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Alistair Shepherd. I'm a retired police officer. I just wanted to thank you for pulling us off-world back there."
    Liao took it, giving a firm shake. "A pleasure, Alistair."
    "Where are we?"
    "This is Velsharn. A planet within Telvan space. I've been here before."
    He looked around, then up. "I thought as much. We knew the Pillars crew had been to other worlds, but… the specifics weren't clear. The news didn't really tell us much." He pointed upward. "The sky's weird."
    "Get used to it," she said with a smile. "There's a good chance we'll be here for some time."
    Shepherd glanced at her. "We're not going home?"
    Of course. They couldn't know, being inside a ship the whole time. They might have suspected, perhaps, but it all happened so fast…
    "No. There's not much left of Earth, I'm afraid. Just a burned out husk, from what we saw from orbit. The storms you experienced weren't localised. In fact, Houston was one of the last areas to be truly affected by the worst of it. By now, though, it's the same as the rest of the planet; scalded and uninhabitable."
    His shoulders sank, and Liao knew she should feel pity for him. Instead, all she could manage was a strange sense of detachment.
    "Thank you for telling me," he said, and then wandered off. He seemed to be in a daze, shocked by how quickly he'd been taken here. Liao let him go without comment.
    Crowds of people milled around, but no others approached her. Their eyes were elsewhere; on the ground, on the sky, on the strange flora and the mountains on all sides of the valley.
    It was good to get away, to have a moment to herself. It was the first time she had done so since the battle at Belthas IV. How many hours ago had that been? Had they had a shift change yet? The details of it all seemed fuzzy.
    Liao shrugged off her jacket, folding it under her arm, and then slipped into the crowd. She wasn't trying to hide, but she didn't want to be found. A subtle difference in her mind. The further away she got from Operations, the further away she was from the things she had seen there and the less real they felt.
    The people around her were dirty, confused, listless. Liao weaved through them easily, walking nowhere, until the crowd began to thin out. At the edge of the sea of people, something caught her attention.
    A damaged, detached gun turret from a Broadsword, turned upside down in the dirt, converted into a latrine. Four fire blankets were hung up on metal struts to give a modicum of privacy. A short queue of people waited to use it; further down was another, and another. Drag marks in the dirt lead from the hangar bay.
    The smell was strong, but the wind was taking it away from the ship and the people. Cheung had done good work.
    The first seemed half-full. It couldn't be emptied. It was too large to move far without a team, but a metal pole, a set of thick leather gloves, a box of matches and yellow jerrycan stood nearby. She had seen similar things in basic.
    Yellow cans were for diesel fuel. Disposal of improvised latrines was best accomplished by burning, a horrible but necessary job usually employed as a punishment. But this one had not been burnt, and the reason was clear: no marines were nearby, and the civilians wouldn't know what to do.
    So it was up to her. Liao folded her jacket and hung it over the cloth, pulled on the gloves, then—with a pained grunt and a strain of her arms—pulled the broken turret out from under the cloth. She flipped the cam lever release, lifted the can, and poured fluid in.
    The smell of the latrine and the diesel hit her at the same time. It smelt like Satan cooking breakfast; a sulphurous, thick, synthetic smell mixed with the stench of fecal matter. It made her gag.
    She kept at it, though. This was something practical she could do.
    Liao poured in six or seven gallons then stopped. Her arms ached from the effort, and she moved away to give herself some fresh air.
    She had a moment to rest, but it wasn't to last. Cheung, still