Year 248 P.L. Rychter Calendar
Coordinates: 15.4°N; 29.8°E
Site Designation: Rubicon (City of)

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Dawn blazed into life over the city of Rubicon.

The first city. The jewel of Rychter. Planetfall. The Mouth of the River. A place of myth in the minds of many.

Rubicon followed the contours of a large waterfall - one of the few naturally occurring sources of water on the planet's surface - sheltered by a huge crescent of mountainous cliffs. A great cluster of white-stone buildings filled the upper reaches, some of them a dozen stories tall, larger and more strident than anywhere else on the planet.

Standing on the balcony of his residence in Rubicon's cliff district, Commissariat Minister Lanto Numitor took in the view. Age was catching up to him now, his slim crop of black hair now peppered with increasing streaks of grey, his joints aching in protest as he tried to stride on through life as though he was still a young man. One bony hand held a ceramic mug of sun-roasted coffee; the other held a data slate, its screen clogged with today's agenda.

He sipped. The coffee was good - grown on the Rubicon slopes barely a few hundred yards from where he stood. Not a lot of people on Rychter could enjoy such luxury, but he allowed it to himself. Such indulgences were payment he felt he deserved, given that his job left precious time for much else. A moment of calm like this was more precious than gemstones; rarer than rain.

Another sip. It made some of the information on the data pad easier to digest.

Lanto never thought he would have missed the simplicity of the Scraegan war, but what had sprung from the dark waters of the south made him long for the years of us versus them. Two sides wrestling for the right to exist on this planet.

His eyes wandered to the great cluster of the cliff district. In the midst of it, the armoured cube of Rubicon's Grand Commissariat chambers stood, austere in its decoration save for a large flag draped over its southern-facing wall above the main entrance. Blood red and bisected by a horizontal line of blue, with a depiction of the twin suns of Rychter stitched into its upper section.

Lanto had the same flag hanging in his house, because he was a patriot. A man who would do anything and everything to defend Rubicon's place in history.

The ping of his door alarm dragged his attention reluctantly away from the vista. Lanto turned, draining the last of his coffee as he did, and stepped back into his home. He walked through the front room, passing smoothly machined chairs, a stonework dining table and a well-stocked cabinet of expensive liquor until he reached the front door.

When he opened it, he found his adjutant, Aurelia, waiting for him. She was a tawny-skinned woman in her early thirties - barely half his age - clad in a crisply pressed grey uniform with the Rubicon flag emblazoned above her right breast and a matching military cap. Her short bundle of dark hair jutted out beneath it, and she stood smartly to attention, bright blue eyes looking past him as she saluted.

"Sir," she declared in her gritty voice.

"Lieutenant." Lanto inclined his head to her. A thin smile played on the corners of his mouth as he held up the mug. "I don't suppose we have time for another coffee."

Aurelia mirrored his smile. "Afraid not, sir. You know how the other ministers are about their punctuality."

"Yes indeed." He placed the empty mug down on a small table beside the door and selected a long black jacket from an alcove that receded into the left hand wall. With a smoothness that belied his age, he swept the jacket on over his white Commissariat fatigues and tugged it straighter onto his angular frame. "Very well. How do I look?"

She smirked. "Uncomfortable."

"I never was a man for ceremony." Lanto's thoughts darkened again, the data slate weighing heavy in his hand. "Not a one of those squabbling idiots knows how to swim rough tides. They've gotten lazy - forgotten what it is to have nuance."

Normally he would have kept such vitriol to himself, but Aurelia was the soul of discretion. The perfect adjutant in many ways. Where some would have been aghast at the Commissariat Ministers of Rubicon being described in such a way, she let out a light chuckle.

"Then, for what it's worth, sir, I'm glad you're going to be in that room." Aurelia pivoted to one side and gestured to the sandstone walkways beyond. "Shall we?"

Lanto nodded and stepped out. "Into the rapids, Lieutenant."

*

They met in a small, immaculate room adjacent to the immense the main chamber. That hall could play host to visiting ministers from all over the planet to thrash out their issues, but right now the true power-brokers of Rychter had more important things to worry about than trifling matters of democracy.

There were eight of them.

