Kev'cect felt the mild bump that signaled that the shuttlecraft had finally touched down. He quickly unstrapped his torso from the restraining straps of the seat and waited as security force beings filed out from the back row. Then his row, second from the back, filed out. Kev'cect squeezed through the shuttle's airlock and skillfully descended the ladder to the ground. The first seven men off the shuttle had already started to form a crude perimeter around the shuttle, more out of habit than because of an actual threat already on the ground.

Lieutenant Henin was supervising the lowering of the armed explorer van from the belly of the shuttle. The winch lowered it to the ground, and another security Landfleet soldier was opening the main hatch of the van. Kev'cect took a few moments to look around. It was the first time he had set foot on this world, but he had heard many stories about it. Through the dust that had been kicked up by the shuttle's VTOL thrusters, Kev'cect could make out the domes and towers of the colony about two-hundred meters away.

The colony appeared to be surrounded by a low metal wall at least four meters tall. There were watch towers positioned every fifty meters along its length. There was also a larger tower where the wall sections joined at each corner. The wall appeared to be hexagon shaped as viewed from the air. It had a large gate at the center of each of the three wall sections that Kev'cect could see from where he stood, one of which was open. He assumed the other three walls on the far side had a similar layout. As Kev'cect watched, a civilian groundcar drove out of the open gate and turned toward the shuttlecraft. It moved slowly over the uneven ground and came to a stop twenty meters from the shuttle's right wing. Lieutenant Henin motioned Kev'cect and two others to follow him as he marched toward the groundcar.

A human male stepped out of the back of the car and walked toward the group. He was soon followed by a Dralasite Landfleet officer and a startlingly attractive Vrusk female. Kev'cect only half heard the introduction and pleasantries exchanged between the two humans as Lieutenant Henin and Governor Bradley spoke. Kev'cect tore his gaze from the female Vrusk long enough to appraise the other two visitors. The Dralasite had a name tag that read, "Oorl." The Human wore no military uniform, but his demeanor left little doubt that he considered himself to be in charge. He had a large amount of facial hair. Kev'cect reminded himself that humans referred to it as a beard, and remembered that most human males would have them if not for their tendencies to cut those hairs very close to the skin daily. This human seemed to enjoy the hair though, as he had an odd mannerism of stroking the hairs nearest his chin while he addressed Lieutenant Henin.

"I can't say I'm unhappy to see you, but it appears we're in a bit of a bind. Our Deep Space Radar control has recorded twenty-five shuttlecraft heading toward the planet. Our colony is equipped with a Geothermal powered laser battery that they'll likely steer clear of, but the rest of the airspace is undefended."

Thomas Bradley nodded his head toward the Vrusk, "My assistant Jenk'sik believes they intend to enter the atmosphere on the far hemisphere and then fly in low as close to the colony as they can get. That way, they can avoid costly atmospheric losses. Once they're on the ground, they can make a frontal assault."

Kev'cect considered the situation. If he were in the Sathar commanders' shoes, he would do much the same thing. Jenk'sik's analysis sounded reasonable. He turned his mind to preparations to repel a ground assault.

Lieutenant Henin asked, "What defenses have you prepared so far?"

The Dralasite was the first to answer, "I've got my troops digging foxholes along the southern perimeter with overlapping fields of fire. I've also asked for civilian volunteers and began training them with weapons. Deep Space radar control is analyzing the radar profile of the Sathar assault shuttles so that we can estimate how many troops each can carry."

Governor Bradley interrupted him, "And that appears to be way too many troops. Twenty-five shuttles can carry as many as three-thousand soldiers. We have fewer than thirty in the colony. Even with your troops, that makes less than fifty. Lieutenant Oorl believes that the best chance we have is to dig in here and wait for more Landfleet reinforcements."

Lieutenant Henin looked skeptical. "I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for reinforcements. I don't know how much you've heard out here, but Spacefleet is on the ropes and they'll have a hard enough time protecting the heavily populated worlds without protecting troop transports to reinforce us here."

Henin paused and considered the situation, "If we prepare adequate defenses and the Sathar didn't land much in the way of heavy support weapons though, we may be able to hold a perimeter. For several weeks, at least. I don't see many other options."

