Bright-Moon-Hills brought up a map on one of the computer screens. Through the dead pixels Aranarth and Decker could see the situation as it was the last time reliable information had been gathered. Important military installations and population centers were all marked with various symbols that the rangers' implants translated for them.

"So what do you suppose your next move is?" asked Aranarth.

"My people are preparing for an attack at this very moment," Bright-Moon-Hills boasted. "We have split into smaller groups to stay mobile but we will come together for a coordinated strike in two days time. We're going to assault the garrison here."

Bright-Moon-Hills unraveled one of his many-jointed fingers and touched the screen with it.

"At the second largest population center?" asked Aranarth.

"Yes," confirmed Bright-Moon-Hills.

"Why?"

"It is our home. Why else would we fight?"

"It's a waste of time and lives. You're not in a position to hold that territory. The gug-gug-gugs will just send reinforcements to take it back. From here, here and here."

Aranarth indicated on the map where the reinforcements would quickly be deployed from.

"They will have to kill us first!" insisted Bright-Moon-Hills.

"Don't worry, they will," said Aranarth. "This is a ridiculous plan. Did Ranger Helios approve this?"

"Ranger Helios is not our leader," said Bright-Moon-Hills, bristling.

"I didn't think so."

"The land is ours. We cannot allow the enemy to simply take it from us!"

"You're right. And the only way to get your land back is to defeat the enemy. Not the other way around. Do you understand now?"

"Elaborate."

"Look," said Aranarth, pointing at a symbol on the map. "See this large centralized solar farm? That's in striking distance of this safe house. The gug-gug-gugs don't have the technology to build one of those here with local materials, and they can't get any ships close enough to the planet to resupply. Take that thing out and they can't build a new one. Take that thing out and you hurt them."

"Solar farm?" asked Bright-Moon-Hills. "What do you mean with this term? How does one farm the sun? You mean the light catchers?"

"Whatever you call it, the thing indicated by this symbol right here."

"I know the device you speak us. They use it to power their fliers. You say they can't rebuild it?"

"They can't. And without it their ability to project force into the desert will be greatly diminished."

"Ranger Helios never mentioned any of this."

"Her skills lie elsewhere," said Aranarth, although he couldn't believe Helios didn't think of this herself.

"I will gather the others and tell them your plan. It has my support," said Bright-Moon-Hills.

He clapped his shoulders in respect.

* * *

For a day and a night messengers traveled back and forth between hidden safe houses. The Kinship leaders talked among themselves and agreed there was wisdom in the ranger's words. They changed the target of their attack to the light catcher.

"I hope you understand my squire and I can't participate in the battle," said Aranarth. "By the laws of our people we shouldn't be here at all. It wouldn't be in anyone's interests if we got caught."

"This has been explained to us," said Bright-Moon-Hills. "The Kinship does not need aliens to fight our battles for us. We welcome you as allies but we do not require you as parents."

"We're going to come along anyway, hide somewhere where we can watch the battle. We might be able to learn something useful to you."

"Do as you desire, as long as it doesn't interfere."

* * *

Re-configuring their long fingers into flipper-like digging tools with precise bends in their many joints, the Kinsmen warriors dug under ground and began to swim through the desert sands. Their passage was marked by trails of moving bulges.

Three groups of warriors began their journey from different starting points but they all had the same destination. The solar farm was a nearly half-kilometer long circle of individually adjustable high-intensity mirrored sun collectors, broken up by tall black obelisk-like machines set out in a grid pattern. Along the outside were charging stations, most of which had fliers plugged into them.

Gug-gug-gug in groups of three stood watch over these stations. They were armed with the same triangular Saturn Starlifting wearable ion rifles that Decker had used on Xalax.

The gug-gug-gug tremor sensors detected the movement a few scant minutes before the attack. Shrill alien alarms began to blare as the gug-gug-gug soldiers scrambled to get into defensive positions.

The Kinship warriors popped up out of the sand as soon as they were within range of their weapons. They aimed the gas-powered pellet guns with all four arms and opened fire, the volatile projectiles exploding upon impact with their targets. Wisps of white gas puffed out the barrel of the weapons with each shot.

Several pellets impacted gug-gug-gug soldiers, blowing off large chunks in a spray of yellow-green hemolymph. Many more of the projectiles hit the ground and blew enough sand into the air to obscure the entire battlefield. The fog of war took on a somewhat literal dimension.

The gug-gug-gugs fired back wildly through the sand clouds. Ion beams seared the air in random directions. A few lucky shots caught unlucky Kinsmen and reduced them to a fine mist that stained the sand.