Eight men and women who knew things nobody else did. Who made choices so nobody else had to. Who nudged the world this way and that to keep the fragile light of civilisation burning. In official records they were innocuously dubbed the Planetary Affairs Sub-Committee - a name designed to be so vague that it offered nothing. Just a designation to fool any curious eyes.

Much as he detested such games, Lanto understood the necessity of the group's existence, underscored ever-more so by the latest twist in the Rychter's war.

He entered the room alone; Aurelia's security clearance only got her as far as the corridor outside. The walls were a warm red-brown, decorated with a handful of tastefully etched murals; soft globes embedded in the ceiling illuminated the space. The rectangular table loomed ominously before him, seven seats already populated. Three dimensional map displays shone at regular intervals, lighting up the faces of his companions.

Lanto slid into his assigned seat between Ministers Hadriana and Jungaat - plenty of elbow room and a smoke-glass goblet of clear Rubicon water already waiting for him. He settled his old bones against the chair, scanning faces for clues as he picked up the goblet.

Across the table Minister Nastassos slouched, his overweight bulk barely contained by his fatigues and spilling from the chair. A murderous old warhorse at the best of times, and right now his ugly, stubble-dark face was set in the expression of an unpleasant storm. A couple of places down, his eye was drawn to Minister Ossetia, who at thirty-nine years old was youngest member of the group. Her thin, sharp features reflected her blade-like attention to detail. A little naive and rough around the edges for Lanto's liking, but she was smart and capable.

"Good of you to join us, Minister," said the woman at the head of the table. Lanto shifted his gaze and raised his goblet respectfully.

"Commissary-General," he said, dipping his head.

Commissary-General Valeria Xanthus raised her own glass, and gave a smile that made his blood run cold. No matter how many times he sat here, the old battle-axe never failed to unnerve him. Unlike some of the members of the 'Planetary Affairs Sub-Committee', she was someone Lanto knew never to underestimate.

She was the highest ranking official on the planet, and hadn't got there by accident.

Grey hair hacked into a short military crop; a frame that still looked lean and powerful despite her age; a weather-beaten face set in a permanent grimace and a synthetic left arm lost three decades ago when she'd still been serving in Rychter's military.

"Let's get started," Xanthus grated, placing her glass down, formalities dealt with. "You all know why we are here." Her real hand flickered over a control panel set into the table in front of her and the map displays blinked out of existence, replaced by the reports from the southern reaches.

"Our operation to remove the Scraegan threat has had some unexpected developments," she continued. "I assume you've all read the briefings on the Crawlers?"

"A whole other species," Jungaat muttered, shaking his bald head. "Right under our noses all this time."

"The Scraegans contained them." Xanthus looked more than little bitter about admitting it. "Our push south is the only reason we know of their existence at all."

"The Karvonen expedition," Minister Hadriana said. Demure and soft-spoken, in another life she'd been a head of development at one of Rubicon's better-hidden military facilities. "We always had our suspicions, but it looks like they stirred up even more than we thought."

A wave of one delicate hand and the image in front of her changed to show blurred images from the Hunter-Killer excursion into the Scraegar Labyrinth. Pictures of an ancient, wrecked convoy of human vehicles, and the horribly artificial structure of what appeared to be a huge, subterranean door.

"You believe that the Karvonen expedition let them out?" Ossetia asked.

Hadriana nodded. "From the reports we have, there was a door here, a door that does not correspond with Scraegan architecture."

"But the Scraegans have obviously known about these things for a long time," Lanto interjected. "Before the war even. These creatures feature in much of the Scraegan iconography we've uncovered that pre-dates our arrival on this planet."

"Whatever the consequences of the expedition," Xanthus said. "It is now our duty to assess the wider threat of these... creatures. Llewellyn's expeditionary force was able to eliminate the nest in the Scraegar Labyrinth, but I would like to know if there are any more Crawler hives on this planet before some imbecile trips over one."

The grizzled hulk of Minister Miatt nodded in agreement. "I'll coordinate with the Forge command. I have geological survey teams already scouting for possible locations with similar depths and tunnel systems that could conceal another hive."

