I don't own avatar, but I suppose I own my original characters.

Chapter 18: Darkening Nights

Date: April 10th, 2170

Location: Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centuari A system

Sleeping in the newly built apartment complex for the mining crews was a welcome change from the prefabricated building for Parker. For one thing, the thick concrete did a much better job of keeping out the sounds of random gunfire at night than the thin metal prefab had.

He was in a congenial mood upon waking, as it had been pleasant indeed to be able to sleep throughout the night without being woken by the turrets at the nearby gravel mine, or by the heavier, and harder to ignore, AMP patrol's opening fire as they brought back the last mining crews for the night.

Stretching, he put on his workout clothes before donning his exopack and heading outside to run. Like Quaritch before him, Weigand had instituted a mandatory work-out policy to ensure that everyone remained healthy in the lower gravity.

Starting into a slow jog, he began to follow his usual course around the base. Several of his miners waved to him as they headed to their massive trucks to start hauling back unobtanium.

"Great game last night, wasn't it boss?" one of them called out, grinning.

"Long as you guys stomp Thomes tomorrow. She still hasn't stopped needling Weigand about losing, and I don't want to be on the receiving end." he called back,

They laughed and clambered up into their trucks as Parker moved past. As they began to roll out, he saw the blonde-haired captain, clad in her own light clothes, out on her own run. Noticing him in turn, she turned and made her way over to him.

"Morning Administrator."

"Good morning Captain." he nodded in return, forcing himself to not stare at her as they ran. "What is new?"

"Not much. Down here for this last meeting, and the game tomorrow, then I'm back up to the Dream to see off Bradley and the rest of the fleet day after."

His memory poked at him, "Ah yes, the meeting. It's been moved up three hours, did you get that memo."

She blinked, "No I didn't, what's the occasion?"

"Angry Thanator tried to tear apart one of my excavators yesterday to get at the man inside. AMP teams brought it down, but that's the second one of those beasts to try it. Combine that with all of the viper wolf attacks, the fortunately few slingers we've seen, and that wasp swarm three days ago, Weigand's admitted we have to do something more. I think Jones and Adler are going to push for a torch and burn around the mining sites." he explained, pace slowing as they neared the apartment complex once more.

The space captain frowned and slowed as well, looking at the partially complete quarters for the soldiers as she did so. "That will piss of the natives, and I thought he was avoiding that."

Parker shrugged, "They're always going to be pissed at us over something. Not much to do about it. More important is making sure the mining goes ahead on schedule. My teams have gone from being more than a week ahead to a day behind thanks to all these attacks."

"Salt the soil?" she suggested, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, "Show the Na'vi how brutal ancient humanity was, and that they should be glad we're more civilized?"

He paused, as though seriously contemplating it, "I don't think we have enough salt. And it's the only thing that makes hexapede edible."

"Touche." she laughed.

He bade her goodbye until the meeting, headed inside, showered, changed and ran through a few reports before heading back outside to reach the new ops center. Soon enough the tunnel connecting the two buildings would be finished, and he would not have to take the circuitous route.

Looking over the new building over as he approached, he smiled lightly from nostalgia. It had much in common with the old one at Hell's Gate. Same basic design, sans the lighter color. The most obvious difference was that the Hell's Gate Ops center hadn't had it's own defensive weapons.

Should have had them, he thought, feeling mildly bitter at the memory of Patel and the Avatar team attacking it in the aftermath of the battle. Several remote-controlled machine guns could be seen on the edges, and a much larger turret on the roof that Jones had said was a dual-forty milometer cannon system, strong enough to drop even a raging titanohere.

He nodded greetings to the staff on duty as he headed in. The interior was still a work in progress, but the massive holo-table was up and running at least, as were about half of the computer stations. He headed into his office, identical in all but decoration to his old, and began to run through reports, trying to get as many done as he could before the meeting began.

The unobtanium mine was lagging nearly a day behind schedule, which was to be expected, considering that it had born the brunt of the recent attacks. The gravel mine was not as far behind, and he hoped that they'd be able to make up lost time today, assuming nothing major happened.

