Xavier couldn’t help his body language. Just standing there, directing meditrans and clearance procedures, that was enough to focus on. Hell, keeping his voice steady was enough to drain the strength from two sturdy legs.

Grime and muck stuck to his skin. Was that dirt in his teeth or powdered flesh? It doesn’t matter, they both taste like the harsh reality of what his eyes just had to drink in.

At first, it sounded like a menacing hum. At first… Next the front third of his infantry line was sucked towards the GDB ’s (Gravity Distortion Bomb) center and spat back out into the night sky.

You think a shrapnel mine is bad? Imagine a device that randomly alters gravity inside a bubble of death. Pulling bones from joints, flesh from skin, teeth from mouths, and finally using all that absorbed energy to launch a radial blast; spewing out those same human elements as oddly-shaped, organic projectiles of death.

The visual shock never left him or his fighting force, yet they marched on towards Theta Camp.