Unknown place, evening

Following the heavy footsteps of Tony's MAX suit through the winding ravines and valleys of the desert hills, Edward looked high toward the sky, the orange sunlight fading to a crimson red over the rust-stained stone crags around them. "It's turning night already... that's fast," he thought, watching the clock on his helmet visor's holographic display as he turned his gaze down to the ground ahead of him once more. Only the sound of the occasional breeze whistling through the stony valley around them penetrated the eerie silence on their hike.

"So it's true that you used to be part of the Terran Republic?" Tony asked. He had seemed incredulous of Edward's remarks during an earlier conversation, but now he seemed quite serious.

"Yeah, ever since the colony ships came through the wormhole, up until about the tenth year of the war, I believe," Edward replied, glancing over to Charlotte to check that she was still with him. Aside from being her usual quiet self, her footsteps were so silent in comparison to Tony's MAX suit that he often felt as though she had disappeared.

"Damn, you're one stale cookie, my man," Tony laughed. "And your girlfriend?"

Edward frowned, turning his attention forward once more. "Long story, maybe later. You?"

"Believe it or not, this is only my… fifth body?" the Terran soldier replied, a tone of uncertainty in his voice. "Yeah, somewhere around there. I was actually born on Auraxis, to a couple of Terran parents. Raised in the military, pretty much, but that never meant I was good at anything. Spent my first three lives trying out for Infiltrator certifications right out of school, pretty much flopped at that." He stopped for a moment, looking around to get his bearings before setting off again. "My shooting was okay, but I couldn't sneak around worth a damn, so they shipped me off to take MAX suit training instead. When my old squad leader got promoted, they split up the squad, and lo and behold, I get this angry little lady for a CO," he added, gently holding up the unconscious soldier he held in the grip of his curled left arm. "Next thing I know, we shove off to go check out some excavation site in the mountains just south of Haven Outpost on Esamir, and you know what happens from there."

"That was you?" Edward asked, surprised. Visions of decapitating that poor MAX soldier outside the dig site earlier that day instantly flashed back to him.

Tony raised his right hand to wave the Vanu soldier off. "Don't worry about it, it happens. You were doing your job, I was doing mine. My question is, why the hell were you dropping in on a fight between us and the Conglomerate rebels without any backup?"

"Trying to get ourselves killed, believe it or not," Edward replied. "That pit you were defending used to belong to us. A couple of my co-workers dug out an underground Vanu bunker with what we thought was a data relay inside. After a bit of analysis, we tried hooking it up to the Reconstruction Tubes to see if we could get rid of the bottleneck in data transmission between the genome storage database and the Tubes themselves. Turns out we weren't entirely correct about what that Vanu tech was used for… so we're here."

"No shit?" Tony said. "Yeah, I overheard the higher-ups talking to Sofia here about that. They said they swept the dig site right after you guys got the first artifact out and tried to take the other two for themselves, that one of their spooks in your HQ passed them the test data you guys ran and that they planned to try and beat you guys to it. Turns out, the NC had a spook of their own among the engineer crew we brought along, and the bastard managed to trans-mat one of the artifacts and the data to some rich NC scumbag before we could put a bullet in him."

Edward was stunned. "They got our test data that fucking fast?" he swore to himself, racking his brain for any possibilities about who could have leaked the intel. "That's crazy… the Council hand-picked everyone on that development team. Could one of them really have done it? Or maybe there was a breach in security protocol and someone outside the team got in?" he pondered.

"Ah, here we go!" Tony exclaimed. Glancing up, Edward saw what the Terran soldier was talking about; The ravine split into two directions, one of which quickly ended in a dead end surrounded by wind-worn steep cliffs that rose up to some plateau far above. At the end of the short dead-end valley, the floor gave way to a deep circular pit that stretched more than two dozen yards across. Along the stony path up to the pit, he could see the glimmer of flowing water shimmering between the rocks.