Odds of that, extremely unlikely,he thought with a shake of his head. The attacks are getting worse, not better. They're acting too damn smart for animals. Avoiding the main base itself entirely, and now only the bigger animals are attacking the mining sites, and the wolves are going after the truck convoys. Fuck, that we have to use a convoy system for our trucks just isn't right, not for a measly two mile drive.

Grumbling internally, he flashed through the rest, most concerning the progress of the mining, and most also requesting that he put pressure on Weigand to do something decisive about the attacks.

He signed and uploaded the last report to the base's intranet before heading out and deeper into the building, entering the main conference room. Thomes and Kozlov were already there, and he helped himself to some coffee from a nearby table as he listened to them debate the best method to clear the area of natives. Thomes was sticking to her over-hunting idea, whereas Kozlov wanted to clear-cut the areas on the roadside out to two hundred meters and position their spare automated turrets along it.

"Those are the last ones we have in reserve," she was countering as he sat down, "We can't make more until the Terran Winter shows up with the STG plant, and that's not going to be for over a year!"

"But it's the only method open to us that wouldn't overly incite the blue-skins," their Russian companion shot back, "As much as I would dearly love to simply torch and burn the area in full klick around anything we hold, we still have to be diplomatic."

Thomes was not having any of it, "Why do we have to be diplomatic about this? Our people are getting wounded, killed, eaten for Christ's sake! We're not getting reinforcements for over a year either, it's all the Lament can do to haul the digging equipment and more ammunition, and what reinforcements the Winter will be carrying will mostly be the staff to run the plant. We have to act now to deal with this, and deal with it permanently."

"I agree," at this, Parker spoke up, "I had a dozen requests for heavier firepower this morning, and both of my mining foremen are begging me to convince Weigand to torch the area. They're sick of being attacked and not knowing if they'll come back from the mines every day."

"Sehr gut. I am glad we are on the same page." Hauptmann Adler and Jones had just walked in, "We cannot keep this up forever. At our current rate, we'll deplete our munitions the month before the Lament arrives with more, and her crew won't find anyone here."

Parker winced, stomach turning a bit. The idea of being trapped here, guns completely dry.. he shuddered. No. No way in hell, we're dealing with this, we have to.

They all sat and waited. Weigand showed up shortly, looking exhausted. He froze a bit, frown on his face when he saw them all seated in silence and staring back at him.

Their commander nodded, as though it were expected, before heading to the head of the table. "Let me guess, forget diplomacy, torch and burn?" he asked as he sat.

Parker tossed one of his electronic reports across the table at him. "I've got five others just like that, just from this morning. My teams are sick of being attacked, we're running steadily more behind, and equipment damage is starting to become a problem."

"Ammunition expenditure is getting out of hand," Kozlov rumbled, "Morale amongst my people is getting low, and the wounded would rather stay on the Dream than return to the surface."

"My men are getting angry at not being allowed to fight back," this was Adler, "We're supposed to be the air support but we've done nothing since arrival. They say they can't look the Russians or Americans in the eyes anymore."

Weigand winced at this and leaned back in his chair. He opened his mouth, shut it, and nodded instead to Jones, who continued the verbal barrage. "Morale is dropping amongst my engineers as well. That hellfire swarm that killed two of my men and wounded five more was another blow on top of the losses from the battle. They want to hit back, against the natives, this world, something. I've had to break up two fights in the last day, tensions are high."

Thomes chimed in, "Oberst... Eric. We have to stop this, even if the natives are going to get pissed. We can't last until August like this. And as the veterans here are telling me, the natives will probably hate us no matter what we do anyway."

A sigh came from their leader. "Throw away the negotiations?"

He shook his head, "No, we survive. Hard to negotiate if we're not alive isn't it?" Parker waved a hand expressively, "We can't start appeasing them with reclamation if all this shit is happening here, and we won't survive long enough to actually negotiate with them if we don't do something."

The Obest sat in silence for a while, staring at nothing, before he nodded slowly. "You are right. Human interests and lives must come first to us. If it brings a most likely inevitable battle closer, than so be it. Hauptman Adler, Hauptmann Jones. I want the Samsons loaded and ready to begin scouring the area within three hours. Get Brunhilde up as well for heavy support. Hauptmann Kozlov, work with Kapitan Thomes on getting the remainder of our sentry turrets in place along the road, and then I want a hundred meter kill zone on both sides."

