[b]Shahan IVa[/b]
[i]Five years ago[/i]

The first one of the survivor caravan arrived at the checkpoint with his hands held high in the air, limping across the shattered and torn road while dozens of men, women, and children of all species and ages trailed behind him. His exposed skin, face and arms, were covered in dirty bandages. Beneath the wraps, his skin was burnt and charred, peeling off grotesquely. A soldier, from a mobile guardpost, had spotted them a few kilometers out with his scout drone, and had assembled a fireteam to block off the road. A gun platform mounted to a utility truck had been brought to the center of the road. They dressed like Vanaati, probably the ones unlucky enough to be stuck in mineshafts or bunkers when the nukes glassed the town and its rebel garrison there. The leader dropped to his knees in front of the fireteam and bowed his head down to the ground.

In the distance, thunderous explosions from nuclear warheads and laser bombardment sent ripples through the still air. It was noticeably hotter: thermal energy from the fires and explosions had raised the temperature by a few degrees, at least locally. The goal of the Kotayki battlegroup was not to glass the entire planet, since they still needed to space when the battle was over, but instead to completely wipe any sort of resistance pockets that Vanaat could still harbor. In the distance, over the horizon, the city of Vanaat burned and sent thick plumes of acrid smoke into the blue sky. Drones and craft soared across the grasslands, ferrying troops and supplies. On the ground, convoys of troops were poised to enter through the city to verify the damage done and move onto the next position. Sadaet's vehicle, towing a tactical satcom array to help establish local communications for the battle damage assessment, had parked a hundred meters behind the checkpoint while they waited for the security element to clear the road. He stood behind the armored door of his truck on the running board, hand on the hilt of his holstered revolver while the other one gripped a handrail on the roof of the truck. A cigarette dangled from his mouth, his helmet linked with a d-ring to a spare loop on his plate carrier's load bearing harness. He turned to his technical expert, a warrant officer almost twice his age with wild hair and a greying beard. "Who are these guys?" Sadaet asked.

"Vanaati," said the warrant officer simply. "Probably trying to get out of there. No idea how in the hell they managed to do that, we've been glassing the town for days now."

"They've got vehicles behind them," pointed out Sadaet. He gestured in the direction, many meters behind the herd of refugees on foot with their hands in the air as well. Ragged-looking vehicles with blasted-out windshields and scorched paint drove slowly with the writhing figures of the mortally wounded in their truck flatbeds or sprawled out on backseats. "And the wind is pushing the fallout to the east, right by Battle Position Rio."

Shouting from the refugees brought Sadaet and his warrant officer back to the scene. The lead man, speaking in thickly accented Vanaati, begged for help from the fireteam. "We're poisoned! Poisoned!" he screamed at them. His hands turned to fists, he shook at the troops from his knees. "Everyone is sick! We're all burned! How could you do this? Everyone!"

"Back off! Back up!" shouted one of the security troops. Beside him, another soldier held out detection gear in his hands, registering a potential radiological threat. While radiation poisoning wasn't contagious, the concern was fallout particles: little pieces of dirt or material sucked up by the fireball and deposited with radioactive nuclides that was dispersed over the blast area. While most of it decayed within two days, there was a significant contamination risk to men and materiel from some of the elements with longer half-lives. “I swear to god, if you don’t back the fuck up I will shoot you in the fucking face.”

Sadaet’s radio started to ping, but he turned down the volume knob. The scene in front of him unfolded about as dramatically as it could have: the refugee continued to shuffle towards the checkpoint, his followers alongside him showing their wounds and desperately requesting help. A single medic had been brought forward from the convoy to assess the situation. He could be seen shaking his head, massaging his forehead with his fingertips with a pained expression on his face. An officer beside him was pointing to the refugees and talking fast. The discussion between him and the convoy security leader turned into shouting, then shoving. A shout from the little circle drew two soldiers in as the officer body-checked the medic into a ditch beside the road: one soldier restrained him, now yelling and screaming at the medic and pointing wildly at the refugees, while another helped the other man out of the ditch. What insanity.

