Purple light makes me dizzy. It's cramped as hell, and there's no space to stretch my legs.

  The APC rocked and Thete crushed into Betelgeuse' left, and then it lurched and Entuban, who took up two whole spaces to his right, pressed into him and forced his body against Thete's.

  The sickly purple light made of the giant's uniquely shaped head a featureless aubergine, and Betelgeuse' physical discomfort was palpably amplified by the idiosyncratic and psychological fear that he might meet his inadvertent end at the hands of a fucking fruit.

  "Thete, you still have that splint?" Entuban rumbled, transmitting through the Section Five comms-link and looking down to Venna on his right.

  "Yeah. Hold on, let me get it out," Thete replied, removing her left arm from her sleeve and then maneuvering it underneath her exosuit chestpiece to her right arm and finessing the plastic splint from its binding, in the process digging her elbow into Betelgeuse' side. Betelgeuse shifted and pushed back irritably at her arm; ignoring him, Thete unzipped her exosuit's ventilation pocket and passed the rigid piece of plastic out, reaching over Betelgeuse and turning it over to Entuban. "Here. Don't think it's going to do much for the pain, though."

  Entuban accepted the splint and, raising two fingers in thanks, turned away to Venna on his opposite side. From his vantage Betelgeuse could see Entuban's cheek flexing in silent conversation; and he watched the man's thick fingers support Venna's broken leg with surprising gentleness and observed the dexterous dance of hands he had supposed cumbersome lashing the splint to the woman's pant-leg.

  Betelgeuse leaned forward so that he could see over Entuban's extreme girth. Venna's skin was fair like the other Jegorichians, but darkly purple by the only light in that space. He observed behind her visor large eyes darting to and fro, and her twitching nose was wide and fine and terribly feminine in construction.

  He realized further that, unlike his TAF-issued exosuit, the PDF exosuits appeared to lack structural and guard supports in the shin and thigh area. Whilst the TAF exosuits had come fully furnished with ribbed shells of plastic covering almost the whole body, the PDF exosuits had confined such protection to the upper-body. It shortly became clear, once he started analyzing the myriad possible sources of such discrepancy, that he was too bored for his own good.

  He leaned back. No sooner had he put his head to the wall than the APC jumped, causing his helmet to bounce off the metal sheet with a sharp retort.

  A soft chuckle breezed through the comms. Betelgeuse raised his eyes and saw Douglas watching him from the opposite row, his features a caricature of smirking violet shadows.

  "Thanks," Entuban transmitted, turning toward Thete, and the hamster within Betelgeuse' mind noted that it was the second thanks Entuban had given for the same thing. "Can your arm survive without splint?"

  "Yeah, was about eighty percent healed with the Fixit anyway," Thete said. "I'm more worried about whether she can survive the op. It's amazing what can pass as 'fit-for-fighting'—I swear a guy can get half his body blown off in the morning and by afternoon they'd have slapped a bunch of pipes on him and sent him waddling off in the direction of the enemy."

  "Hey, doesn't that sound familiar?" Douglas chimed in facetiously, earning a clipped chuckle from the giant.

  "I am finding myself in agreement. We got a bad one in the Captain, yes?" Entuban shifted, and Betelgeuse felt himself being pushed into Thete for the umpteenth time.

  "It would seem so," Thete closed her eyes, purposely ignoring Betelgeuse' unintentional intrusion. The crimson glow of her prosthetic eye shone lidless through her eyelid.

  "I don't know… what they're doing don't seem so sustainable to me," Douglas offered, and Betelgeuse wondered if he was just trying to get someone to talk to him.

  "Somehow I doubt they care," Voke said, and Betelgeuse saw him bow his head and hug the railgun set butt-down, muzzle-up between his knees.

  "It gets more common over the past year," Entuban said, his voice a low mumur, clasping his large hands over his own railgun before him so that barely any of it could be seen. "I have fought this Chimerae incursion since it started, and the more PDF officers it is claiming, the more TAF officers they send who treat us like cattle. No offense, okay?"

  "None taken," Thete mumbled back, her skin bunching up cabbage-like between her eyebrows. The long scar which cut down across her prosthesis was a heavy blot in that dimness. "I don't work for them by choice."

  "... That is seeming more right. I am sorry. PLP are more cattle than us, no?" Entuban said, sighing, and Betelgeuse did not miss the side-eye he cast in their direction. They brand you as such, he seemed to think

  "You got that right," Douglas chortled.

