The Confederates Last

link to OOC planning thread

Aldehaf sized up the man, while he sat in the barbers chair, into whom age had set its teeth. Salt and pepper had shifted into grey. Not the smoky grey in the hair of some, but true pearl silver. Yet the age, he mused, was nonetheless hard to gauge given the straight shoulders. Aldehaf could almost hear his great-uncles sparring with one-another verbally: an elderly man hangs his head off an ever drooping neck, they'd jibed not only of a military man's skull, but of that within a military man's trousers. This neck still showed strength. Not the hunched bull-neck of a turn coat or exile -some convict turned indentured campaigner. One could always spot the convict stock because of the "guilt-weight" they carried in their neck. This was the posture of a man who had seen out youth and middle age having earned no few scars, but as yet no disfiguring injury.
An archetypal military moustache framed a straight set mouth. Aldehaf nodded, the man clearly still had his own set of teeth: the lip hadn't receded. The chew-ers all lost their teeth early. A man could hardly blame the hard-campaigners for turning to the chew, which somehow numbed exhaustion and concern, but left the fighting mind clear; something about a pseudo-endorphine that was instantly catalysed by adrenaline. The moustache was that same shade of pearl atop the lip and through the middle of the close cropped but pointed beard; but a stony dark whisker still grew at the corners of the lips, and each side of the chin. This was a cavalry man to the core.
"That's you, Aldehaf." The barber, Smithson, held a mirror so Aldehaf could check the back had been cropped close enough to the scalp. Nodding, Aldehaf looked a last time at his reflection before he left the otherwise empty cut-shack, putting aside self-appraisal for another six weeks.
"Bill my Officer, Smiths'." Aldehaf shrugged his shirt back down. Whenever he was seated his shirt always seemed to work its way over his pectorals. Clearing his throat, which always itched lately, he rubbed a hand over his head.
The Barber just nodded, knowing full well the payment arrangement could have been no other way, the funds transmission had shorted seasons earlier and the colony had reverted to cheques. Smithson gnawed at the end of a stick of chew. "I heard we're getting some fresh meat."
Aldehaf managed to avoid revealing his distaste for his comrade's addiction, but shook his head in earnest in regard to the question. "We're finally getting some real Officers. Since we took the Outside Three." Aldehaf referred to the occupied planets at the other extremity of the Confederates. With the relative lack of threatening opposition on their own reach of the galaxy, Aldehaf mused, their Regiments of the Armed Forces had long since seen the death of all their genuinely educated Officers. Like himself, all the acting-officers had fallen into the position out of a lack of any other option. "High Command can spare a bit of the real talent, maybe help us push the bastards back!"
"As opposed to leaving things to us cannon fodder?" The Barber waved off Aldehaf's objection before it could be voiced. "Na! Stow it Aldehaf. You got your principles and your loyalty: straight as your back! Mine was shot as crooked as a surviving man's can be back in time to when you still had black hair! I know you fought the same bit of jungle back on Old Sunny, and that god awful bit of desert on Right Next, but, well: well, I got no answer to that." Smithson brushed over how differently they had grown as men. They had likewise been conscripted to fight across the length and breadth of the galaxy. But like most thinking soldiers Smithson deflated. Trying to solve any inter-galactic relations was an act of futility; unless everyone scuppered their ships and left one another well enough alone. "Sorry Aldehaf. Maybe, maybe I felt a bit tired just then. I didn't mean any harm. But Chris'sakes!" They locked gazes for a moment, before Smithson broke the gaze, shrugging in a way that showed how twisted his spine had healed. He pulled a hand along the length of his long face.
"Smiths', you getting by? I can spare the credits, if it's what you're not saying." Aldehaf knew full well it was not what had undermined Smithson's usual resolve. Cavalrymen called it Colony-fever. For some, The Cause needed to be tied to the actual body of ground from which they were descended. Conscription, as a department of the Armed Force, attempted to acknowledge this. There was a time Aldehaf would have needed specific Orders to those Colonies with which he had a rapport. But after a life with The Cavalry he was tired enough to sleep anywhere, and willing to do what ever was needed. He heard those great-uncles again: to whom there was no cause within The Cause but for the philosophy of having a cause. Still, he reflected, theirs had been an era of being supreme in armament, reckless expansion, and of supposed parliament being run by Lobbies; of the election being run by Merchant Establishments. A new nobility in effect, disguised in their greed and corruption by the evildoers upon the newly discovered planets -whose civilisations were now reduced to colonies.
The one piece Aldehaf wore on his uniform not only acknowledged his acting seniority; but it also made him present to every important global transmission upon the colony.
He listened in growing dread. The transmission was from the much needed craft bearing their much needed officers, relaying that they were in a state of wild flight. The Confederate armament in the Home Sector had been turned against itself. There was no longer a Home of the Confederates other than that upon which they respectively stood. Something had gone wrong with the weapons, or someone had found a way to sobbatage them. The war had taken a turn, they were longer in control, let alone winning.