"Damn, that's a sight for sore eyes," Edward said, jogging over to the rocks and pushing a few aside. Cupping his hands together, he raised a handful of water and looked it over carefully before pouring it into his mouth, taking a moment to rinse out the horrible "morning breath" taste before swallowing. "Shit, that's better than a cup of coffee any day of the week," he muttered, raising another handful and splashing it on his exposed lower face. Charlotte quietly knelt down next to him and pressed a button on the side of her helmet to remove her face mask to join him in drinking her fill.

Downing the last handful of water he could stomach, Edward rose to his feet and made his way over to the edge of the deep pit, peering into the abyss below. "Careful!" Tony called as Edward reached for his tool satchel, withdrawing a small waterproof emergency flare. Pulling the pin on the incendiary device, he gently tossed the flare down into the hole, watching as it illuminated the darkness around it on its way down.

"Ah, morning, cap! Wh—hey, captain, what the hell!" Tony cried. Edward spun about, instinctively reaching for his auto-pistol on his leg. Just beyond the MAX suit soldier standing with his hands in the air stood the once-unconscious captain he had been carrying, the rocket launcher that had been strapped to her back now in her arms and pointed at her armored companion. "Any of you three so much as sneeze and I blow your sorry ass back to the Tubes!" she yelled, shifting the magazine-fed rocket launcher against her shoulder. "You two, on the ground, now!" she added, pointing the launcher at the two purple-clad Sovereignty soldiers.

Raising his hands, Edward slowly dropped to his knees, casting a glance over toward Charlotte as she did the same, kneeling down. Lowering their hands, they both laid down on the stony dried riverbed, looking up at Sofia. Seeing that they complied, she turned her attention toward Tony, stepping closer toward him while spewing about how he would be punished. Suddenly, a thought clicked in Edward's head, and he placed his head face-down against the stony ground to obscure his lips. "Charlotte, can you hear me?" he whispered, glancing over to his partner until he had her attention. "Tony's between you and her, she can't see you. Cloak and do your thing."

Nodding, Charlotte quietly pressed her facemask into place against her helmet until it locked into place. With a brief noise of her suit, her figure faded to almost nothingness, save for the faintest shimmer as the suit worked to distort light around her body. Turning his attention back to the launcher-wielding Terran, he pressed the palms of his hands against the ground, ready to spring at a moment's notice.

When the captain was done chewing out Tony, she stepped away from him and glanced down at Edward, then to where Charlotte once was. She could barely utter a word of surprise before Charlotte reappeared behind her, placing a knife at her throat. "Three on one, captain. Not good odds," Tony said, lowering his arms. "At least listen to what Edward has to say before you blow us all up."

Sofia let out a sigh, but didn't dare lower her rocket launcher. "I swear to god, Tony, I'm going to knock your fucking lights out for this… What do you need to say, Mr. Spandex?"

"Tony, take her guns, then we'll talk," Edward ordered.

Nodding, the MAX suited soldier stepped forward and detached her light machine gun and handgun from their hardpoints before gently plucking the magazine-fed rocket launcher from her hands, careful not to crush the device in his suit's steely grasp. "Sorry, captain," he added sheepishly, wilting away from the scowl she gave him.

"Right, first thing's first. One," Edward said, holding up a finger, "…we're not on Auraxis any more. I mean, I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I'm at least ninety-five percent sure. Which means, two, we don't have backup, we don't have anybody waiting at the Tubes for us. Hell, for all I know, there may already be some clone of us walking around on Auraxis some billion light years away."

"So you're saying you want my help?" Sofia asked, her hands on her hips. "Classic."

"Not really," Edward replied, rolling his eyes. "I've already been talking with Tony for a while, and we're absolutely okay with taking your guns and supplies and leaving you for dead. I'm saying that we're offering you a chance to come with us, if you're so inclined."

