Engineer Corps

Two days had passed since 1st Squad had returned from its mission in Rune Town to the 5th Battalion's base at Pride of Boke. After some time to rest and recover, Augustus's outlook had changed.

Augustus thought his time serving in the Confederacy's military wouldn't last much longer. As soon as the war ended, he would leave.

That morning, June 22, at 6:00 sharp, Augustus woke up as usual. He roused the men in his squad and ordered them to get dressed and head straight to the mess hall at the camp for breakfast.

There were two silver moons in the sky. On the horizon, the outline of another moon appeared alongside that of a sun, even brighter than the moons. The barracks grew noisy as bleary-eyed Marines crowded into the narrow corridors, jostling their way toward the mess hall.

At the mess hall, Augustus got some toast and fried pork sausage. He sat at a standardized alloy table and chatted with Raynor across from him about reports on government corruption in the UNN Global News Network. Harnack and Josephine, meanwhile, were loudly trading crude dirty jokes.

"Anyone know where we're going today? I didn't read the mission briefing." Private Zander held a piece of bread between his teeth. Harnack was wolfing down food beside him.

"Downtown Pride of Boke. The exact spot should be eight miles northwest of our camp." Josephine chomped on his bread with none of a nobleman's restraint or grace, like a man starving to death. "Guess what? There's an engineering crew working there, and command's sending us to babysit them because it's right next to the Kel-Morians' doghouse."

As he spoke, Josephine swallowed a whole grilled pork sausage. It nearly choked him. He grabbed his own throat, rolling his eyes, then snatched Harnack's bowl of porridge and guzzled it down.

So when the assembly bugle sounded, Harnack and Josephine were both busy trying to choke each other.

"Grab your M-2 packs and report to the A-2-7 parade ground!" A few sergeants came in shouting just as everyone burst out laughing. Whether they'd finished eating or not, the soldiers all did as they were told.

Augustus led 1st Squad in formation into the barracks and armory, where the Sigma Grey Wolf Emblem was engraved on the walls, and donned their Power Armor.

Since the city center wasn't far away, and the 33rd Ground Assault Division had arrived on Turaxis less than a week earlier, there were few atmospheric transports available. 1st Company headed for its destination in heavy trucks loaned to them by Pride of Boke's Army Logistics and Support Regiment. Other trucks were loaded with ammunition, grenades, and explosives.

Each truck could carry no more than six to eight heavily armored Marines. Augustus, Raynor, and several other men from 1st Squad rode in the bed of one truck, its entrance sealed off by a pair of heavy wind flaps.

When they pulled back the flaps, they could see outside. Dozens of identical trucks followed behind theirs.

At first, the convoy drove north along a straight city road through Pride of Boke toward the camp. The road had a few shell craters here and there, but was still fairly smooth. As soon as the convoy entered downtown, however, it slowed to a crawl.

This part of the city had been the main battleground between the Confederacy and the Kel-Morians, changing hands repeatedly over the course of several months.

Now the entire downtown was a wasteland pocked with huge craters and strewn with barbed wire, abandoned armored vehicles, and tanks. Rows of skyscrapers stood silent, like tombstones for a city that had once been bustling with life.

About two miles from the camp, Augustus saw a very different sight: a large group of ragged refugees trudging along the road.

The groups ranged from a few dozen people to several hundred. In just ten minutes, Augustus had seen thousands of them.

The blank-faced people carried sacks and pushed carts and battered suitcases. Their loads held quiet, tearless children or all kinds of metal scrap, mostly parts from robots or cars.

The local garrison on Turaxis called these people Scavengers. With the garrison turning a blind eye, they made a living by entering the city to search for valuable junk or anything else left behind.

Pride of Boke, the city where Augustus's 4th Brigade was stationed, had once belonged to the Terran Confederacy. It had been a large city of two million Terrans, with even more workers and farmers living in the industrial districts and farms outside it. But after becoming a strategic stronghold, the city had turned into a battlefield.

In the part of the city held by the Kel-Morians, the entire population had been turned into miners and laborers for the great factories. Kel-Morian overseers whipped them and worked them like slaves, forcing them to toil without end until they dropped dead, all to produce more weapons and supplies for the war.

The Terran Confederacy, meanwhile, had forcibly driven everyone in its own territory away from the front and into the lower districts and suburbs, yet refused to provide the war refugees with any means of support.

The truck carrying Augustus passed the trudging refugees and drove on for several more miles. At last, it turned beside a long river flowing from east to west and headed west along an asphalt road riddled with artillery craters.

To the north of the convoy lay the shimmering Paddick River. Stretching for more than a thousand miles, it looked like a golden ribbon beneath the brilliant morning sun.

The Paddick River flowed through downtown Pride of Boke, dividing the grand city in two. At its widest point downtown, the river spanned five miles.

Before the city was caught up in the war, three maglev lines and more than a dozen steel bridges had connected its northern and southern halves. Hundreds of man-made canals, dug along the Paddick River and its tributaries, had given the city a unique, water-bound charm. The intricate canal network had also fueled a thriving barge trade.

At its peak, the slow-moving canals of Pride of Boke had carried not only large cargo ships, but also luxury yachts for the upper classes and antique-style sailboats equipped with modern technology. Towering skyscrapers, office buildings, plazas, and parks lined the riverbanks.

Pollution from the prosperous refineries and crystal-ore processing plants had once left Pride of Boke shrouded in a thick haze of crystal dust. Glittering clouds of crystals had gathered over its blue canal network without end.

For more than twenty years, music, etiquette, and literature from the era of old Earth had been the latest craze among Pride of Boke's upper class, who used them to display their refined tastes and flaunt their families' ancient histories.

The rich had lounged aboard expensive, fashionable yachts and cruise ships, listening to music passed down from old Earth as they admired the scenery. The debauched had sought pleasure. It was as though time had returned to London in the Victorian era, when the wealthy toured the Thames aboard their boats.

The city's former splendor could now be found only in documentaries and on postcards. Most of its canals had dried up as their channels silted over. When the rainy season came, swollen river waters would pour back into them and cause floods. Some blocked canals that hadn't dried up had become filthy ditches, their dark green surfaces covered in trash.

When the convoy reached its destination, the Engineer Company was clearing rubble in an area marked off with warning tape. They used fusion welders to join prefabricated modular alloy-steel panels, assembling barracks, supply depots, garages, and armories. Their worksite was about two miles from the Paddick River.

The Engineer Company had a clear division of labor. While some drove construction vehicles to erect the new barracks, others set up support frames for water towers and generators, built septic tanks, and laid electrical cables and water pipes underground. Rows of barracks and camp signal lights sprang up at astonishing speed.