Hodenhagen Airfield had been eerily calm for a number of weeks now, due to the rank-sweeping mandatory escort duty sent from High Command for the cargo ship Distant Shore. The remaining members of the 901st Combat Engineer Corps, a collection of senior and trainee ranks, were clucking away about their situation like a superstitious sewing circle. Ordered to stay behind to maintain the airfield for the return of their comrades (and, most importantly, the weapons they took with them), the handful of engineering crew and fighter pilot trainees who were holding down the fort had little else to do but speculate as to the sudden acquisition of new Brass. Weren't they doing well in the war, they wondered? Wasn't it just a matter of decades before they would take back their colonies, gain a few new ones and spark a long-term era of galactic peace? Would the new Brass be able to carry such a heavy weight of responsibility on their shoulders, the same one that had killed their predecessors? It was bad luck to just plop faceless ranks into the file, they concluded. There would be no chemistry, no heart, and if that wasn't there they might as well start sewing their drawers into a giant white flag.

Chief Technician Claudia Salter was a rare instance in the 901st, in that she was not superstitious, and therefore spent her time actually doing her job during this unofficial downtime. Granted, her determination to stay busy was largely self-serving; one of the fighter platoons sent to escort the Distant Shore had been the 409th, codenamed “Sea Hawk”, which included her 19-year-old brother. He was a damn good pilot, to be sure, but his lack of experience set her instincts aflame and twisted her stomach into knots whenever she thought about it. So, C/T Salter worked, volunteering for more shifts than were necessary, in order to keep a grip on her sanity.

It had been a beautiful day so far, with warm breezes rolling down from the golden fields surrounding the airfield. Thick, white thunderheads were lazily piling on top of each other on the horizon, promising a much-needed downpour to quench the dry earth. Hangar 3, the only building with serviceable vehicles and weaponry left inside, had its doors flung wide open to welcome the weather. Inside, Claudia was perched precariously atop one of the bipedal Anti-grav Fighting Units, its cockpit lid popped open over its hulking metallic form. Salter was a small woman, short and lithe, her body strong and flexible from her years of climbing through machinery. She was currently squatting over a clutch of wires, her legs covered in the khaki green coveralls of her station, with sleeves tied around her waist to let her shoulders breathe. Black tank top was damp with sweat as she repaired the AFU’s combat heads-up display, and diagnostics scrolled in front of her vision via the repair visor that covered her Afghan eyes. Just a few more weeks of this monotonous routine of keeping her hands and mind needlessly busy, and she’d be able to breathe when Sea Hawk finally returned home.

Claudia’s ear buzzed, indicating a transmission coming in from High Command, and she straightened her spine upward like a wild animal listening for a predator. She removed one of her welding gloves and ran her fingers through her dark, silver-streaked and sweat-soaked hair, eyes staring blankly ahead as she listened for any relevant information. Her mouth slowly went agape as the situation was revealed: the Distant Shore and its accompanying convoyhad been overwhelmed with friendly fire. Casualties had yet to be calculated, but there were no responses from the Raptor, Falcon, Wasp or Sea Hawk platoons, as of yet, and it was predicted that survivors were in the double digits, at best. The Home Sector had been compromised, and was no longer under Confederate control. The transmission repeated.

“Cee Tee!” Claudia’s ear was flooded with pings from the local communication band, and she turned to see Senior Technician Don Salvatore sprinting into Hangar 3 to find her. She dismounted from the AFU, landing hard on the ground as Salvator skidded to a stop in front of her, doubled over and breathing hard from his run, “Did you... get... that transmission?”

“Yeah,” she chewed on her lower lip thoughtfully, unsure of what to make of it. She was in shock, unable to think clearly, “I... I don’t know what it means yet. We should all meet in the briefing hall on base, I think. I’ll see if I can get any Brass on the local band.” Salvatore nodded and cued up his communicator to gather the rest of the staff on the field.

“This is Chief Technician Salter reporting from Hodenhagen Airfield,” her voice did not have the same wavering tension that her heart felt, instead coming out loud and clear through the local band, “If there are any Commanding Officers on this band, please respond.” She was ignoring chain of command, a cardinal sin in any of the Armed Forces -- but if the transmission they received was any indication of how bad things had gotten, the line of succession had gotten a hell of a lot shorter, and there was no telling who was in charge any more.