  "Entuban," Betelgeuse turned to meet the giant's meandering gaze, "you say dangerous words and speak Aluaa quite freely, yet you don't seem too afraid of the blackbox."

  "That shit?" he laughed. "All of it is dealt with by Jegorich Support when our suits are having servicing. We rajul take care of each other…"

  Then, his eyes widened: "oh, I am remembering that you Taffies…"

  Thete had opened her eyes by now. Betelgeuse saw Douglas and Voke before him straighten their backs.

  "Yes, it was what I was getting at," Betelgeuse nodded vacantly.

  "You are catching good, D.B.! First time we have gotten auxiliary PLPs, no wonder we have not had this problem… But it is no issue, I will put in a request that your suits be serviced by our Jegorich Support. None of sneaky fucking Saltillan bullshit yes? They will sell their mothers to TAF. Once we get back, we will take care of you."

  'Not if,' Betelgeuse thought with a wry smile. 'Entuban has high hopes for our survival.' The APC jumped again, and when it hit the ground it did so with barely controlled violence.

  "Ah, Venna?" Entuban whipped his head around. He started speaking in his flowing language, neglecting to close the section comms-link, and Betelgeuse supposed Venna was talking to him. Some of the Jegorich men sitting opposite Betelgeuse seemed to be shifting in their seat and casting concerned glances at the woman. The man to Douglas' left, the skin of his face smooth and innocent, raised Venna's leg gingerly and placed it straight upon his knee. Betelgeuse could see her leg seize up, shy away and falter with pain.

  "Yehna, Entuban-shi, why not try the Proxy?" Thete said, leaning herself forward so that the muzzle of her railgun quavered dangerously beside her chin.

  Betelgeuse brought his hand out and gripped onto the top of her muzzle. Wouldn't be pretty, even with the chinguard. Thete glanced at him and their eyes locked momentarily. He saw her expression harden, then soften. Then she leaned back and he retracted his hand.

  "Hrnh." Entuban started digging into his utility pouch, his large fingers showing remarkable agility in its retrieval of a vacuum-sealed packet, peeling off the plastic and extracting the Proxyamine syrette within. Muttering softly in Aluaa, he administered the substance to Corporal Venna Tajiran, and Betelgeuse saw her leg twitch and relax.

  "Pretty strong stuff," Betelgeuse remarked, observing with interest.

  "Yes, very. You will not be surprised if I tell you there is Proxy epidemic raging in Jegorich," Entuban returned. "Many of them veterans."

  Betelgeuse nodded, dragging his boot absentmindedly across the metal ground and feeling his worn rubber sole grip onto the raised oval studs embossed onto that blacksteel sheet.

  "You sure you don't need any, Dougie?" Voke said, elbowing Douglas' arm, earning a snappy "shaddup" for his efforts.

  It couldn't have been longer than three hours before the APC came to a stop. For several minutes everything was quiet save for the vehicle's hypnotic palpitations, and the dull drone began to smooth over Betelgeuse' nerves and lull him almost to drowsiness.

  "Staff Entuban, is your APC halted?" Cacliocos' voice filtered in through the company comms-link. Betelgeuse' sat up, his mind instantaneously roused to alertness.

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  "Yes, sir."

  "Standby for disembarkation. Whole convoy has stopped and Sergeant Khvalynsky is checking in with Subaltern Franklin," Cacliocos instructed. "Corporal Tajiran's status?"

  Before Betelgeuse all the rest of the Jegorichians buzzed and shifted in their seats, their eyes sharp with latent anxiety.

  "We got a splint on her. Gave her one shot of Proxy, sir, and she seems to be holding up," Entuban responded.

  "Okay, she'll sit out the engagement, if any," Cacliocos said.

  "Not to worry, sir. I will have Private Asaghar with her," Entuban transmitted, and at this Betelgeuse observed the babyfaced man beside Douglas nod enthusiastically. "I will put them behind, in ninehvagant—"

  "Staff. In Common, please," Cacliocos interrupted. Betelgeuse thought he could hear the man scrunching up his face in exasperation. "You're bankrupting us," someone mumbled bitterly over company comms-link and Betlegeuse recognized Sergeant Belekov's voice. In the circumstances, no one bothered to take him to task for the breach in comms protocol.

  "Sorry, sorry… I will put them in rest line, sir, they will be safe," Entuban corrected himself hastily.

  "Noted. Standby."

  The long minutes stretched interminably. Betelgeuse could hear his breath in his ears, and he found himself wondering if the caffeine pills included substances other than caffeine.

