The day after arrival, Rus and the rest of Cyma Squad followed Colonel Vance Halberg through the forward line. The sun was harsh and white, burning off the last of the morning fog, leaving the air hot enough to taste iron. The smell of turned soil, oil, and distant smoke hung heavy over Galves.
They moved past the prefab command center and out toward the trenches. The whole area looked like an ant colony carved into the earth full of layered walls of sandbags, firing pits, and bunkers half-buried in dirt. Soldiers crawled everywhere, digging, hauling, shouting.
Halberg led the way with a certain pride in his stride. He wasn't just showing them around, he was showing off.
"This," he said, sweeping a hand toward the line of foxholes stretching down the slope, "is the first line. Infantry positions, overlapping fields of fire. Every sector's reinforced with at least two automatic guns and a marksman team."
Berta peered down into a trench where a pair of soldiers were hammering stakes into the dirt to anchor wire. "You've got them digging like moles."
"That's the point," Halberg said. "Ground eats fire. We don't win this with speed. We win this by making them bleed every inch they take."
Rus walked in silence beside him, scanning the line. The soldiers were a mix of veterans and fresh faces, their uniforms already stained with dirt and sweat. The older ones moved with the mechanical rhythm of dig, stack, reinforce. The younger ones hesitated, watching their own hands, as if unsure they were doing it right.
Dirt turned to mud as they descended toward the lower trench. Machinery growled in the background of diggers, loaders, and the rhythmic thunk of an autocannon being tested somewhere behind them.
Halberg kept talking.
"We've got overlapping fields of fire from here to the ridge. Each gun team's paired with a mech detachment. The Knights are stationed along the flanks, and artillery covers the rear. We'll have constant surveillance from drones along the ridge once they finish installing the towers."
Gino leaned toward Dan and muttered, "Feels like overkill."
Halberg didn't miss a beat. "There's no such thing as overkill. Only open caskets."
That shut them up.
They crossed another section where engineers were setting up floodlights and thermal sensors. A line of prefab turrets was being mounted to a steel wall. Each gun was sleek, angular, humming faintly with standby power. Rus recognized the design of the automated sentry cannons, motion-linked, high-caliber.
"Fifty meters between each," Halberg said. "They'll chew through anything dumb enough to rush."
Berta gave a low whistle. "Are you planning to invite the whole damn warband to dinner?"
Halberg grinned. "We're not inviting. We're waiting. And when they show up, we'll feed them lead until they choke on it."
They moved on.
The path curved along the perimeter where the terrain dipped into a wide flat basin. Rus noticed the change immediately, the the ground here was stripped bare, blackened and flat. A hundred meters of open land with nothing but churned dirt and ash. The smell was different too, bitter, chemical.
Halberg stopped at the edge and pointed. "That," he said, "is what we call the Death Zone."
The name fits.
Rus stepped forward and looked down the slope. The basin stretched out toward a shattered tree line about a kilometer away. Between here and there, nothing lived. The entire stretch had been burned clean by controlled detonations and napalm runs. The surface shimmered faintly in the heat, dotted with half-melted rebar and bones turned white by fire.
He could see the faint craters left by previous bombardments, perfect circular wounds in the ground. Beyond that, the faint haze of smoke where artillery shells still fell in the distance.
Halberg folded his arms, pride plain in his voice. "The moment they step into that zone, they're meat paste. We've got every gun, turret, and drone trained on it. The second they enter range, we light them up."
He nodded toward the emplacements behind them. "We've got layered kill zones. The first wave hits them with high-caliber fire. The second's all explosives and artillery. Anything that survives that, and some will, runs straight into the trench line where we finish them with small arms. If that fails, the mechs step in and mop up."
Foster looked out at the empty basin. "So this is where it happens."
Halberg nodded. "Every report says the Orcs are massing. Scouts spotted them three clicks east of the ridge. Big ones, too. Warband-sized. Not the usual rabble. These bastards are organized. Command calls them a structured host."
"Structured?" Kate asked.
"Yeah," Halberg said, his tone hardening. "Ranks. Cohesion. Someone's leading them, not some brute, either. We don't know who or what. But they move like they've got discipline."
Rus watched the Colonel as he spoke, noting the shift, from pride to calculation. Halberg was confident, but he wasn't underestimating them either.
"How long until they hit?" Rus asked.
"Could be tomorrow. Could be a week." Halberg's eyes narrowed toward the tree line. "But they'll come. They always do."
The squad stood there in silence for a moment, looking out at the scorched land. The heat shimmered across the Death Zone like a mirage. It looked lifeless, but Rus knew better. Sooner or later, it would fill with movement, the kind of chaotic barbaric flood that turned the earth red and the air to metal.