While this unfolded, a gunshot cut through the air. The fight on the side of the road stopped: the men looked, some in shock, some in total apathy, as the checkpoint fireteam leader fired off another shot into the ground beside the refugees. “The next one goes right into your fucking forehead!” he screamed, jerking his rifle towards the leader of the huddle. The man dropped to his knees again, hands still outstretched in the air.

Sadaet turned back to ask for another cigarette from his chief. He opened up the cardboard box, withdrawing one slowly while he flicked open his lighter in the other hand. He bent his head low to light it behind the cover of his truck’s door, away from the wind, and just managed to get a good light going before the rip of a machinegun burst tore across the road. He flinched down behind the armored vehicle skin as another cacophony of rifle rounds, some even on automatic mode, shook the convoy. The screams and shrieks of dozens, hundreds even, of people, silenced the gunfire. Refugees took off sprinting in whatever way they could, scattering like balls broken in a game of pool. Bodies lay in the street, torn to shreds and missing arms, legs, and faces. Red blood seeped out from underneath the pile of dead in the streets. A pink mist gently settled down from the scene, mixing in with the blood on the road before someone called for a ceasefire.

“Stop!” shouted the officer, who had broken out of an arm-lock from a convoy securityman. “Stop shooting! What the fuck!”

“They kept coming!” replied someone else. Sadaet didn’t know who. Beside him, his chief offered up a few choice swears before settling down into his seat and closing his door. “Get in, sir,” he said simply, bluntly. “Close the door. Start the engine. Our convoy is moving.”

[b]Teravainen[/b]

“Alright convicts, go time.”

Sergeant Gunnarson leapt from the ramp of their dropship onto the wet, muddy ground. His boots sucked into the mud, he raised his rifle to a crisp high-ready before scanning his sector. Off the ship next came Sadaet, jumping down into the dirt and unslinging his carbine from the sling on his chest. His left hand held onto the foregrip of the piece, an unregistered printed weapon he had downloaded and assembled some years ago after he could out that he could not avoid firefights with his technical expertise alone, while his left hand tapped at a small screen strapped to his left wrist. He went down a knee, bowing his body and slipping one shoulder of his assault pack off. The rest of the team assembled into a semicircle facing outwards just off the ramp of the dropship to provide security while Sadaet uncovered the drone inside his pack. He flipped the power on, unfolded its triangular wings, shouldered his bag, and stood up to toss it out.

Immediately, the drone’s engine kicked on and, as it dipped a little bit in the air, it flew off. A sensor link was established to Sadaet’s wristpiece and he began receiving live data from the sector. Visual, infrared, or other optical imagery piped into the screen while a side window displayed coordinates or pertinent alerts. “We’re live,” Sadaet said simply, his hand coming back to the weapon grip. He pushed the alert window to his contact lenses and ducked down again as the heat of the dropship engine passed over him and the crew. The engines, angled down, downwashed them in dirt, grass, and heat as it passed off back to the [i]Revenant.[/i] Gunnarson hissed about forming up as their ride left, and the team moved into their wedge to begin moving out. The dropship was moderately stealthy, but the Federation had better sensors than that. There would at least be a rudimentary investigation into a potential intrusion, but they had plans to be long gone by the time a quick-reaction force arrived.

The team took off at a combat jog, weapons raised and scanning. Their formation passed over a few hundred meters of open ground before disappearing into the woodline. Gunnarson called them to a halt and security position while Sadaet gathered information from the drone. He had helped develop the software that turned physical and digital reconnaissance signals into actionable intelligence: his thermal sensors picked up and identified guard positions, which were matched to locations and pushed out to heads-up-displays on the other members of the team. The drone did a few flybys of the base, encircling it to double-check that it had found all of the signatures it needed. Thermal, electromagnetic, visual, and radiological hits were converted into camera positions, weapon nests, or types of buildings and vehicles. Once a few minutes had passed, the scan was complete. A fully-detailed view of the depot populated on top of the existing imagery: now they had real-time positions of the enemy position. Gunnarson ordered a final check of weapons and equipment before they began their maneuver to a critically underdefended point on the perimeter. Time to get some action.