“Weren't you one of the knights that picked up the critters hideout?” Covfeefe looked at Charles, his fellow man, with predatory eyes. “You also saw it kill Scabbert ” Scabbert was the marine who died inside, not outside Turlington station. “Of all people you have evidence it’s inhuman. You don’t believe your own reports?”

  Charles didn’t believe his own reports, but that was because he had been trained to reject the false and deceptive physical world even his own senses for the internal world of his personal agency. He didn’t think he was less accurate than the average person. In fact, his accuracy was rather a mark of pride. Perhaps this Coffee guy was more perceptive than he let on.

  “You know these Knights have active imaginations, they see some crazy stuff out in the stars. They fought almost the entire Lancer war by themselves.” Delta was stepping in to defuse the tension. Charles hadn’t even made to speak. “I’m sure if we had access to their records we might be asking the same thing.”

  As nice as it was, Covfeefe was right, Delta Papa was buying into the romance the church had written into Knighthood. That being said, The Lancer war was twenty years ago, so named because the aliens threw “Lances” that befuddled human armor. The same aliens were hard to hit with small arms as well, naturally they still died if you shot them. But the species as a whole was rather bony and hard to hit. They survived being hit pretty well too, or so the story went. Laser and denial of proximity weaponry had developed rather quickly in those years, narratives all agreed. Charles himself wasn’t really aware of the war outside the interesting history and reports from that decade. Not that he believed many of them to be accurate, it was too recent in history to not be political.

  “Forgive me” Charles spoke “It doesn’t matter what the thing is, it appears it has a human ally.”

  “How do you get that job?” Covfeefe couldn’t turn it off.

  “You applying?” Delta Papa was instantly cold. Apparently he had less of a sense of humor.

  “We should probably consider how the human ended up working with the alien.” Charles mediated. “Seems important.”

  “Lets try to be professional here, we need pictures and documentation.” Covfeefe was right, they were just speculating now.

  “Yes Sir!” Delta Papa responded loudly,

  “Lets try to be a bit quiet, we don’t want to disturb the site, and I’m not sure we want attention.” Covfeefe was likely Owningsburg’s replacement if Owningsburg died.

  “Yes sir!” Delta Papa responded softly.

  Charles had a film camera and a digital camera. The marines had digital phones. The work was quick. The longest part was searching for tracks that the giant mech, estimated at over one ton in weight.

  “Coffee?” Charles asked.

  “What?” Covfeefe answered.

  “Can your phone track the landscape for unnatural formations?”

  “I thought you would never ask.” The sly and annoying twenty something responded. Charles knew to ask because Charles remembered when people bragged about interesting tools a few days ago.

  Covfeefe, coffee for short, kept a software on their military phone that spotted for unnatural earthworks. Why the man kept the tool hidden until asked was anyone's guess.

  “Sure enough!”

  Delta Papa had a tired look on their face, he was an optimistic guy but the smugness of youth clearly annoyed him a little. “What have you got!?” His chipper voice hid the exhaustion well, but Charles could perceive it still.

  The three men crowded around Coffees millitary phone to have a look at the tiny image on it’s screen. It highlighted two sunken depressions in the earth. Both gently formed a path uphill to the gravel road. The road itself was in mild disrepair.

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  “It says it isn’t natural?” Charles stated the obvious, but the knights were content stating the obvious. Coffee moved to interrupt but Charles bore over him “Do we know it’s recent?”

  “What else would it be?” Coffee ignored the fact that the little cell phone app didn’t have a dating mechanism for land formation. To be fair, Charles considered, dating ditches was probably not very important for the developers.

  “No… their market is military people…” His mind was wandering, Charles tried to focus back on the present. The voice of Delta brought him back.

  “I mean what else would be here other than the crater? The little… umm grooves look like they are kinda old. Maybe it rained to make it look…”

  “But there is no vegetation!” Coffee nearly whispered. Confidently he walked over and kicked one of the strips of dirt that could have easily been new erosion runoff from a dead tree, “Nice and hard too! That’s not normal.” His voice was getting louder, evidently he enjoyed landscapes.

