5 comments/ 6037 views/ 0 favorites Elora Ch. 01 By: TimRailing **All characters in this story are eighteen or older.** **The following is a prologue to what will be a very long, chaptered story. It is my first real exploration into science fiction. This is not a quick-fix sex story but is suited to those looking for science fiction with occasional sex!" Elora She's moving slowly, just her hips. She's on top of me, moving back and forth gently, slightly, but pleasurably. She moans as she grinds her body into mine. It's barely audible, its always barely audible, but she always moans. Her long hair is tangled and a mess, damp from sweat. The tangles obstruct her stunning face. Through the strands of hair I can see she's biting her lower lip and her eyes are looking into mine. Her small hands cup her large breasts. Her nipples and bare curves overflow. She pushes her nakedness together, squeezes and massages them. No woman has ever looked more feminine. She removes both hands to pull the hair from her face, revealing herself entirely. Stunning. She smiles softly as she pulls her hair behind her shoulders. She always teases that when she's topless I'll never look at anything else in the world. She's mostly right, but I do notice her smile. When my gaze drifts back, she jiggles them for me and I know she's grinning as she does it; forever amused by my lust. Then she leans forward, her breasts compressed against my chest, and kisses me. For a few moments, she just looks at my face. Then she leans back, places her hands on my abdomen, and begins to push into me harder. As she cums, her eyes never leave mine. It was the last time I'd ever make love. Prologue I wonder what it felt like to love in the days when men never left earth. I know that most slept in the same bed with the one they loved every night and they woke together the next morning and that there was no foreseeable end to this in sight. Love had to have had an almost entirely different meaning back then. It must have felt very different. It surely was different. There was no ship waiting to rip you apart from the one you love, at near light speeds. There was no set date at which your love would become forever a memory. In the last moment of my life I know my mind will carry me back to this moment, my last moments with her. I often find peace in believing this. I even let myself imagine that, as my heart stops, my mind will forever rest in that memory. Even now, when I wake, and my eyes have not yet opened, I let myself trick my mind into pretending to be back in those last hours staring into her caring eyes. I hadn't slept. I had watched the darkness chased away by the sun's rays. It shined bright into the room through the large windows above the bed, lighting up the white sheets and her bare skin. I watched her sleep, watched her steady breathing. I didn't close my eyes but, if I had, I would have felt her presence next to me without touching her. I inhaled her scent with every breath I took. I tried to describe it to myself, so I could remember it and maybe close my eyes one day and pretend I had never left. I tried to study the curve of her back, the color of her hair, the mole on her right shoulder blade, and the shape of the scar on the back of her right arm. Forgetting what laying next to her felt like sounded worst than dying. She had hardly slept the night before, instead speaking so assuringly to me of all the strength she knew I had and all the greatness I was going to carry with me from our world. Before the sun came up I had already repeated her words of faith in me a hundred times in my head. But as the clock inched closer to eight, I thought of less and less. I watched her peacefully sleep for the last time. I had not then, nor do I now, the words. A part of me knew I would not wake her. Our last shared moments were behind us. I tried to ignore the clock. An hour went by as if it was being stolen from time itself. I listened to her peaceful, steady breathing and tried to steal time back. Still no words, no thoughts. The enormity of change before me was beyond my grasp. As kids we had fantasied about the warriors leaving to fight the great war. As teenagers we'd seen our friends and siblings leave. But in the hours that led up to my own departure, reality was surreal. The grief of truly realizing my loss was still before me. At 7:59am I slid from the bed and switched off the alarm before it could wake her. At 8:00 I walked out the door and left the love of my life forever. They should have constructed a new word for love when they started sending us off into space. They could have defined it as "the feeling of longing for a life you lived long ago on a distant little blue planet." As I walked down the hall I silently vowed that this would not be for nothing. They will pay an unknowable price for having started this war. For taking everything from me, in return I will leave anger, justice, revenge, compassion, love, and understanding all behind. I will stand