After the first exchange there was enough smoke and sand that even the sharpest-eyed shooter wouldn't be able to reliably hit anything. That didn't stop either side from trying.

With neither side being particularly well armored and with accuracy at nearly zero the ion weapons didn't provide all that much of an advantage. For every Kinsman the gug-gug-gugs managed to kill they lost one of their own.

Any time there was a brief gap in the sound of weapons fire angry shouts in many languages could be heard.

Suddenly there was a sound like distant thunder and a bolt from a kinetic lance came cutting through the sand cloud. It struck a Kinsman soldier in the process of aiming, blowing him to pieces. Two more such bolts fired off, each one precisely striking it's target.

Someone had the ability to see through the obscuring sands, and they were armed with a kinetic lance.

The Kinsmen warrior continued to fire, but the low visibility made this a largely futile gesture. The kinetic bolts began picking them off one-by-one.

Decker and Aranarth watched this all happen from their far off vantage point atop an yellow stone outcropping. Being far enough away to avoid detection meant they could only watch the action by zooming in with their visors. Even being this close was a risk.

"Old Ones!" hissed Decker.

"It must be," agreed Aranarth, quietly.

"Now's our chance!" said Decker. "If we can take it out without entirely destroying its battlesuit we'll have the evidence we need prove the Old One's involvement."

"Remember what Ranger Helios said," said Aranarth. "It's not the smart move."

Down below the battle continued to rage on, but more and more perfectly aimed bolts from the kinetic lance were turning the tide of the battle. A few of the Kinsmen threw down their weapons and fled.

"Forget smart, there are people down there dying," said Decker. "If the Old Ones are willing to risk putting their thumb on the scale we can too. Didn't we both take an oath to defend them?"

"Squire..."

"Didn't we?"

Aranarth looked at Decker as though for the first time.

"No, you're right. Let's do this. Follow me. And by all the oozing wounds of Tellus don't sprell up and get caught. These people are counting on us."

"Right," said Decker, with an inappropriately timed smile behind his helmet.

"Go ahead and warp him in a Perjurer."

Decker's Suit didn't need to be told twice. The weapon slipped easily into his hands from hyperspace.

With twin bursts of AG the two rangers flung themselves at the battle. They quickly closed the distance and began to unfurl their sensors into the obscuring clouds. While all the sand in the air made targeting by sight difficult to impossible, it made finding the cloaked Old Ones far easier. One just had to look for the gaps.

Both rangers found targets quickly. There wasn't just a single Old One, there were several. Breaking out of formation they began to fly unpredictably in order to make as poor targets themselves as possible.

Decker and Aranarth opened fire. Now ion beam were firing in the other direction. They sliced straight through the defence fields of the Old One battlesuits. Cloaked pieces of armor rematerialized into the visual spectrum as they were blown off the central mass. The rangers fired again and again.

The Old Ones fired back with their own weapons, but Decker and Aranarth were harder to pin down in the air. They never stopped moving. Kinetic bolts zoomed past them uncomfortably close.

One such bolt struck Decker's defence field, popping it.

<Shield's down for at least a minute,> Suit warned him.

Decker returned fire at the Old One that shot him and scored a hit that damaged his target's cloaking device. The entire battlesuit reappeared in the visual spectrum. The Old One immediately began to flee through the sand cloud deeper into the gug-gug-gug held territory.

The Old Ones had not been expecting this kind of resistance, and they were all as worried about leaving behind evidence as the rangers were. As soon as the first of their number broke they entered a full route. The still-cloaked Old Ones scattered in every direction, leaving the gug-gug-gugs to their fate.

Decker started to follow the visible Old One, but Aranarth yelled after him.

"Stop. Leave it. We can't see the others, you'll get yourself surrounded."

Decker stopped and watched it go.

"Might as well finish this," said Aranarth. He warped in a cluster of missiles which he directed at the solar farm. They shot through the air white hot and struck home. A tremendous explosion sent glass shrapnel flying everywhere. Dozens of gug-gug-gugs were torn to pieces.

Seeing their objective complete the surviving Kinsmen burrowed back into the ground and swam away. The gug-gug-gug soldiers ran off in the same direction as their Old One masters.

Before long all that was left was the two rangers, hovering above the smoking battlefield.

"We did it!" enthused Decker.

"We did," agreed Aranarth. "Hopefully winning this battle didn't lose the whole war."

"What do you mean?" asked Aranarth.

"We personally involved ourselves in the fighting," explained Aranarth. "Not inconspicuously either. It's too early yet to know how badly we've been exposed yet."