"The main Crawler nest in the south may be gone," Ossetia put in, her dark eyes grim. "But there still appear to be numerous smaller pockets scattered through the southern regions. Most of them are in Scraegan-held territories, but Brekka's Commissariat have committed substantial resources to dealing with them nonetheless."

"Working alongside the Scraegans," Minister Nastassos growled.

Lanto's brow rose. "You see their cooperation as a problem?"

"Marshall Llewellyn was given command authority, and he acted as he had to," Nastassos replied, swivelling his bovine bulk in Lanto's direction. His jowly face contorted with anger. "But none of us - no northern Commissariat - agreed to an alliance with those brutes. It was a temporary measure which has now outlived its usefulness."

"We can't influence how Brekka allocates its military assets," Hadriana told him.

"Of course we can," the man persisted. "Allowing them to continue this... alliance will drown Brekka and squander our best opportunity. We owe the Scraegans nothing. Let them deal with the Crawlers while we rearm and resupply. The northern arsenals are almost replenished. We can have Llewellyn and a fresh battle group dispatched to Brekka in a matter of weeks. Brekka's Commissariat will fall in line, just as they did last time."

"And then?"

"Then we finish what we started, and wipe the Scraegans off this planet."

Lanto felt his mouth twitch. The Scraegan war had started when he was just a boy, and he'd grown up watching it warp the fabric of civilisation into something bitter and twisted. He hated the beasts as much as anyone else, and when the first battle group had been sent south, he'd supported it.

But now things were different. The Scraegans no longer concerned him.

"You're a fool, Nastassos," he said quietly. "A warmongering fool."

Nastassos's face purpled and he looked like he wanted to surge out of the chair - though Lanto doubted the gluttonous old fool had the strength to do it.

"When did the great Lanto Numitor lose his spine?" he spluttered instead. "We agreed - all of us - that this was the course."

"That was before the Crawlers," Lanto answered, keeping his tone mild.

"Drown the Crawlers!" Nastassos thumped a flabby hand on the table. "They are no longer a threat with the main nest gone."

"This isn't about that." Lanto reached out to his own control panel and brought one specific report into focus. The images showed teams of Brekkan engineers and more than a dozen Scraegans within the ruined cavern that had once housed the Crawler queen. "Our friends in Brekka have also wasted no time in trying to figure out where the Crawlers came from."

"A further waste of resources-,"

"Nastassos!" Xanthus barked sharply. "That is enough. I'll hear Minister Numitor speak, and you'll keep a civil tongue in your mouth."

Nastassos receded into his chair, his face black with anger but he was not about to challenge the Commissary-General. A crackling silence settled over the group, and Lanto let it sit for a moment, happy to watch the other man squirm for a few extra seconds.

"As I was saying," he continued eventually. "Brekka have committed units of their Engineering Cadre, along with specialist archaeological and architectural teams, and a unit of Blackwater guards, to investigating the Crawler origins. And they are not working alone. Any punitive action against the Scraegans now could jeopardise that work - work I feel is now of more importance than continuing a war against the Scraegans."

"Have they made any progress in their investigations?" Jungaat asked.

Lanto shook his head. "Not yet, but I don't need any conclusions from Brekka to understand the implications."

Xanthus pinned him to the chair with her gaze. "Implications?"

"We came here as colonists." He pressed on, doing his best to seem unconcerned by the attention of the Commissary-General. "Is it so far fetched that someone else might have as well?"

"You think an alien race put the Crawlers here?!" Nastassos exploded. "By the Watching Lords. They've simply been here longer than we anticipated."

"How do you account for the architecture of the cavern and surrounding tunnels?" Hadriana asked mildly, gesturing lazily at the images with one hand. "We know it isn't Scraegan, and the Crawlers do not build. They simply tunnel and destroy. There is a third party at work here."

"It could easily have been another native species that died out," Minister Miatt countered. "Or it could have been some ancestor of the Scraegans we see today. We need proof."

"I quite agree."

"Minister Numitor," Xanthus cut in. "What exactly is it you're asking for?"

"For a long time," Lanto said, his voice firming with every word. "We have been focused on one goal: containing the Scraegan threat. We've been so concerned with what's going on under our feet that we stopped looking at the sky." His eyes moved from face to face, judging; challenging. "Perhaps it is time we changed that."