The sky was filled with brilliant fire that illuminated the churning battlefield in blues and greens. Ailen stumbled in the mud, shielding her eyes from the light, and fell flat on her face as the tell-tale vzz of a plasma rifle flew right through the space her head had been. She struggled against the sucking mud, and the storm cannon fired again, flashing cerulean over a blackened, grinning skull in front of her.
A hand on her backpack gave her pause, and then she was hoisted bodily upright by the sergeant, silver bionics flashing in the muzzle-light.
“Lucky fall, Private!” said the sergeant. “Try to stick to upright from now on, though!” They raised their pistol and fired off four shots at staccato pace, and shouted: “Come on! The first trench is just ahead!”
Sliding into the trench, she let off a blast from her pulse projector that sent a black-clad enemy troop spinning, screaming as his organs scrambled inside his body. She glanced over and saw Colls grab an enemy as he came round a bend and wrench his head to the side, exposing the half-inch of weakpoint in the atmo-seal that they had been briefed on. Colls pulled her knife from her belt and slashed the faultline, and threw him away as he choked on the hostile atmosphere of their homeworld.
“We don’t want you here,” said Colls, and spat on the heavily-armoured corpse. She turned and gave a smirk and a nod to Ailen, before hefting her own projector – a heavy model that could just about turn a man inside out.
“Give ’em hell,” said Ailen, ratcheting the bolt on her projector and slotting a new powercell into the open receptacle.
“You read my mind.”

Reports going home would describe the battle as a “decisive, game-changing victory”. But Ailen couldn’t help but feel strange about it. The first trench had been barely guarded. The Travayan forces, her forces, had taken a handful of casualties if that. She knew she should be thankful, but couldn’t bring herself to join in the ancient battle-songs and rejoicing among the other soldiers as they swept through the tunnel network, driving the enemy before them like harried animals.
She and Colls went side-by-side down a dark tunnel, the white beams of their personal lights slicing narrow circles out of the blackness. Colls was belting out an old favourite of hers: “Bleed the Enemy Dry” to any soldier that might be waiting for them.
“Come on, join in!” she nudged Ailen. “For the blood of lesser men/ be fit to water the fields of Travayan…”
Ailen had always thought that was a rather tortured rhyme. She put her arm out, halting Colls in her tracks.
“Wait!” she said, and shone her light over an apparently empty space in front of them. A silken steel thread glinted. “Tripwire.” She turned left and right, following the wire, and then dug her hand into the dirt wall on her left-hand side. After a second, she pulled it out again. Clasped in her fingers was a small, black explosive charge.
Colls gasped. “How did you spot that?” she said.
“Lucky, I guess,” Ailen shrugged. “Door!” She pointed to an unobtrusive nook in the wall where a dull, rust-reddened portal could almost have been missed by a casual observer. Colls let a curse fly.
“Looks dangerous,” she said, getting the glint in her eye that she got when danger beckoned. “Could be anything hiding in there. We should call it in.”
“Yes,” said Ailen insistently, “we should.”
Colls ignored her and laid a hand on the door. “Looks old. How long have these trenches been here? Months, right? It’s stuck, I can’t budge it an inch.”
Ailen crouched down and helped out, and together they got the door to open far enough for Colls to get her hand through the crack and feel for the issue.
“Can you see anything?” she said to Ailen as she felt around the back of the door. The other side was black as night and dead silent. Ailen looked up and down the tunnel in case some soldier had doubled back to try and do some damage to the reclaimed trenches.
“Can you feel anything?” Ailen asked back to Colls.
“Nothing yet… hold on, I think… yes!”
There was a metallic sound and the door suddenly fell inwards, Colls going face-first into the mud on the other side. Ailen laughed and grabbed her shoulder, pulling her up. She didn’t move.
“Come on!” said Ailen, pulling again. This time, Colls rolled over onto her back. One hand was clutching something over her right eye. “Colls?” Ailen touched the hand and it fell away limp and bloody into the mud.
In her eye socket, embedded at least six inches deep, a jagged spike of metal protruded, oozing blood mixed with the translucent ocular fluid that ran down her cheek like tears. The other eye flicked around madly, sightlessly, as Ailen screamed for a medic who would only shake his head and lay a sheet over her when he arrived. The empty darkness on the other side of the door watched silently as the tableau unfolded.

A few squads were gathered in the recently-captured mess not long after. Among those in attendance were Ailen and her sergeant, one looking on the debrief with emotionless professionalism and one staring, but not seeing it.
The sergeant stood up suddenly and Ailen shook out of her silent internal scream just in time to hear them declare:
“That’s ridiculous, we’re far under strength! You can’t possibly expect us to-”
“With respect, Huff, this is low-priority. You aren’t expected to meet heavy resistance on your way down the tunnel. It’s probably a forgotten dead end, but we can’t afford to leave a stone unturned at this stage.” The Captain, a small man with a narrow voice, closed off his statement as if that settled everything. Sergeant Huff pounded their leg with a clenched fist, but fell silent and sank back into their seat, not cowed but biding their time, Ailen felt.
She waited for the rest of the debrief to pass in silence. When it was all over, she shot a quizzical look at the sergeant.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“What’s wrong? Didn’t you hear the Captain?” said Huff. “We’re being sent down that blasted tunnel as recon!”
“That… tunnel…”
“Exactly. We’re in no state. We’re below strength, still recovering from the assault, and who knows what we’ll find down there. Don’t you worry, though. I’ll talk to the Captain and get this all straightened out, you wait and see.”

The tunnel was still dark, not having any light of its own, but the six of them each had a flashlight, and the sergeant had a case of flares as well in case of hazards. Ailen walked at the front of the column, just behind the sergeant.
“You found this tunnel didn’t you?” said the soldier behind her, Lon, a sneer given human shape. “You and Colls.”
“What? Oh, yes,” said Ailen. “I guess you’re right.”
“I liked Colls,” said Lon straightforwardly. “Let me make this clear. If I am put in a position where I can save your life, I won’t do it. If I am put in a position where I can save myself at your expense, I will do everything in my power to make that happen. Your life is completely forfeit to me.”
“That’s good to know, Lon,” said Ailen wearily, wishing something would happen if only to break the monotony of trudging through the mud in the narrow tunnel.
“Shut up, Lon,” said the sergeant. “Nobody is getting killed.”
“Yes, sarge,” said Lon.

The rest of the journey was passed in silence, the only source of mental stimulation the drunken back-and-forth swaying of the chest-mounted flashlights they all wore that made it almost, but not quite, impossible to develop any kind of adjustment to the darkness. They were automatic and came on in dark environments whether they were wanted, needed, or otherwise.
After what could have been hours, the light from their lamps met a soft, twilight glow coming the other way and the flashlights immediately shut off. The sergeant stopped immediately, and Ailen, no longer able to see, walked straight into their back. When everybody had steadied themselves and apologised to the people they had crashed into, they proceeded slowly, silently, towards the light.

The complex was big, low and concrete, with sloping bunker walls. The tunnel opened out into the woods, clearly some kind of secret exit. It, too, looked old. Much too old to be a war installation. This facility, this dark site shrouded in the ancient forests, had been here in secret for years!
Ailen clutched her head suddenly as it began to throb with a pulsating ache, and she looked up to see a figure slowly descending above the facility – a lone person, flying under some hidden power. As if supernaturally drawn to it, she stepped forward, until the sergeant caught her arm.
“What are you doing? That’s an Agent! That’s the Empire, Ailen! The Enemy!” they hissed.
High above, Ailen saw the Agent’s head turn to face them.