[h3]The Lone Survivor[/h3]
	[i]“Hey, I said I’d [b]considered[/b] doing it,”[/i] Kay chuckled, [i]“but it’s still on your noggin and in one piece, isn’t it?”[/i]
	"You've not as much as gotten a chance to touch it with your fingertip, so I'd not put too much weight to that statement," Enn grumbled, his posture visibly stiffening. And then, after a moment, "I think I much preferred when you were [i]only[/i] promising to shoot me in the back."
	Perhaps he owned some explanations, too.
	"Death is a perfectly normal part of life, when you're a soldier like I. But if you're in combat, you're too busy to be able to care, besides flinch and swear in your head when a bullet hits overhead and showers you with shards, and back at base, there is nothing you could do about its eventual probability, so we joked over it to take the edge off it, yeah? But you didn't comment on, or ask questions over, why someone was moved to another location or unit. You learn to keep your mouth shut about things like that pretty quickly, for your own sake. And you don't touch another soldier's things. Losing equipment is severe offense, should an officer pick up on it. So you learn to protect it pretty quickly, too, with your life if need be - failure to do so could mean the latter's forfeit, anyway." Another pause. "...They did manage to do it to me, once. Sort of. They managed to take my gun apart and tape all of its components to the ceiling. Never found out who [i]they[/i] were, but luckily I woke before someone further took note and I got in trouble."
	[i]“That said, I don’t mess with stuff that belongs to someone else unless it’s salvage. Not without permission. I’m really curious about your helmet because I figure I may be able to adapt some of the technology from it in this,”[/i] she pointed to her artificial eye, [i]“or my drones, but I’m not going to touch it if you don’t want me to. I do know what I’m doing, though; I’m pretty confident that anything I take apart I can also put back together.”[/i]
	"You wouldn't have to be [i]good[/i] - you'd have to be better than the entire Trenian faction, or they'd have fielded equivalents long ago," noted the ex-Anderekian. "Yesternight alone probably left them with over a hundred intact examples. I can dis- and reassemble my gun in my sleep, or by touch alone. I couldn't my helmet. It has no obvious ways to do so, either. Even aside of damage from dust and moisture and such, I doubt it's meant to be possible without fucking it up entirely. I'd rather it didn't happen. I wouldn't want to lose half my senses, and risk going blind and deaf shortly after. Just ... keep what I have, and make myself look less like an Anderekian, less like [i]them[/i]?"
	For [i]they[/i] they now were.

	Enn's interest seemed piqued when Kay unholstered her gun - as much as one could tell from him turning his head and falling in line with the woman. It was certainly different from most things he had encountered.
	[i]“Not with the first two shots, it couldn’t,”[/i] she concluded, [i]“and by the time it’d loaded the third... heh, I guess I’m just happy I didn’t have to use it.”[/i]
	Was she right? On short distance, maybe, depending on the precision of her aim ... and if he had to make it do by himself in the wild for a while longer, being even slightly injured - and reeking of blood - would be quite the hindrance. Never mind if he had to engage again...  
	[i]“I call it the ‘scavenger-gun’,”[/i] he was informed. [i]“It can take most kinds of ammunition so that I can replenish my supply from any I find, but it’s kinda unreliable and slow... I have a stock for it, too, in there. So yeah... ‘sometimes’ it can pen your armor. It’s stupid, but it’s the only gun I have.”[/i]
	"If it works for your purposes, then it works," the renegade soldier shrugged. "You said you're a scourer, not a gunner. So you mostly would just retreat when there is a danger of confrontation, and otherwise just use it to let the beasts know attacking you is not worth it, yeah? Soldiers need specialist guns because we are often meant to shoot at skilled, armored targets, not too uncommonly at some range; we go in to kill, not to defend ourselves as a last resort."
	Without as much as breaking stride, the young man produced a magazine, and released a round from it, only to hold it up between his index finger and thumb for Kay to see. It was larger than a regular rifle round - a bit longer than Enn's palm -, and faintly greenish gray in color.