before them as something more dangerous than a soldier. I am their alien and their soon-to-be-discovered being of superior intelligence. I am the unnamed architect of the 102nd fleet dispatched from Earth to Elora. Generals have failed, soldiers have fallen short, but I am neither. I am the blacksmith who forged the silver bullet and who will travel trillions of miles to pull the trigger and watch the beast shrivel into a lifeless heap. Elora Ch. 02 Chapter 1- The hidden city Elora, our enemy's home world, may also be the most beautiful planet humans have seen. The planet's surface is more than half land, almost all of which is covered in grass fields that shimmer red, orange, and yellow all at the same time. It's said that the natives named the planet Elo, their word for fire. Yet when they went into space and saw their home world from a distance, they renamed it Elora. The word translates to "Planet on Fire." The books written on Elora describe its beauty as though the planet were a God itself. Standing on the windy surface, the grass flickers and shimmers so bright in the midday sun that it blinds the naked eye. For hundreds of miles, in any direction, there's nothing but fields. Yet, when you walk far enough, in the center of the horizon will stand a forest that towers over the flickering flatlands. The trees in these forests stretch to heights higher than any tree on earth. In a human city, they would stand as tall as skyscrapers, taller even. The forests span no more than a single square mile. They grow upwards instead of outwards. Their enormous shadow lurking in the distance, past the shimmering fields, is said to loom like a distant storm at sea. As rare as forests are the rivers. They are as wide as the trees are tall. The gentle currents move quickly but never fast enough to stir the surface or to make a sound. They say it looks as though the water is not moving at all but standing still, maybe pausing to watch the fiery grass sway to and fro. In its calmness, the surface mirrors the flickers of the sun and the grass. It is as though the river knew of the beauty around it and, knowing it could do no better, set off to imitate what it could not beat. Beneath the beauty, in millions of miles of tunnel, they hide. The ones who came and killed. Ugly, stalky creatures with silver, glistening eyes. They toil away underground, like some race of beardless dwarf ancestors of humankind. There, deep in their holes, they wait, surely knowing what is to come. __ __ __ __ An echo resounded as I walked up the marble stairs of the great hall and passed beneath the arch for the south entrance into the International Resistance Headquarters. We built the IRH after the initial attack on Earth. The concrete monstrosity was actually two domes side by side. Combined, the compound occupied most of what was once Oklahoma. Its construction took the combined efforts of all the remaining nations in the world, and the better part of four decades. It is the largest structure built in the history of Earth. The Western dome holds the training grounds we call the hidden city. After the attack we were able to identify their home planet and image and scan every detail. We knew they were living beneath the surface and when we built the hidden city, we built it to mimic their underground civilization. Long before I was born, the remaining nations built 5,000 miles of tunnel beneath the Oklahoma fields. They tore up every road, tore down every house, and constructed the IRH. They planted genetically engineered red grass. They couldn't make it glimmer or change color like the probes showed on Elora, but it was closer to looking like Elora than looking like Earth. They built the forests but knew nothing of what the interior should be. The tunnels were the important part. Some say there are thousands more miles of top secret tunnels deep below the main ones. The hidden city's purpose is to serve as a training ground for soldiers that will be sent to end the war the Elori started. The East dome is called the K-Bay. Short for Kill-Bay. In it our scientists engineer weapons the likes of which human history has never seen. From the first day of the war our scientists had gone to work trying to reverse engineer their technology, but the Elori were smart. They targeted high-science and tech hubs first. Some say they took us back a hundred years on day one. And the first bunkers we eradicated had traps waiting for the scientists we sent in after, to do research. Tunnels miles below the ground collapsed, trapping entire research teams to dark, suffocating ends. Triggers opened doors to tunnels that let river beds above collapse and redirect entire rivers into the tunnels until every inch flooded to the surface. The Elori's understanding of fear made them seem that much more human. They killed every scientist slowly so the stories of mass suffocations and drownings would spread. They sent a message to others who would think to help. 