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Second
Earth’s horizon. That planetoid, Elennarah, named after the admiral who had commanded the fleet
of colonists who’d landed here, was far too different from the moon of Old
Earth to fool Shawn into believing he was back on the birthplace of humanity.
Elennarah’s surface was a mottled mixture of orange and grays, a tribute to the
high iron content of its surface, and interspersed with wisps of turquoise
clouds which moved across the extremely thin atmosphere like micro-cracks on an
eggshell. By all accounts, it looked more like the planet Mars before it had
been terraformed and overpopulated.
       “I never thought it
would look like this.” Lieutenant Commander Roslyn Brunel, sitting in the
copilot’s seat of Sylvia’s Delight ,
was in shock at her surroundings. Like the rest of the exploration team, she’d
already made her assumptions about what they would encounter when they arrived,
only to have those same expectations shattered to pieces.
       Shawn let out a
measured sigh before responding. “Yeah.”
       In fact, he
couldn’t agree more. The world passing rapidly below Sylvia’s Delight was unlike anything the Unified government had led
everyone to believe. Seeing the beauty and tranquility of the mountain range
over which they were currently passing, he couldn’t help but speculate about
the other lies the Unified Government may have told the public, or they themselves
were told. When the end of the monolithic range appeared, Shawn took the
Mark-IV gracefully down the slope of the last hills in the chain.  
       Sylvia’s Delight was now directly over a
lush, green field on the outskirts of an ancient forest. On either side of D were Maelstrom-class fighters from
Shawn’s squadron, the Rippers. In front of D ,
far too distant to be seen with the naked eye, was a single Mummy from the 215 th Electronic Intelligence Gathering Squadron, the Discoverers. Behind them were two
Pharaohs from the 8 th Logistics Squadron, the Senders. The band of
ships quickly came to a large body of water. Based on their current location,
Shawn and Raven both knew it to be Arben Lake, purported to be the best place
to fish on the whole of the planet. Its blue surface sparkled under the rays of
the sun, sending back streaks of reflections that contoured themselves to the
hulls of the low-lying Unified craft.   
       Knowing they were
fast approaching their destination, Shawn called in a status report from the
Discoverers’ lead ELINT. The sensor officer on the Mummy reported no unusual
contacts of any kind in the immediate area of Crystal City or Delta Base, then
notified Shawn that he was cleared to land at the former base’s airstrip and
spaceport, Addison Field, at his convenience. A relatively undamaged small
swatch of the abandoned tarmac was located by the recon craft on its third
patrol of the area, and it would give Shawn—and the small squad of Marines in Sylvia’s belly—ample room to set up a base
camp once they touched down.
       Over the distant
horizon, beyond the last ridge of trees, Shawn and Roslyn could now see the
damaged but still upright spires of the center of the city, Crystal Towers.
Each of the three structures had been nearly a mile tall when constructed, with
thick bases that looked as if each were a tree trunk and rooted deeply into the
pavement beneath it. From there they tapered off into the sky, ending at
communications towers and disc-shaped observation lounges. Midway up the spires
were a series of transparent connecting corridors that had linked the
structures together. The three towers were home to the majority of the city’s
inhabitants, as well as the main offices for the local law enforcement
officials, the planetary Sector Command and Unified Government representatives,
and the planet’s governing council—not to mention the hundreds of offices,
retail, and dining spaces they held.
       As Shawn brought
the Mark-IV in closer to the remains of the structures, he could