Kev'cect listened as Governor Bradley, Lieutenant Oorl, and Lieutenant Henin began to discuss the best layout for the defensive positions, with the help of a map on a datapad Lieutenant Oorl carried in his pseudopod. Kev'cect also allowed himself to surreptitiously study Jenk'sik. She was also following the conversation, and adding her own observations when she deemed them appropriate. Kev'cect noted that she didn't seem to have military experience, but her opinions about the surrounding terrain were insightful and helped to further the plans for reconnaissance and foxhole positions. Then, Jenk'sik then looked directly at him, and for an instant Kev'cect feared that she had been aware of his quiet observation of her. He felt like a youth discovered doing something wrong by his parents. To his relief, her gaze only settled on him for an instant, then it continued on to each man and woman who accompanied the shuttle to the surface. It appeared to Kev'cect that she was appraising them.

Kev'cect saw that Bradley and the two Lieutenants were finished with the map datapad and had added foxhole positions to the map a bit beyond the wall to the research compound. Lieutenant Henin turned to Kev'cect and the other lower ranking soldiers. "Rollins, take you squad to the north and start digging. You're in charge of setting up the fields of fire and setting up the communication lines to the compound. Cover the arc between three-hundred fifteen degrees and forty-five degrees. Naralk, same thing but cover this arc between forty-five and one-hundred fifteen degrees. Kev'cect, take your team and cover two-hundred twenty-five degrees to three-hundred fifteen degrees. The locals have the remaining southern arc started. Everybody clear on this?"

Lieutenant Henin looked at each squad leader in turn. Kev'cect nodded automatically when Henin looked at him. Next, Henin fixed his gaze on Governor Bradley. "I'd be lying if I told you our chances were good. If we are to have a chance at all, we need adequate preparations and we need every being in your compound to pitch in on the digging. Can I count on them?"

Governor Bradley forced a laugh, "They may be scientists and researchers, but I guarantee that they'll work like their lives depend on it. I'm pretty handy with a shovel myself. Just tell me where to start."

Kev'cect walked back to his small squad of Privates. They were still off-loading ammunition crates and heavy weapons from the shuttlecraft's cargo hold. Kev'cect waded in and assisted them in loading them into the back of the Governor's groundcar, then led his men around the Colony wall to the far side of the compound where his section of the perimeter would lie.

The hot Volturnus winds blew sand against his carapace as he walked. His squad was remarkably quiet today, perhaps aware of the gravity of the situation. Kev'cect looked again at his map to get an idea of the size of the area his squad was assigned to cover.

Although the arc didn't look long on the datapad, it actually was an area four-hundred meters in length. Even with civilian volunteers to help man the foxholes, there would be far too many for his five man squad to cover. Ideally, there would be a foxhole about every fifteen meters along the length, which amounted to about twenty-seven foxholes. That's fifty-four men, not counting the Heavy support weapon squads, Kev'cect realized. At that rate, half of the colonists will be needed to man the perimeter.

Looking more carefully at the Datapad, Kev'cect saw that the foxholes had been placed twenty-five meters apart instead of fifteen. That cut down the number in his coverage arc to just sixteen foxholes. This meant that every third foxhole could be manned by a member of Kev'cect's squad, with civilian volunteers manning the rest. It also meant that the Sathar could slip through the gaps between the foxholes without facing withering point blank range crossfire. At last, Kev'cect arrived at the beginning of his squad's arc.

There was a group of thirty civilians waiting at the start of his defensive perimeter section. Kev'cect split them up assigning five beings to each member of his squad. Each six man team had only to dig three foxholes, which wasn't as bad as Kev'cect feared it would be. When he queried one of the civilians about who organized the work groups, he was not surprised to hear that it was the Assistant Governor Jenk'sik.

After making sure his three foxholes were started in the right place, Kev'cect left the civilians to work and walked the line. All of his men had taken similar steps and the defensive perimeter was shaping up nicely. By midday, they were covering the foxholes with metal plates and covering the plates with still more dirt before camouflaging each foxhole. Lieutenants Oorl and Henin walked the line just before dusk, making sure that the land communications lines were installed to each foxhole and that the heavy support weapons positions were prepared to their satisfaction.

