Touchstone 1 - Stray

different hills, so everyone can enjoy the show if they explode.
    I wish it meant I could go back to Tare (I nearly wrote ‘home’, and felt awful), but I’m stuck here at least until the end of the original mission, even though they’re probably not going to involve me in the moonfall. I wouldn’t mind so much, except they swapped out Second Squad for Fifth Squad.
    I guess Kajal must be stable and not completely stupid if they made him a squad captain. Just because he’s a prick and treats Zan and me as if we shouldn’t exist doesn’t mean he’s not good at his job. He’s still doing the completely not acknowledging my presence thing, which suits me well enough, and it’s not really obvious since there’s so many people here.
    Third and Fourth have been off most of the day exploring the near-space and surrounding spaces; a task made easy by the Ddura’s hunting. Fifth and Eighth are assigned to guard duty, split up in pairs around the entire camp, in case something shows up to attack. Fifth is on now and Eighth has night duty. Having Setari squads guarding in shifts seems a real waste of their abilities. You can sure as hell tell that’s what Kajal thinks, anyway.
    Tomorrow night is moonfall, and they’re in a huge rush to set up before then. There’s nowhere good to hide away from all the activity. Before Third headed out Taarel mentioned that I shouldn’t leave the area of camp, so it doesn’t look like I’ll get away with another excursion. I spent the bulk of the day in the infirmary recovering from my Ddura headache and the afternoon sitting on a rock down at the shore wishing that if I’m not allowed to leave, everyone would be quieter. I’m not even allowed into the ‘old town’.
    Cloudy today, but then windy. It’ll probably be clear for the moonfall tomorrow.
    Sunday, March 23
    Boom
    One of the shuttles exploded last night.
    The right one, fortunately, and I could hear the Ddura being all happy about it afterwards. Funny that people could be pleased that a perfectly good piece of equipment was destroyed. I was in the infirmary, having carefully hung around the medic’s tent in the evening looking tired and headachy until Ista Leema, the settlement’s main medical person, started running tests on me and kept me in for observation. I have an assigned ‘bunk’ in with the Setari, which I didn’t mind when my neighbours were Second and Third Squad, but found less amusing when it involved Fifth Squad one row over. Even the prospect of perhaps seeing Ruuel asleep wasn’t enough to outweigh my dislike of Kajal.
    I was reading when the shuttle went boom, and in a bit of a mood, so pretended to be asleep when I heard the noise in case they wanted me to go talk to the Ddura. Headaches are making me less than cooperative. I was thinking that it was useful to be able to read books with my eyes closed when I remembered that the interface would also show them I was awake, if they looked.
    Oh well. Now that they’ve confirmed that the fake security clearance will work for their machines, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be sent back to Tare tomorrow. Less important again, thank everything. I can start thinking about cautious ‘going home’ experiments without feeling guilty.
    Male Posturing
    Late afternoon, and everyone’s keyed up about the moonfall. It’s been a good day for me, since it didn’t involve a headache, just a couple of private attempts to see if I have a path-finding ability by trying to locate Ista Leema. Otherwise, I found a great spot where I could sit on the lakeshore and read: snugged down between two rocks, out of the wind and almost out of sight.
    Eighth Squad, who had been asleep all morning, came down to the water’s edge with Fourth Squad and practiced the martial art which is the basis of their close-combat. That was a lot of eye-candy for me, heh. In terms of fire power, Ruuel’s one of the weakest of the Setari, but knowing his talent set I wasn’t the least surprised that he seemed able to avoid the blows of anyone matching with him. Eighth’s captain, Kanato, had him breathing hard though, which I greatly appreciated.
    They’d kept a businesslike atmosphere during the training session. Ruuel was his usual tersely-efficient self, of course, and both captains only made suggestions for improving weaknesses, gave the occasional nod of approval, and then dismissed their squads. They were standing together talking when Kajal, trailed by Nise, strolled down to