The rain hammered down, thundering into the sodden grass and splashing into puddles. A low, heavy mist hung over the hillocks and among the reedy trees. Droplets trickled down the matte grey barrel of Anja’s rifle and fell as she adjusted her grip. Her eyes didn’t leave the treeline.

A flash of motion in the murk drew her aim and the rifle spat ghostly fire through the downpour. A trace of steam stretched out in a thin line from the gun as the shot vaporized raindrops in its path, terminating in the hissing, charred ruin of a Buil armsman’s torso. The insectile corpse fell to the ground with its mouth open in a silent scream. Long fingers twitched, grasping the slick mud before falling still.

“Nice shot,” murmured a hunched figure to her left. Anja shot a glance at her sister, ducking back down to rest her back against a crumbling wall that marked the end of a long-disused pasture.

“He could have moved sooner,” Anja hissed back. “I was beginning to think he had fallen asleep.” She pressed a few buttons on her communicator and spoke softly into her helmet’s pickup. “Wraith Actual, Valkyrie Two. South line is clear.”

The rain washed over the two women for a few seconds longer. Droplets slid with unnatural speed from the fabric of their field uniforms, skating across the surface without wetting the slick grey fabric. “Valkyrie Two, copy. Wraith is moving,” came the response, buzzing harshly in her ear.

“Dammit,” she groused, rubbing the side of her helmet. “I hate groundpounder comms. Ellie, didn’t you say they were working on a link interface?”

Eleanor shook her head irritably, a few blonde curls bouncing with the motion where they had escaped her helmet. “Sorry, sister. I heard a rumor, but it appears nothing came of it.” She flashed Anja a grin, her teeth white against the grey murk surrounding them. She tilted her head, then jerked her chin slightly to the rear. “Here they come,” she muttered.

Anja glanced back at the low scrub behind them. The old field wasn’t heavily treed even after years of neglect, but the brush had still grown up to a respectable height. Aside from the tremors of raindrops striking branches, everything was still and quiet behind them. Anja surveyed the miserable scenery for a few moments before sighing and rolling her eyes.

“Chen, Singh, Leclerc, Anders,” she said softly, her finger pointing to four separate spots amidst the undergrowth. A whispered curse drifted up from the last of the spots she marked and four shadowy figures straightened up.

“Goddamn but it’s hard to sneak up on you ladies,” drawled the nearest arrival, shaking his head. His face was obscured by a thin, smooth tactical wrap studded with nonreflective lenses and little black sensors, but the grin was audible. “That’s the fifth time you’ve caught me, Major.” He inclined his head to Eleanor. “Colonel.”

Eleanor shot him a look. “Anders. You called ahead and told us you were advancing. A blind Buil could have seen you coming.”

Anders chuckled quietly. “Good thing you shot the sentry,” he snarked. “We good to move?” Both women nodded and the six set off into the sparse woods, a gentle slope rising beneath them as they traveled. Anja paused once to pull a thin cloth from a pouch at her waist, shaking it out and draping it over the steaming corpse of the sentry. It settled over the body and shimmered, rapidly changing to show a grass and brush pattern that blended perfectly with the ground cover.

They slid through the trees, silently ascending towards a squat villa on the crest of the hill. They stopped well back of the cleared perimeter, observing the guards from behind the treeline as they patrolled.

“Shit,” spat Eleanor. “Three guards on the west roof and four in the garden. Those weren’t in the packet.” She looked back at Anja, who shrugged.

“I’d call him paranoid,” Anders whispered wryly, “but in his defense it’s somewhat justified.” He waggled his gun at the compound, earning a snort from Singh behind him.

“Definitely paranoid,” grunted the burly soldier. “He thinks we don’t know about the villa. If he knew we were coming he wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Eleanor mused. “A few extra thugs don’t alter our plan much. Chen, Leclerc, deploy up at Hill 5. That should give us better coverage of the folks on the roof. Take them out when we’ve begun, then move in for exfil once they pull back the perimeter. We’ll just have to deal with the garden guys ourselves.”

