Lurec! 

[i]"Certainly not!"[/i] gasped the Raven, five hands touching against a beak-shaped void. [i]"You have travelled all this way. You are my guests. I cannot accept your hospitality when I have so much of my own to offer."[/i]

It stepped back, the dance coming apart. As it does the light and dark that it had separated begin to blend together again, and water stains the ankles of the maidens. Tall swamp reeds brush the sides of your command throne, silt and dirt and mosquitoes lap around the bases of the cogitators, and the smell of stagnant water corrupts the air.

The five give final bows, one after another, and then their light dims as possession leaves them.

[i]"Welcome again to my home. Come in peace, go in friendship, and leave behind some of the happiness you bring."[/i]

*

[b]All![/b]

The ship has made anchor. The shuttles are loaded, the battle plans are drawn up, and a world awaits below. You have gone your separate ways during the long months of travel but now you are to be committed to each others' presence for perhaps just as many months. Side by side, you see the vast swamp of the Jade Bastion come into view; the spectacular riverbursts where dams collapsed into cities, the lines and lines of fortification, the dark grey shapes of the spaceports and their vast, empty bulk carriers.

You take with you only a few attendants each; the second shuttle carries a unit of thirty Legionnaires; the third some sort of terrible walker device. Trivialities against the might of an entire fortress world - your only real assets are each other.