Elektra sat with her back against the berm looking up at the pale white sky of Babylon 0412. Different scattering patterns meant that the sky wasn't blue the way it was on Samothrace and most of the other worlds she had visited. It was rather pretty. The Cataphract decarch was in armor, but it was open, the panels spread like the petals of polished steel flower. Though the sophisticated armor was air conditioned, it had to be to operate in hostile environments and in vacuum, most troopers preferred to breathe natural air when they could, even now, when she was technically on guard. Two of her ten man squad were buttoned up in their own armor, taking care of that chore by observing the Carisad host via emissionless optic fiber lenses that extended from their suits like tentacles. It didn't seem likely to her that Artaxerxes and his troops would try an attack, they were negotiating after all, but if they did Elektra could have her suit buttoned up in a second and be ready to fight the second after that. The Carisadan forces encamped on the other side of the shallow valley had learned the hard way what attacking a force of armored Hellens was like two days ago when the armies had clashed in shattering destruction. Artaxerexs II had been routed and his troops had fled in panic, but Cyrus had been killed at the pivotal moment and so the battle would go down as a tactical victory and a strategic defeat. Most of Cyrus' Carisadan troops had already gone over to Artaxeres or fled into the hills. That was fine for them, this was their corner of the universe afterall, but the Hellnes, mercenaries without an employer were hundreds of light years from the Agean and Hellace sectors, hundreds of very hostile lightyears if the negotiations didn't go well. Politics in the vast and ancient Carisad Empire was a turbuletn affair, particularly when the Emperor died. There was, supposedly, a line of succession, but the reality was that, unless the Emperor was unusually strong, it was usually ignored in favor of a more direct method of choosing a successor. Cyrus had been in contact with the Hellenes during his time as overloard of the Agean Satrapies, as the systems bordering Hellenic space were known when his father, the aged Emperor Darius, had died unexpectedly. With the long war between the Delions and the Spartans finally coming to an end, he had quite understandably hired himself the finest heavy infantry force in the world to make himself Emperor. The problem was of course, that you couldn't be Emperor if you were dead. And god damn all glory hounds who think they are invincible just because they have a set of armor. "Arty will hire us on right?" Menander asked sounding a little anxious. All of them felt that way of course, their armor was expensive to maintain and operate and a mercenary needed to say employed or risk losing it. "Well he hasn't started shooting yet so its a fair bet," Leto responded in her thick Scythian accent. "He's lucky we dont just start up where we left off the other day," Leto opined hopefully. She was always looking for some action. That was good in a cataphract who served as both the scouts and the close assault element of the force, but her grasp of tactics beyond her own specialty were lamentably weak. Elektra snorted in derision. "You got something to say boss?" Leto asked acidly. Recruits from the so called barbarian worlds, like Leto and, for that matter, Elektra were difficult to keep under discipline. "Sure maybe we could cut our way through them, mabye," she retorted added emphasis to the qualifier by wiggling her hand back and forth. "But then what do we do, with Cyrus dead ever Carisad on the planet will be shooting at us, even if just so whoever ends up on the throne dosen't show them the hot end of a fusion torch for not defending the Empire right?" she explained. "We can't go back, because Arty has all that artillery he can drop on us as we try to retreat, and we cant go forward because wed have to fight every inch of the way. We can't even go north unless we fancy fighting our way through the jungles with all the creatures and the natives and Athena only knows what." Babylon 0412 was home to a race of natives who were intelligent but had never progressed beyond gunpowder technology before the world had been settled by the Camisads. There had been some attempts to civilize them but these had been violently resisted. When the Camisads responded with violence of their own the natives had bought guns from the Terrans and promptly taught the invaders the same lesson occupying armies had been learning for centuries. There was always someone who wanted it more than you. "The peltasts could cover us from the artillery," Menander put it, guesturing to where one of the specialist troopers stood. His armor was lighter than the cataphracts and the line troopers, and mounted three light calibre plasma chain guns on seperate mounts, one on each shoulder and one from the small of his back. The configuration could put out a fearsome amount of fire but the calibre was two small to be really effective against shields and armor. Its design was to provide harassing fire against light troops and, more importantly, to shoot down incoming artillery fire with the aid of their sophisticated computer targeting systems. "Fine lets say they could protect us," ELektra conceeded and then pointed to the pass at the southern end of the valley, large peaks capped with snow rose up all around the route. "Nothing stopping him from dropping the mountains on us, and the peltasts would burn out their guns eventually, Carisad troops might be for shit but their artillery is no joke." "Fine," Leto huffed crossing the arms of her gleaming suit, "what do you suggest?" "I think," ELecktra replied calmly, "that we all better just shut our mouths and wait our betters to sort this mess out right?"