"Achoo—"
General McClen, standing at the entrance to the tent, sneezed. Caught off guard, he lost his bite on the cigarette and spat the butt into the sand.
Rubbing his sunburned nose, he glanced at the cigarette stuck in the ground and cursed under his breath.
"...Fuck."
Though it was a perfect plan, McClen still felt stifled when he thought about how a dignified two-star commander of ten thousand—and a noble "Conqueror of the Skies," no less—had fallen so low as to become a desert foreman.
And for some reason...
Since earlier, he had felt a chill creeping down his spine.
He had experienced that feeling two or three months ago as well. Not long after that, the propeller of his beloved Heart of Steel had sucked in a hydrogen balloon that had drifted in from who knew where.
Even now, he could not determine which bastard had released that balloon...
"Step up the patrols!" McClen looked at the newly promoted commander of a thousand beside him and gave his orders with a grim face. "Expand the search radius from three kilometers to five. Arrest anyone who approaches. Shoot anyone who resists!"
The officer beside him straightened up and snapped a salute.
"Yes, sir!"
Watching the officer jog away to carry out his orders, General McClen crushed the cigarette butt beneath his boot and ground it into the sand before strolling toward the northern side of the camp with his hands behind his back.
The airport runway was under construction.
Without excavators, they could only dig with shovels and use wheelbarrows and trucks to move the earth.
The land here had suffered severe desertification. To keep the ground from collapsing when planes landed, they had to compact the runway properly.
More than fifty soldiers patrolled along the edges of the