He turned to Parker, "Have your men work with them on the clear-cutting Administrator. Tommorow, I want you and Jones to have a meeting concerning additional defenses regarding the mining site. You two came up with Brunhilde, maybe you can surprise us once more. We still have plenty of scrap metal in the junkyard, I want the two of you to come up with a use for it. Thomes, work with them if you have the time before you leave."

Parker paled a bit when he felt Thomes' furious glare hit him, but he nodded.

"Get to work." Everyone rose, Parker was among them, but then a thought struck him, and frowning at Weigand, he remained as everyone else filed out.

"Yes Administrator?" the base commander asked, once everyone else had filed out.

"That was too much of a plan to come with on the spur of the moment." Parker said, still frowning. "You had already decided before you came in here what would happen."

"Jawohl. I would not be a good commander if I had not. I also heard the discussion inside, and it solidified my resolve."

"But.. why? Why not just tell us at the beginning? Why go through all that? Would have saved time."

The German sighed and stood, "Because if we're going to survive, Parker, we need to stay together. A divided leadership is a divided people, and when you all united against what you thought I would say, in a sense, you united this base. By tomorrow, everyone will have a purpose again. By the day after, morale will be higher. That is why I did it."

He left the room, pausing as he did, "Get to work my friend, it will be a hard road ahead once the blue-skins learn of this."

Parker sighed, and followed him out. A blur occupied the corner of his vision for the moment before a fist slammed into his face at what felt like a hundred kilometers per hour.

Vision exploding, he dropped to the floor, barely being able to make out Thomes standing over him.

"Your idea huh. Your idea that they tear apart one of my ships and turn it into a flying trash heap!"

He sighed and simply laid there, pain already spreading across his entire face

It's going to be a long two days before she heads back to orbit, he thought to himself even as she continued her tirade.

Date: April 11th, 2170

Location: 'Rust Bowl' Junkyard, Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centauri A System

"What do you think Administrator?" Jones was asking as they sat on the rusted Dragon, staring across the massive junkyard.

"I have no idea." he admitted. "The whole gunship thing was just a fluke, I have no idea why he thinks I can help you."

"'Cuz you've been here before, for a long damn time." the other American supplied. "You'll know what might work, and more importantly, was doesn't. Let's start with that, what's been tried?"

Parker sighed, "Fences are useless without electrical current, and things like titanoheres can just bull through them anyway, and most of the others can just jump them unless they're ridiculously high. Land mines don't work, the magnetic ones get set off at random thanks to the magnetic field or something, and the animals seem to be able to smell them anyway."

He ticked them off on his fingers as he went through what the early RDA settlers, and later Quaritch, had tried, "We never found a sonic frequency that doesn't just piss them off, microwave emitters are a pain to maintain and don't cover a broad area well. I think there was some vague ideas of using a toxin to clear mass-areas of the woods, but we never had the budget to work on it, and we couldn't think of anything that wouldn't kill the forest as well, which we wanted to avoid at the time, Pandoran wood sells."

Jones nodded, a frown on his face, "Was hoping you hadn't tried sonic emitters to be honest, would be the easiest way to keep them away."

"That was one of the early ones," he replied shaking his head. A roar was heard and he glanced to his right, Brunhilde was taking off on another hunting trip, half a dozen Samsons lifting off and moving into escort positions. They'd killed enough hexapeds and titanoheres to feed them for months, and were still killing more. The attacks hadn't stopped, or slowed really, but they were hoping it was just a matter of time before hungry bellies forced the predators to move elsewhere.

"Automated turrets were the only thing we found really worked, and it helped that, for the most part, the fauna avoided Hell's Gate like the plague, and I think the main excavator scared the hell out of a lot of them at the mining site." he finished, watching the massive Valkyrie slowly move overhead and out over the jungle.

He heard a sigh as he watched, "So, the only thing that seemed to work was the second largest vehicle constructed by man, and we won't be getting ours for another four months, and even then, it is not a guarantee."

"Yep."

