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“Ride hell!”

TWELVE RIPPLING RIVERS OF shadow move across a desert of white chalk The shadows are cast by six thousand starShells flying in twelve iron columns

It is two hours since breach and I do not feel sane

My life has disintegrated into a series of fragmented moments of extreme fear and unreal violence It is defined by new sensations The crunching of ice under clawed titaniu of air The tangy chlorine sun The ever-present tension that a benign ridge will suddenly come alive with anti-aircraft fire

I no longer trust stillness

Stillness is the ene careful aim

After clearing the briar-patch of ion linked with our launch partners, the Terran-born XX Fulion, to swell our numbers and drive north to make a secure landfall for the first wave of one hundred fifty thousand, and then the two million that will follow in the second and third waves to take Heliopolis

Sooty sun batteries cleared by Fulst the icy peaks, Ajax took us headlong at any threat like soed to keep pace, but my blade is well blooded froh it all, lory Seraphina is keen for glory too, but not keen enough to override her discipline

She is a better soldier than she was a traveling couarded my flank Once in the ruins of a ed from the rubble with an axe Once in the air when I didn’t spot an anti-aircraft battery

By ns of civilization appear on the blasted landscape A hotel for the wealthy beside a hightoith gold pyramids painted on their roofs to ward off bombardment Small-arms fire flashes feebly at us from a rooftop

“Leopard Eleven engaging sniper,” I intone I have three rockets left “Thers indicate enus Switching to guns” Kalindora shadows me as I bank to make a precision shot at the two men on the roof

A pillar of blinding light divides the horizon

I break off to avoid the rippling shockwave

When the orbital strike clears, the town is a molten crater “Too slow on the draw,” Ajax drawls as I reel “You’ll have to be quicker than a cat to steal my kills”

“They were civilians…”