Aldehaf paused, awkwardly, squeezing Laudeauc's shoulder. She almost flinched at the touch, pausing for a moment, but seeming to draw strength from the physical link. She was only twenty-three, and had been dreaming of the day she could make it to see Mother Earth. The planets fate was now in doubt. It had taken Laudeauc only a few moments to ascertain that the radiation coming from Mother-Sector was glowing with melt-down spectrum. Aldehaf he did not press her to ascertain the bandwith of the electro-radiation, which would beyond doubt prove which planet had gone down. Right now the name of the planet didn't matter, suffice to say Home Planet was as unreachable to them as if it had been vaporised, along with High Command.
Shakily she had scrambled across the Comm's systems, Laudeauc had never carried out some of the manual proceedures Aldehaf now required of her without the availability of High Command relay. "You're right ser. There's an old-type transmission being sling-shotted along the gravity-chain of the planets now, I should have it in ninety."
Aldehaf nodded. There'd be no few of the old-tricks resurfacing; even if the worst had come true. There were still a few old cockraches like himself that could survive almost anything. Trouble was, for them, their colony had been operating under stealth for a generation. It remained to be seen if what remained of Command even knew of their existence, let alone be able to rally support for them. Still, it improved their chances of the enemy coming for them, initially.
The massive holograph before him showed the planet-side corps, triangulating their positions and transcribing their transmissions; establishing a public link that he would hardwire to the Commanding Officer. Forcing his jaw to unclench Aldehaf asserted the pragmatism of how few there were actually left of them; at least, even if they all had to retreat, he could get them all on one good ship. The Holograph shivered, a transmission alighting in the red of a break in the chain of command.
"Laudeauc, bring up that transmission." Aldehalf waved his hand at the personnel link, the holograph jittered as it strove to bring up what he wanted.
Laudeauc saw the frown on Aldehaf's face. "It's Salter, ser. She's what you'd call a 'proper bit of spine', ser; and what everyone else calls a 'nice bit of ass'." Laudeauc managed a snort of laughter, through the barely restrained tears. "Do you want her transmission halted."
"No, that's a negative Laudeauc." Aldehaf scrambled, trying to find the other senior officers. While he held an unofficially higher rank, he had been promoted four times in that unofficial chain. Salter, while perhaps a technical rank below, was genuinely her rank. "She might BE the senior officer."
"I've got that grav-tran ser. relaying it to you now."
"Copy in Salter."

This is acting pilot officer Matambili. Distant Shore will reach you approximately twenty three hours, on the Seventh, Mean Time.
We are getting towed - like a barge. Lost almost all power. Massive damage to all systems. All passengers dead. Escort is intact, better armour defelct the pulse. Only working crew of Distant Shore. Officers were with them from High Command when the pulse overtook us.
Do you have ferry to get us landside, repeat, Distant Shore can not be enterring orbit...

The rest of the transmission was largely unintelligible, especially given the pilots heavy Outside-Three accent. Aldehalf linked with Salter. "Ma'am? Acting Lancer-Majer Aldehaf." He winced at the overly deep sound of his voice over the comm, augmenting his transmission with a psy-emote undertone of professional concern, and open-mindedness. "I know it's not chain-of-command, but I've been overseeing Communications since Westerly died. I don't have your P.C.I to assure future comms of this priority, please forward.
"Laudeauc is acting Comms. Did you copy the transmission from Distant Shore?" He asked while transmitting the remaining personnel planetside to Salter, and the computers assessment of remaining Rankers, and the systems suggested seniority. Turning from the holograph, hands resting heavily on the windowsill, he watched the storm clouds mounting. Aldehaf refrained from shaking his head at how a man only a tour away from being pastured out was now effecting the support required of a second in charge of a working military colony. That aside, he straightened, and readied what could possibly be needed at the Commanding Officers meet. He needed to be able to represent and speak into affairs for the Mounted Infantry; Communications; and the Heavy Lancers.

Salter was patched through almost instantly, and the deep bass of a fellow soldier boomed into her ear with news. Acting comms. Acting Lancer-Major. For a brief moment, she wondered exactly where she had ended up in the rank and file since that first emergency transmission had been broadcast, but her attention was immediately snapped back to reality when a second transmission buzzed in her ear.

Escort is intact...

Claudia clenched her eyes tightly shut as her heart leapt into her throat, and her body shook with the effort of holding back a sob of relief. She knew better than to get her hopes too high -- an intact escort did not necessarily mean zero-percent casualties. Still, her voice trembled briefly when she opened her throat to respond.

“Affirmative, Lancer-Major. I’m taking the rest of the 901st and what’s left of the junior trainees to the briefing hall for a situation assessment,” Salvatore, who had been busy during her comm-mining, pulled up to Hangar 3 in a personnel truck just as she slid the hangar doors shut and locked them. Salter bounced into the passenger’s seat and glanced back into the back compartment for a quick headcount -- seven engineers, eight trainee pilots -- before talking at Aldehaf once more.

“Listen, Lancer-Major... I don’t know where we are in the file any more, but if you can gather as many as you can and join us...” she hesitated, suddenly self-conscious of her position as an engineer, “I think that would be best. Hearing from someone who’s been on the ground before might help us get through this. Salter out.”