Berta leaned on her axe, squinting. "Hard to imagine anything charging through that."
"They will," Rus said quietly.
She glanced at him. "You sound sure."
"I've seen enough of these monsters," Rus said. "They don't need a reason. Just momentum."
Halberg smiled grimly. "These Orcs don't retreat. Not the warband kind. They'll throw everything they have until the ground's buried in their own dead. We just have to make sure none of them get close enough to matter."
They continued the tour, circling back toward the central camp. Along the way, they passed the artillery section, five mobile howitzers parked in a semi-circle, their barrels aimed toward the ridge. Crews worked around them, loading shells, calibrating targeting modules. The ground here trembled faintly with each test fire.
Further along, engineers were stacking crates of ammunition taller than men. Each one stenciled with black warnings and numbers. Rus glanced at one of the labels, a 120mm AP-FRAG. Enough to level a small town.
Halberg paused beside one of the piles. "We'll have full resupply every forty-eight hours from the carrier. The VTOLs make constant runs. If this turns into a siege, we'll hold. We've got supplies for weeks."
Dan looked skeptical. "And if they cut us off?"
"Then we kill them faster," Halberg said simply.
They passed a line of armored personnel carriers parked under camo nets, mechanics crawling over them like ants. One of the mechs, a hulking biped with hydraulic claws, stood idle nearby, its pilot sitting on its foot, smoking.
Everywhere they looked, someone was working. No idle hands. No wasted motion. It was the rhythm of soldiers waiting for inevitability.
By the time they looped back to the observation deck above the trench line, the sun was already dipping west. The Death Zone stretched out before them, glowing faintly under the orange light.
Halberg stood beside Rus, hands clasped behind his back. "This is it, Lieutenant. Every inch of this place is built to kill. Once the warband comes into view, you'll see something you'll never forget."
Rus watched the horizon, the blackened ridges, the smoke trails, the faint flicker of distant movement that might have been heat or something else. "Let's hope it works."
Halberg's grin was sharp. "It will. We've turned this place into a slaughterhouse. And once they walk into our line of sight—" he gestured toward the basin "—they'll be nothing but meat paste."
Rus didn't smile. He just nodded once. "Understood."
Behind them, the sounds of construction continued. drills whining, shovels biting into dirt, men shouting for parts and tools.
The line was growing stronger every hour.
But so was the silence in the distance, the waiting, the sense of something vast moving out of sight.
War never arrived quietly.
* * *
They called it a debriefing, but the TRU tent smelled less like paperwork and more like lab flasks and bleach. Long tables, holo-screens, and white-coated men and women with tired eyes and sharper attitudes clustered around a central projector. Soldiers filed in, boots soft on the canvas floor. Cyma Squad sat together, Berta already chewing at a smoke, Kate and Stacy quiet and attentive, Amiel folded like a statue at the rear, and Dan, Gino, Foster trying very hard to look like they belonged.
Rus stood where the colonel told him to, hands folded, Salvo sheathed at his side. The Recovery and Research Unit, TRU were the sort of people who arrived after the shooting to catalog the mess and then decide what to do with it. They were bureaucrats in lab coats who made policies about bodies. That suited neither Rus nor anyone really.
A man with a thin face and glasses introduced himself as Lieutenant-Commander Halvorsen, TRU field lead. He had the tone of someone who'd given too many rationalizations and was practiced at making them sound tidy.
"Thank you for coming," Halvorsen said, tapping the holo. Images rolled from maps, counts, skeletal diagrams of the Orcs they'd been encountering. "We've recovered remains from the engagement east of the ridge. We've functionalized preliminary analysis. These specimens are not your garden-variety ferals."
He let that sit, then flicked through scans that showed bone structure differences, endocrine gland swellings, anomalous growths. The visuals were clinical and ugly all at once.
"We're calling them mutant orcs," one of the TRU techs offered, voice hollow with the detached cadence of a man who'd compartmentalized too much. "They're larger, more organized, and there's evidence of rapid adaptation. They breed fast. They regenerate tissue at rates inconsistent with baseline mammalian physiology."
Berta snorted. "Great. More bugs that breed like roaches."
Rus kept his face neutral. He'd done enough of these fights to know what the numbers meant, if they bred fast, the fight would never end without either containment or eradication. The conversation slid into logistics, how many, where they'd been spotted massing, what the casualty estimates were, and how many rounds it took to put down one of the larger specimens. TRU's slides spun coldly through the cost analysis, ammo per expected kill, fuel consumption, and medevac needs.