The two she had named nodded quickly and vanished like smoke into the forest, heading towards a knobby rise a few hundred meters distant. The remaining four hunkered down in the damp and waited as the dim sunlight faded further, the wan glow from above diffusing and dimming to plunge the hilltop into a stygian darkness.

Once the only light visible shone in a dim halo from the villa, they crept silently towards the outer perimeter. The rain had stopped, and a hazy mist clung to the ground as they moved. Light shone through expensive-looking bay windows on the near side of the structure, revealing an opulent interior crowded with richly-dressed Buil. Anja lay low amid the forest undergrowth and slid a monocular down from her helmet.

“Party is well underway,” she murmured, scanning the crowd. “I see Prelate Cailir.”

Anders slid forward next to her, surveying the window through the scope of his weapon. “Yep, there’s the old bug,” he agreed, panning across the room. “Looks like he brought half the Curia with him.”

“Positive ID on all three targets,” Eleanor whispered. “They should be moving into the garden after the reception, we’ll advance while they’re preoccupied herding guests.”

Anders poked Anja in the side. “That party looks like fun,” he said sourly. “Why are we stuck out here when Valkyrie 1 gets to infiltrate?”

Anja snorted. “Do you even read your mission packets?”, she shot back derisively. “The other team is infiltrating, but not at the party. Trust me, our assignment is more pleasant than theirs.”

Anders shrugged and peered back through his scope. “Must have skipped over that part. Look, something’s happening.”

The knots of conversation were breaking up as people filed out of the room. The ornate doors to the garden swung open slowly, allowing the first guests to trickle in and wander through the low hedges.

Eleanor nodded sharply and rose to a crouch. “Okay kids, this is it,” she said. “Entry point is…” She frowned, then pointed at one of the sentries on the low wall surrounding the villa. “That one.”

The guests slowly made their way to the garden, tiny golden lights lighting their path and pushing back the cool night. The forest beyond the wall looked utterly black, a featureless void without form or detail. As such, nobody inside was looking outwards when one of the perimeter sentries was yanked backwards, disappearing quietly into the darkness.

Singh twisted his knife sharply and the sentry’s exoskeleton crunched. Anja looked coolly at the rivulets of ichor, steam rising from them to curl around Singh’s crouched form. He kept his glove pressed tightly over the Buil’s mouth until the jerking motions stopped, then nodded to Eleanor.

She returned the motion, then beckoned the team closer to her. “Hold until we get the signal from Valkyrie 1, then pop up on the wall. Take two shots, then drop. Anja, take Yeural and the rightmost guard. Anders, Paunir and the leftmost guard. I’ll backstop Valkyrie 1. Singh, target any other guards.”

The team split up to stand close against the wall while Singh extended a tiny probe. After a few moments all four of them had a small view of the party projected in their HUD, courtesy of the camera at the probe’s tip.

The guests had mostly finished wandering and taken seats in a large flat area opposite their entry. Their targets were moving towards them from the left, leading a procession of roughly-dressed, hunched figures. They took places on a raised podium festooned with lights, an appreciative murmur rising from the audience as they ascended the steps.

A tall, broad-shouldered Buil wrapped in scarlet brocade stood at a podium, spreading his arms to address the audience. “Friends, thank you for coming,” he said in a low, droning voice. “All of you have given selflessly in defense of our homeland, and tonight I hope I can repay a small portion of your sacrifice.”

The audience rattled their chitin in a low wave of acclaim. Anja snorted. “And here I thought Cailir was playing the pompous ass for our benefit,” she whispered. “Turns out he’s like that all the time.”

Singh leaned in conspiratorially as Cailir continued to speak. “Leclerc and I were talking during infil,” he whispered. “Cailir is a true prodigy. He’s one of the biggest assholes known to man, despite the fact that - and this is true, I checked - the Buil don’t have assholes.”