Claudia sent her P.C.I through the band to Laudeauc so she could transfer it to Aldehaf and anyone else who might need it, and she snapped her visor down as it began to scroll through the information the Major had sent her. She didn’t bother with the suggested seniority report just yet, focusing instead on who was left behind and what exactly they would be working with.

***

Ten minutes later, Salter was brewing a kettle of coffee for anyone who might arrive to the briefing hall, her arms crossed and her steel-toed boot tapping thoughtfully on the tiled floor. The murmurs of the crew behind her were a comforting white noise that numbed her over-active thoughts -- that is, until she heard a sharp sob rise over the dull sounds. Claudia turned to see a small handful of people surrounding a trembling junior pilot, trying to placate the young soldier and calm him down.

“That could have been us,” he wailed, his face buried in his hands, “What are we gonna do? We’re all that’s left of the entire Armed Forces. We’ll die for sure!”

Salter closed the distance between herself and that small crowd and pushed her way to the young man who was steadily losing control. No doubt, he was voicing what they were all feeling after the bombardment of news they had received, but saying those thoughts out loud would poison the morale of the remaining soldiers faster than any bad news ever could.

“Hey. You need to pull yourself together, pilot. We’re still here, which means there’s still a chance,” she could barely bring herself to believe these words, but as far as she could tell, they had two choices available to them now: die like soldiers, or die like cowards.

“What the hell do you know, Salter?!” the young man stood, revealing a tall, boot-camp-trained form that was nearly two heads taller than she was, “You’re a god damned mechanic, not a strategist! They’re hundreds of thousand strong, while we’re barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth!”

Claudia’s eyes narrowed as the young pilot continued to lose his grip, and her right hand was balled into a white-knuckled fist as he spoke. Rather than let him continue with his frantic speech, Claudia reached up to grab him by the collar of his coveralls, pulled his face down to her level, and slammed her fist into his chiseled young jaw. He stumbled back into his chair with a surprised yelp, and the C/T stood there with her fist by her side, doing her best to ignore the throbbing pain in her knuckles.

“That’s Chief Technician Salter to you, Juinor Pilot,” she growled through clenched teeth, glad to see a purple welt begin to bloom on the younger man’s jaw (so the pain in her knuckles would be worth it, at least), “And I don’t remember giving you permission to flip sh it, airman. So shut your goddamn mouth and calm the hell down until you’re told to do otherwise, understand?”

The Junior pilot nodded, eyes huge and wet with barely-contained tears, and Salter walked back to the coffee kettle to begin pouring herself a cup. There was no cream or sugar, which, oddly enough, made the pain in her swelling knuckles worsen.

Aldehaf found his acting captain right where he would expect him, given the situation. Drury stood surrounded by his squad leaders, each of them leaning intently toward the head-piece screens before their eyes, their hands a flurry of movement as they strove to establish a body of intelligence that could illumine a course of action.
"Majer in the Office!" The call went out. The screens all winked to standby and the company of the 81st Heavy Cavalry snapped to attention. Aldehaf nodded, the squad leader gave the call to stand as they were.
Drury was a slender build, with a dark complexion and almond eyes that caught the light in a shade of grey that looked purple at times. An eye colour that had mutated on the colonies. Drury's people had been cavalrymen and hard campaigners even longer than Aldehaf's. The Captain was one of the few that wore a full beard. A pointed and sculpted thing that gave him a fierce impression, in spite of his physical build. "Majer. I can't make sense of the seniority planet-side."
"My reccomendation is to defer the Companies to the seniority of the Engineers. If we're in the field, we need someone planetside running things and watching our back." Aldehaf pulled at his chin, catching the eye of each of the squad leaders, who had been waiting, and who moved away only after they had received their nod. Each nod symbolised unit ready for orders. He cleared his throat. "Someone get the Mounties in here!"
Wiring that he was almost ready to report to the briefing Salter had called, Aldehaf studied the Mounted Infantry as they filed in. Good solid men and women. "I am Acting Majer Aldehaf. In a moment we will proceed to the briefing of the Engineers, to whom Command is being given until orders are received otherwise.
You should know by now, they are a solid bunch, and overworked, and a critically understaffed. As we proceed you will each wire me such skills as you could offer, and you will be put to work where and when is required. You will do this because we Horse-men don't care what our duty is, as long as it is duty, am I right?"
The room crescendoed with the battle cry Kya-mow!
Drury stifled a hang-dog look at his commanding officer, knowing the value of the little speech was fairly trite. Aldehaf let the returning glance show just a trace of cynacism. Sometimes, he had learned over a perticularly long career, impressions were needed.

