Icy winds battering her face, Angelika sprinted at the fore of over a hundred troops, boots pounding sand in a mad scramble to reach the coast. She arrived first and tiptoed a glance over the barrier.

Along the shore, salty droplets slithered down the cores of crawlers, of which at least eight protruded from the murky ocean depths. Two carriers moaned at their flanks, and above, a swarm of fliers glided through dark skies, the glow of their circuits illuminating the emerald underbellies of clouds with concentric swirls of blue.