A fortunate swell of clattering applause masked the choking noises that Anders was making. Anja leaned in, frowning. “Singh, I would not call into question your anatomical expertise…”

The big man shook his head, gesturing emphatically. “No, it’s true!”, he insisted. “They just move things between stomachs and when they’re done-”

“Can it,” Eleanor hissed, “he’s wrapping up. Get ready for the signal.” The four crouched figures turned their attention to the video feed as the noise from the crowd died down once more.

“...for those who have perished in our struggle against the human oppressors,” he intoned solemnly, drawing a hushed whisper from the audience. “But tonight is a celebration of what it means to be Buil!”, he crowed. “Our traditions and history carry us through this trial, and we will draw our strength from them in the coming conflicts.” He waited for the smattering of applause to die down again.

“One of the lies the humans spread about me is that I am intolerant of other species,” he said sadly. “Friends, this is not true. I will be the first to say that every species has its place in the order of things,” he leered, drawing a ripple of amusement from the audience. “I’ve even invited a number of them here as honored guests!”

With this, he indicated the line of figures standing manacled behind him, an assortment of non-Buil species clothed in ragged brown cloaks. Anja’s eye was drawn to two humanoid figures near the center of the line, looking hunched and defeated. They shivered in the chill night air, and one was wracked with a coughing fit.

Cailir turned to frown at the noise, then laughed and turned back to his audience. “Ah, yes. The keen-eyed among you may have noticed that I have some human guests as well.” He motioned with one slender arm and a guard hauled the coughing prisoner forward. “It is my humble belief that even the most uncivilized of races may benefit from a life of service. You will find that humans make strong and able servants, and if they are a bit spirited, well...”

He swung his arm and backhanded the prisoner to the ground. “...they are durable enough to survive discipline,” he concluded. Anja’s grip tightened on her rifle as the prisoner struggled to rise, still coughing into their hand. “I will start the bidding at five hundred,” Cailir shouted, and the crowd burst with noise as the bids were called.

The prisoner finished standing and wiped their mouth, and through the camera Anja caught a glint of reflected light from their palm. The guard cuffed the prisoner roughly and dragged them forward, but the cloaked figure opened its hand and twisted-

A bright burst of light flared out from the garden, casting sharp-edged shadows into the forest beyond and evoking a chorus of shocked screams from the audience. As one, the four infiltrators vaulted atop the wall and leveled their rifles at the stunned Buil. The party was in chaos, with blinded guests and guards colliding in an uncoordinated panic.

The prisoner standing in front had slipped her manacles and looped the thin chain around Cailir’s neck in a garrote. Eleanor sighted and fired almost the instant her feet touched the wall, her shot drilling a blackened hole through Cailir’s head. He dropped, as did the two richly-dressed Buil that took fire from Anja and Anders. Another round of fire lashed out to drop two guards, tendrils of steam leaking from their wounds.

The surviving guards on the stage recovered their vision as the team hopped down from the wall. The two human prisoners leapt to engage them, bare hands and feet blurring as they struck chitin hard enough to pulverize it. Singh finished off the staggering guards with quick bursts of fire and the courtyard was momentarily calm.

Dead bodies and cowering aliens filled the stage, and Anja could hear the distant thump of Leclerc and Chen firing on the rooftop guards. The human prisoners pushed their cloaks back to reveal grinning, dirty faces. “Cait, Jesri,” Anja said, smiling at the state of them. “You two look like shit.”

Jesri scooted over by Anja, socking her on the arm and staying low as Singh and Anders searched the steaming bodies of their targets. “What, that’s it?”, she scoffed. “Nothing else? ‘Hi, Jesri, nice to see you! How was being a slave? Thanks for showing us where to find-’”

Cait tossed Jesri a weapon from a downed Buil guard, cutting her off. “Escape first, then chat,” she said brusquely. Eleanor was already backing towards the wall, her rifle leveled at the villa’s windows. Anja turned to leave, then noticed Anders crouched near one of the brown-cloaked slaves.

