This is for S.J. Smith, in response to a challenge posted on her LiveJournal. Brrr ...
The desert moon was the largest he'd ever seen, a enormous copper platter oxidizing in the sunset, blemished beyond hope of scouring clean. His colleagues hated it: the light showed everything up, left them vulnerable to night attacks by guerillas who knew every trick of blending into the shadows it cast. Some of the enlisted men, country boys, made covert signs against bad luck; others muttered that the enemy's god was spying on them, ill-wishing them ...
Experimentally, he lifted his hand between Ishbala's jaundiced eye and his own until his palm just blotted it out. "Bang!" Kimbley whispered, and grinned.