Twenty hours ago, Operation Null Hour began.
Right now, on a planet that had no name in any human language, Kelvin Pithon was crouched behind a structure that was not quite a wall and not quite a building, somewhere in the architectural middle ground between the two, on a world that smelled like rain that hadn't fallen yet and something sweet underneath it that he couldn't identify and had stopped trying to.
Seraleth was to his left. The Faithful Feathers were folded against her back, wings compressed to their minimum profile, the feathers doing something in the low light of whatever this planet called evening that made them look like they were breathing. She was watching the structure across the open ground ahead of them with the patience she applied to everything, which was considerable.
