“...Sugar bombs are part of a nutritious breakfast.”

  “Why do we have to keep that last bit in there?”

  “It’s a tradition going back to the 60’s. If we don’t include it, sales will drop because people won’t recognize it’s a breakfast cereal.”

  --Marketting advertisement analysis meeting, 2049

  ***

  The commander had a huge stack of pancakes dripping with butter and several flavors of syrup. And she didn’t seem to mind our silence, since she joined it until finally washing it down with a cup of coffee. “I don’t know how he does it, but that was excellent.” We all voiced our agreement.

  “Much as we’d like to stay here eating all day, the antithesis won’t let us. Drones are still iffy at best, but we have enough optical observers to keep an eye on them and estimate numbers. They’ll be moving soon, so we should get ready. Since you’re here, I assume you want to work with us? Right?

  “Good. Despite what some,” her voice caught for a moment, then continued, “parties back home seem to think, we’re here to get battle experience for our ground troops, not to get people killed. To that end, please focus on the bigger models: the ones in the tens and higher. That will save lives, since the troopers should be able to handle the swarms of smaller aliens.

  “RAV, I want you on the west flank. Try not to get too lost, though; I might need to redirect you. Xenovir here took out a small nest of a new ranged variant last night, something with real, honest-to-god reach. That hill’s still abandoned, but I have my eye on a couple other areas that would work just as well. If they start up any weirdness, you’ll be my go-to response. So don’t go all manic on us until we know for sure.

  “Xenovir, I want you on the east side. You can shift as needed inside or out to help out. Carlson wasn’t entirely happy about the work you did at the quarry, but he did say it was, quote: ‘highly effective and surprisingly directed chaos.’ The more you can tie up and slow down the antithesis, the better.

  “Gangnam, can you take the center and shore it up against any teens and higher that come your way? We know they have at least a couple of Twenty-Twos and a lot of Twelves. We’ll want to deal with them fast once they come in range, or we’ll be buried in numbers. Any questions?”

  I lifted a finger to capture the floor. “I was surprised to see air ambulances in use so close to the antithesis last night. Until I realized that I haven’t seen any flying models at all yet. Isn’t it odd that there’s no flying models?”

  “Yes. And frankly that has me worried,” Khan answered. “There can be a lot of variation in hives, but it’s rare to find one that doesn’t invest in some flying units unless it’s underwater or underground. Maybe we caught their fliers on the ground, though. We’ve been pounding the hive’s main valley with artillery for days, after all.”

  The lights in the truck turned off, and the lifted panel lowered silently. “And Brian’s starting to close up, which is a sure sign that the Anti’s will be attacking soon,” Khan continued. “We had better get into position. CILS will have markers for your local commanders. I’d appreciate it if you touched base with them.” She stood up as a robot came and started cleaning the table.

  RAV simply nodded, stood up, and walked off. The whole time he hadn’t said a single word. Before walking off, Gangnam paused to make sure I had both the point to go to and the chat he and RAV had set up just for the Samurai.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  I decided to leave Junior behind the main battle lines and asked Corie or Tara to guide him to a safe spot. I’d have enough range to reach him anywhere on the battlefield and didn’t want to have to mess with moving him about mid-battle.

  The inner slopes of the killbox rose brutally steep over the valley bottom, only avoiding the label of "cliff" by the abundant plant growth all over it. Once the antithesis entered the gap, there was no direction they could travel but towards the main battlefront. As I climbed the vertical slope to the ridge top, I activated my armor and pulled out all my gear.

  At the ridgeline, a tall, thin man stood under a rain tarp, watching me approach while smoking a cigarette. I sketched a salute as I read his insignia and grew confused at the symbols. “Commander Khan asked that I check in with you. I’m Xenovir, and I’m sorry, I’m not sure how to read your rank beyond centurion?” He had a centurion’s insignia, but with a modifying marker I didn’t know.

  He looked me over for a minute, taking a last drag on the cigarette and tossing the butt off into the bush. “Worthless bureaucrats making things worse,” he muttered with a returned salute. “Officially, I’m a master centurion. It’s a half step up from a standard centurion. While high command is still arguing over the proper address, the troops have settled on “EmCent” regardless of the official protocol, which works for me, so call me EmCent Rogers.”

  “The meeting with the commander was short on detail. Can you give me a big-picture idea of what’s going on?” As I asked, Centurion Morris walked up, looking tired and dirty. I’d last seen her and her combat engineers moving back into the gap to start on the defenses for today, and it looked like she hadn’t stopped moving since.

  “What’s going on is that we are going to be fucked, almost certainly,” Rogers pointed to the topological map on the table. “If you follow the link I just sent in CILS, you’ll get an understanding of our situation.” I followed the link, and a 3D overlay appeared on the map. The land formed a narrow point, south of which the steep slopes angled out to the east and west, forming an hourglass shape with the gap as the neck. North of the ridges, on both sides, the land gently sloped down to the valley where the antithesis lay.

  “In a perfect world,” Morris said, “the antithesis would be attacking from the south. We could line the ridges and stop up the gap, and they’d never touch us with these steep sides. But instead, we’re reversed. There’s only a gentle slope to prevent the antithesis from climbing the hills and either hitting us in the flank or ignoring our defenses to run straight at the city of Pe Ell.

  “What I and the other construction teams have been doing is trying to make those slopes more inhospitable than the gap that leads to a line of entrenched troopers, tanks, and heavy weapons. If I’ve done my job right, they’ll fall into our laps and be chewed up on all sides.”

  Rogers pointed along the ridges. “The commander is betting on keeping most of the antithesis focused on the core of the army below us. It’s part of why she’s so far back. If she can draw the main force through the gap, they’ll be walking into a brutal kill box. With an intelligent foe, it would be suicide.”

  “Lucky for us, the antithesis act on instincts then. You gave the commander that lure I left with you, right? That should drive them crazy and pull them into our prepared defenses,” I said.

  Morris nodded as Rogers pushed forward with his explanation. “For this to work, we need to block the valley about two kilometers south of the gap and line the ridges to kill them. If we shoot square to the hillside, we’ll be hitting them almost from behind. But that puts our troopers beyond the targets. If we fire square to the front, we’ll have more fire per angle but longer ranges. While the other wall has troopers on it, the downward angle should prevent blue-on-blue incidents.”

  “But, there’s nothing that will block the Anti’s from climbing up our side from the north to pincer us,” I said.

  “Yes. The west side’s north face is more rugged, and they will be contesting that the whole way up. On our side, we have too much length to cover with the manpower we have, all at an easier climb to boot. Since we can’t cover it all, we have to rely on passive harassment to convince them it’s not worth coming up here. And we’re spread out even more since we also have to keep them from going east toward where you fought yesterday.

  “A bunch of my forces are out on the wing to prevent them from coming around the flank. That includes all my armored and mounted units. I’ve put my best sharpshooters and heavy gunners on the ridge here. With the valley a hundred meters down, I expect they will be the only ones to be able to reach the whole width of the valley. 64Alpha Recon, part of whom you were with yesterday, will be the security detail and hole plugger. They went through a marksmanship refresher not too long ago. I hope they haven’t forgotten it all.”