Disclaimer – Everything either does belong to Joss or it should. I’m just borrowing his shiny ‘verse for a while.

The 21st Lancers belong to the British Army so I’m borrowing them too. I hope they don’t mind.

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“Toulouse wasn’t the most industrialised, the most populous, or even the world most hostile to the Alliance but it was pretty close to the top in all three categories and even more importantly it also possessed one of the only notable universities out towards the Rim. Guts and enthusiasm amongst the troops will take you a long way, but having a decent team of scientists and engineers backing them up behind the scenes is pretty much a must in a modern war. You might fight in the field but a whole heap of the winning is done on the factory floor and the Research and Development Lab and we still had a goodly amount of captured Alliance tech that was state of the art, or better, to reverse engineer and chuck back in their faces.”

General Eric Brown – Head of Independent Military Intelligence 2531AD

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Toulouse City – Toulouse – 2522AD

Mal jumped out of the passenger seat on the ammunition truck and just stood there looking around for the best part of a minute “ Wode tìan ’ he eventually mumbled unable to believe what he was seeing.

There had to be thousands here.

And they were constructing fortifications… fast.

‘Sergeant Reynolds’ a voice interrupted his chain of thought. ‘Are you with us?’

Mal straightened up. ‘Yes Major sorry Ma’am’ he responded to the Marine. ‘I’m just a bit surprised by… this’ he said sweeping his arm to indicate the scene.

‘You’re surprised?’ the Marine replied. ‘I’m supposed to be in charge and I don’t even know to the nearest thousand how many people are here.’

The Rangers were now stood in a loose group behind him all watching in equal amazement. About five hundred metres ahead it looked like there was a team of construction workers in hard hats digging tank traps with mechanical diggers, closer in people we