  Thunder boomed faintly in the distance. The APC chassis trembled.

  Explosives…?

  "Enemy engaged," Cacliocos intoned. "Our APCs are parked right next to each other, Staff, approximately one hundred and seventy meters from the tankline and two hundred meters from the frontline. TAF First has deployed south-facing barricades demarcating the frontline. Disembark and wheel south. Keep headlamps off. Get the company toward the frontline ASAP."

  "Roger, roger," Entuban transmitted. The hull doors were cranking open even as he spoke. "Second Platoon!"

  "Second Platoon!" Sergeant Belekov echoed. The doors clanked and slammed into the ground. Betelgeuse could see, beyond the tuft of dust, darkness and flashing light and little else besides. The distinctive twang of railgun fire carried over from distant places.

  "Second Platoon move out!"

  Second Platoon sounded their echoes, and there was a mad rush of activity as the troops closest to the hull doors shot to their feet, head hunched so that the tops of their helmets would not hit against the ceiling. Betelgeuse counted eleven of them.

  'Eleven left out of the platoon,' Betelgeuse thought, wincing inwardly.

  Second Platoon disembarked and crouched and fanned out quickly. Section Five was next and Betelgeuse stuck close to Thete as Voke and Douglas stuck to Betelgeuse, stepping out into a world of shadow and blue plasmafire and roving traces of armature-rounds whistling overhead.

  The environment was a forest of sound. Second Platoon was already tens of meters away and Betelgeuse pumped his legs madly, attempting as far as he could to keep up with Thete. He glanced at his wrist-tranceiver, confirming that they were moving southward.

  It was less than a minute before they passed near to the loosely-arranged row of tanks, and Betelgeuse saw in front of him a Plasma Leopard, its long barrel red-hot and humming loudly. As Section Five reached it, the tank bucked sonorously and its barrel spit out a glowing bolt of plasma that stuttered fitfully across space.

  The frontage was briefly illuminated in blue. A surface of melted and writhing shapes. Then the plasma bolt erupted in a flash of intense fire and a collection of dark figures, including a massive mechanism several stories high, were backlit briefly and then everything was sucked away into blackness.

  Section Five shot past the Plasma Leopard and was already amongst the waist-high barricades. The battlefield was strobing with plasmafire and the other Plasma Leopards—perhaps a hundred of them—were loosing a thick curtain of superheated globules toward the enemy.

  Betelgeuse slammed back-first into the surface of the barricade, the impact forcing the air out of his lungs. To his left was Thete, already rattling off shots into the darkness, and beyond her Belekov and his platoon-mates had set up a constant stream of fire. A panting Voke, his visor smudged with moisture, brought up Betelgeuse' right, while an expressionless Douglas positioned himself right of Voke, his exceptional stamina carrying him weightless over the uneven crags.

  Entuban came thundering down mere seconds later and had to lower himself into a prone position between Thete's Section Five and Belekov's Platoon Two, to ensure his body was properly covered by the barricade. Under the flaring bolts of the Plasma Leopards Betelgeuse could see the barricades stretch kilometers on both sides and soldiers scuttling like lunatic creatures and firing their railguns vaguely in the direction of the enemy.

  "Sir, our Platoon Two plus PLPs are some hundred meters left of TAF First's Second Battalion, Third Company," Entuban was saying. "Zero visibility on enemy, I repeat, zero visibility on enemy!"

  "We're to your right, between you and TAF First's Second Battalion, Third Company," Cacliocos clarified.

  Betelgeuse' ears filled with the sound of wailing and a stream of light twinkled into existence, shooting across the frontage from the Chimerae's line. He whipped his head around and saw that stream of light touch the edge of the Plasma Leopard.

  "Down!" Betelgeuse roared, and Thete lurched to the opposite side. He pulled Voke down with him and lost sight of Douglas and braced himself.

  A bright purple wound erupted and the tank burst outward like a pimple, spitting sparks and fire into the air. The ground rumbled violently and bits of rock and metal tinkled onto his helmet.

  His senses returned to him and he felt himself breathing. Still alive. Nothing seems to be missing. Letting instinct take over, he regained a crouching position and, aiming blindly, snapped off several shots which flew off into distant polygonal shadows.

