As the sun finally set behind the foothills, Major Jacob Fu allowed himself a sigh of relief. The scrub he lay concealed in was the only suitable cover in the area, but had left him dazzled by the low late evening sun. That was what happened when you let a suit in an in a cosy Core world plan a mission, little details might mean little to them, but to Fu it meant the difference between meeting his rendezvous after the mission or meeting his maker. Fu had reached his age and rank by not leaving things to chance – he not so much followed the book as had written it. Throughout the war he had been one of the Alliance’s foremost sharpshooters, not a man who got the headlines, but one who got the job done.

He glanced down at his terminal, it was still passive, the message ‘Awaiting Target Confirmation’ above a schematic of the area. Who they thought could intercept and decrypt an Alliance secure channel on this God forsaken rock Fu didn’t ask, it had taken him months to stop them sending him a signal via a tight beam signal that may have well put an illuminated sign above his position. Times were changing, in the war things were simple: you tracked and killed browncoats, the more stripes the better, how you did it was your problem. Fu had spent weeks behind enemy lines, living off the land, taking his chances. Now he was a relic of the past, an old man who didn’t realise times had changed, too highly decorated to be dismissed, too stubborn to take a job behind a desk or in the academy. He had been an artist, now he was just an over-ranked grunt told who to kill by a man halfway across the system who would never look the target in the eyes.

Fu shook his head in disgust at himself, letting his mind wander like some wet behind the ears rookie. It defeated the purpose of being in position hours early if you dozed off and let someone sneak up on you. He stretched his muscles under the blanket hiding his thermal signature, shaking the tension from his muscles. Fu was lithe rather than muscular, but many a young upstart