“Anders!”, she called out. “Time to go!” He turned his head to look at her but didn’t move.

“Major, we’ve got civilian children here,” he said softly. Anja saw Singh stiffen and look over the line of slaves.

Eleanor shook her head sharply. “Anders, no. We’ve got seconds before they regroup.” The mutinous look Anders shot her in return was visible even under his face wrap and goggles. He picked up the tiny slave standing next to him and stood, glaring back in a silent challenge.

Singh bent down and gathered two tiny Arrigh into his arms. As their cloaks fell away Anja saw that their shells had yet to harden and fuse; they couldn’t have been older than ten. “Sir,” Singh rumbled tonelessly, “I have determined that these prisoners are a potential intelligence asset. Our orders-”

“Dammit, you two,” spat Eleanor. “Fine. This will go in your record.” She hopped to the top of the low wall and gestured down. “Jesri, up here. The rest of you, pass the ‘assets’ up to us.” The four left in the garden quickly gathered the prisoners from where they had retreated during the firefight. Anja severed their chains with a plasma knife from her kit, and they were in the process of boosting an elderly Tlixl onto the wall when the first shots came from the villa.

Anja and Cait grabbed a prisoner each and vaulted onto the wall one-handed. Anders and Singh followed close behind, shaking children clinging to their arms. A round sent stone flakes spraying up near Anja’s foot and she spat a curse. “We should have been halfway to the exfil point by now,” she seethed. “Come on!”

The last of the prisoners dove clumsily down from the wall and they began to move at speed towards the forest. Fifty meters of cleared ground lay between them and the forest, and before they had made it halfway they heard the unwelcome whine of Buil rifles from the estate. Singh grunted in pain as a round impacted his armor, but he did not slow.

“Anja, cover fire!”, shouted Eleanor, spinning around to spray a line of fire at the walls. She turned back to move towards the forest and Anja spun as well, shooting an unlucky guard in the chest - but they were swarming the walls now, lining up to pour fire down towards her. Clods of dirt flung up around her as she serpentined towards the treeline. She felt the impact of a round cracking off her shoulderpad, and another scored against her calf.

She burst into the forest at a full sprint, swerving to put trees at her back as she dodged through the blackness. The others had vanished into the forest ahead of her, invisible, so she ran alone and silent for what felt like hours. A roaring filled her skull, pounding with every footfall. Behind her beams of light lanced into the undergrowth and shots rang out to crack against trees.

It sounded like the Buil had found a whole battalion to come after them, she thought, cursing Anders and Singh for sentimental idiots. Weren’t they professionals? Didn’t they know the stakes? Handing the Buil Orthodox insurgency a dead human soldier would provide them a propaganda boost they could use to inspire thousands of new recruits. With solid proof of human involvement Cailir would become a martyr to their cause. It was an unacceptable risk to linger for something that, despite Singh’s excuses, offered no strategic value.

And yet they had, the idiots.

Branches raked at her face as she drew near to the exfiltration site. The Buil were damnably fast through the forest, and their lights seemed to chase just behind her no matter how swiftly she dodged through the undergrowth. She spied another light ahead of her and veered towards it, stumbling over a root that reached up to snag her foot.

She broke through into a clearing where a boxy dropship sat idling, engines pouring hot exhaust onto the rapidly wilting scrub below it. A shimmering barrier sat in front of the ramp to the ship, behind which Leclerc, Chen and Eleanor sat with rifles trained on the perimeter. Cait and Jesri were herding the last of the brown-cloaked captives inside.

At the sight of Anja emerging from the forest the three behind the shield began pouring fire into the trees. Surprised squawks of pain and anger erupted behind her, followed by gunfire that hissed past Anja to carom off the shield or scatter chunks of loamy dirt.