Then Halvorsen leaned forward, voice lowering as though he was imparting something that needed to sound reasonable in a hurry.
"Given the numbers, the logistic burden is untenable," he said. "Genociding at scale is unsustainable in theater. Therefore, our command has been debating containment measures. Sterilization has been brought to the table."
A ripple passed through the room and stalled. Kate's hand flexed around a cup until the knuckles went white. Stacy's jaw clenched. Berta's smirk didn't leave her face for a second, then snapped into something darker, like a blade being drawn.
Rus's eyes flicked to the techs. "Sterilization?" he echoed.
Halvorsen nodded. "Chemical immunocontraception, endocrine suppressants, targeted sterility agents, non-lethal. We inhibit reproductive capability and thus reduce population growth without expending the ammo and resources necessary for mass hits."
He phrased it clinically, as if each word cleaned the implication. The TRU man used "non-lethal" and "targeted" like a shield.
One of the other TRU officers, a broad-shouldered woman with a tired voice, leaned in and said it bluntly. "Mostly because we're running out of ammo. And because if these creatures keep reproducing at the rate they're doing, if the warband backs up and breeds, then we've got whole sectors that will require genocidal fire to reclaim. The strategic choice is obvious."
Berta barked a laugh. "So what, you wanna turn them into eunuchs and watch them rot? That's your big plan? Chemical castration, huh? Sounds almost Biblical."
The woman's mouth twitched. "We don't use colloquialisms, Sergeant. We use terms that commanders understand."
Dan, Gino, and Foster exchanged looks, somewhere between disbelief and the kind of distaste that comes from reading a grubbed truth and knowing you'll have to live with it anyway.
"That's barbaric," Kate said, voice low.
"It's pragmatic," Halvorsen replied. "Hear me out. We can't commit the resources to a total-kill approach. We can't naval-bomb every breeding ground. If we can reduce their reproductive success and suppress hormonal drives that fuel aggression and coordination, then the numbers will drop. If crews don't have to burn through tens of thousands of rounds to thin the herds, we keep forces intact for decisive fights."
Rus listened. He understood the arithmetic. He also saw the blind side of it, what they weren't showing in the slides were the long-term effects, ecological disruption, the moral rot that follows institutionalized cruelty even if it's dressed in "non-lethal" language. He'd seen what desperation hid behind an order. Both in this life and the other.
"How do you deliver it?" he asked, because someone needed to ask the thing that mattered. Not all questions could be left to pillows or to think tanks.
"Vectors," Halvorsen said. "Feed contamination, aerosol dispersal targeted to burrow entrances, injection via baited traps for smaller numbers. We are not releasing anything indiscriminately over possible civilian areas. It's targeted to the specimens we have identified."
Rus could see Amiel's jaw work once. She didn't speak, but the friction between "targeted" and "what if it spreads?" tightened in the tent.
"No biological agents?" Stacy asked. "No pathogens that might mutate and jump?"
"Controlled compounds," Halvorsen said. "No replicating agents. Pharmaceutical-grade immunomodulators designed to bind to reproductive receptors. We have lab-controlled trials on comparable species. There are protocols."
He said it all as if that settled it. As if the word "protocol" was an eraser for the ethical stain.
Berta rolled her eyes and spat out a string of curses so raw them their faces went unreadable. "So we're turning them to eunuchs instead of shooting them. Cheaper. Cleaner. You guys always find the neat way to make murder polite."
Rus's gaze cut to her. She was half-joke, half-rage, an odd cocktail he'd come to expect. He could feel the rest of the squad shift in their boots.
One of the techs added, too eager, too young. "Also, it reduces the incentive to chase mating grounds, which are predictable. If they stop congregating, we can stage fewer ambushes and focus on strategic points."
"And what about unintended consequences?" Rus asked. "What about selection pressure? You suppress reproduction and all you do is select for resistance. Next thing you know, they're breeding resistant offspring. You rig the environment for a stronger variant."
A murmur of agreement ran through the TRU people. The broad-shouldered woman shrugged. "This is a risk assessment. Everything in theater is a risk. We weigh operational sustainability against ethical considerations. Command made the call: contain reproduction. Save rounds. Save lives that would be spent trying to wipe entire packs."
Amiel's voice was quieter than anyone expected. "And if they adapt?"
"That's where adaptive response comes in," Halvorsen said. "Ongoing surveillance, iterative compound development. It buys us time."
"Time for what?" Kate snapped. "To invent a worse weapon?"
"Time to stabilize the corridor," Halvorsen said. "To build the infrastructure so the next unit doesn't have to burn it all out by hand. Time to develop non-combat solutions to population control so we can move north without forty-year wars on our flank."
