now and then, but always avoiding standing on the road.

The sun was low in the sky when he finally spoke.

"Why did you choose Dead Man's Highway?" Tawtchee asked.

"The route is only a third as long as the other routes. I chose it for speed," Captain Strechen said, her voice haughty.

"Yeah, there's a reason that you shouldn't use it unless you're part of an armored convoy," Tawtchee said.

"What is that?" the Captain asked.

Tawtchee turned his head to look at her, even as he thumbed the button on the atmo cylinder to get a hit of good air. He looked around, where there were scattered burnt out vehicles on the road, then back at her.

"Guess," he said. He sighed. "Do you still have your map?"

The Captain nodded and dug it out of her pocket.

Tawtchee just grabbed it, moving over to a burnt out hovertruck that the pods were sunk into the dirt. He spread it out and looked around. He dug in a pocket and pulled out a compass/sextant combination. It was crude and lacked any electronics. He checked a crack watch, then went to work. After a minute he put a pebble on the map.

"OK, we're here," he said. He sighed. "Dead center Dead Man's Highway," he looked at her as he traced another route with his finger. "This route stays behind our lines. It's three times as long, but stays in green zones," he traced the shorter route. "This one is straight through No-Ma'am-Land."

She frowned. "Are you sure about our location?"

Tawtchee nodded. "Yes," he said. He examined the map slowly and kept looking around. Finally he tapped it. "All right, there was a small town, population two hundred, about two miles away that way," he said, pointing. "We'll go there and..."

He suddenly ducked down, grabbing the Captain's arm and yanking her down. She went to yank away then thought better of it, crouching down next to the burnt out vehicle. Tawtchee laid down and wiggled into the narrow space between the vehicle and the loose dirt, grabbing Strechen's ankle and tugging.

Making a face of disgust Strechen climbed after him, her face twisted with disgust at the dirt and grease beneath the burnt out vehicle.

There was a slight buzzing in the air that slowly got louder.

Strechen saw a small drone, roughly a meter wide, bobbing and weaving as it moved across the burnt out forest.

"Dommy drone," Tawtchee said softly. He looked at her. "Speak softly. Whispers carry."

Strechen nodded, feeling her mouth go dry.

"Looks like recon, I don't see a swarm or swarm controllers," Tawtchee said.

Strechen slowly drew her pistol.

Tawtchee grabbed her wrist. "They'll know we're here. Right now it looks like its flying on auto."

For nearly ten minutes the drone bobbed around, scanning vehicles and moving on.

"Yeah, it's using shape comparison. It's on auto," Tawtchee said, his voice strangely muffled.

Strechen looked over and realized the male was eating a salad bar.

The drone suddenly leveled out and hovered for a long moment.

"Shit, that just went to manual," Tawtchee swore.

The drone suddenly tilted to the side and raced off, gaining altitude.

"Whew," Tawtchee said. He took another bite of the salad bar, grinding the nuts on his back teeth. He looked at Strechen. "Probably the rescue party, or they spotted some Grenkies."

After about ten minutes, the whole time Strechen stared out at the burnt woodline, Tawtchee kicked her foot with his own.

"Let's go. We need to make it to whatever's left of the village," Tawtchee said.

"But rescue could come along..." Strechen said.

"You really want to ride in a vehicle?" Tawtchee asked, waving at the burnt out lines of vehicles, some Strevik'al, some Dra.Falten, and a few Grenklakail.

She stared for a moment, then shook her head.

"Good choice. We'll take you to see the elephant yet," Tawtchee mumbled. He handed her one of the field cloaks. "Here, wear this," he said.

She sniffed and flinched. "That smells terrible."

"Drones don't go off smell," Tawtchee said. He shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Strechen watched him arrange the field cloak over the gear on his back, then wrap two around his torso that were slightly too big for him. He tucked in the excess to his belt in a single fold, then looked at Strechen.

She pulled the cloak around herself, internally cringing at the smell of rotted and burnt meat.

The hike was long, several times the pair had to duck down and pulled the face shield across the hood. Clouds were moving in, heavy dark clouds holding a hint of poison from the runoff from destroyed factories.

"Acid rain tonight," was all Tawtchee grunted.

Finally, they reached the settlement. It was almost dark, the shadows long and deep, when Strechen realized that they were almost to a wall.

When it came out of the shadows, she almost groaned in frustration.

There was just a fifteen foot length of wall, with two windows, that didn't meet other walls at corners. It was blackened by old scorch marks and soot.

"Stay. Here," Tawtchee said softly but forcefully.

Strechen was took fatigued to argue as the smaller male vanished into the shadows. She stretched out her legs, trying to forestall cramps, then sat down on a rock and waited.

The male came out of the shadows, not from where Strechen had expected, which would have been the way he'd gone, but instead on her right.

She hoped he hadn't noticed that he had scared her.

"Clear," he said softly. "Found a good spot. Second story floor didn't collapse all the way. We've got a little spot with a roof, almost four walls, and some carpet so we aren't sleeping on the dirt. It's a good spot."

"How do you know it's a good spot?" she asked, following him.

"Others have used it. Probably deserters," Tawtchee said.

