The Fate of the 68th Kinetic

It wasn't a narrative that we wished to remember

 so we'd forgotten about them

and their misguided deployment.

That's how these things go.

 

Deployed to Witness (xii)

Deployed to Witness (xi)

Deployed to Witness (x)

This is where it gets weird.

 

Deployed to Witness (ix)

Nobody heard from the garrison

 nothing at all

 

 for a hundred and twenty years.

 

Deployed to Witness (viii)

So the 68th Kinetic landed on Witness, and went about their duties

 (whatever those were)

 and they were promptly forgotten. Just left there.

They didn't send for resupply or refit

no status reports

or briefings

(maybe they didn't know how)

they just stayed there on that planet and went to work.

The whole regiment.

Deployed to Witness (vii)

Out there it's nowhere

in the middle 

of nowhere.

 

Deployed to Witness (vi)

There was no threat to be had, perceived

or otherwise

for three thousand-thousand light years in any direction.
Three thousand millenia.

We're talking about the Udina Sector here, right?

Kalizch Stars, for Grom's sake.

Deployed to Witness (v)

Strange duty for an intelligence unit.

Or whatever they were.

 

Deployed to Witness (iv)

- by reasonable standards a dead-end world, in

a dead-end system

growing genetically modified staplegrains

for no one special.

Deployed to Witness (iii)

It isn't clear why they were assigned career duties

guarding grain storage and cultivators

on Witness

Deployed to Witness (ii)

Deployed to Witness

But deployment amongst the stars is haphazard,

 random

at least

for the regiments from backwater systems

such as

ours.

 

The 68th Kinetic (Witness)

So that by the time

they landed

on Witness

(Udina Sector, Kalizch Stars)

they were three years into their voyage

(somewhere around 874)

 and whatever they envisioned an Intelligence Unit to be

they trained rigorously to become

and had
become.

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

And find their own way they did

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

Spirited,

conciliatory.

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

Contentious

 

The 68th Kinetic (continued)

The 68th Kinetic

You might say 

they struggled to find their way.