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WeOlympus’s white spires There are dead men in the halls, on the slopes

"They used it as a base," Jupiter says cheerily "Your Stained disagreed with their presumptuousness I like the beast!" Our men secure the section of the Valles Marineris set aside for the Institute, far east of Agea in the upper arrand canyon I watch out theas hundreds of friendly dropships descend on the staging ground, depositing more than three hundred thousand men in thirty minutes A Gold runs out of each lowered ramp, always the first onto enemy soil

"No resistance," I say quietly,uneasily

She wipes blonde hair fro in, they harder we are to dislodge Why are they waiting?"

"Want to cluster us up like a bunch of grapes before stouesses "Atoh the pockets of one of the dead men "That’s e have Grays Let thee"

"No ato says "Sensors would have picked them up from a hundred clicks away" She looks out over the land "They’re waiting because they don’t have enough ht them flat-footed, which is doubtful Or they deployed too many men to halt Lorn’s advance Or they’ve created choke points in the valley Or they marshal them around the Citadel Or there’s a trap ahead"

Her mind is a machine

"There’s a trap," she says after aupon it to stall us while they reallocate men and materiel" She snorts in contempt "Static defenses without inot Line"

"But they knoe don’t want to waste the city or the populace," I say

"They know that" Mustang adjusts her datapad, exa the map "Which shrinks our flexibility in tactics"

"Total war is easier," Jupiter grue, then drop boained"

"It takes a day to break a city, then fifty years to rebuild," Mustang snaps "You want to sign up to oversee the reconstruction?"

"Do I look like a builder?" Jupiter asks

"The passage to Agea is eighty kiloh walls on either side, all farriculture for the city Bellona likely littered the place with mines If they had ti" Did they have ti motions me to the side

I ith her away from the rest of my command staff, who roll their eyes at one another The airy palace halls should remindhere So many memories Sonear Minerva castle where Pax and I once dueled

"It’s eighty kilometers to the walls from here," she says "We could make the dash as planned Just because they didn’t contest our landing doesn’tnefarious afoot" She sees the hesitation in my eyes "We are here for n We have toto kill hiuess "Aren’t you"

"You know their history"