  "—Earthborer, they're using the Earthborer as cover—they have lancecannons set up top—" Cacliocos was yelling through comms, and Betelgeuse caught barely enough of it to make sense of the battlefield. From what he gathered the Chimerae's Earthborer had broken down and now they were fighting a pitched battle with the thing. In addition, the Chimerae had mid-range artillery capabilities capable of taking out their armor. More noodles of light winked into existence and touched the other Plasma Leopards, and a host of them were promptly transformed into smoking hunks of flayed metal.

  Betelgeuse snapped his head to his left and right. Partial lights and short-lived dazzles. Soldiers in turbulence. A chaos of sound.

  Something strange was happening, and alarm bells sounded in Betelgeuse' mind. The bodies of faraway soldiers—those that he could see—were moving violently and reacting to some external disturbance, and all of a sudden some of their headlamps turned on and jerked around in savage arcs and then blinked out just as quickly.

  A horde of strange shapes were upon them and bounding over the barricade in twos and threes, and the melee was joined, faster than they could react. One of the figures traveled over Betelgeuse's head and landed before him; he flinched as he fired, the armature-round flying wide, and the unmistakable articulations of pitch-black Chimerae plating was briefly revealed in the orange flare.

  Thete was already moving, smashing the butt of her railgun into the creaure with a clack that overlapped with a blossoming explosion in the distance. The Chimera stumbled, and Betelgeuse fired again, this time catching the Chimera in the head and blasting a dark mist out through the back of its head.

  A force struck him from behind and he fell forward. He turned before he hit the ground and saw another Chimera up close, its wicked arm-blades extended and glinting purplish under the aegis of plasmafire, its fetlocked legs splayed.

  And then a massive palm grabbed its uppermost arm-joint and twisted and snapped its bones like toothpicks, and another palm grasped onto its neck, picking it up and holding it suspended in the air. Entuban held it there for the merest moment, reveling in its tortured gasps, before pulling it in opposing directions, tearing it raggedly into two, spewing blood and viscera over a wide radius.

  A blade lanced out through Entuban's thigh and twisted, causing the giant to stumble and freezing his expression somewhere between frenzy and pain. Betelgeuse regained his feet and bounded away from the barricade, falling back some tens of meters toward the splayed metal of the Plasma Leopard's flaming chassis; by the time he turned he saw that the Chimera which had stabbed Entuban was already dead, Douglas having gored its skull through with his combat knife.

  Douglas sheathed his combat knife in the armpit of his left arm-stump and wrangled his right arm over that twitching alien body and pulled it backward with some difficulty, removing its blade from Entuban's thigh; Voke was by the Staff Sergeant's side and attempting medical support to poor results, as he fumbled with his medical pouch and spilled cartridges everywhere.

  To the left of Entuban's half-kneeling form Betelgeuse saw Thete engaged in close quarters with a Chimera, and further to the right another Chimera had emerged from the newly-raised smog with a bleeding human leg grasped in its left hand by the booted ankle, its left arm-blade looking bent and crumpled out of shape, its right arm missing at the shoulder-joint. In less than a second it had come up behind Douglas, and it swung the leg viciously, smashing it into the side of his head. Douglas flopped to the ground.

  Betelgeuse raised his railgun, took aim, and fired, blasting a hole into the side of that creature's head. It was just in the midst of swinging the leg around again, and as it died it lost its hold on that human appendage half-swing, causing the limb to catapult into the fog, spinning end over end and disappearing from his sight.

  "Sir, they're swamping us!" Thete yelled through company comms-link. She had dispatched her alien opponent and was already beside Betelgeuse, adding her small-arms fire to his. They were about thirty meters from the barricade, where Entuban, Voke and the rest of Belekov's Platoon Two were engaged in fighting the Chimerae at close quarters.

  After a momentary reprieve Entuban had rejoined the fight again and got his palm over the head of another Chimera. He pressed, folding that form into two and snapping its spine backward. Voke was stumbling behind him and trying desperately to foam up the new tear in his back which was piddling blood in two directions.

  Another one of the Jegorichians had broken off from Platoon Two and retreated to Thete's and Betelgeuse' position, taking cover behind the flaming chassis of the destroyed Plasma Leopard. Betelgeuse recognized Private First Class Gelam Shentor through his visor, the fellow that he had briefly spoken to in the Factotum. The man's expression was calm and composed, and he was snapping off shots with a cool regularity. Betelgeuse noted that every single one seemed to be finding their mark, no matter the distance of the shot or proximity between the Chimerae and their fellow soldiers.

  'A sharpshooter... like those men before,' he thought, remembering the two soldiers from Cacliocos' doomed company.