Colony Fifteen Thousand and Seventy two Drury's crisp voice seared across the comm's, wiring the basics to Salter; Or White Clouds, is an earth-type three; with a level-ten hard-entry stratosphere and heavily electro-magnetically active oceans that provide us with the stealth we need as a guerrilla outpost.
The population is entirely Armed Force staff, but predominantly stationed as a Comms hub. Clouds is not equipped to withstand major assault or seige, orders have been to retreat in the event of our stealth being compromised. Mounted Infantry and the Lancers, such as we are, have been stationed here for nine months, and have been planetside the longest. We stand equipped to escort a single fighting retreat, but our units comprise many seasoned hard-campaigners who have some exposure to similar situations.
If prolonged presence planet-side is unavoidable: Clouds type-three gravilty stimulates overt muscular and bone development, which can be hard on the endocrine and cardiovascular system.
"Enough Drury. If Salter wants more she'll ask. Right, Ma'am?" Aldehaf pulled rank and cut into the transmission. That said he nodded at the Captain, who in turn ordered the Squad Leaders.
The Mounted Infantry and Heavy Lancers filed into the meeting hall at a semi-formal march. They waited in ranks while Aldehaf, flanked by Drury, made their way to the cluster of officers at the front. "Mounties, break rank and sit. Silence."

Salter and S/T Salvatore had been linked into a teleconference with Aldehaf and Drury as they made their way to the briefing hall, the two commanding technicians standing in front of the large blank screen that covered the front wall. Drury filled them in on what details he had gathered, and she paid close attention to the dynamic he had with the Lancer-Major, taking inventory of what she thought to be a note of resentment or rivalry -- one could never really tell over comms. A small team of medics from the base’s clinic had joined them in the meantime, and one of them was currently holding Salter’s hand aloft, inspecting her swollen knuckles while the current suggested seniority scrolled in front of her vision. She had dislocated her middle finger from its knuckle upon socking the Junior Pilot in the jaw (he, on the other hand, only had a purple welt on his face to show for it), and she had to mute her mic while the medic popped the joint back in place so she could release a sharp, painful curse into the briefing room. Claudia’s middle two fingers were taped together, and the medic told her to stop by the clinic after the briefing to get it completely healed just as the rhythmic stomping of boots echoed in the hall. Salter watched quietly as a hundred-or-so heads filed into the hall with the calculated discipline one would expect of combat personnel, followed by two men with Officer’s stripes on their shoulders who commanded the platoons with steadfast confidence. It was a stark contrast to her team of engineers that had taken the front row of the hall, draped casually in their seats with cups of coffee as though it were any other break time.

And it was suggested that she take the highest commanding rank that was left? Clearly, that had to be some kind of algorithmic error. Or a very clever joke, suggesting that their computers had gained some kind of smart-arsed sentience at the worst possible time.

Claudia flipped her visor up and saluted the two officers as they approached, her bright eyes taking in the details of her comrades as they exchanged their military greetings. She offered her left hand to each of them for a brief shake, before crossing her arms and resting her weight on one leg in a more casual stance. All three men in her company seemed to tower over her small frame, though this was nothing new for Claudia; she had found, over the years, that she was shorter than the average military woman, despite having been born and raised on a One Gee planet.

“Captain, Lancer-Majer. Thank you for assembling your men on such short notice,” she gave a wayward glance over to the row of seats where her crew sat with the trainee pilots. They all had begun to look weary and lost as the weight of their situation continued to press down on them, and Claudia was forced to fight back a wave of nausea when she realized that this room probably held the only fighting chance the Confederacy had.

“Casualty reports aren’t looking great, as I’m sure you’ve all noticed” her voice was low, and could only be heard by the three men in front of her. She had never met Aldehaf or Drury in person before, having only been recently alerted to their sudden promotions, and she was unsure of what to expect from the thin, dark-skinned man or the broad, silver-haired one. In a brief moment of unprofessional weakness, Salter allowed herself to remember an observation made by another Chief Technician, one who had gone with the convoy to escort the Distant Shore: all combat-class soldiers were good-looking men and women. Never in her entire career had Claudia seen a blatantly unattractive heavy-lancer, mounty or grunt, and the two officers in front of her were no exception to the rule. It was likely due to the massive amount of physical conditioning they went through, her colleague had mused those many years ago, and Claudia immediately stifled the half-smile she had donned as she observed the finely-cut details of Aldehaf's distinguished face.

They were most certainly in trouble, Claudia thought, if she couldn't even keep unprofessional musings like that under control while discussing the bleak fate of the Confederacy.

“If the numbers are as low as predicted, I have to question the wisdom of having a conventional chain of command in place... I probably know as much about maintaining the front lines as you two know about repairing machines,” she made sure to hold eye contact with the two officers, her chin tilted upward, to maintain some sort of authoritative air. She wasn't sure how effective that would be with these two very tall, very solid infantry men, however.

