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Forboding, no? I'm putting up the prologue to my long-worked-on "Project Everything" book. I'm sitting down in my spare time now, you see, and actually trying to finish it. Enjoy.


((the last couple paragraphs are actually the first of Chapter One.. but they tie into the prologue directly.))

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It was a hot drop with a rough landing. Our re-entry window was off, but the landing zone was right where it should be. A little damage to the boats, but otherwise our mission was off to a good start.

'Base' camp started taking shape quickly, and our ships could unass the area pretty quick... but it wasn't ten seconds after the passive-sensor grid was up that we got a beep. A distress signal, weak, but planetside. Close enough to investigate without attracting unwanted attention, but far enough away that comms would be a definite no. Couldn't afford anything more than narrowband mic-to-mic. No open channels when one was on an enemy-controlled planet. Aegis said a silent prayer in his head for the souls lost in the battle that had gone on above their heads... a battle that inadvertently had made this mission possible by knocking out half their sensor grid. Nevertheless... that meant somebody had to go check that call.

A quick leader's conference decided Dragoon and Aegis should be the ones to go. The rest of the security detail could hold a solid perimeter if they widened their lanes of fire by about five degrees each. Not even a full point of travel on a sharpshooter's reticle. Aegis in NOVA and Dragoon in DRAK, they left the camp taking it low and slow, hoping like hell they weren't crossing paths with any recon patrols.

It took about fifteen minutes to reach the source of the signal, putting it a good hundred kilometers out... The source, though, turned out to be nothing more than a lost beacon from one of the drop ships. It had to have been jarred loose during re-entry. Tracks around it looked like it'd been found already... but deemed battlefield debris and left alone. Dragoon noticed it before Aegis - the signal was on too old a channel. The beacon had been tampered with.

Dragoon went back to camp while Aegis set about analyzing the beacon, trying to determine the source of the sabotage. He'd only been working at it about ten minutes when suddenly he heard the comm crackle. That wasn't right... he adjusted his antenna back toward camp and the signal got stronger.

"Aeg...e...come in! D... tra...or. H..." By that time Aegis was already at full burn toward them. He was in range for narrowband when he saw it.

"Dragoon's atta...!" Was the last thing Aegis heard when he saw the flash of white. That blinding flash of red-rimmed white that he knew so well. That he had watched destroy so many enemies in times prior. Aegis came skidding to a halt, his heart fluttering. Biomonitors beeped rapidly at him in his helmet... but he couldn't stabilize. He saw a glint disappear into the distance, staying on-planet... and then took off again as the glow started to fade.

Aegis stopped at the edge of the crater. A larger crater than the one they'd landed in to establish basecamp... There was nothing left. Nothing at all.

Yet still, he heard the screams.

-||-

"... And even today, in my head, I still hear them." Lieutennant Commander Azriel 'Aegis' Damienté said as he swirled the glass of brandy in his hand once more. Chief Admiral Marcus Reddigan sat across the large ebony desk from him. The Fleet Commandant carefully examined the much younger officer currently staring out the porthole of the flagship ISFN Pax Romana, in such the way a father would examine a troubled son.

"And it is that, Aegis, that makes you such a good commander." Reddigan tapped the side of his head sharply, needing to readjust his glasses afterward. "I can't tell you how many voices scream their last agonies in my mind. More than any mathematician could ever hope to count in a lifetime, I'd imagine."

Aegis chuckled lightly, refilling his glass with the last of the brandy as he finally sat down. "Old man, it'd take at least a dozen." It wasn't the thing you normally joke about, but when two military men get drunk - anything is fair game.

-||-

And that's all you get for now. You'll have to wait until either my next excerpt, or... maybe I'll finish the book and you can get yourself a copy.