Rebellion

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The campaign against the Worms was over. My surviving marines were orbiting the dusty world we’d named Helios inside a vast, cylindrical invasion ship. Macro Command had left us floating in orbit for days, waiting for something. We didn’t know what.

A giant, reddish-orange star burned nearby. Its swollen glare filled much more of space than Sol did back home, being over forty times the diameter of our sun. Somehow, that huge red sun made me feel even more insignificant than usual. Combined with the heartless treatment of the Macros, I understood how a sentient amoeba might feel when faced with the microscopic nature of its existence.

We hung in space near the same ring we’d used to invade the system. Escorting the invasion ship was the single surviving Macro cruiser. Its thick-snouted belly-turret prowled ceaselessly, despite the fact there was nothing to aim at.

My command brick was amongst the various pieces of my unit that had survived the war against the Worms. It was no longer neatly stacked with the others, however. We’d clamped the bricks down with magnetic footings to the curving metal interior of the hold in a nearly random pattern of dispersal. I hadn’t gotten around to reorganizing them into neat rows-and I probably never would.

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