The moment Aldehaf and Drury were able to speak with Salter, they both dropped into the same body language. They'd both served under a female commander before, and knew, when overt and visible obescience was required -to stand with hands behind the back, feet spread, and chin tucked down, brow thoughtful, hanging on every word, listening rather than looking. Robots on standby.
Aldehaf had to agree with Salter's intuition regarding chain of command, nodding in a businesslike manner at her point. But he and Drury had brought another agenda with them, which Aldehaf would voice while Drury made a show on the podium.
Drury played his part expertly, drawing out the situation until the hall trembled with the first break of thunder. A moment later, the background noise of torrential rain.
Aldehaf made an expression, for Salter to follow, while Drury took his place behind the podium, and demanded everyone's attention. The Lancer Majer did not slow until they were well outside, and standing in the lee of a massive electricity substation. "Salter, I've got news for you and none of it is good. I've got no proof, none, but this -all of this- had to be an inside job." Aldehaf mentally chided himself, of course it was an inside job; there was no other way so many protocols and safe-checks could be undermined. He was as much telling Salter how to suck eggs. "Worse yet, the trojan, I traced it here, White Clouds. Someone here made this happen." He dug into his pocket, and lit a cigarette, offering one over.

Salter followed the Lancer-Majer without hesitation, the cold rain pelting her bare shoulders uncomfortably as they took shelter by the large, cream-colored back-up generators at the substation. She untied the sleeves of her coveralls from her waist and shrugged the top half of her uniform back on, zipping it up to her neck just as Aldehaf offered her a cigarette. She accepted it, and his light, and leaned heavily against the generator that was shielding them from the rain.

"That is a serious accusation, Lancer-Majer," Claudia scrutinized the man in her company with those bright, inquisitive eyes before she tilted her head back to exhale a white plume of smoke into the dark sky, "But you don't strike me as the type to make accusations very lightly."

She was silent for a long while as she digested the information Aldehaf had given her, and she shook her head before taking another long drag of her cigarette, "If your intel's any good, then White Clouds has almost certainly been compromised. We need to get everyone to the evac shuttles ASAP and rendezvous with the Distant Shore convoy in neutral territory."

"Lancer-Majer, where did you get your intel?" Salter looked up at the man, her face suddenly fraught with worry -- if all of this was true, how much time did they have before enemy forces arrived? "And... do you know who it might be? It might be too late for White Clouds, but if we can isolate the threat and get information from them, our chances in this war might not be so bad."

Aldehaf touched on Laudeauc's progress at comm's, having Salter copied into the personnel profiling .
It was with a growing sense of respect he watched Salter's mind take a diagnostic of their situation. He especially respected her reaction to the fact Whiteclouds was almost certainly condemned. Some officers would fight the long defeat of a planet's habitation until all their fighting men were dead, and their only remaining option was surrender or a undefended retreat.
"High Command is gone. Any chance I had of processing an analysis of the comm's is gone. I only have our side of the comm's, and since we are just a forwarding hub, not much is left in terms of a trail, or of the actual contents of the messages without High Commands records. We do not retain copies of anything we forward. I guess noone imagined that one day Mother Earth would be vapour."
Aldehaf caught himself. While he had not been born, nor any of his family for generations, on the home-planet - Salter very well may have. He looked at her quickly, over the ember at the tip of his cigarette, to gauge her reaction. He chided himself mentally for being callous, for letting his composure slip -being too open, and too informal. Aldehaf took note that he had this weakness around Salter, as he sometimes had experienced with senior officers: he was capable and trustworthy, ad his superiors could often relax around him; but that didn't grant him the same leeway.
"The thing that glaringly stands out: and -if you'll grant my opinion on the matter- the departure and arrival records are gone. Just gone. Someone has covered their tracks." Taking a last drag at the cigarette through pinched fingers Aldehaf stubbed it out and opened the compartment of the case for the finished stubs - offering this for Salter's use too. "An evacuation would be my own recommendation, too, ma'am. I can have a brief of hopeful retreat destinations readied, you can leave that much to me; and a statement of Mounted and Infantry strength available."
He smiled, mirthlessly, with eyes that said: you think we can pull this off?

Claudia did, indeed, wince momentarily at the sudden realization that earth was lost to them -- whether it was entirely destroyed or simply inaccesible, it did not matter. She and her two brothers were the first generation of her family to never have visited the Mother Planet, as the Salters were die-hard Terrans, and the only way they had gotten away with that was because both of her parents served in the Confederate Armed Forces. Her grandparents, her older brother's wife and daughter, and a small clutch of extended family had been on the planet when the attack on the convoy happened, to the best of her knowledge. Add to that the family and friends of the people under her command, and... it was too overwhleming to consider at this critical time. For now, they had a colony of survivors to evacuate.

The C/T nodded her confirmation when Aldehaf offered to gather data relevant to their evacuation. He seemed to fall right into his leadership position with no trouble at all, while Salter felt she was a fish out of water, gulping for air and grasping weakly for any way to make sense of their situation -- leading a bunch of rowdy grease monkeys was much different than leading an entire resistance. She was quite surprised when the soldier agreed with her evacuation plan, and somewhat relieved; he was proving to be much different than the typical meatheads she was used to dealing with in front-line troops. And, given he was probably 10-or-so years her senior, she felt a small pang of childish pride that someone with his experience thought that she had a good idea.

