How Forged the End (Part 1 of ???)

The sun overhead was blinding, a brilliant white circle in the sky that was orange-crimson. Someone had reflected that the sky above Earth was blue because of all the ocean, so the sky above Vulcan was red because of all the sand. Pike understandably doubted that was the reason, considering science and all, but the more time he spent on the planet, the more it seemed to make sense. After all, the colors were all the same, never changing.

They were tucked into the depths of a long, hot canyon somewhere outside of the main city. The only relief from the sun was to be under a tent when high noon came, but that didn't stop the heat. It was oppressive, even for the lot of them that had been forced through extreme temperature training. He still preferred the heat over the cold. Pike was sure that the cold had formed ice in his bones and would never fully leave him.

He dragged his hand across his brow, eyes closing to avoid getting sweat into them. Being forced to stand here for the last half hour had put a severe limit on his patience. Why his commander had called for him then decided to ignore him was beyond him, but such was the way of things in the military.

Pike sat back further on the stack of crates that held more ammo, scratching lightly at his thigh where the edge of his phaser's holster rubbed. Around him, the sounds of the camp felt far away and subtle. After the last confrontation with the rebels, it did not really surprise him that it was so quiet. Almost half of their troop was injured in some way or another, and everyone was exhausted. The rebels were striking in quickfire strikes that set everyone's nerves on edge, injured some, killed more then a few.

The rebels had chosen their base with genius. The rock formations held some sort of unknown chemical or radiation, still under debate, that dissipated energy strikes from above as well as prevented transport. Not that they had been able to find the damn thing, yet. The patch of stone was as big as California, curving around the edge of a mountain and extending far to the west. It meant dangerous physical exploration to attempt to find any sign of the rebels.

The rebels were something unto themselves. A somewhat unknown though hesitantly guessed number around fifty-thousand Vulcans made up the strength of the rebellion, but in Pike's opinion they were nothing like any other Vulcan he had ever met. They knew something, a way of fighting, that Starfleet had never seen until the beginning of the rebellion several years ago. They could kill with their mind through strikes of their hands as much as they could with their sheer greater strength.

There were ways to counter that strength. Techniques they had been training in for several years now in the academy, fighting styles, and when resorted to, drugs. Pike was fairly sure that his system was going to be burned out before he was thirty and had stopped questioning what each hypo was for before they went into a fight. He had his own small supply of them, traded for, purchased, or stolen, in the small padded pouch on his belt in front of his left hip. Never knew when the rebels were going to attack and he would need it, after all.

"Chris!" Pike tilted his head and looked unhappily in the direction of that voice, fingers creeping towards the phaser at his hip. He relaxed when he saw David coming towards him, dressed in dusty full armor as much as he was. The light weight, supposedly phaser-proof armor got annoying after the hundredth hour of wearing it but protected the chest from being a very open target. It kept bones of the arms and legs from being broken but never stopped the bruising. "Chris!"

"Richardson." Pike remarked, smirking. David's last name had been what made them know each other in the first place. Their instructor had gotten a kick out of it and had called them "Dick One" and "Dick Two" for more then half the semester until he had tired of it.

"Any idea why we were called here?" David skirted to a stop right in front of him, grinning. What had been infuriating before, that somewhat endless smile, had become just another quirk in his once-roommate.

"Don't know." A shoulder was lifted, dropped. "I've been waiting here forever though. Some one went in before me and they've been talking ever since."

“Bastards.” David remarked with some venom that was erased a moment later. Pike had seen the other man kill with that smile on, and was fairly sure he was completely insane. Considering, it would not have surprised him.

Someone came barreling out of the tent, almost slamming into David, and went straight towards supplies at a rush. David and Pike had just a breath to share a look before, “Pike. Richardson,” A voice remarked from the shaded depths of the large tent they were in front of. Pike glanced to David, who winced at possibly having been caught saying that about their superiors, and shrugged once before going inside. It was cool inside, such the luck of being higher up in the food chain. Pike looked around once to make sure he knew who was in the tent with him. Their commanding officer, who was a supposedly born in Cuba but raised elsewhere from the accent, and his assistant, a scruffy, smug, blond haired blue eyed kid, were the only people there.

“We’ve found them.”