Sofia stood quietly, as though she were mulling over her options. Finally, she seemed to have come to a conclusion, turning hr head to glance over her shoulder at Charlotte. "Say, that's a pretty big rifle you've got on your back, infiltrator. Big enough to put a put a pretty nasty hole in a MAX suit, I bet…"

Almost instantly, Edward's heart sank into his stomach. Faster than lightning, Sofia's hands flew to Charlotte's wrist, yanking the knife away from her throat as she twisted his partner's arm until she dropped the blade. Sprinting forward, he was on her in a flash, tearing her away from Charlotte and shoving her back toward Tony, who hastily dropped her confiscated weapons to grab her arms. "I'll kill you, Moses, you fucking wh-" Her seething rage was cut short as Edward planted a heavy punch in her unarmored stomach, knocking the wind out of her lungs as she buckled inward at the blow.

Quietly, he pushed her head up and raised his helmet visor, then pushed hers up and stared her in her in her green eyes. "You touch Charlotte again, and I'll steal Tony's suit and rip you limb from limb, you understand me?" he muttered. "I don't know what you have against me, but I can assure you that there's not a single thing standing between you and a slow, painful death if you don't put it aside right here and now. It's your choice. Are you with us or not?"

Finally, the lightbulb went on, and Sofia's eyes flew wide. "You're… Moses?"

"The name's Edward Saller. That anti-materiel rifle Charlotte's carrying is mine. Yes, I've operated under the callsign 'Moses' before. Now, drop it before I knock you out and throw you in that pit over there."

"How the hell could I forgive you for-"

Edward stepped back, turning his back to the Terran captain. "You heard her, Tony. Go toss her in that hole over there," he said, gesturing toward the deep pit.

"Tony, don't you fucking dare!" Sofia snapped, but her squad member ignored her plea. Tightening his grip on her arms, he casually lifted the captain high and began stomping over to the edge of the dark sinkhole while Edward tended to Charlotte. "Don't worry, Captain, you won't remember a thing," Tony said, only half-jokingly. "We're not on Auraxis, remember? Your memories won't be uploaded to the database. You'll wake up the same old perpetually pissed-off captain we all know and love, I'm sure."

"Burn in hell, you fucking traitor," she snarled.

Finding no significant wounds on Charlotte, Edward looked up at Tony as he reached the edge of the pit, dangling his CO over the edge like a doll in his exosuit's iron grip. Surprisingly, however, Tony took a step back, turning toward him. "Edward, come take a look at this!" He called. Curious, he rose to his feet and trotted over, joining Tony at the pit's edge. Down in the darkness, he could see the flare he had dropped earlier still burning, submerged deep in a pool of water at the bottom of the pit. All around it, light from the flare glistened off of the algae-crusted interior of a wide metal container, torn open by some tremendous force and submerged by the trickling flow of the rivulet of water flowing along the bottom of the dry riverbed and down the into the hole. "What's that?" Tony asked, looking down toward the burning flare.

"Step back, no need to go for a swim if the edge gives way," Edward said, reaching into his satchel for another flare. Waiting until Tony backpedalled away from the edge, he pulled the pin and tossed it down into the hole well away from the first flare. The flare fell for several seconds until it hit the water's surface far below, sending up a brief wisp of steam as the blazing-hot grenade slipped below the surface. Sinking briefly, the light of the flare spread out through the murky water, illuminating the untorn surface of the metal and the large "0-5" stenciled on its surface in faded, chipped black paint. "Finally, some good news…" he thought.

"What is it?" Tony asked once more.

"A chance at survival," Edward said, turning away from the hole. "So, Sofia, right? Make your decision now, otherwise we'll leave you here and head on our way."

"This chucklefuck still owes me nearly three years of PT," she replied, nodding back toward the metal man that held her. "There's not a chance in hell I'm letting him out of my sight until he's court-martialed properly for insubordination."

"Right, let her down, Tony," the Vanu engineer said. The Terran soldier quickly complied, dropping Sofia to her feet and stepping back from his CO as she rubbed her sore forearms, bruised under his iron grip. "So what the hell's down there?" She asked.

"Down there, nothing important," Edward replied, shaking his head. "It's what's beyond there, or at least in that general direction," he added, pointing across the hole toward the far wall of the dead-end of the ravine.