	"Two and half centimeters of hardened steel mid-range, and anything less," he reiterated his earlier point. These do a bit less damage than expanding ammo, but will pen more. It's the core, mostly; the coating is to protect the barrel more than anything. Wouldn't recommend trying to shoot one of those with your gun, even if they fit, especially without your stock - your arm'd be in splinters. And yet, they've learnt to counter them, somehow - the Trenians, that is. Shoot an armored soldier, you'll hit through, but if you don't get them in the neck or head, there's a high chance they'll stay up, the resilient bastards, for a while at least."

	[i]“Protocols?”[/i] Kay repeated when he asked. It seemed she was ... surprised. Enn thought she was, at least. [i]“I don’t know... normally there’s ‘don’t mention the nuke’, but we already know that we’ll throw that one out the window. Eh...I think most of it’s related to mundane everyday life rather than life-changing impending disaster-situations, so I doubt they’ll be relevant."[/i]
	Protocols were perhaps restrictive, but they were also nice. They made the lives of people like him easier. It was the unspoken rules that were difficult. And he knew nothing but Kay's words about what he was walking into. Should he simply continue observing the old rules? He did not [i]know[/i], and that was deeply disconcerting...
	[i]"As for chain of command, you’ll want to talk to Gramps,”[/i] Kay continued confidently. [i]“He’s basically our de facto leader; everyone listens to him even though he’s not officially in charge. None of the others will dare to make any big decisions without his consent. He’s also the one responsible for the nuke, so that’s a bonus. And no, I’m not related to him – not closely, anyway – he’s just been given the name ‘Gramps’ because he’s kinda old and everyone likes him.
	As for where to begin, o Harbinger of Doom, I’d recommend ‘let’s chat over a cup of tea’. People tend to be a bit less aggressive when their hands are full of hot beverage instead of guns.”[/i]
	A leader that was not a leader yet not a dissident or a traitor?
	[i]No,[/i] he asserted in his mind. [i]No, you don't understand the depth of my problem at all. I don't [b]do[/b] "chatting to people that are not my fellow soldiers" ... I didn't, at least. And those fellow soldiers were quite frequently shuffled around, so it was best to not chat [b]too[/b] much with them, either. Anyone else, I report, I answer questions, and I obey commands, yeah? This was my life. Thinking too much was unhealthy. The decisions that were mine to make involved choosing which rocks to hide behind and which enemy soldier to shoot - and even those not always.[/i]
	There were no [i]real[/i] civilians among Anderekians, so the most he had even [i]seen[/i] had been Trenians. Out, on missions. The chain of command had been absolute, with little to no upwards drift. He had never truly known who was more than a few steps up... You were better off assuming that you could be interrupted at any moment, and that your any action could be seen and reviewed at will. Not that they often bothered to - unless something you did marked you as potential threat, the officers had better things to do than to observe what their pawns were up to during their off-time. Answer, don't question, is safer. But you cannot remain blind forever, so you observed even when you did not speak. And sometimes trouble found you regardless of your entirely reasonable efforts of being wholly, entirely unremarkable.
	Not everyone had taken his approach, however risky it was.
	Some things were laws, like the barrier for knowledge between the people of differing status. It made sense, too. Knowledge was a weapon beyond bullets, one that was only dangerous in [i]certain[/i] hands. Do not arm those who did not need it with it, and your entire faction was much safer for it. It did not even matter how loyal your men were - you could be loyal with not a thought of defection, but how long would you last while your fingers were removed knuckle-by-knuckle? What about needles in your eyes? Some manner of truth serum? Sophisticated brain-scanning? Sometimes, there was nothing you could do to protect what you cared about. (Would Kay's Eighfour one of those things?)
	Other things ... were not truly law. You were not to inquire about anything confidential, you were not to disobey direct orders, you were not to enter places you were not supposed to or otherwise break protocol. But there was no true law against having an informal conversation with officers, or having relationships. But it was not generally done. It was more or less an unspoken rule. You did not voluntarily engage in interactions where one person had all the power, and the other had none.
