---Esme’s perspective---

---Wednesday, 2nd of January, 2685 Terran Calendar---

---Central Pangaea, New Australia---

I walk at the front of the column, behind only Jurrah himself.

We soldiers are slightly outnumbered by his partisans.

They’re mostly sapiens with a brother and sister pair of Denisovans and a single Kangaroo uplift who’s definitely suffering from the slow, clambering movement we’re undergoing.

I remember Oskar explaining that kangaroos actually use less energy when bounding than not as we watched a mob of them hopping along the arid plains of Sahul, on our first survival excursion.

Of course, even if we weren’t moving over terrain that would make bounding a challenge, it’s just too eye catching a movement, too likely to get us all spotted.

“Sooo…” I start, causing the partisan leader to turn his head partway back as he walks “…your grandson’s parents are…?”

“Dead…” he interrupts matter-of-factly “…my daughter and son-in-law sent him out to stay with me a few weeks before the invasion… Thought they were being fraidy-cats at the time… I’m glad they had more sense than me or Steve’d’ve died when New Brisbane was bombarded…”

“I’m… extremely sorry to hear that, Sir.”

He shrugs “That’s War… I’m sure you’ve lost folk too…?”

I hesitate a moment before answering “I… have…”

“Pretty much a universal part of the Terran experience, these days… You’d have to be either the jammiest bastard to ever live or the loneliest to not have lost any mates or rellies this far into the War!”

“I guess so…” I grimace.

“Still… I’ve got Steve… I’ve got my Band…” he gestures vaguely back to the unarmoured people clambering through the red rocky mountain crag behind us “…no point in whinging…”

I smile, invisibly, beneath my helmet.

We reach the mouth of this mountaintop crevasse and the man stops, pointing downhill.

“There it is…”

I look to see the compound.

I saw the footage from the reconnaissance drone but… something about seeing it in person brings home just how shoddily it’s designed!

Even being a Soldier, I’d consider myself a relative layperson in the art of fortress construction! Despite that, I think I could do a better job than whoever laid out that depot!

The main thing it has going for it in terms of defence is the inaccessibility of its location!

The walls are flat and vertical (terrible for deflecting artillery impacts) and the corners are just simple right-angles in the wall with no extra fortification!

There are autonomous gun turrets on the roof but they’ve got blindspots so obvious a child could work them out!

I suppose, a side effect of a million years of barely interrupted peace is that the xenos have no idea how to design for War!

I signal my subordinates to form up and begin outlining the plan of attack, one last time.

---later---

I’m sprinting toward the walls, my men and women spread out to minimise the effect of the screaming machinegun turrets pointed at us.

The wind is knocked out of me as a heavy projectile impacts my front and transfers a large portion of it’s momentum through my armour into my diaphragm.

I’m momentarily unable to breathe but adrenaline keeps me going!

This pain is nothing compared to childbirth(!)

We reach the walls and gather in the blindspot that I identified as our entry point.

“Breach!” I try to shout, my voice hoarse from my lungs being partly empty.

Nevertheless, Cook and Evans immediately follow my command, igniting their plasmaswords and, in unison, plunging the roaring blades into the wall and carving a door.

Richards then sprints at the hatch, outlined in molten rock, and shoulder barges into it, causing the inordinately heavy looking piece to collapse inward, in a cloud of dust.

I’m the first in after the ox of a man.

The xenos inside have been instantly thrown into chaos by the attack.

Even still, I feel my body be buffeted about as some of the more levelheaded of them aim pulseweaponry at me.

I charge the nearest one and backhand him with enough momentum to bring his feet off the ground! While he’s still in the air, I bring my rifle butt to his chest and slam him to the floor with sufficient force to crush his ribcage, killing him instantly.

All around me, the noise of gunfire, laserfire and kinetics sound, along with the heavy impacts of hand to hand.

The din rapidly falls silent as all resistance is overcome.

I begin giving orders “Alright, move quickly! Reinforcements are probably already inbound! Deactivate the gun turrets to let the partisans in! Grab whatever looks high calorie! Good rule of thumb, the denser it feels, the more likely it is to be nutritious! Everything else, pile up here, ready to be burned…”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A few minutes pass as we begin sorting the stuff we want to take from the stuff we’re going to burn.

I’m about to go and signal to the partisans to move in when I hear a voice I shouldn’t be hearing right now “Lieutenant!”

I turn to see the unarmoured old man, panting heavily and leaning on his twisted staff.

“Mr Jurrah!? I told you to wait outside until we gave you the all clear! How did you know you could even get in here without being shot?!” I ask, incredulously.

“Not important!… Ships incoming!” he pants, breathlessly, pointing to his right.

I stride to the doorway carved by my subordinates and look where he’s pointing.

What I see is stomach dropping; sleek, predatory looking craft, designed with an artistry uncommon among nonTerrans… flying towards us with unnerving speed.

“New plan…” I shout, causing every soldier to stop where they are “…grab the most appealing looking box in arm’s reach and bolt back for cover!”

It takes around thirty seconds for everyone to have grabbed a package and made it back through the breach.

“Pvt Richards…” I say, pulling aside the hulking man “…keep yourself between those ships and Mr Jurrah as you run back!”

He nods his helmet in response and takes the partisan by the shoulder.

The last in the depot, I take out my sword and ignite it.

I make a lap of the small fortress, touching the screaming blade to each pile of goods in turn.

The room is already engulfed in flames by the time I make it back to the breach.

Richards and Jurrah are taking up the rear, 200m or so ahead of me.

I sprint to catch them up.

---Hsisak’s perspective---

Annoyingly, we aren’t going to make it there before the Terrans escape.

At this range, our shipmounted guns would be entirely ineffectual against their armour.

There’s already a huge plume of smoke rising from the depot they struck, we’re simply too late!