'You will die slowly. You will die in the dark. No last words. Only helpless gasps.' In the Kill-Bay, scientists remember those that died before them. They build weapons not as angry men but as determined men, who remember. They build not to kill, not to torture, but to efficiently and thoroughly exterminate the entire species. Unfortunately, their attempts to infect Elora with Earth-like plagues took hold but eventually failed and their attempts to collapse Elora's sun into a black hole only succeeded in causing the star to burn more intensely and shorten its life by a few percent. However, their more humble inventions have found great success. In the forests humans climb and fly with ease. In the fields our suits render us invisible and, at a run, we are fast as a lion and quiet as a fox. Their genius has been unyielding but it has yet to help us end the war. The marble halls of the main entrance of the IRH are lined with the flags of every remaining nation on the left and the flags of every fallen nation on the right. I walk a football field's length before arriving at the first set of steel doors. I look up the hall and then down it. No one except me. I step in front of the doors and they quickly slide open. Another marble hallway but this one has many doors. I walk, heels still clicking against the marble, passing one door after the next. None are open, none are labeled. Am I too early? "State." I realize the voice is coming from ahead of me. One of the doors down the hall is open. "Sir?" I speed up my walk. "Get a fuckin move on will ya. Those steps I hear are too fuckin slow." I get to the door and sharply turn in. The commander is in usual form, pants around his ankles with his dick buried in some pretty private first class. I come to attention. The commander turns to me. I'm sure my facial expression is blank but he acts as though it isn't. "What the fuck do you care? Just give me one god damn minute." She moans, quietly in sync with his short thrusts. There's almost nothing to see. Both are fully clothed with only their pants down. He humps her petite ass harder each time and the slap of skin on skin precedes each of the young woman's moans. The commander grunts, rams her a bit harder, grunts again, and stops his thrusts. He sighs deeply and slows his breathing. Then he abruptly pulls his cock out of her and pulls up his pants. She stays bent over for a few moments, catching her breath, her reddened bottom totally exposed. Oddly, the sight of her bare doesn't distract my mind. Today is launch day and nothing else. I look away and a moment later she pulls up her pants. "Maria, thank you. And thank your captain for suggesting you stop by. I needed that." "My pleasure Sir. I volunteered. But I will tell her Sir." "Well thank you Maria. Carry on." She took a minute to tuck in her shirt and compose herself, and then walked out. He turned to me and looked me over. "State, that didn't get you off-focus, did it? You still seeing straight?" "Only straight." "Good." "Sir, can I ask why I'm here instead of at the launch prep?" "This is your launch prep." "Sir, if this is my launch prep, then where's Siama?" "She's already here. You'll see her soon." He paused for a long moment. "Listen, State, this operation you designed... it's... we've got a lot riding on it. I need to know you're still focused. There are a lot of things trying to distract your mind right now but Siama isn't leaving anyone behind and Siama doesn't have RB doubling her testosterone levels. She's straight as straight gets. You know that, I know that. This strategy wasn't her idea but she knows this operation better than anyone, maybe as well as you do. If you're distracted... if you get distracted in-route... I hope you'll do the right thing." "I'm seeing straight Sir, only straight." "I'll be honest with you son, everyone knows I'm a BFS. I know it. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm faster, tougher, and stronger than most. Hell, when it comes to big fuckin sticks, I'm the biggest fuckin stick around... I might not be like you. I don't see all the angles you see, but I've made it this far up the ladder, so maybe the two of us can assume I'm not just a BFS who fucks every pretty private first class that comes around." "You do fuck every pretty private first class that comes around, but other than that I don't disagree, Sir" "Good. You're 26 now and you've only had the RB in for eight years. You think you can trust yourself but you know that shit is progressive and it's effects are going to get stronger. Not you or anyone on this fuckin' planet can say how much worse. The council is so fuckin' sure that as it accelerates it will just keep making you smarter. I say they don't know shit. There's no data on this... this anomaly. Your brain could go from exceptional to dysfunctional in a day. The effect on your testosterone could just be delayed. Soon enough you could be the biggest BFS there is. You've got no fuckin clue State, no one does. You're going to be in a war zone. Nothing