	"You might find Death is a poor conversationalist, for the dead rarely speak," Enn noted, and then sighed. "You're the first civilian I've spoken to, you know. I know [i]nothing[/i] about how you go at things. What you consider fully self-explanatory, I might not. I did not have parents, or relatives - or at least I don't recall any. We are not supposed to wave our hands around when stopped at gunpoint - just stop completely and answer questions. And that applies to officers, too."

	Thunder rolled over the land. Real thunder, produced by a massive release of electrical energy in turbulent weather, not the roar of aircraft breaking sound barrier or the crack of a shot. The wind had once more quieted, the sickly brownish-yellow sky deceptively still.
	There was naught but a glimpse of the heavens above visible, even as the conifers overhead began rolling the young tips of their branches up, not unlike some manner of inverse growing ferns. Some measure against sustaining radiation burns, perhaps. "Don't you fear your skin being scorched off, walking around so far from your base partially bare-skinned?" he inquired from Kay with a sideways glance.    
	Soon enough, the sky was riddled with flashes of light, the air felt heavy, buzzing, and all ranged communications were rendered impotent, machines brought down to more primitive forms of communication or restricted to their own thoughts in their shielded shells.
        It would be four more hours until Notrau Qure, now aliased Enn-Que, would be walking through the gates of Eighfour, still adorned in full (albeit still slightly damp) Anderekian combat armor and with his gun slung over his shoulder.
	That is, assuming they had gates. Would be hard to keep the beasties out without a dedicated armed force otherwise.

[h3]The Aftermath[/h3]
	Somewhat gingerly, Ezek settled down in what was one of the five most comfortable chairs within at least a dozen kilometers' radius. In stark contrast to the hard outer shell of the mobile station that turned it into a viable surface bunker, the insides were almost ... cozy. This room in particular had been designed much more like a fancy living room than a military compound. If one ignored the reason why the windows were but long, narrow slits and carefully avoided analyzing anything displayed on the screens in front of you - which, incidentally, would have looked uniformly dull matte black to anyone noninitiated peering at them with naked eye - one could probably almost forget where one was, and why. [i]Almost.[/i]
	Edrik Marax had evidently arrived quite some time before him; he was seated in the chair by Ezek's left hand, leaned back with his eyes closed. It almost appeared as if he were asleep. Only the occasional twitch of muscles between labored breaths and his pallid countenance betrayed that the man was most likely just trying to regain some semblance of a passable state. His helmet was on a table behind him, gun propped against the armrest of his chair with its strap wrapped around his left arm. [i]"As much as he is able,"[/i] Igna had said... The two commands - one female, one male, both quite young, not impossibly on their first [i]severe[/i] mission - looked semi-expectantly at the two of them. The chair to Ezek's right was empty.
	[i]He should probably pay a visit to Aidren...[/i] Not necessarily to question him; while he was quite certain Aidren would be at [i]least[/i] as interested in where some of his men had [i]disappeared[/i] as himself and Igna (provided he had the presence of consciousness), his older female counterpart was probably also correct in trying not to stress their fellow commanding officer any further than necessary. The man had been through enough already (if anything, Igna had understated his condition), and it was not like he was capable of much if he wanted to.
	"Once more, drivers are who will save us all..." he muttered.
	"Pardon?" one of the commands inquired.
	"The drivers of the utilitarian vehicles, and the surviving artillery," he noted. "A good half of those who are still in one piece are drivers."  
	"Ah. Yes."
	Nevertheless, they had two injured people and a third of a dead one (sometimes literally) for every intact one. Support - cut off. Communications will probably drop entirely in an hour from the impending sunstorm, and stay down for six to eight.
