brought a game mod,” she said, sitting back
up and mentally settling in to the process of waiting for nightfall to come
again.
4
February 27, 2933
Gvaris System (lizard
territory)
Nephasil
Jyra and her team packed up
their gear just before sunset and crept over to their speeders when the light
finally went down. Throughout the entire day they hadn’t seen or heard so much
as a peep from the lizards, but with their lives hanging on by a thread they
didn’t want to take any chances. When deep night finally reigned they mounted
up and took off on the next leg of their journey, traveling north around a city
then angling northeast in a zigzag between two others before finally finding
some less than suitable terrain to lay low in during the next day.
There they didn’t have the luxury of an overhang, barely
finding enough boulders to hide their bikes in and having to stay in armor
tucked into crevices for most of the day. When night finally fell they took an
hour to set up camp and shower, then they immediately packed back up and headed
off on their bikes towards their destination city.
They got to the perimeter with a few hours left to
spare but didn’t think that would be enough time to accomplish their mission,
so they searched around and actually found a cave to hide in about 20 miles
outside the city. There they waited through the day cycle, sleeping in turns while
one always kept watch with a fair amount of air traffic passing nearby them.
They weren’t disturbed and no wisps or transports did a double pass so the team
assumed they’d gone undetected, then when the day began to wane it was almost
time to get going and make this happen, with Jyra watching battlemap updates being transmitted from orbit detailing how the
ground battles were faring.
She wasn’t pulling live vids, for she couldn’t request
additional data with the blackout protocols, but the basis statistics showed
that they were losing, but in a controlled manner. Bleeding the enemy of troops
as they slowly withdrew, but Star Force only had so much ground to give. The
‘had to hold’ points were still secure, but the pressure on them was mounting
and Jyra wasn’t sure what the outcome of this one was
going to be unless they got reinforcements…for the enemy’s never-ending stream
was going to wear down their troops eventually, with the lizard body trails
already being visible from orbit.
“Anyone else thinking that we might be a bit too
late?” she asked, sitting on the edge of the cave where she could get decent
reception on her helmet, but just far enough in side that she was still in
shadow.
“Looks that way,” Mace answered. “But if Sara let us
come down here, then I’d guess they don’t see it that way.”
“We’re going to need backup.”
“Might already be on the way.”
“Regardless,” Brandon added, “we haven’t seen this
much resistance on the ground since…well, as long as I can remember.”
“I don’t think the lizards want us severing their
empire’s lifeline,” Leo summed up. “I think we’re in for a whole new level of
spamming here.”
“Not us, if we do our job right,” Brandon corrected.
“Let’s hope their backline is asleep.”
“When do they sleep?” Jyra wondered. “And how much?”
“A good question,” Brandon agreed. “Let’s not try and
a find out this trip, okay?”
“Not like I was going to go around interviewing them,” Jyra mumbled. “Just wondering how much a slice of day
they miss in snooze zone.”
“Once every three days, give or take,” Leo answered.
Brandon turned his helmet to look at him. “How do you
know that?”
“Recon report.”
“By who?”
“The Queen of Diamonds. She’s pulled a lot of solo
missions behind enemy lines studying them. I’ve been able to get into most of
the reports. Makes for good reading.”
“I didn’t think our codes would work on the
trailblazers’ stuff?”
“She’s not one of