Then, I notice something…

The long range telemetry is showing one figure who doesn’t look like the others…

I turn my head back to point my sense pits at the screen.

Yeeeees… The body is mostly obscured by the large one at the back… but unmistakably, those are hot legs that belong to a warmblooded creature not clad in metal.

The unarmoured one’s face becomes visible around the large one’s chest for a length of time too short for me to perceive but long enough for the ship to identify him as a local insurgency cell leader…

My forked tongue flicks out of my mouth, excitedly trying to taste for the prey that my instincts have no way of knowing is far too far for me to detect on the air.

I direct the targeting reticle to the obscured insurgent.

Perhaps this mission won’t be a total bust!

---Steve’s perspective---

I’m in a little mountaintop hollow that’ll obviously’ve been where everyone slept last night.

That bloody soldier woman had some fucking nerve, telling Grandad I couldn’t come!

Well how’s this lady!?

Here I am! Ready to help carry back the loot!

Complain if you want! I don’t give a damn what wankers with no respect say about me!

The band know I’m not some little kid! That’s all that matters!

I’ve lived almost half my life in the bush!

Spent that entire time learning how to survive from Grandad!

That poncy soldier lady with the funny accent just shows up and acts like she can give me orders!?

Right then, my stewing is cut off by the sound of footsteps.

I stand up, looking excitedly down the narrow gulley in the rock where the first soldiers and bandmates start appearing.

My face falls as I realise something’s not right…

Only the soldiers are carrying stuff… and every visible face looks really sad…

There’s no way that none of them’ve noticed me (can’t speak for the soldiers but partisans are pretty hot shit about noticing things like that) but no one’s meeting my eyes…

Then, I smile as I see a familiar stick of twisted, red wood appear at the back of the troop.

Grandad’ll be able to… Wait… that’s not Grandad…

Why would he have given his stick to the soldier lady?

I lean side to side, seeing if I can spot him behind her… He’s not there…

The woman spots me and, instead of angrily shouting at me for following, she just silently walks towards me.

She holds out the rod towards me.

“I’m sorry, lad…” she says in her weird accent.

The bottom falls out of my stomach and my mind begins working so fast that I can’t keep up with it.

I manage to ask “What… do… you… mean… you’re sorry!?”

Seriously, she says “…Your grandad… he didn’t…”

“Didn’t what?! Where IS he!?!?!?” I snarl, already knowing, trying and failing to keep my breathing under control and the tears from stinging my eyes.

“He didn’t make it, lad…” she says, turning her face down in shame.

“He’s dead?!” I ask, desperately trying to keep the shuddering sobs out of my voice.

She nods.

I shake my head, willing it not to be true, looking around for him like he might spring out and reveal it was all a joke!

“Nah… nah, nah, nah, nah… NO… You don’t know him! He’s still alive! We’ve gotta go back for him! We’ve gotta…!” I begin walking forward but I feel a hand on my shoulder.

I turn to look up into Drid’s grey eyes.

The Denisovan woman pulls me into a hug and sobs “I’m so sorry, Steve… but there was no surviving what happened to him… Yarran’s gone… You’ll only get yourself killed going back for him…”

The world goes out of focus as I absorb what she said.

My vision is blurry, sounds feel distant, my chest feels like it’s being crushed under the weight of a hundred tonnes of sand…

Then I snap back to myself.

I push off Drid’s arms and wheel on the soldier.

Tears spill down my cheeks as I stamp towards her, my face twisted into a furious mask.

“This is YOUR fault!!!” I yell, pushing her and barely even noticing the childish way my voice cracks that would normally make me incredibly selfconscious.

The armour clad woman is so heavy that she barely even reacts to my full body shove

“Steve…!” objects Drid, weakly.

Ignoring her, I keep shouting at the helmeted woman “Ain’t you here to protect us?!?!?! Why did you even fuckin’ COME here, if not!?… Some soldier you are, makin’ an old man die to protect you!!!”

She doesn’t react to my shouting and shoving except by holding her gun and my grandad’s staff out of the way, opening up her armoured body to my rubbish attacks!

Here, a giant, armoured man cuts in in a deep, monotone “It wasn’t her fault, kid… it was mine…”

“Richards… shut up…” says the woman, sounding like she’s speaking through gritted teeth.

The man, Richards, keeps going “She ordered me to act as his shield… placing myself between him and the enemy… I failed… I’m sorry…”

“Oh… well, if you’re ‘sorry’, that makes it all OK, don’t it(!) THAT brings my grandad back(!)” I half laugh, half sob “You’ve got yours and we get bugger all ’cept one of ours dead!!!” I say, pointing around to the boxes only the soldiers carry.

The woman steps forward, shaking her head, her hand raised “We didn’t get as much as we’d’ve liked… but we’ve already agreed to split what we got with your band…”

“Great(!)” I scowl “I’m sure whatever biscuits and bandages you’ve given us will make my grandad’s death sooooooo worth it(!)”

She sighs “Listen… kid, I…”

“I DON’T WANNA HEAR IT!!!” I scream so hard that it shreds my vocal chords “Just… *sob*… just GO!” I gesture to the path back to the valley I met her in.

She looks at me for a few seconds before gloomily saying “Alright lad…”

She holds out my grandad’s staff to me again… this time, I take it from her… the last piece of my favourite person in the universe that I’ll ever have…

“Alright troops; Those of you carrying the partisans’ portion, leave your boxes here. We’re moving out.”

Some of the orange armoured soldiers begin dumping the stuff they’ve earmarked for us and then they all form up at the path entrance.

As soon as they’re gone, I collapse onto a rock, lean my forehead against the red wood and weep, openly and uncontrollably.

Drid sits next to me on my left, her brother on my right, both wrapping me in their arms trying to comfort me.