Of course, there was the matter of the data that had been deliberately wiped from the packets that Aldehaf was able to collect. As she disposed of the stub of her cigarette, she began to ponder their situation from their enemy's viewpoint: while 1572 wasn't exactly classified in its functions, it was more or less kept secret because of its strategically advantageous location on a small, unassuming garden world called Prospect. Planting a fresh mole from the outside would have been impossible, as the only green personnel allowed on base were particularly gifted Junior Pilots who were transfered there for special training. Junior Pilots were not allowed near the comm towers, since their training didn't involve data transmission in any fashion, so the chances of being sabotaged by a fresh-faced J/P were slim to none. No, if the enemy were to plant someone there, it was almost necessary that it be a sleeper agent of some sort, or perhaps with the thorough coercion of a soldier who had a substantial enough career to be assigned to White Clouds. That was a troubling thought indeed, because White Clouds had not been through a personnel rotation since well before their ranks were thinned out by the mandatory escort of the Distant Shore. This meant that whoever had been planted there (if that was indeed the case) had to have been there for months, transmitting data, deleting records, making sure colony 1572 was sufficiently quiet before suggesting a tactical strike. If they had months to transmit data, then the enemy had months to prepare, which meant...

Claudia's visor was suddenly alight with red flashes, and she snapped it down just in time to hear the comm tower's Virtual Intelligence spouting out a warning regarding an atmospheric perimeter breach. Several unidentified spacecraft were closing in on their position, and they were not responding to hails from Leudeauc. By now, the world had gone almost completely dark under a stormy, overcast night sky; a perfect time for a stealth strike.

"Sh'it! Majer, this way!" Claudia left the shelter of the generator and ran toward the nearest emergency evac tunnel entrance, a metal door embedded horizontally in a slab of concrete. She entered her credentials into its security panel and tugged the door open with a grunt, letting the heavy metal fall open with a loud clang! The tunnel's emergency lights flickered on, and their sodium glow revealed a well-maintained cement staircase. Claudia was now dripping wet from the downpour, and the rivulets of water that ran down her face darkened the stairs in droplets. "This tunnel should lead straight to the underground evac hangars. All of the shuttles should be in tact, and there are enough to--"

Claudia was interrupted by a sudden bang and a flash of light that came from the direction of Hodenhagen. When she turned to look, there was an orange glow coming from the airfield, and the smell of sulfur was carried to them on hot gusts of air. The C/T cued up the common band and began shouting over the sounds of the surrounding storm.

"This is Salter! White Clouds is under attack, get everyone to the--"

She was instantly knocked back into the evac tunnel by a massively concussive force, blinded and deafened by white-hot light and explosive sound. Claudia tumbled painfully down the concrete stairs, covering her head and yelping in pain as concrete edges jabbed into her ribs, back and legs. She seemed to tumble for an eternity before finally coming to a rest on her side, curled up in a protective fetal position as she felt the floor beneath her rumble from distant explosions. Her vision was blurred, the afterimage of the explosion burned into her retina as a high-pitched whine filled her right ear. A stream of blood trickled from a gash in her forehead, merging with the red wetness that dripped from inside of her ear, and every breath she took brought a painful burning sensation into her lungs.

"Majer!" Claudia coughed violently as she struggled to stand, fighting the urge to wretch, "Aldehaf! Are you here?!"