fucks with your body like the stress of war." "The council..." "I told you! The fuckin' council doesn't know. No one knows. Don't create a weak spot. We're fighting a smart fuckin' enemy. I'm telling you State, you keep Siama close, you keep her safe. Every soldier on that ship believes in what you've built, and I'll never say this to anyone else, but I will say it to you right here, right now. Siama is our hope. She doesn't have RB bullshit inflating her thinking. She's the sure thing." "We're a team Sir. She'll be there every step of the way. If anything happens, she'll be there." "You see to it that she is, soldier." The commander points to a door on the far wall. "She's waiting. You'll be running one last exercise before you rejoin the ranks. She'll explain the rest." "Yes Sir, thank you Sir." I walk over, turn the knob, and walk through. The room is empty. I turn and look back to the commander. "State, you two... you can end this." He paused a moment. "But then again, if you die, our hope may die with you... Good luck." He nods. I nod back and close the door. Elora Ch. 03 **Edited by WEI** Chapter 3 Into the Darkness I already know. It's not an empty room. It's an elevator to the secret tunnels. Only a second or two passes before the floor starts to descend. The walls are the familiar concrete I've passed through a thousand times when descending into the hidden city, but this elevator is moving faster. Two minutes go by and I know, at these speeds, I've passed the entrances into the manmade hidden city. Then the blurred concrete stops and the walls look to be raw rock and earth. She was right. The secret, deeper tunnels aren't manmade. The concrete marked our descent through the manmade hidden city but this shaft isn't concrete, isn't human. No soldier could miss the light shimmer of the walls. It's an effect created by a clear Elori sealant applied to keep the raw dirt and rock from coming loose. The compound is as thin as paint, but stronger than titanium. The hidden city has its own secrets. Siama always believed they hadn't told us everything. Lately she's been furious that they haven't told us their secrets and are about to send us off to war. The elevator is racing now, faster and faster. At high speeds, the shimmer starts to look like hundreds of streaks of lightning racing down the walls. I kneel, fearing that if the elevator shakes, I'll fall into the wall. I look around for a grip but see nothing. I keep my eyes on the wall. It's truly racing now, hundreds of miles per hour. I kneel lower to bring down my center of gravity and keep my balance. I feel my blood pressure rise, my heart pump faster, and my muscles turn to the ready, flush with blood and ready for anything. Fuckin' RB, it takes the lightest signals of increased awareness and turns the human body to fight mode. I can feel the difference in my thinking, my brain wanting to shut down all advanced cognitive function areas and increase blood flow to the receptors that affect reaction time, balance, agility, and spatial reasoning. I steady my breathing and keep control. Stay straight, it's only a slight trigger, nothing you can't handle. My attention snaps back to the elevator. I look around again. Still nothing to hold on to, but I notice small holes in the floor... even small indents. There had once been railings, seats even? It never ends. So there will be a last test, and this is an agitator to make the RB kick in. Creative. They are paranoid that eventually the RB will interfere with my ability to overcome their every simulation. This is a better attempt than usual. It lacks the bluntness of other agitators; loud bangs, a simulated explosion nearby. This is just subtle enough let the RB kick in gradually, unnoticed, unchecked. I close my eyes. Breath. Breath. Breath. She'll be there. Breath. I survey the floor again. It's flat and even. I won't slide. I lay down in the center and put my hands behind my head; my raised arms will open my lungs and the familiar relaxed position will send the desired signal to my brain. Relax. I am relaxed. You do it too. I open my eyes and look up. Beautiful. The streaks of light are almost majestic. It's an odd coincidence that not only their world, but even their tunnels, are beautiful. How is it that such beauty is the home of dark, violent creatures? Their world offers abundance in every necessary resource, and yet a race that lives on the most beautiful planet known to man almost killed off our entire species, without provocation. Why? The question has plagued me for years now. We don't understand them. I'm pulled out of my thoughts, startled by the sudden disappearance of the walls, leaving me in darkness, and staring at the bright circle of the tunnel's exit racing away. All else is black. I look around. The platform is falling through open space. I'm not slipping from my position on the platform, so this is a controlled fall. This is fine. This is planned. My heart pounds but I will it not to. I look up and