Strechen said nothing, despite her hackles raising at the idea of someone abandoning their duty to the Empire, following the smaller male. They had to almost crawl through some fallen rubble.

It was a small area, barely eight feet by six feet. There was layers of carpet on the floor.

"Way of Means Sucks" and "Means of Way Bites Bad Popcorn" were scratched into the walls. "Screw the Emperor!" was written in Grenky runes. "I was here. Now you are. We are both in Hell" was written in Dommy script.

"Get some sleep," Tawtchee said. "If we leave just after dawn, we should make our lines by just after lunch."

Strechen wanted to argue, but just leaning back against her duffle made her eyes heavy.

She just nodded.

After a few moments she went to sleep.

She woke up to the male climbing on top of her, one hand groping her, the other hand holding her muzzle shut. She struggled and wiggled and he slapped her.

"Dammit, hold still," he grunted. He felt up her chest and suddenly pulled back.

She could faintly see him, a pinlight on the ceiling providing just enough light.

"Stupid slag," he grunted. "Brain shot officer dipshit."

He pulled a knife from his mouth and brought it down to her chest. She felt him cut something off of her harness. He held it up.

"Fucking idiot."

It was her personal transponder.

"Your beacon? You've had it on? Really?" he snarled. He wiggled off her, moving to the gap that was now covered by an extra cloak. He grabbed his rifle and kicked his way out.

After a moment she followed.

He was crouched down, barely visible, wrapped in his cloaks, looking down at the single street. He was on a second story floor that ended in empty air, the wall missing. She scrabbled up the debris to crouch down next to him, holding her cloak tightly around yourself.

"Where are you... where are you... where..." the male was saying, his face hidden behind the face cloth.

She pulled her own cloth over her breathing mask.

"There," he said softly. He set her officer's transponder, now wrapped in the foil packet a meal normally came in, on the shattered tile and pulled a grenade off his harness. He quickly taped them together. "Please tell me momma isn't here."

She frowned, looking out.

She couldn't see anything.

"What is it?" she said softly.

"Mole rat. Grenky make. Shit, they lost control of them months ago," he said. He pointed. "By the pile of blue tiles."

She frowned, rubbing the stud on her face cloth, switching from ambient light to IR then UV then back to enhanced ambient light.

Captain Strechen saw it right when it poked its head out of the dirt of a crater in the tarmac road.

It looked like a mechanical rat without any fur or casing.

It immediately looked at where she was crouched down next to Tawtchee and wriggled out of the dirt, hopping forward rapidly.

The IR sensors pinged as it scanned the pair crouched down. It shook itself and tried again.

"It can't see us because of the cloaks. It can't home in on the beacon because of the foil," Tawtchee said. "Let's see what happens next."

A part of the tarmac suddenly cracked and lifted.

"Aw, crap. Big momma," Tawtchee said. He patted himself, pulling out a grenade and looking at it. "Frag. Dammit," he looked at her. "Stay here, and for the love of buttered popcorn, don't help me."

What revealed itself was a large cone with eight legs. It had treads embedded in the body, only the cleats clear of the shell. As she watched it extended almost a dozen tendrils around the widest part of the cone, irises opening up to reveal lenses as it began looking around.

The smaller one ran up, extended a 'tongue' that tapped a nodule. The nodule opened up and the smaller one plugged itself into the revealed socket.

Strechen looked around.

Tawtchee was nowhere to be seen.

Two others ran out of the shadows, copying the first one.

The big one slowly turned in a circle, the articulated spidery looking legs clicking on the broken tarmac.

It suddenly raised up, the tendrils extending out. The end of the cone suddenly irised open, revealing grinders, blades, and rock crushers, all lit by a sullen red light from further into the meter long cone.

Something arced out of the darkness, landing in front of the big one.

It shrieked and charged forward, lowering the opening and scooping up dirt and the object.

A second later there was an explosion that consumed the conical mechanical monstrosity and sent robotic parts showering across the street.

She stayed silent, crouched down on the ruined floor.

A tap to her boot made her jerk around.

Tawtchee motioned at her.

"Come on," he said.

She followed him back to the little nest.

"What was that?" she asked.

"Grenky mole rat. Autonomous subterranean killer drones," Tawtchee said. "The Grenkies used them heavily in the beginning but lost control of them about five months ago. You doni't see them often, they usually haunt out of the way places. Like this one. Now they just kill whoever they find," he patted his rifle. "They want your gear. Electronics, batteries, e-clips, whatever."

"Can't they shut them down?" Strechen asked.

Tawtchee shook his head. "No. They lost control," he wave his hand to encompass outside. "It's a Pratty-Chan Very Special Shit Show."

Strechen frowned at the mention of the animated AI avatar that haunted Dra.Net.

"You don't have another beacon on you, do you?" Tawtchee asked.

"No," Strechen said.

"Good. Your turn for guard," he waved at a small piece of thermal/EM camo tacked on the wall. "There's a viewport behind that."

He laid down and turned away from Strechen, his rifle held between his knees, barrel pointed downward, butt plate up by his chin.

"Try not to shoot yourself in the dick."