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“What’s your core status?” Kalindora asks

“Sixty-six percent”

“So he still listens” She nods in disgust at the Iron Leopards “Most of those whelps are walking around sub-fifty because they didn’t hold their burn They’ll depend on recharge”

“That was a war crime,” I say “It was only small-arms fire”

“Only a crime if there’s a court Eat” Kalindora tosses me a protein bar “You move well,” she says At any other time, I’d bask

in her compliments as I did as a boy “Superb instincts But you’re clumsy in takeoff and need to expand your field of vision You act like you want to use your razor instead of your gun This isn’t asteroid corridor fighting or whatever the blazes Bellona had you at You did prih I saw you put down four Not your first kills, it seems”

“No”

She sees er “What did you expect?”

“I don’t know”

“Why did you come back?” she asks

When I don’t answer, she turns her back and crawls into her mech “Your sensors picked up some people” She levers to her feet as I climb into my cockpit “Did your sensors tell you they didn’t have weapons? No Did they tell you they weren’t saboteurs or snipers? No Or even Howlers? No So how can mercy exist when anyone could carry an atomic rocket, and you don’t know? That’s the problem with this war Cruelty is necessary Yet cruelty is a thermal runaway”

The first wave of transports descends from the sky by the time I’ve sealed myself back in my starShell Those ships with thrusters kick clouds of debris into the air The ones with gravity engines for cloaks of chalk GravBikes roar out of pens Gray legionnaires skinned in desert ar helmets pour out of personnel carriers Dozens of humanoid titans, hoverTanks, and spiderTanks decouple from their transports and land on the dirt with a sound like ha on wood

Then coineers

With a hundred fifty thousandand fortifying the landfall for the primary wave

I look past the dise troops to the north