see the enormous tunnel now resembles a faint, shimmering star. It hits me; this is a cavern. It's huge! My god, it's bigger than any cavern of theirs I've even heard of; the entrance must be a mile away already. I squint at the ceiling and look for the glimmer but see none. From this far away though, it might not be visible. I look at the platform, but it's hardly visible without the light bouncing off the sealed walls. I try to ignore the feeling that I'm in a black void falling endlessly. What could they have possibly needed to build such an enormous cavern for? The platform begins to rapidly slow. I immediately hear the buzz of the platform's electric hover propulsion revved up to full deceleration. Above me is still dark, but I know the hover propulsion gives off light so I make my way closer to the edge. I see a dimly lit floor far below, but it's getting closer by the second. Decisions, fast. I look for cover but there's none within the lit area. I look for movement, but see none. I listen and, even without gear, can hear the evenness in the echo; I'll be landing in the center. Fuck, if this is a simulated breach, I'm blind and dumb. The ground is getting closer, maybe 15 seconds. Then I see it. An arrow etched into the rocky floor of the cavern. Next to it there is her call sign, Sia. I realize that when the platform lands, the propulsion will shut off and the light will be gone. I align my body to point in the same direction as the arrow. I want to think about what this cavern was used for but there's no time. The platform comes to a halt and a second later there's only complete darkness. I stay still enough to hear my every heartbeat and my exhalation through my nostrils. Too loud, I think. Much too loud. I take faster, softer, shallower breaths. Better. Still I can hear my heartbeat. If they were near, I'd be dead. I take a knee, making sure to keep my knee pointed in the same direction I've been lying in. This is Earth. Siama is down here, somewhere. Be calm, be invisible. I feel my heartbeat slow a little, then a little more. Good enough. I need to move away from the platform, it's a known position. My first step is too quick and too loud; my second is noiseless. I count 40 steps, a distance I calculate to be the edge of the lit area I viewed from the platform. Beyond this point the next step could be off of a cliff and I wouldn't know it. I listen to my heartbeat and decide its quiet enough to keep moving. I make it 100 paces, stopping to listen every ten. Nothing. I keep moving, but slower, recognizing the possibility that I've deviated from the direction I started out in. I think back to the height of the cavern and realize that I could have a very long distance to cover. Is there time for this? Launch is in less than six hours. I consider speeding up but instead stay low, slow, and noiseless. What was this enormous thing used for? I start listing the possible uses: it could be that their tunnel intersected a natural cavern but it's unlikely. It could have held water, also unlikely. The manmade hidden city was probably built over this to keep it protected but allow continued covert access. It could be an engineering bay. If so, why is it empty? The emptiness implies that the cavern is a byproduct. Was the open air used to dissipate heat from a power source? I've never heard of an Elori power source that works in such a way. I grow frustrated, knowing that I know nothing about their caves or technology that would suggest why they would require such an enormous, underground space. Then I hear it, running water. I keep moving in the straight line I set out on and the sound keeps getting louder. Under the mask of the river's echo, I risk louder footsteps and move faster. Out of nowhere, it strikes me. Elora's sky is entirely layered in cloud, their forests grow without sunlight. Their alien forests need only water, minerals, and deep roots to collect heat energy from the Earth. A forest is the only thing that makes sense. Over a third of all of their technology is biological. If they had a forest on Earth, they could continuously resupply. During the war growing a forest above ground, where satellites and missiles could reach, wasn't an option so they grew it right here! I move faster, excited. I listen for my footsteps and hear nothing but the river getting closer and closer. As I approach the sound I realize that I don't hear rapids, the water isn't moving fast enough. Still, the sound is enormous. The river must be huge. As I take my next step a feeling washes over me like the sound of the river. It's Sia. She's close. I turn right and slowly move 20 paces. Softly I whisper her name. "Sia." "State. Five right, forward." I take five diagonal steps forward and to the right. I feel her presence right beside me. "Straight?" I pause, "Yes" She pauses, surely disliking the moment I let lapse before responding. She lets it go. "Told you they were hiding something." "Yeah... yeah you did." "You want to see it?" "It? The