By nightfall, all the work was completed. The men were caked with dirt and their hands were callused from the unaccustomed manual labor. Kev'cect and his men began to teach the volunteers the finer points of firing lane coverage, antipersonnel mines, radio and land line communications procedures, and battlefield first aid.

Most of the civilians were able bodied and took quickly to the training, but some seemed unable to hit the broad side of a groundcar at ten meters. Sathar target outlines two hundred meters away were almost impossible for those novice gunners to hit. Kev'cect made sure that they received fully automatic weapons, which could be fired in short burst covering a wider arc. He knew that this wouldn't actually increase their odds of hitting very much, but he hoped the noise they made would cause the Sathar to attack down other, seemingly safer firing lanes. Kev'cect paused for a moment to watch the sun set over the horizon, filling the sky with brilliant shades of red and purple.

Kev'cect found himself wondering if it would be his last.

One quarter of the way around the world, in the vast desert region of Volturnus, Junior Lieutenant Gorlma slowly drifted back to consciousness. He was first aware of pain near his shoulders, then a similar, if somewhat less intense pain coming from his hips. His eyes didn't appear to be working, but he could smell coolant and the acrid smell of burnt circuitry.

The smell triggered memories of the crash, which flooded back to him all at once.

Gorlma vividly recalled entering the atmosphere of this rock and learning that the damage made his craft very difficult to control. Gorlma had intended to land by the colony, but then his auxiliary power, which had been spotty, failed altogether. Without power, the fighter's atmospheric control surfaces failed to function. Everything on the fighter was computer controlled, so without power, there was no control. To make matters worse, the little atomic fighter had a very high wing loading, which made it glide only slightly better than a brick.

His fighter plummeted thousands of meters through the atmosphere before the auxiliary power began to work again. The controls felt sluggish and unresponsive, but Gorlma was able to fly the fighter to some extent. Still, the slowest rate of descent he could manage was over two-hundred meters per minute.

By the time Gorlma was able to pick out a landing spot, the controls were getting worse. He was still facing a dead stick landing, with no runway and no vertical landing thrusters. At four hundred meters Gorlma tried to put the landing gear down and noticed that the green "Landing gear locked" indicator was only displayed for the tail skids. The nose skid indicator was displaying a message on his Tactical display screen. It read "do not attempt landing before performing EVA checkout of nose gear. Landing without nose skid may cause loss of control and damage to astrogations and targeting sensor package."

"Thanks a lot computer!" Gorlma spat, wondering what he had done to deserve such trouble.

As the ground came up, Gorlma pulled back on the stick as hard as he could to flare for landing, trading airspeed for a softer landing. He'd just brought the nose level with the horizon when the computer's voice warning intoned, "Auxiliary power failed. Atmospheric control surface function los-"

Then the fighter hit, smashing belly first into the sand. Gorlma was slammed against the restraining straps, then the right wing tip caught on a rock, spinning the fighter around and flipping the fighter onto its back, where it came to rest. Gorlma knew he must have lost consciousness because of that impact.

How long has it been, Gorlma wondered, and why can't I see?

Gorlma could smell air that wasn't from his Inssuit. Gorlma removed his gloves and flipped up the face plate. He cautiously reached up to touch his face, half expecting to find a bloody mess. His hand touched his skin and found it mercifully intact, as were his eyes. Gorlma breathed a sigh of relief, then felt his left wrist for the chronometer he wore there. His thumb hit the button, which lit up the face of the chronometer. Nothing looked better than those glowing green numbers.

17:38 G.S.T. At least I know I'm not blind! Then another thought hit him, I've been unconscious for over seven hours! Gorlma craned his head around, wondering if it was night time on this worthless rock. At that point, he realized that he was hanging upside down in his seat. He reached up his hand and felt the cockpit canopy over his head. No, beneath my head, he corrected himself.

He fought with the five point harness buckles for a moment, which suddenly sprang free, dumping him unceremoniously on his head.

"Ouch!" he muttered, feeling some of the sensation beginning to return to his shoulders and hips, which he realized had been hurt by the straps holding him in his seat.

He felt around in the dark for the manual cockpit canopy release levers. The task was made rather difficult by the complete darkness and the fact that the cockpit was upside down.