Berta spat again. "You say 'non-combat' like it's some kind of charity."
Halvorsen's jaw tightened. "Words have to hold some weight here. Otherwise none of us sleeps."
Rus didn't sleep much already. He folded his hands and spoke, flat.
"If we do this, if Command greenlights a widescale sterilization campaign, who makes the call on targeting? Who signs off on each zone? I'm responsible for my men. I'm not signing off on something that turns tomorrow's enemy into some fucked-up experiment."
Halvorsen's eyes were tired but sharp. "It won't be you. It'll be us in TRU, with Command oversight. We have legal counsel, counsel that has been briefed at HQ, rules of engagement for biological containment. You will provide operational support. You will secure the sites while our teams deploy."
"Legal counsel," Rus echoed. "Somebody's paid to make a moral stain look like a permit."
No one argued. That part was obvious.
Berta stood suddenly, pushing her crate over with a grunt. She came right to the front of the tent, face inches from Halvorsen's. "You lot think you can sterilize a warband like you sterilize cattle. That's not going to be tidy. That's not going to be controllable. And if you mess with their hormones, god help us if they become less predictable."
Halvorsen didn't flinch. "We believe the pros outweigh the cons. We have to."
Rus watched them both, watching Halvorsen trying to sell a plan with slides and numbers, and Berta trying to sell a war with a knife-edge stare. The argument wasn't new. He'd seen versions of it in other places and the cost-benefit calculus that looks clean on screens but leaves blood on hands.
Amiel stepped forward then, slow, precise. "If we perform this, will we monitor genetic drift?" Her voice was thin but clear. "We test environmental spread?"
"We do," Halvorsen said. "We'll monitor, with samples and surveillance. We'll have field labs on rotation. We will attempt to minimize collateral spread."
"How long?" Amiel asked. "How long until you pull the trigger on a compound you barely tested?"
Halvorsen hesitated. That was the first uncertainty Rus had seen on his face. "That depends on field results," he said finally. "We won't release at scale without staged deployment data. There will be pilots. We'll test the traps. If the first pilot shows unacceptable spread we pull back."
"And if it doesn't?" Amiel pressed.
"Then we scale."
That was all.
Rus's mouth was a line. He looked at his squad, at Kate and Stacy clenching their hands, at Dan's face gone sharper than he'd seen it, at Gino and Foster trying to joke but failing. He looked at Berta, wild-eyed, bloodlust softened for once into something like outrage. He looked at Amiel and saw something like the hinge of a decision, profession, yes, but also the small human carving in a life that kept her steady.
He let out a half-sound, no warmth in it. "If Command says go, we do what we have to do," he said. "That's the job."
Berta spat again, loud enough for the TRU people to hear. "And if this makes them into something worse, don't say you weren't warned," she said. "Don't say you didn't hear it from me, or from anyone who's ever bled out their lungs in the swamp."
Halvorsen's expression hardened into the practiced neutrality of policy men. "We'll take input. We'll weigh ethical boards. We'll brief Command. You'll be informed."
Rus let his eyes sweep the tent one last time. The math made sense. The ethics didn't. Both could be true. They had always been true.
Outside, beyond the canvas, Galves smoldered. Men cranked sandbags. Turrets hummed. Somewhere a VTOL lifted.
In the tent, people argued about what to do with bodies they hadn't yet faced. They drew lines on maps with clean fingers, as if maps could hold blood. The plan was to make things cheaper… sterility instead of slaughter, containment instead of genocide. It was efficient, clinical, human in the worst way.
Rus thought of thresholds and growth, of mutations and their edge. He thought of the QTE flashes that guided his hands and kept his squad alive. He thought of what it meant to be asked to make men's decisions into actions at the end of a trigger.
He didn't like the plan. He didn't like the choice. But he lived in a world where choices were rationed and the name for that ration was necessity.
When the debrief ended, when the slides dimmed and the TRU scientists packed their kits, the tent filled with the small noises of men trying to reconcile the arithmetic with the life they'd sworn to protect.
Berta threw a cigarette to the dirt and ground it with the heel of her boot.
"Fine," she said to no one and everyone. "We do it. But I'll be watching your people, Halvorsen. You fuck this up, and I'll send you postcards from the front line of the things you made."
Halvorsen said nothing. He had charts to reconcile and a Command line to ring.
Rus walked out last, shoulders heavy with a decision he hadn't been given and couldn't refuse. The day smelled like ash and oil and the small bright green of grass that had no business being so stubborn. He lit a smoke and watched Berta pace the perimeter as the bay rolled on, indifferent to plans that would change blood into policy.