"That still doesn't answer my question," Sofia replied, crossing her arms in annoyance.

Edward let out a frustrated sigh. "Fine, if it really bothers you that much, take a look for yourself," he said, gesturing toward the hole's edge. He watched her with caution as she joined him at the edge of the pit, glancing down at the large metal object submerged deep in the subterranean pool. "It's a cargo pod of a pretty big ship, an old one, too. If I had to guess, it fell from very high up, with enough force to punch through the ground and fall into an existing cave. Pretty much every cargo ship we ever built on Earth was designed to be modular, so where there's one segment, there could be more if they jettisoned the pods, maybe even the entire ship if they crash landed."

"And you think it's over there?" She said, looking up at the far wall of the canyon. "Seems pretty random to me. The ship could be anywhere, if it even landed."

"Well, given that the far wall is vertical, which means it fell straight down after the cave roof broke, and the path leads up to this hole, it most likely came in from this direction," Edward suggested, pointing over his shoulder toward Tony and tracing a path to the hole in front of him. "Either it detached from the ship after it crashed, meaning that the ship is behind us, or fell from the ship before it crashed, in which it would be behind the shipwreck. Given that we didn't see it on the way here, I'd give it much higher odds that it's ahead of us rather than behind us-"

"Well, sounds good to me," Tony butted in. "Whichever way we go, we should get headed out before it gets totally dark, right?"

"Shut up, Tony," Sofia snapped, "I don't want to hear a damn word from your mouth for the next forty-eight hours."

Edward held up a hand. "I don't care if you don't want to hear him, I do, and he's right. You guys have explored more of this region than us, so if you aren't going to play nice, Tony can take the lead. We just need to be headed…" he trailed off, looking at the compass on his visor's HUD, "…north-northeast, preferably getting some altitude.

Stepping forward with Sofia's weapons under one arm, Charlotte tapped the Terran captain's shoulder to get her attention and handed them back. "Right," Sofia said with a nod, attaching the weapons to their hardpoints on her armor. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Over the hours of hiking around the ravines of the rocky desert mountains, the deep orange evening light had slowly given way to murky darkness. The group of four had managed to slowly climb higher and higher along the stony paths, their eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of their anticipated downed ship – at least, when Edward couldn't feel Sofia's hate-filled gaze boring into the back of his head. "We're going to need to find a place to sleep soon… not that falling asleep anywhere near that lady is a good idea," Edward thought, scanning the rocky ridges and mountainsides for any suitable nook to bed down. Beyond the edge of one of the mountains before him, a dim flash of light emanated from one of the distant valleys. "I didn't just hallucinate that, did I?" He thought.

As if he'd read Edward's mind, Tony pointed toward the distant valley. "Anyone else see that?"

"Yeah, I did," Sofia replied. Edward nodded in agreement. Coming to a standstill, the group watched for any sign of the light's reappearance. After a few moments, a dim corona of light flared around another mountainside. The low rumble of motors slowly began to rise over the whistle of the wind, approaching them from far away. "There's no way they're after us, surely…" he thought.

Suddenly, a bright flash of light appeared to cross the ravine hardly a hundred yards away as a horde of motor vehicles blazed past on some obscured path. "Well, I guess that proves we're not alone here, wherever this is," Tony said.

"We need to get after them and secure those vehicles," Sofia said, pushing forward to the front of the group. "Mobility like that's a game-changer."

"If we can catch up to them, that is," Edward added. "There's clearly some road they're following, or at least a set of tire tracks we can follow, so there's that."

Hiking down the hill toward where the vehicles had crossed the ravine, it soon became obvious that the cars had passed by on some improvised road, made of compacted dirt along one of the many winding dry riverbeds, its potholes packed with gravel and backfilled with mud that had long since dried into a weak clay that had baked in the desert's blazing sun. Fresh tracks marred the dusty surface where the vehicles had roared by, heading in a northwestern direction.

"So, let's go snatch us some wheels," Edward said.