forest is still here?" "Yeah, did they explain it or did you figure it out?" she whispers quietly. "I assumed the Elori grew it for resupply, down here for secrecy and heat. I figured they'd have burned it before giving it up though." "They tried but..." "We blocked the air?" "Exactly." "The rest can wait, I think you'll want to see this." As she said it, I noticed I could feel a rock in her hand. She leans back, winding up, and chucks the rock off into the distance. My heart rate jumps in anticipation. An Elori forest, here? A moment later, the crack of the rock striking something hard resounds and an echo fills the hall, bouncing off the walls, filling every inch of the chamber. Then all at once, a dim glow replaces the blackness. I squint but can't see shapes, just blurs. It grows brighter. Lines, lots of vertical lines. The forest is glowing. Brighter still. I can see the tree trunks. I trace them up with my eyes until my eyes are almost in my head, then my chin follows upwards, until I have to lean back to see the lines disappear into the dark. I look forward again and squint to see into the trees. I see the huge horizontal trees, connecting and reinforcing the vertical forest. Then I see movement, deep in, too deep to define a shape, but movement. I realize that in the light we're in the open and vulnerable and wheel around to check our six. I lose my breath. The cavern is as big as the dome. I look up and can faintly see the intricate architecture I've seen a thousand times above, looking up in the IRH domes. It's immediately obvious that even our domes are their technology. What chance do we have if even the International Resistance HQ is built using their design? The last reverberations of the echo pass and the forest's glow fades away. Darkness creeps back. I manage to ask the first question of the many questions flooding my mind. "Are we here to see the forest?" It seems obvious, but not. If we are, why did they give us so little time to explore it? And that shadow, I didn't imagine it. "Siama, why are we here?" "In six hours you're being sent into the stars, never to return, to take command of an army you built which never knew more than rumors of your existence." "We... we are being sent. Answer?" "Yes, we. We are being sent to fight an enemy we've never met and this will help that. We are here to be shown the forest and to meet the scientist that might be able to answer some of your questions about the Elori." Elora Ch. 04 The Citadel was quiet after sunset. Wind ran through the rickety metal interior, whistling through cracks. On a dark night a traveler could see the monstrosity from a hundred miles away. It towered above the fields and forests, bleak and ancient and bare, like a gravestone covered in rusty, flickering lights. Besides the stars and moon, no place offered light or man-made shelter for hundreds of miles. He woke in the night, his mouth dry. Without opening his eyes, he quietly slipped from under the single dirty sheet and went to the kitchen on his toes. He filled a glass with water, and with his eyes barely open, found his way to the front door, unlocked the flimsy chain lock, and squeezed out trying not to let the outside light in. The distant view from the high, exterior walkway was one of total black. In the distance he could hear dogs barking and howling and the wind carried smells of stirred up dust and the distant ocean. He stood and looked out, sipping water from the coffee stained, chipped glass. He often sat there in the early morning and contemplated the paranoia of the place, the insanity of keeping watch over a land of nothing. The lives in everyone in the outpost revolved around the government's fear that Elora had secretly left behind an underground base that lay waiting to attack. When would the fear end and normalcy begin again? Never, he thought, time does not seem to heal this wound. He leaned over the railing and looked at the nothingness below. Squinting at the shadows, he saw only black. There was nothing to see and 'nothing' was his doom. Nothing awaited him. No purpose called. The fields and forests and tunnels below were vacant and it had long been so, so long that no living man could remember it any differently. To his left and right, above him and below him, no soul stirred. I should sleep, he thought. Instead, he began walking along the walkway. He knew what had woken him. In the barren dead of night, he hated this place and dreamed of cities that restlessly stirred and buzzed, meeting at cafes, political rallies, clubs, restaurants, and training performances. The citadel rises at sunrise and save one or two bars, retires at sunset. He walked the fifteen minutes past the armory, other living quarters, and training facilities. Then he ascended old, creaking metal staircases to reach the higher levels. Climbing rusty ladders he ascended that last few levels hand over hand, until he reached the flight decks. The wind came in hard from the East. He pulled out his cap and