Southern Frontline Head Quarters, Serenity Valley, Planet Hera

Rows of tents stood erect in a sea of bodies. A screech, foul retorts, and even louder honks heralded the arrival of an army jeep cleaving a path through the swarms of idle soldiers. A lieutenant stepped out of a nearby tent, his face red as he screamed after the hazardous driver, to little avail since the vehicle had already disappearing beyond the neighboring row of tents.

The angry lieutenant stepped back into his tent, where a corporal handed him a phone that was connected to the defenders of the Western Flank. The equipment was antiquated, considering that the Alliance was already using long range “waving” communication that could wirelessly link individuals from different planets, but the Independents could neither afford nor obtain this coveted piece of tech. What few interplanetary communication devices General Levitt had managed to acquire during his raid into the Core Planets were distributed amongst the space fleets. The ground troops were stuck using World War II era communication equipment.

The lieutenant barked angrily into the mouth piece, and the brave soul on the other end appeared to be giving as good as he got, since the lieutenant’s face grew increasingly purple. With almost a feral snarl, the lieutenant slammed the phone down, and the corporal stepped forward, pen and paper at the ready. Sound came out of the lieutenant’s mouth, and words appeared on the reused piece of equipment requisition memo. The corporal looked extremely uncomfortable under the glaring scrutiny of the dictating lieutenant.

A private came running by the tent, carrying a stack of paper under his arm. The corporal gave the private the transcript, adding specific instructions to hand the transcript over to Colonel Donovan personally. The private nodded, his mind running a mile a minute as he mentally juggled dozens of other specific instructions given by the dozens of other NCOs.

The transcript eventually made its way over to Colonel Donovan’s te