[ WP ] A sequence from an RTS game , from the perspective of the units .

Nightrun. 
 
 Daarbuk slids his feet cautiously over the crumbling edge of the rock formation, inching carefully towards the salient, his breath labored under the pressure of the stillsuit and his lungs biting from the cold and dry night air. 
 
 Grabbing onto the cutting edge of the rock to steady himself, trying desperately to avoid tumbling more loose gravel onto the sands bellow, he allows himself a moment of respite and finds himself lost in the images and recollections of the days, and nights before. 
 
 It had only been two day before, two days in one of the palace's mess halls, eating and goofing around. 
 
 Yes, they were under the ongoing threat of war, and there had been some casualties recently in their battalion. But this was a soldier's work, a soldier's life. And if a soldier allows himself to get too gone into the despairs of battle and field, he'll lose more than his own self, he'll end dead and food for the monsters, without anybody ever crying for him, or missing his existence back home. 
 
 It had been there amid the noise and laughter, that a a large dark figure loomed over the table where Daarbuk's squad sat enjoying the meal. 
 
 As he noticed the sound dying completely, not only amongst his squad companions but thorough the whole mess hall, Daarbuk slowly turned around and up to peer into the lifeless mask looming over them. 
 
 Sardaukar. What was a fucking sardaukar doing in the palace. 
 
 Daarbuk peers tentatively around the salient, the roughed out but still functional mask of his stillsuit doing nothing to ease the bit of the air on his throat, or the faint rustle of the night wind against the rocks. He strains to steady himself enough to make sense of the far lights over the sands, to finally make out a couple of small buildings, a carrier, and a harvester. 
 
 All this for a few buildings, a carrier, and a harvester? something must be wrong, he thought, he was n't given details of the mission, not enough to assess why he was there... 
 
 He was n't given details about the mission two days earlier. When his squad was marched silently and ceremoniously into a large, cold, undecorated, almost bare and unwelcoming room, where they found themselves facing the Baron's mentat. 
 
 Yes the mentat talked on to them about the importance to the house of their special, secret mission, he talked about surgical strikes and refined tactics, and again, and again about the importance of success. 
 
 But he had n't shared any information on their target ( other than it was utmost important that it was destroyed completely ), and certainly they had not been told about the lot of them, a squad of light infantry, being dumped almost within sight of a couple quads and siege tanks. 
 
 The mentant, that abomination, had not mentioned the fremen either. And though you could always expect some fremen during a dessert raid, you would n't normally dream of finding them in the numbers, and the organization that they had found, and much less never had anybody mentioned the devil weapons that ended with almost all of the squad except for Daarbuk, Ford and Daneel, who all had been in different edges of the formations trying to scout for raiders ( not that it was ever much help with the fremen ), and whom all somehow excaped being noticed. 
 
 Not that it had helped Ford much, only next day, who now lay down desiccating in the sand, his water supply gone and his still suit too damaged during the escape. Something neither Daarbuk or Daneel could do anything about without sacrificing themselves. 
 
 Which did n't help Daneel much either as the monster shot from under the sand, shredding him to pieces as he fell into the endless belly before Daarbuk could move a muscle. 
 
 So it was that here, two days after it all began, Daarbuk found himself grabbing onto the salient for dire life, and contemplating down on the buildings, the harvester and the transport with a deep seated hatred. A hatred not for the opposing house who he was paid to fight but not to loathe ( a soldier is a workman, not an idealist ), but hatred for that pale, inhuman, limbering mentat, that sack of organs somehow treated as a live being. 
 
 Checking his supplies. Daarbuk decides to risk ending the mission alone. He has enough explosive, and firepower as to be able to take down one of the buildings, both vehicles, and if the guard was low, probably everybody on site, specially if he took cover in the night, where he could use a little stealth and try to hit before he was noticed. 
 
 It was so, that he found himself at the site, crawling quietly around one side of the largest building, trying to slide along its edge slowly, softly, towards the carrier, and as he cautiously round the corner on the construction..... 
 
 `` Unit has been swallowed by windtrap.'' 
 
 `` House Harkonnen loses the battle.'' 
 
 `` Retry'' `` Quit''. 
 
 
 -- -- Inspired by many hours of frustration with Dune II -- --