  “Did it rain recently?” Charles asked. Charles was unfamiliar with soil sciences. He hoped Coffee wasn’t just making stuff up. He hoped the software developers weren’t making stuff up.

  “My weather app only shows the future.” Delta sounded particularly dejected here. It was hard to read old Delta sometimes, it was simplest just to assume he was a big man with big emotions.

  “So how do we record this? Screenshot that readout or something Coffee! We can put together a theory later.”

  It was lucky the three men were all eager to solve problems. It made the work feel productive. A wholesome optimism and a competitive level of competence and cynicism made it feel efficient.

  They cleaned their tracks, saved their images, and hopped back off the timber farm, no longer trespassing.

  Charles didn’t waste the other two’s time by inviting them to share his wonder at how they could spend an hour trespassing and not be seen. If he ever owned a farm… well… his farm, his eyes, his machines. It would be his own personal Mordor. Charles would have tolerated no unruly behavior on his farm.

  But Charles didn’t own any farms. Charles was a knight, if he retired it would be after decades of service. Besides, if he did… well…

  Charles knew he was naturally lazy. He would probably just curl up in some apartment and rot.

  What was wrong with him today? He wasn’t focusing. Maybe it was the stress of flying. He had gotten on the flight how many hours ago?

  Delta liked to drive, but the car wanted more digits on a screen. So the three men contented themselves with riding back to the rendezvous where they would compile their findings and finally, after all this time. Get a little rest before making a plan in the morning and hopefully, hunting down that little alien saboteur. Their leads today might be historic, but that thought was somehow in the back of Charles's busy mind.

  They arrived at the little middle class single story, single family home that was going to be bunking seven men for the foreseeable future. Misery loves company.

  They ate their meals, they discussed their findings. Owningsburg and crew had found nothing. They had resolved to search on some more encrypted databases tomorrow for that Thallium company. Edgecase and the ZRM intel guy were a little worried that such a search would get them flagged by an automated system utilized by the alien.

  So strong was this fear that they had invented a phrase to avoid speaking of the company.

  “Shelly.”

  They were going to see if they could find any information about Aunt Shelly.

  Charles and crew had found a treasure trove of data. The intel officer was (probably) going to be able to get a DNA return on the samples found by Covfeefe. They just needed to assume the person was born on, or officially lived on the planet Zephyr.

  But they needed to sleep. Charles had forgotten what it was like to sleep in plainclothes without some of his armored brethren only seconds away and sub seven minutes alert.

  It was disturbingly easy.

  He woke twice during the first night, keenly aware that nobody was keeping watch. Keenly aware also that nobody else was awake. Even more disturbingly, the civilian walls designed for insulation could be bombed or cooked or burned…

  But this was paranoia, if the alien wanted them dead, they would be. Charles looked over from the couch he was failing to sleep on at Lopin who slept soundly. Or appeared to.

  Owningsburg also slept soundly, in a recliner.

  Charles couldn’t sleep in recliners, but he was also not a true soldier, not like these men. Who apparently were comfortable or exhausted enough themselves to consider this a proper civilian nap time.

  Maybe this is why Charles couldn’t sleep, he was the most civilian. In reality Charles was less than a knight. He was a fancy skid steer operator that got arbitrarily promoted by the Magus because they both liked reading technical manuals.

  Quoth the Magus. “Nobody reads anymore.” Charles wondered if anyone ever had. He rather suspected illiteracy was the human condition.

  It was no use to sleep stressed. He got up, stretched silently, took a few deep breaths, wrinkled his nose and tasted the city tap water.

  Really he should just mainline tap water. It was gonna kill him someday.

  A little water always helped him sleep. Part of him hoped that the alien ripped his head off before he woke up.

  But that would have just been to avoid waking up, he didn’t actually want to die. He just wanted to sleep a lot longer than he was able to.