The Regiment (24)

When the water runs out, when supply fails.

How the transports left at Humicant, 843, and

for all we know the army is still there.

The Regiment (23)

Mapping the incomprehensible, all

readings different.

The Regiment (22)

Evacuation when the cause is forfeit.

 

The Regiment (21)

Creases in the landmass. Night

that lasts for months, and when the sun

comes up the armies go blind.

 

The Regiment (20)

Seas of phlogiston. Antithetical, opposed

landings. Fire from the treeline.

 

The Regiment (19)

An alien landscape 

but so beautiful and open that the army 

deserted.

 

The Regiment (18)

Slow rotation so that

timepieces cannot keep it. Field

of ruins, no one there.

A distress signal, a debris

field

a life raft.

 

The Regiment (17)

The fingers of history, in history. The air 

heavy with storms, a

crushed jeep.

 

The Regiment (16)

The Regiment (15)

Civilizations that abandoned themselves, 

 and everything else. 

Nebula-sized questions. Science we cannot

reach.

The Regiment (14)

Moss in a vacuum. Ancient

roads, curves going off into the distance

to cross-current points.

 

The Regiment: Nothing

Maybe just nothing.

 

The Regiment: Breathe

Nothing to breathe.

 

The Regiment (11)

Strange allies. Gravity

so strong you can only 

crawl.

 

The Regiment: Pyres

Planets. Pyres.

Rain made of rocks.

 

The Regiment (9)

When they do come back 

it's near the end of a long, erratic story.

The Regiment (8)

But then the freighter 

shows up, the regiment

files in, and off 

they go from orbit.

The Regiment (7)

We do our best to train them, to anticipate 

a more or less arbitrary set of skills and equipment 

for where ever they may or may not 

end up.

The Regiment (6)

. . .though it's hard to know what that means.

 

The Regiment (5)

Technically anyway, it's a reconnaissance regiment. . .

 

The Regiment (4)

The Regiment is always the 19,640 mustered to meet transport.

Always the same number of troops.

And always the same name, the 302nd Wasteland Reconnaissance.

 

The Regiment (3)

Every five years, a transport arrives in orbit and collects the Regiment. 

And so on, for the last five hundred and thirty-six years.

 

The Regiment (2)

But we've talked about that at length now. . .

We have a King, who has a King. The endless obligation of birth.

An Upholsterer Second-Class with the 498 Company of Tailors and Sheet Cutters, on Hurdonle. Late lunar cycle, 806. 

Near the Fringes.

Voyage of the Wipfli, Year Fourteen.