At last, he felt the release handles and cranks. The canopy began to move when he turned the crank, but only a few inches. Sand began to pour into the cockpit through the gap, and then he saw light.

The light was enough to see by, and proved that at least one of Volturnus' moons were providing some illumination. The entire canopy had been imbedded in the sand to several centimeters above the level where the clear canopy met the hull.

Gorlma tried to turn the crank again, but the canopy was stuck. It was open only twelve centimeters near the front and a mere sliver at the back.

Great! It's jammed against the sand, with the entire weight of the fuselage on top of it, Gorlma thought miserably.

He thought for a moment, then realized that there was a chance he could still get out of this. He began to absorb his left arm into his body and slowly stretched his right arm into a long digging tool. He stretched it to two meters in length, then made his arm more thin to fit through the gap at the front of the canopy. After he had formed the limb to his satisfaction, he reached through the gap in the front and began pulling sand out from under the canopy. The process took several hours of hard work, but at last Gorlma was able to open the canopy enough to squeeze out.

Gorlma reached behind the seat and pulled out his survival bag, with water, food, vitasalt pills, a medkit, a laser pistol, and a toxyrad gauge. To his relief, the toxyrad gauge showed all reading except radiation to be within safe limits. The radiation was to be expected sitting this close to an atomic reactor, and Gorlma knew his Inssuit protected him to a large extent. Just to be safe, he put his visor back down and donned his gloves. He grabbed the Wartech laser pistol and crawled back to the front of the canopy. Poking the weapon out ahead of him, Gorlma squeezed through the gap and crawled up the short distance to the surface. He cautiously peered out and saw the Volturnian desert for the first time. It stretched for as far as he could see in every direction, utterly flat and featureless. The sand took on the faint reddish glow cast by the moon Leo, which hung cold and distant in the sky. Gorlma crawled the rest of the way out and holstered his laser pistol.

He began to walk around his fighter, inspecting the damage.

It wasn't as good as he'd hoped, but neither was it as bad as he'd feared. The bottom of the fuselage, now facing the sky, was scratched and dented in many places, particularly near the nose. The nose skid had apparently been partially down when he landed, because it was now completely torn off. Looking back along the furrow the fighter left through the sand, Gorlma spotted the skid jutting up from the sand a hundred meters back. The right rear landing skid was bent outward, almost in half, and broken hydraulic cushioning shocks leaked reddish fluid all over the belly of the craft. The right wing had sustained the worst damage as far as he could tell. The tip was shredded where it struck the rock that jutted from the sand fifty meters back. The Conformal Control Surface hydraulics, which warped the wing's shape instead of using more traditional flaps and ailerons, appeared to be undamaged, which was the best news Gorlma had received in the last seven hours. If he could get the fighter turned over, he might yet be able to make it fly again.

A glow on the horizon warned Gorlma that dawn was coming soon, and from what he remembered of his system briefing, some parts of this planet reached over thirty degrees Celsius.

Looking at the lack of apparent plant and animal life, Gorlma guessed that he was right in the heart of one of the desert regions. From what he knew of the native wildlife, he figured he should be glad of that. In particular, a creature the Sathar left as a gift to this planet's indigenous population stood out in his mind. It was fast, murderously efficient, and well camouflaged. The briefing, which he had only half listened to, said to be particularly weary of these things. They were called Rapidkillers, or something like that, by the local inhabitants.

Gorlma fought the urge to draw his laser pistol, instead pulling his survival pack from the cockpit and retrieving the tool kit. He knew he had his work cut out for him over the next few days.

Who am I kidding? It will be weeks before I get this fighter air worthy again... if ever!

Gorlma could no longer contain his rage and frustration. He kicked the side of the fighter as hard as he could, intending to curse it out for stranding him on this rock. When his foot struck the metal hull though, he let out a much different curse than he had planned. He hopped about on one leg, holding his wounded toe in his hands and yelping at the top of his air bellows.

Then, he heard a noise not more than five meters behind him.

It sounded like a footstep, but a heavy one. Gorlma was about to draw his pistol and turn, when he felt something strike the back of his neck.

Of all the lousy luck! Gorlma thought. Survive a dogfight with the Sathar, not to mention a crash landing, only to meet my death here at the hands of some native creature!

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