xi. Colden jogged through the wreckage of the nameless town, circling wide of the impact crater in the city center. This conurbation was so wrecked, Star Force hadn’t even bothered to designate it as a target. She crunched through knee-deep debris and clambered over fragments of regocrete walls. In the light of a quiet Martian morning, she could see further than was normal, and everything she saw was in ruins. The more wrecked, the better, from her perspective. Less chance of muppets. Kristiansen and Murray might still be alive … After all, someone had triggered that emergency beacon. The task force had picked it up less than an hour ago, as they drove towards the ruined town. Actually, a sat had picked it up and notified Alpha Base. The signal came and went, confounded by the PLAN’s radio-frequency jamming, but Colden had the location of the beacon marked on her heads-up display. It tracked with Kristiansen and Murray’s last known location. Their buggy broke down, she thought.
