[u][b]Sunia. Occupied by the Totalists.
[/b][/u]
	Sergeant Anastas Karthum, cringed slightly as Senior Engineer Silayev floored the prisoner with a punch to the gut. The punishment did not stop there as Silayev continued to kick their collaborator with his heavy mechanic leg, all the while looking supremely uninterested in the whole situation. The bad lightning almost made the Ascended look human while accentuating the prosthetics of Engineer Silayev. It almost made the Sergeant pity the Ascended. 

	The Engineer left the beaten cyborg just and returned to the large concentration of consoles, wires and personnel gathered around the large towering servers in that level of the Tower. Private Isidora emerged from the shadowed alcoves of the server room to help the Ascended. In a rather brusque way, half shoving him back towards the cluster of engineers working on decrypting whatever information the degenerate machines had stored in the towering bulks of the server room. Karthum knew very little about the subject of softwares, encryption and whatnot. But cracking this seal was of vital importance to the designs of the Party and the State. And that was enough for him. Besides, guarding the Tower was a rather cushy job, far from the frontlines and close to the supply depots. What else could he ask for?

	And so the Sergeant continued to watch the boring work of the engineers from his position, leaning on one of the many pillars shadowed by the low ambient light. Which frankly was a problem with Collective architecture in general, or at least a constant flaw of the buildings he had visited. Khartum had never seen nor visited the massive walled cities that housed the Ascended. Now reduced to ghost cities, from what he had heard. The pathetic cyborg currently under their watch was one of the few that they had managed to find on the planet. From what he had heard from the official sources, there had been some kind of mass flight by the machines before their arrival. Which would explain why Sunia had fallen so quickly and easily. Specially when compared to the grindhouse that was the Fringe Worlds. Who had also fallen quickly after the Totalist offensive in the region.

	The Sergeant absently started toying with his pocket watch. There was little else to do. An old family heirloom, it looked the part. The watch wasn't even digital. But despite its battered appearance it still worked. And on dull times like these, Karthum often found himself running his thumb over the inscriptions etched on the inner side of the cover. To be honest, he had no idea what it said, it certainly wasn't in Newspeak so nobody actually could translate it. A nifty curiosity, Commissar Strobel has called it, before telling him to keep watch for any light handed soldier. It would be a pity to lose such fine thing to a bastard wanting to make a few more ration cards in the black market.
	
	The sudden noise of another generator coming to life caught the Lieutenant's attention and he turned just in time to get momentarily blinded by the array of searchlights being turned on all over the server room. 

	“About time someone fixed that.” Isidora grumbled as the Sergeant tried to blink away the bright spots in his sight. “Why did it took so long anyway?”

	Before Karthum could reply his attention was caught by the sudden cheering coming from the cluster of engineers. One of them congratulated the Ascended with a few pats on the back, with much more force than necessary, while others scurried away with hands filled with tools, pads and other devices. The Sergeant had no idea of what had just happened but it looked like progress.


[hider=TL DR]

-Totalists are cracking the Collective data banks in Sunia

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