In the darkness, lit by the eerie light of night specs, Sonia could see Thorson and Gomez making their slow, cautious progress around the edge of the main tank of the recyling vats.

The nights on Planet were irregular creatures. Centauri B, Alpha Centauri's weak sister, shone a ghostly light as often as not, turning the solar night into a pale twilight, lit by a lantern no bigger than Nessos.

This was a four-hour night. A rare opportunity for infiltration and intrigue. A cover, under which Thorson and Gomez were affixing shaped charges to the support struts of the recycling vats, under Sonia's tireless eye, and her Spartan marksmanship.

Sonia took a pinch of soil, and brought it to her tongue. It had an ammonia sting. She was lying prone in a tangle of the Planet's native fungus, locked in tar drip slow conflict with a the spearpoints of couch grass, bursting from the hard earth.

~Charges set.

Thorson's voice came over the mindlink. She scratched at the neural jack set into her skull, behind her ear, still unused to the feeling of another's consciousness, another's words, appearing in her own.

~Chopper evac in five, still no hostiles, rendezvous at point Alpha, she sent back.

The great flank of Photus ridge rose up on her right, and she could see the glinting edges of thousands of solar arrays, rising in the darkness, lit by starlight alone.

She spotted something moving, checked it out through the scope of her rifle.

~Shit. Spotted five hostiles. A Security pack, by the looks of it. ETA three minutes.

Security Packs. Mindlinked Security. The idea made Sonia shudder. For their working hours, they worked as a collective consciousness - their minds and bodies linked into a machine-bound gestalt. They moved like a single animal, fought seamless, hitchless, without conscience or fear.

Sonia had fear, but her courage surpassed it. These were just civilians, brain-jacked into a killing machine, who woke from their shifts with only dim, alien memories of their gestalt experience.

Woke to catch the evening pornos on Morgan TV, before going to sleep in their Eezy-Sleep hab-cube, deep in the heart of the warrens of individualism.

Sonia thought the arrangement was the essential paradox of the Morganite worldview. By upholding sink-or-swim individualism, they created the conditions under which, to do anything but sink, Morganites had to sell their lives.

The Colonel called them the nation of whores.

~We've finished up here, what's the word on evac?

Thorson's mind was all hardened Spartan competence, Sonia took strength from it. A viking out of time, Thorson.

The radio rustled.

"Sigma team, this is big bird. There's a flight of interceptors coming in from Morgan Interstellar - we're going to have to hang back until they pass."

Sonia swore. The chopper would be short work for a flight of jets. She put one hand to her collar-mike, keeping her eye firmly fixed on the security pack, that was making its way down the slope of Photus ridge, moving with perfect co-ordination in the shadows of the solar arrays.

"Big bird, I need an eta here, we have company."

"Command expects them to finish their sweep within ten minutes. I'll advise when I get better data."

~Evac's held up - I'll headmap you defensive positions, we're going to have to engage.

Sonia felt Gomez and Thorson nod in the affirmative.

She kept her scope on the security pack. She sketched out a killzone on the team's headmap in a gulley where efluent from the recyclers pooled. Gomez and Thorson moved into position, resting their assault rifles on the broken walls of a pioneer house that had been levelled to make way for the Recycler.

Sonia licked her lips. No matter how many scraps she got into, she never seemed to ease into them.

Overhead, she could hear the roar of the interceptors, sleek black forms flitting across the stars, the edges of their wings lit by the rising moonlight from Nessos.

She set her crosshairs over the first man in the security pack. Pudgy-faced, kindly looking. Eyes like wet oysters, eyes of a weak man in a muscled frame.

~Mark your targets.

Two of the men lit up, blue and red, in Sonia's vision. Blue meant Thorson was gunning for you. Red meant Gomez. Neither suggested a life expectancy to boast of.

She marked hers. Yellow. Yellow kindly-faced man.

~Fire.

The three men came apart, blasted into giblets by they high-V rounds, macerated, legs still in motion. This was the key to fighting a security pack. Overwhelming initial force disorientated the gestalt while it tried to re-distribute its mind.

Sonia put a slug through the fourth, and the fifth ducked behind a piece of broken pipe.

~Gomez, advance to beta point. Thorson, hold.

The pre-prepared overwatch point blinked in the headmap. It had been a contingency, in case they got pinned down. More security would be coming.

~I can hear crying.

Thorson's message came with a sense of the sound. A woman, sobbing. Sonia queried:

~The security pack?

~In position, I have a bead on him, should I engage?

She could almost feel the impact rifle in Gomez's hands as he put his gun on the last surviving member of the security pack.

~She's dropped her rifle. Just curled up in a ball. Don't think she's a threat.

Sonia could feel Gomez's sympathy for the woman.

~Could be a trick.

Sonia cursed. The burden of command. Thorson was just trying to make things easier for her, saying it might be a ruse. He knew the right call. So did she. Didn't mean she liked it.

~Put her down.

She heard the crack as Gomez put her order into action.

The radio crackled into life.

"Evac coming in three, stand by at exit point Sigma."

She spat out her mouthful of earth, then loped into the darkness.

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

"I thought recyling was a little too green for Wabuda K," rumbled Thorson, over the muffled rattle of the helo.

"If there's a credit in it," shrugged Gomez, a hint of an Earther mexican accent creeping into his voice.

"For all their talk about freedom, and individuality, a Morganite hab cube sure looks a lot like a Hive one." Thorson should know - he had been embedded as a shift worker for a month, preparing the ground for this opperation.

Sonia checked the time-code set in the corner of her eye. She'd had that implant since childhood. The explosives would blow in forty-seven seconds. She fastened the seatbelt.

The landscape flashing by through the helo doors was now fully lit by the pale light of Nessos. The fungus was thick here, growing into tumescent spires and giant, stochiastic spirals.

In the distance, haloed against the breakers of the Great Northern Ocean, were the twisted, alien ruins - strange monoliths clustered like blasphemous fingers, pointed at the sky.

There was a low, resounding rumble in the distance.

Thorson grinned. "Another successful op, chief."

Sonia smiled back, and they bumped fists. In the distance, she could hear the whine of emergency sirens, the howl of interceptor engines warming up.

"We're about to have company, buckle up," came the pilot's voice from the cabin.

Sonia imagined the morganite interceptors climbing into the air like riled hornets, tires screeching off 'crete runwways, turbines blasting into the night.

There was a shrieking roar and a flash in the darkness, as the chopper jinked to one side.

She saw a black shape flit past. It must be one of the interceptors from the flight that had passed them by earlier.

Four holes suddenly appeared in the side of the chopper with deafening percussions.

Gomez whooped, Thorson cursed.

In the darkness, there were a series of blinding flashes, and a something screamed past, fast as a flickering laser, then there was silence.

"In case you were wondering, the Third Air Core just saved our asses," came the voice of the helo pilot.

Sonia made a mental note to find and thank the pilots responsible.