know it every chance they got.
We drilled and exercised until our bodies and minds were harder than before. Most of us died in the training sessions during those final weeks, some more than once. I’d managed to avoid the experience so far, but I knew that couldn’t last forever.
The training changed me—it changed us all. Our spirits were tougher by the end. I don’t think anyone can die, or watch his comrades die around him multiple times, as I did, and still maintain an easy-going personality.
* * *
The big day finally came two months after I’d killed Veteran Harris. Today, we were going into action and landing on our target world at last.
We reached Cancri-9 just after midnight, but the tribune who was running the show up on the bridge didn’t let us hang around in our bunks until morning. By 0230, I was suited-up and marching down into the bowels of the ship where the lifters waited. It was from their massive deployment bays the drop-pods would be released.
There hadn’t been much in the way of a briefing. I’m sure the officers knew more, but all I’d heard was that we were to drop into a jungle-like landing zone of the planet high in the mountains. Apparently, only the highest lands were wet and green, while the plains were bone dry. There was a large compound that would serve as our LZ, and we were to deploy defensively the moment we were down.
What were we defending? As I understood it, there was a large mining complex under us, and it was under threat.
I kept thinking about Cancri-9. I couldn’t believe I was actually here. I’d fought online battles on this planet in simulators for years. I was sure it would be very different in person than it had been in the sims, but I felt confident the basics would be familiar. It was definitely going to be hot and full of intelligent, violent reptiles.
In a way, it wasn’t that surprising we’d ended up in the Cancri system. Video games had been made about this world for a good reason. The planet was turbulent and full of warring factions. They were, in fact, one of our best customers. They hired Earth’s legions regularly to impress one another—I guess they thought alien troops were cool.
I read more about the planet on my tapper and learned details from our briefings. The saurian population was a relatively rich people. The planets in their star system, including their homeworld, were heavy with minerals. Their home planet was a carbide world with an iron-rich core and a high carbon content.
The first carbide planet humanity ever found was 55 Cancri e. In mankind’s exploratory days of the twenty-first century, before the intrusion of the Galactics, such planets were found to be odd but not terribly rare.
Cancri, as we called it now, was a binary star system in the constellation of Cancer. Its unusual nature was discovered in 2012. The first planet we noticed was an inhospitable world far too close to its star to support life, but friendlier high-carbon planets were located subsequently. Cancri-9 was one of those worlds, discovered in 2039, about a decade before the Galactics first came to Earth.
As a carbide planet, what made the saurian homeworld unique was its habitability. Most carbide or ‘diamond’ planets were too toxic or too hot to support life. Cancri-9 provided a rare combination: a warm-water world rich in iron, diamond and many other rare earths, with the added benefit of a breathable atmosphere.
We called them “steel worlds” because they were literally made of iron and carbon, the two primary elements of steel. In places, these two components had formed veins of actual steel, a metal that didn’t occur naturally on Earth. The outer crust was sprinkled with organic matter, but this was a mere shell over an inner core of metal and, most abundant of all, carbon.
In short, Cancri-9 possessed a fantastic treasure trove of materials perfect for building ships and other structures. As a result, the saurians had credits to
We drilled and exercised until our bodies and minds were harder than before. Most of us died in the training sessions during those final weeks, some more than once. I’d managed to avoid the experience so far, but I knew that couldn’t last forever.
The training changed me—it changed us all. Our spirits were tougher by the end. I don’t think anyone can die, or watch his comrades die around him multiple times, as I did, and still maintain an easy-going personality.
* * *
The big day finally came two months after I’d killed Veteran Harris. Today, we were going into action and landing on our target world at last.
We reached Cancri-9 just after midnight, but the tribune who was running the show up on the bridge didn’t let us hang around in our bunks until morning. By 0230, I was suited-up and marching down into the bowels of the ship where the lifters waited. It was from their massive deployment bays the drop-pods would be released.
There hadn’t been much in the way of a briefing. I’m sure the officers knew more, but all I’d heard was that we were to drop into a jungle-like landing zone of the planet high in the mountains. Apparently, only the highest lands were wet and green, while the plains were bone dry. There was a large compound that would serve as our LZ, and we were to deploy defensively the moment we were down.
What were we defending? As I understood it, there was a large mining complex under us, and it was under threat.
I kept thinking about Cancri-9. I couldn’t believe I was actually here. I’d fought online battles on this planet in simulators for years. I was sure it would be very different in person than it had been in the sims, but I felt confident the basics would be familiar. It was definitely going to be hot and full of intelligent, violent reptiles.
In a way, it wasn’t that surprising we’d ended up in the Cancri system. Video games had been made about this world for a good reason. The planet was turbulent and full of warring factions. They were, in fact, one of our best customers. They hired Earth’s legions regularly to impress one another—I guess they thought alien troops were cool.
I read more about the planet on my tapper and learned details from our briefings. The saurian population was a relatively rich people. The planets in their star system, including their homeworld, were heavy with minerals. Their home planet was a carbide world with an iron-rich core and a high carbon content.
The first carbide planet humanity ever found was 55 Cancri e. In mankind’s exploratory days of the twenty-first century, before the intrusion of the Galactics, such planets were found to be odd but not terribly rare.
Cancri, as we called it now, was a binary star system in the constellation of Cancer. Its unusual nature was discovered in 2012. The first planet we noticed was an inhospitable world far too close to its star to support life, but friendlier high-carbon planets were located subsequently. Cancri-9 was one of those worlds, discovered in 2039, about a decade before the Galactics first came to Earth.
As a carbide planet, what made the saurian homeworld unique was its habitability. Most carbide or ‘diamond’ planets were too toxic or too hot to support life. Cancri-9 provided a rare combination: a warm-water world rich in iron, diamond and many other rare earths, with the added benefit of a breathable atmosphere.
We called them “steel worlds” because they were literally made of iron and carbon, the two primary elements of steel. In places, these two components had formed veins of actual steel, a metal that didn’t occur naturally on Earth. The outer crust was sprinkled with organic matter, but this was a mere shell over an inner core of metal and, most abundant of all, carbon.
In short, Cancri-9 possessed a fantastic treasure trove of materials perfect for building ships and other structures. As a result, the saurians had credits to
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