"Dammit."

The two stared at the junkyard in silence for a while.

"Game tonight right?" Jones asked after a while.

"Yeah. My gravel-diggers against Thomes' spacemen." he replied.

"Good. Always better after there's been a game, morale is always up."

He nodded, "Yeah. Amazing how it can make people forget where we are for a bit."

They sat in silence a while more. In the distance, he saw flashes and heard muted explosions as Brunhilde found something worth killing.

"Still seems funny that we're playing a game in something as dangerous as a rusting junkyard." he commented.

"Doesn't it?" Jones agreed, then froze, frowning. "Parker. Has anyone told you that you're a genius?"

He blinked, "No. Why?"

Jones gestured. "This place is dangerous, the metal is sharp, rusting, things are falling apart. We use that."

"Huh?"

An impatient sigh, "We tear it apart even more, make sure the edges are sharp enough to cut and tear, and we line the edges of the roads with it, fill the new kill-zones and the areas around the mines. Kind of like barbed-wire mixed with dragon's teeth."

Parker blinked and frowned, thinking.

Jones continued, "It'll stop most of the attacks cold, I mean, even animals are smart enough not to try running through a field of metal shards. We make sure there's a good mix of smaller and large ones, so that the big beasts don't want to try it either. Only thing we'd have to worry about are things that fly at that point, and the automated turrets can handle those just fine. Hell, I bet there's enough metal we could even make barbed wire and run that out too. Fuck, I didn't even think about shit like that man."

"Doesn't that sound.. 20th century?" he asked, trying to remember. "Like all those old war movies about the first two world wars?"

An encouraged nod, "Exactly like that, they used that shit cuz it worked. It's a pain in the ass to untangled yourself from barbed-wire, and that's when you're human and smart enough to work out how to get out of it." he leaped to his feet and hopped off. "I need to go talk to Weigand about this, see you at the game!" He was running even as Parker belatedly bid him goodbye.

He stared at the junkyard some more. "Metal spears, shards, and barbed-wire. Huh." he shrugged, it was worth a shot he supposed, and it wasn't like they had anything else to do with the rusting wreckage. They had already removed everything of value.

Hopping down off the Dragon, he headed towards the Ops Center. Might as well get some work done before the game.

Date: April 12th, 2170

Location: Tartarus, Pandora, Alpha Centauri A System

Jones had his engineers working around the clock. Even as Parker and Weigand stood in the darkness, staring at the sky, they could hear the sounds of clanging metal. A huge pile of rusting metallic spears, triangular shards that looked like sharks teeth, and various other shapes rested near the southern entrance, waiting for morning to be taken out and affixed into the ground.

That was not why he and the Oberst were standing outside at night however, they were waiting for something else.

Far overhead, six new stars suddenly appeared. The significance was not lost on him, or anyone else in the base. Sound in the junkyard stuttered, slowed, then stopped as everyone turned their eyes to the sky.

They were alone now.

It was, Parker realized, something far too significant for one small word. Five letters, two syllables. It did not seem like it was enough to contain the weary fear and helplessness that he now felt.

They could not leave now, if things went bad. Could not retreat from this base, could not call for help. Their survival would depend on their skill and resources, and upon those factors alone.

We're... all alone now. The thought raged in his head, and he bit down his tongue on a hysterical laugh. He turned and headed back into the apartment complex, heading for the newly finished kitchen. He did not want to go to sleep sober. And besides, his miners were still partying it up after winning 2-1 the previous night, so it was not as though he would be drinking alone, though he was sure that he would be the only one drinking to forget.

Next up is Chapter 19: Hopeful Overture

This one was the opposite of the last chapter, turning out longer than I thought it would. The meeting in particular lasted longer, but I think it came across well. We'll see how humanity's latest defensive attempts are faring a few chapters down the road.

But first, we have to have our fateful negotiations session between Max and Jake, and we'll what the locals think of the human's actions and promises. That will end the second act, and we're overdue for another interlude about things back on Terra. After that, we're back to Selfridge and seeing how humanity's defensive attempts are faring against a world that seemingly loathes them.

Review, review, a thousand times review. I like them, they're shiny, and so I want more.