	They will not be able to more than blind-shoot the artillery at anything out of range of sight during that time... Unless they set out someone with beacons, that was. He was not going to send his men and women out on death missions on a whim, but he could set up a trap of sorts. Artillery fire was not ideal for defensive purposes, but for as long as they remained stationary - and they were not going anywhere at this rate -, they could be used to land shards at any designated location within the range of sixty kilometers, and slugs and powered projectiles more than twice as far. When it came down to very close ranges, the artillery were more than capable just rolling over lesser enemy units. Igna and Uwe had had similar ideas, but before the sunstorm, they could rely on drone sight over relying on manned beacons. Not that they had had many people to spare while everyone was still busy trying to save who could be saved...
	No one knew whether their new ally was really trustworthy, or even whether it - as the forces sent appeared unmanned - would remain responsive for the duration of the sunstorm, so he could not put much consideration into its units' participation. He could try making suggestions, but ultimately, it operated autonomously.
	"I'd say wired beacons in these thirty-eight locations, twelve watchers," he commented, his words sent by the fingers of his left hand moving over the table and lightly touching a few spots, lighting up markings on a map on one of the screens. His arm remained rested against the edge of the table and his armrest; each of his fingers was mapped to its own pointer - the thumb manipulating options and switching modes, and the other fingers handling selections and markers. Once he was done, he simply curled his hand into a loose fist and left it to lie right where it had been when he finished manipulating the map. The pointers corresponding to his fingers disappeared as soon as his gauntleted fingertips were no longer pointed at the table.
	Edrik remained motionless, but opened his eyes enough to see what he was doing. 
	"AP paired here and here," commented Ezek. "And send the drones out ... whether we live or die, the records would still be useful. For the common good and all that."
	"Four of them; we need to make sure we still have sight even if they scour the place under the cover of the sunstorm and manage to take them out," appended the second commanding officer. Edrik's voice was weak, his speech much slower than usual, with unnatural pauses. It seemed he had to take great effort to pronounce the words clearly. "So, you agree with Igna? That they'll mobilize what's left of the base northeast of here and come after us again?" 
	"I wouldn't know. But they've already moved to attrition us, and it'd be quite like them. Besides, what are we to do, just [i]wait[/i] and see whether they strike us while we're down?" The question was rhetorical. They were duty-bound to be as ready to retaliate as possible at all times.
	"I figure they'll wait. At least until they can send in some additional forces from the nearby bases. Attack us with the proper force and then for the amount of units they already know we have fielded here. Reckless and and uncaring though the Ardeks are, they would not have managed to stay an existential threat for as long as they have were they also pathological morons. If they manage to clear any and all drones and watchposts, they'd leave us as blind as the sunstorm, all the while retaining their comms and coordination."
	"Ever the optimist..." That possibility gave them much worse odds ... that kind of fight, he did not think they could win. They would try, though. And even if they fail, the others would at the very least have a [i]better[/i] fighting chance. But that was far future compared to the usual timeframe of a combat scenario. Until then, there would be preparations ... and waiting. All too much waiting.
	"I call it realism. Besides, I'm willing to bet you agree with me now that I've brought the possibility to the forefront of your mind."
	"You're not helping, Marax. We can at least [i]hope[/i] they make more, rather than fewer mistakes."
	"They say that if you want something broken, you don't just hand it to intellectuals and task them with breaking it - you'll also want to hand it to an idiot and tell them to just [i]use[/i] it," murmured Edrik. "A rational person simply would not come up with ways to fail quite as spectacularly. It can throw one off."
	Ezek raised an eyebrow, but realized Edrik had closed his eyes again. "What?"
	"We can only prepare for what we expect. So I propose we play a game, see how ridiculous a battle plan we can come up with for the good old Ardeks. There is little our shift can do; should help pass some time. You two are free to take shots, too."
	"Sir?" one of the commands inquired hesitantly. Ezek appeared to have turned his focus onto something on his personal screen. The second command was handling drones.
	"Yes?" Edrik replied in his newly-acquired drawl. "Go on, ask. I'm only half as likely to bite someone's head of as Igna on a [i]good[/i] day, and currently I'm still not entirely sure my brain won't start seeping out of my nose if I move my head too much."