The door resisted the first shock of his boot and the second. On the third the lintel gave way completely, the door scudding into the comm's in a shower of ceramic shards and splinters. Laudeauc stood within, head shaking, her slug-thrower levelled.
Aldehaf knew she was a good woman, no matter what she had chosen, or been coerced to do; no matter her treason -and the personal betrayal; the weakness that had played part in the orchestration of the destruction of an entire planet. If a trial was held, as such had been before, the findings would be that it was Laudeauc's goodness and her gentleness that had been manipulated and used against her.
Laudeauc hesitated, as Aldehaf knew she would. In the face of her commanding office she saw the face of all the dead her betrayal had slain. Only the most corrupt and hateful being could do so without hesitation or remorse: that moment's hesitation, while she mentally-reached for what she could possibly say, the Aldehaf had triggered the nano-nervous augmentation in his musculature.
His body wrenched itself through the air between them. The slug thrower was torn from her grasp with the crack of wrist, the butt slammed under Lauceauc's chin with the gushing sound of the ruin of her jaw and palate, and her neck wrenched fatally.
What ever she had wanted to say, or what forgiveness she meant to beg would remain unspoken, her body slumped in ruin at Aldehaf's feet. He did not hesitate: he was a good man, but not one that concerned himself with justice. It was not fair what happened to the young woman, whose body twitched in its pooling blood, there was no justice in it. But it was unavoidable, now. From the moment she actioned her first espied transmission, her life was forfeit.
Aldehaf's teeth strained, the upper against the lower. Searing through his every nerve were the transmissions of all those subordinate to his position. He heard the strange sound in Salter's voice - the shell impact had collapsed the door in front of him, and he could not reach Salter, nor aid her. He had the heavy-infantry advantage of specialised personal shields: the impact that had collapsed Salter's ear had only hurled him through the air. He would be bruised and sore, but he was uninjured. He knew the sound of someone whose eardrum has been damaged, because he too had sustained the injury: it gave a strange edge to the human voice -as if not being able to hear one's own voice made it impossible to use one's normal tone or timbre. He did not bother transmitting to her over the vocal comm's. He needed to wire her, and any in a similar situation over the glance-mail system.
The Comm's system was in complete disarray. Imperatives flashed over the screen: the comm's had been used to trojan the craft-control systems; this was unimaginably intricate and meticulous work: showing the squandered genius of the dead young woman. Unless someone found a way to over-ride this, they were not going to be flying anywhere. Aldehaf hung his head. Incendiaries, heavy enemy fire, these he could face dauntlessly: but he was no high-level tech.
He tripped the messenger, wiring Salter: they needed to hot-wire a craft.

Salter leaned heavily against the concrete wall of the underground tunnel, her ability to stand immensely hindered by an overwhelming dizziness. A massive headache throbbed behind her eyes as she felt the tinny vibration of her comm unit in her teeth, since her ear was filled with the high whine of it's injury, and she fought to clear her vision as she read Aldehaf's transmission: they were trapped unless she could remove the software lockdown on at least one of the escape shuttles.

Claudia's only way out of the tunnels was to go forward toward the evacuation bay, and doing so was no small struggle. She figured her tumble down the stairs had resulted in a mild concussion, as her vision remained blurred and her headache persisted viciously, the pain spiking with each muffled explosion that came from above-ground. It wasn't far before she came to the shuttle bay, and she dragged the hangar's door open to a relatively quiet and brightly-lit bay. The C/T limped her way to the largest craft in the line, an Oxen class personnel carrier that might be able to fit the remaining survivors on her decks, but it was locked up tight and unresponsive to her override codes -- she needed time that they simply didn't have to override the lockdown.

"Cee Tee!"

Salvatore's voice was drowned out by the whine that filled Claudia's head as he approached her, and she yelped as the senior tech lay a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. She whirled around, ready to defend herself tooth and nail despite being unarmed, but the moment she saw that familiar face she managed to stop herself. Salvatore's mouth moved frantically, but she raised a hand to stop him before pointing to the drying red streak coming from her ear, and she stared in a brief moment of shock before nodding. Salter looked at the crowd behind him and took a quick count: sixty-five people, including most of her engineers. She refused to consider the fate of the absentees, instead waving her hands in the air to get everyone's attention.

"Confederates! Listen up!" she didn't wait until she had all eyes on her before continuing, "Our main priority is to get off this planet, so we need to hold the hangar until S/T Salvatore and I can get this bird in the air," she pointed to a row of cavalrymen and women, "Secure the exits and cover any surviving friendlies trying to get to the hangar; everyone in the 901st, be prepared to find your on-board stations as soon as we get this bird open!"

Instantly, everyone dispersed, the mutual need for survival urging them to cooperate with one another to allow them to complete their goal and live to see another day. Most of them had little or no idea of what was happening, and hysterics were currently being kept to a minimum on the individual level. Claudia shuddered to think what a nightmare this would be if she were dealing with civilians, rather than trained soldiers.

Salvatore was working on opening the Oxen craft's rear personnel hatch open to allow entry, and Claudia immediately set to work analyzing the software that was keeping them on the ground. The base code was familiar to her, something she had been trained to work with, but her attempts to disarm the security protocols that were put in place by the invading forces were being thwarted at an alarming rate. The software wasn't just difficult to work with, or too advanced for her abilities; it was responding to her attempts to disarm it, working like a sentient mind rather than a pre-programmed virus with set parameters...

Frustrated, Claudia shut down the Oxen's control panel, forcing it into a hard restart and removing it from Hodenhagen's intelligence grid. This was dangerous on a number of levels, as it would deactivate its automatic navigational software and potentially leave them wandering in space once they left the planet's orbit -- unfortunately, evacuation took precedence over all other objectives, so they would need to solve that little problem once they were out of enemy range.

Claudia glanced upward and looked around while she waited for the Oxen's software to boot back up, and noticed instantly that Aldehaf had not yet found his way to the evac hangar. She pulled up the glance-mail he had sent her and replied, trying to urge him along:

Got an Oxen freed from its yoke, will be ready to deploy in 30 minutes. Please hurry, Majer.