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and see this!”
    Colden exclaimed in fake surprise, “That’s one of my agents! Wonder what he’s found?”
    “Like, guo lai ya, dudes!” Like all the newbies, Drudge had been made to learn a bit of basic Chinese. “For real! I need backup, pronto!”
    All the Chinese troops immediately downed tools and drove towards Drudge’s location. The Star Force troops followed, just in case Drudge had found something good and the Chinese were going to get to it first.
    Result! Colden thought to herself. She counted a hundred and fifty human beings passing her, hanging off the sides of their Death Buggies and Dongwu Che surface transports. There could hardly be anyone left at the farm. They all converged on the building where Drudge was yelping about his amazing discovery.
    Uh oh. He’d better have found SOMETHING to justify this build-up.
    She needn’t have worried.
    Drudge’s phavatar stood on the roof of a ziggurat. This wasn’t one of the 120-meter ziggurats that housed the PLAN’s fission reactors. She’d never seen one like this before. It was a smooth-sided cone, about 30 meters high, with a ramp that spiraled up to the top, reminding her of a helter-skelter. She flashed back on the pure joy of a day at the funfair with her parents, and then she saw the skulls carved into the sides of the ramp.
    Scratch that.
    Actual skulls—muppet skulls—set into the regocrete, like decorations.
    “Oh boy, this is sick!” said the grunts, vidding from every angle.
    “It sure is!” Drudge shouted. “But you haven’t seen the really interesting thing yet!” His phavatar danced like an excited stag beetle. “Come on up here!”
    Chinese and UN grunts climbed the ramp. It was steep enough to force them onto their hands and knees. Infected by the general excitement, Colden climbed up behind them.
    There were so many people crowding the platform at the top that she couldn’t reach Drudge. She turned to look back at the ruined farm, about a klick away. Her platoon’s phavatars were still digging, as were those from Rho Base and Theta Base. She line-of-sighted Sophie Gilchrist’s phavatar. “Any time now,” meaning that all the humans were off the site, so she wouldn’t mind if the PLAN sprang its ambush any time.
    “One of our combat units is still here,” Gilchrist responded anxiously. “They found a bit that didn’t collapse, and they’ve gone inside. I told Geoff—I mean Captain Saroyan—about our theory, but he was just like, ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass. This is my duty.’”
    “It’s Geoff now, is it?” Colden teased her.
    “Ma’am! Ma’am! Mizz Colden!” Drudge was trying to get her attention. “You really should look at this!”
    People were squeezing through the crowd to where Drudge stood. One by one, they bent down as if to look at something on the floor, and fell back with curses on their lips, to make way for the next set of gawpers. Drudge held his position, quivering self-importantly. Colden could have accessed his phavatar’s optic feed, but whatever it was the human beings were getting so riled about, she felt like she ought to see it with her own eyes, even though she was a hundred klicks away on the couch.
    Did that make any sense? Nope. She pushed her way towards him.
    He stood guard over a telescope or periscope set into the platform, wrong end up, waist-high to a human. There were metal handles on either side that you could use to focus and tilt it. Star Force and CTDF gloves had rubbed the dust off them. Colden aimed her optic sensors at the telescope’s eyepiece. Lenses trying to look through lenses. All she saw was a blur. Then her sensors auto-focused, rendering a picture of a dimly lit room with a square object in the middle.
    “It’s like a crypt or something,” Drudge jabbered. “I bet there’s a mummy in there!”
    Colden said, “The walls of the room look to be covered with markings. Probably just PLAN glyphs, but I’m getting that they’re red . That’s