“Get in!”, Eleanor shouted, her voice slicing through the din of combat. Chen lifted the mobile shield and began backing towards the ramp while the others provided covering fire. A ricochet from the ship hull creased Anja’s thigh, breaking her stride and drawing a hiss of pain. She tripped on the ramp edge and fell hard on her wounded leg. Bright lights flashed in her vision, but Cait was already toggling the ramp up - everyone was in, and it was time to go. Anja’s eyes cleared enough for her to snap off a few parting shots through the closing gap, then the hatch sealed with a hiss of pressure and they were away.

After the firefight the shuttle seemed nearly silent, but as Anja lay panting on the deck she felt sound come back into the world around her. The muted wails and sniffles of the frightened refugee children blended into the rumbling assurances from Singh, his helmet and facemask stripped off to reveal hair greying at the temples and a bushy moustache that the tiny Arrigh youth were prodding with obvious fascination. Angry grunts and obscenities from Cait; she had been shot in the shoulder during the withdrawal and was being treated by an oddly maternal Eleanor.

Anja hauled herself upright and saw Anders lying against a bulkhead with a fledgling Tlixl cradled in his arms, chatting with the weeping elder of the same species with a distant smile on his face. The frail winged alien thanked him profusely as he handed over the shivering child, retreating to a corner where he cooed over the youngster and rocked softly.

She stormed up to Anders and kicked his boot.

“Ow,” he said mildly. He had taken off his tac gear as well, revealing a weather-lined face with sandy hair and grey-green eyes. The broad white scar interrupting the stubble on his chin twisted as he grinned up at her.

“Stow that shit,” fumed Anja, kicking him again for good measure. “Anders, we were not equipped for a civilian extraction. If one of us had gone down-”

Anders coughed and waved her off. “You ladies worry too much. Nobody went down,” he said softly, still with that infuriating smirk. “We killed the bad guys, saved the innocent, all that stuff. Take the win, Major.”

“We got lucky,” she hissed. “If the Buil could shoot worth a damn we would be dead. If they had guards posted closer inside we would be dead. You rolled the dice for the whole fucking planet just now.”

Anders shrugged again, but his smile faded. “Major, some dice just need to roll.”

“What we won was not worth the risk, you know that,” Anja sighed.

He barked out a short laugh that turned into a wet series of coughs. “Wasn’t playing to win,” he said dreamily. “Just…”

Anders grimaced and spasmed, his eyes rolling back in his head. Anja spat out a curse and crouched down beside him, trying to hold him steady. “Fucking dammit, Anders, are you hit?”, she growled. “Say something next time! Hey, medkit!”, she yelled, tearing open his jacket and probing for injuries.

Jesri rushed over with a medkit and began preparing a battlefield stimulant injection while Anja turned him over to check his back. He rolled onto his stomach, twitching weakly, and Anja saw the blood caked around the bottom of his armored backplate. It slid out easily, undamaged, but the jacket beneath it was shredded and bloody. She pulled up his jacket and paused.

A Buil round had slipped in between his back and side armor plates, leaving a gaping wound on his lower back. Anja knew the kidney was hit, and probably the liver too. She found herself standing and backing up, clasping her bloody hands together as Jesri saw the wound and gasped.

“Anders? Hey, Anders!”, Jesri yelled, fumbling with the stimulant. She grabbed a pack of nanofiber gauze from the medkit and began frantically packing the wound, her hands smearing scarlet across the pristine white plastic of the medical packaging as she reached back for another roll.

The ship spun around Anja as she stood silently and wrung her hands over and over again, blood dripping from her wrists and elbows to the floor. The wailing of the frightened slave children and the roar of the atmosphere rushing by outside of the shuttle blended together in her ears like an echoing thunder in her skull.

Jesri continued to work as Anders slumped motionless to the decking, her hands bloody past her wrists. “Oh shit, Anders, I got you,” she murmured, turning to stare blankly at Anja. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Don’t worry.”