	"I..." the command began, but stopped, eying Edrik's limp form. He was about the same height as Ezek, but more sturdily built, and about eight years younger. The same pitch-black hair- and eye-color. More almond-shaped eyes and rectangular face, framed by straight hair that reached just barely past his shoulders. The armor he was wearing was impeccable - chances were, not the same he had been wearing last night. "Are you OK?"
	"Negative. If it isn't visually apparent enough after watching me for the better part of two hours, feel free to check my status file, I don't mind. But judging by the fact that I can still mostly form coherent sentences if I focus on it, could be worse."
	"Yeah. Stupid question." The command seemed to consider for a moment. "A game, Sir?"
	"Why not? Between the four of us, we should have enough shared attention to keep an eye on things, and short of making sure each individual watchpost is properly in cover, there is little we can do at the moment. I can't go out, you're supposed not to."
	The command did not seem entirely convinced. It [i]was[/i] indeed the first time they were on a severe mission - and incidentally also the first time they had hit an off-time during a mission. A calm [i]between[/i] storms. There was little reason to doubt their skill and training, however it appeared at least one of them was quite timid when paid any not strictly formal attention to by one of the highest ranks in vicinity. The other appeared focused on what little he had in the ways of tasks.
	"I guess... I'd like to do more, now. It feels like all I do is watching."
	Being a command was a bit of an unique position. They were voices and observers, not deciders. On one hand, they had tremendous responsibility. On the other, they technically ranked below line-soldiers, and in the absence of any higher ranks, were supposed to take orders from them. Perhaps it was a fair price to pay for being of the few whose job description did not [i]specifically[/i] include going in the thick of it all and getting shot at.
	"Trust me, I know the feeling," Ezek commented, dully looking [i]through[/i] his screen. The missing people were somewhere on the lower plateau, that much could be deduced. Drones A1 through A4 were in position. Beacons were being dealt with.
	"We could bring a few of the stable severely injured people here," figured Edrik. "The ones who the meds are done with, and who are mostly sane. It's a safer place than the tents here, bit nicer than the APCs, too, but still mobile like them if need be. Company is up to everyone's own judgment."
	"But we cannot leave."
	"Exoding's against the terms, yes. Repositioning isn't. Not providing more obvious targets than necessary isn't. Neither is cycling too injured people out in favor of operative soldiers." They also had more vehicles than people to pack into them.
	"And we cannot bring in anything or anyone. Unless someone tears down the watch. No salvager, no converter, no repair vehicles, nothing. Terrain's in the way of artillery fire. And we are ... well."
	"They [i]did[/i] set me loose. That alone should be enough of a hint on our condition." There was a brief pause. "They've a reason to fear us, though. There are most likely a few more bases within range of us, which, if revealed, are effectively done for. And once the weather clears up, we might be able get a few flighted carriers over if Ederen Naught can lend support fire and we and the AA can move to meet them."
	"That assumes many things fall in place, it'd not lend to immediate firepower ... and that's also when you expected a second strike." 
	"Yes. But we'd be able to do something, and it's a better chance than zero. Any chance is better than none." And Ezek said [i]he[/i] was not the optimist?
	"Do you reckon you'd be able to handle it if something was needed here?" Ezek interrupted. 
	"Sure," figured Edrik, once more looking over the screens rather than appearing to be out. "Feeling restless?" 
	"Something of the kind," the other sighed, and just like that, he was getting up again. 
	"For all our talk, we [i]cannot[/i] afford to be reckless," Edrik reminded his fellow commanding officer, briefly halting him. Oddly harshly, too. The six - now five - of them were all of equal standing. Nevertheless, between pain and longer experience, some part of Ezek wanted to snap at the other. He [i]knew[/i]. 
	"I'm aware," he noted, and continued with his departure. 
	"Good. Igna seemed to suspect otherwise, and she's known you longer than I." The door closed behind Ezek a moment after the man was certain his fellow commanding officer was done speaking. "Now, any proposals? Any tactic you can come up with if you disregard common sense for a while?"
	"What?" the female command seemed momentarily confused. "Ah yes." Pause for thought. "Can their drones physically carry people?"