tucked his hair under as he pulled it down tight, then he walked to the overlook above helipad 7. Quietly he peered over the edge, down at the crew scrambling through pre-flight checks. Around the helicopter soldiers were loading gear and bags were all over the pad with soldiers making last minute load changes, checking off lists, and then rechecking everything a second time. His friend walked among the men, kneeling by each and saying a few words before moving on. Cal was a respected lead diver and they would jump on his heels without hesitation. None talked about it, but his leadership put them all at ease. The chopper was headed for a three-city tour, ten days of descent in each. Including ascending and transit it would be 70 days, most of it in dark tunnels, if everything went right. Their nerves were surely in need of untangling. They'd been told of the mission two weeks ago. Everyday since had been nerve racking and miserable for each of them. The men were ready though. He'd had drinks with all of them in the bar the night prior. They were eager to get it over with. Now, as they made final checks, they joked and laughed and looked as light hearted as if they were off for a hike. Probing the tunnels was safer than it used to be. A long while back he could remember his father coming home sullen, a mission having gone wrong and lost half of its men. Now most lost only one or two. Still too many. All in search of the ghost of an enemy that had never existed. He watched as the men finished their checks. The helicopter blades began to turn. The men stole glances over their shoulders as they dawned their gear and lined up, suddenly quiet, suddenly aware of the peril ahead and the love to be left behind. The citadel wasn't much, but it wasn't the metal they'd miss. They leave behind friends, wives and children, brothers and sisters, parents. In the moonlight, their pale skin shined and their eyes twinkled. Surely, not all would look that way in 70 days. The men began boarding, each less jovial than before, each with the stern face of soldier. He watched his friend take one last look around before boarding. The cargo ramp door closed. A winding squeal sounded as the rotors spun faster and the chopper lifted into the air. The nose dipped, the chopper started forward, and then took off into the darkness of night. Under his breath, he whispered them good luck. He headed for an early breakfast, walking the fifteen minutes back to level nine residential. He passed no one. As he ambled through other residential units he heard a few babies cry then only the wind again. As he turned the last corner he saw the lights of the kitchen flooding out from the windows into the night. The smell of apples and fresh bread filled his nostrils. His level's chef cooked terribly but baked better than most. She knew this and always baked something to accompany each mediocre meal. He slipped through the back door of the kitchen, nodded to Marsa and grabbed a stool. "See them off?" "Just watched." She nodded. "He'll get them back in one piece, himself included. Always does." "Yup." "Good. Eat up." She pushed a fresh loaf of stregamasa bread across the table and slid him an apple and cinnamon jam overflowing from a small bowl. He pulled the utility tool off his belt then slammed it against the crust and a rewarding crack stung his ears. Steam immediately poured out from the crevasse in its thick crust. He pulled it open and let the heat and steam pour out and wash over his face. He ripped away the soft, fluffy interior, dipped it in the jam, and stuffed his mouth. Few things made him happy these days, but quiet moments with his thoughts and fresh bread were still prized. He chewed and readied his mind for another day. He and his team would spend most of the day practicing with their rapid descent technique. They'd had six months doing patrols with no missions out and were admittedly sloppy. He'd have them training from dawn to dusk, taking lunch in the training tunnels. Concentrating was impossible. Cal and his team had been using the training tunnels nonstop for the week before they left and they were already, undisputed, the best deep divers. The IRH sent orders to look deeper and to look into every deep tunnel abnormality they had on file. Cal's team would be detonating every deep tunnel wall that sonar said was thin or that they even deemed looked odd. It was a mission that would almost certainly have casualties. Fear driven thinking. One collapse could kill the whole team, and for what? Fearful politicians scouring the shadows for our enemy's ghost. They always up security measures when an attack ship leaves with an entire generation of soldiers on board. They feel exposed to an enemy we vanquished and have been attacking ever since, but this was more paranoid than usual. He ate silently. Marsa cooked pounds of eggs, potatoes, and an Apple crumble for breakfast but he was already taking his first practice dive by the time she served her second patron.