Anja sat bolt upright with a strangled scream, only to clang her head sharply against the autodoc’s cylindrical covering. Cursing, she tugged the cover back and winced at the blinding light that flooded in from the medical bay. After allowing herself a few moments of blissful immobility, she swung her legs off the bed and paused.

Legs.

She peered at her right leg, probing her knee experimentally. The skin was lighter below the joint and felt more sensitive to touch. Her foot flexed when she tried to move it, and when she slid off the bed onto the deck it held her weight without trouble.

She padded out of the room, feeling the sharp cold of the metal on her bare feet as she wandered over to the nearest fab terminal and dialed up a duty uniform. The terminal chirped and she waited for a minute, examining her body. No scars or blemishes remained from her earlier injuries, but the odd light patches on her skin told a story. One on her stomach, her breast, her arm. She swiped a hand across her back, feeling the smooth skin and knowing what should have been there.

The dispenser dinged and Anja pulled her warm, crisp uniform from the slot, shaking it out and slipping into the clothes before they lost their heat. She bounced on her leg again, feeling it flex in her boot, and a smile flitted across her face.

“Anja!”, Jesri shouted, running over to tackle her sister as she left the bridge lift. Anja laughed as Jesri embraced her, squeezing hard enough to hurt her ribs.

“Ow, ow,” she winced. Jesri backed off apologetically, but Anja pulled her back into a softer hug. “I feel okay,” she said, “but I am a bit tired. How long was I in the doc?” She paused, staring out the viewport. “Sister, is that the galaxy? The whole galaxy?”

Jesri winced. “Yeah, about that,” she muttered, trailing off awkwardly.

Rhuar bounded up behind her, smiling widely. “Hi Anja!”, he said happily. “We left the galaxy! It wasn’t my fault.” He scratched at his ear. “Oh, and we can get back, it’ll just take a few weeks.”

“Rhuar!”, Jesri said reproachfully, smacking him in the side. “You somehow failed to mention that last part to me.”

He looked up at her, a hurt expression on his face. “You never asked,” he said. “Besides, I thought you knew. We’re way far out, but the engines should be able to take it and we’ll have barely enough fuel. Barely.”

“All right,” said Anja, stretching her leg out. “Do we have a potential fuel depot on the rim?”

“I can look!”, said Rhuar, bounding off towards the shipjack. A few seconds later a map flickered to life and he began sorting through it too fast for either sister to follow.

Jesri turned to Anja and smiled. “I’m glad you made it out okay,” she said. “It was pretty touch and go there for a bit.”

Anja nodded. “I figured. I remember some of it, I think.” She looked around the bridge, then let her gaze wander to the galaxy slowly floating past the window outside. “Still, you have to explain to me how this happened.”

“Ah, you’ll have to talk to Rhuar about the particulars of hyperdrive physics,” she said. “In a nutshell, we had some funny shit thrown at us by a Gestalt Emissary. A real one,” she said meaningfully.

Anja frowned. “Unfortunate that they found us so quickly. I would not want to speculate on our odds against one of those,” she muttered.

Jesri scuffed her foot over the decking in irritation. “Zero,” she said, her voice colored with frustration. “Zero point zero zero zero. There’s just no fucking way. We can’t win against one of those things. The best I can say is that we’re not dead, and even that was a one in a billion chance.”

Anja gave her an odd look, then laughed. Jesri blinked in surprise and opened her mouth to inquire, but Anja cut her off. “Nothing, sorry,” Anja said, “just figured something out.” She slid an arm around Jesri’s shoulders and they looked together at the galaxy hanging motionless, light-years distant. Light from before humans developed agriculture, she realized. Light from before humans tamed the Earth and ruined her. From before they broke the bonds of gravity and time to hurl themselves across the stars. From before they all died.

“The Gestalt is far, far beyond us. We cannot win,” Anja said softly, an incongruous smile creeping over her face even as the words condensed to a cold core in her gut. “But maybe winning is the wrong goal. Maybe it would be enough not to lose.”