chapter=<b>Chapter 6</b>

	Sanjit and the Commander walked slowly through the thick grass that surrounded their small encampment. All around them were majestic hills, covered in dense forest. Beautiful birds with extraordinary iridescent tail feathers flew in swooping flocks above their heads.

	The Commander stopped and looked towards the magnificent expansive deep blue sky. It was the time of day when they approached the nearest they ever got to a dusk, as the sun was temporarily hazed by the thick clouds that hung to the peak of the massive bulk of Mount Ggnnnth.

	"The beauteousness of the surrounding environment leads one to question one's own place in the cosmos, does it not Sanjit."

	"Very philosophical of you Commander." Came the diminutive Indian earthlings reply. "And clearly, having profound thoughts can be very beneficial sir, but I am a little concerned about the state of warlike tension that surrounds us, even as we absorb the intense beauty of the Waj valley."

	"You are so right Sergeant!" said the Commander, snapping out of his reverie and becoming very animated. "We need a peace conference and we need it now."

	"Sir, please.." Sanjit tried vainly to interject.

	"I know it's hard to understand these peculiar people, hard to fully appreciate their hostility. It seems to me that they live on a very beautiful planet, well, the side that gets sunlight, so why they have to fight each other I guess we'll never know. Why anyone feels the need to fight has been an eternal mystery for me."

	"Well, maybe sir." Sanjit tried to interject. "You should work that out before you get too involved."

	"Nonsense Sergeant. I will travel on foot to each and every one of the warring parties emplacements at their most recently recorded locations."

	"Sir, I must advise most...."

	"I will encourage a leader from each group to join me on neutral UP territory and we'll put a stop to all this nonsense right away."

	"Sir, I beg you to consider the...."

	"No Sanjit, my mind was made up long before I arrived. Some could see my recent history as a set back, but personally, I see it as a challenge. This time the UP are going to make a difference, save peoples lives, not merely count them once they are dead. We are going to change the course of the tragic history of Naffos once and for all."

	So saying, the Commander extracted his hand held mapping system, the very latest kit from UP stores, Sanjit noticed, and strode off toward the dense woodland.

	"Sir, are you carrying a side arm?" Sanjit shouted at the enormous back striding through the long grass.

	"I am a warrior for peace, I need no weapon save the love for all men that is in my heart."

	"Oh buggeration." Muttered Sanjit. "Now we really are in trouble."

	He watched the Commander clear a small bluff and then disappear into the dense woodland beyond. He momentarily considered following the fool who had been put in charge of the valley, but rapidly went through the choices in his mind. For one thing, he was in no position to protect the commander, armed as he was with a very light pulse sidearm. If he was going to help, he needed a bit of muscle, and Hitchmouth fitted the bill rather well. He turned back toward the distant lump in the ground that was his home.

	When he arrived back 15 minutes later, the sound of snoring from inside the dug out was very noticeable. Sanjit entered the dim space and saw Hitchmouth asleep on one of the makeshift chairs, his shaven head resting on the table. He hadn't even bothered to get into a sleep pod.

	"Wake up Hitchy, wake up."

	With scarily fast reflexes Hitchmouth had a sidearm pointed straight at Sanjit Rey's left eye; even as Sanjit fell back in terror the weapons exit nozzle stayed millimetres from his cornea.

	"Sanj!" shouted Hitchmouth as he just as suddenly holstered the fearsome device, "you were that close to toast city mate." He indicated the closeness with his thumb and forefinger, as Sanjit worryingly noted, the digits were actually touching.

	Sanjit breathed out slowly and got to his feet. He adjusted his helmet and glanced at the sleeping pods.

	"Where is Doctor Smutts?"

	"Ow the hell should I know." Said Hitchmouth, sniffing with a vomit inducing ferocity. "I don't fancy her if that's what you're thinking."

	"I wasn't thinking that Hitchy, although now you deny it, I would suggest you clearly do have a certain repressed desire for her."

	Hitchmouth stood to his full height and towered over Sanjit. "Frig off, take that back."

	Sanjit smiled, glanced around the room again.

	"Well, where is Hjmugh ?"

	"What?"

	"Hjmugh. The injured man?" said Sanjit, now becoming unusually sharp. "Where is he?"

	Hitchmouth checked the sleep pod, clearly he didn't know.

	"Hitchy, you let him get away? I don't believe you can sleep like that. You of all people, always alert, what were you thinking? We could have found out a great deal more from him. You of all people, I would have thought you could see the importance of gaining a little more data on the present situation."

	"The bastard." Said Hitchmouth, his mouth tight like a cat's rear end. "That Smutts bitch must have spiked my tea!"

	"I hardly think that likely." Said Sanjit quietly. "You fell asleep because you were tired, and they have just waltzed out. I imagine Dr Smutts thought she could find some medical help if she tried to get down to Smihhjin."

	Sanjit was referring to the nearest UP garrison at Smihhjin, situated on the edge of a small Naffoolian enclave of the same name, only 30 minutes by surface ship, but a good 2 days on foot.

	Hitchmouth started to walk around the small living area, his shoulders hunched as he continuously balled his enormous fists. "That is it, seriously it." He ranted. "I am going out there to eradicate a few Naffs just to make up for the humiliation I have suffered."

	"Hitchy, please listen carefully. Although the loss of a potential data source is a serious issue, events have overtaken us. I have just witnessed the Commander storming across the clearing heading for a group of Waj valley Mulimbimbi's in order to start arranging a tri-partate peace conference."

	"What a spod. What's he want to go and do a thing like that for?" said Hitchmouth. "We're on the verge of seeing some impressive rounds exchange and Hunter has to go and piss all over it. What a grade one total div." Spittle flew out of Hitchmouths mouth like scatter grenade fragments.

	"No Hitchy, you have very much the wrong end of the spoon. I can see you have not been reading the communiquŽ that came through on the sub ether before all coms went down."

	"Course I haven't, I've got better things to do. CommuniquŽ's, what the spoof am I meant to do with them?"

	"They made very interesting reading, let me assure you. Our worthy commander has a bit of a history, and some very influential relatives."

	"Yeah, he would have, only way he'd reach that rank is through brown nosin" and bribery."

	"No no Hitchy, it's the other way around. He used to be a Section Leader, imagine."

	"That twonk, a section leader?"

	"Indeed. 15 million men under his command. No, he's been demoted to Commander because of the mess he made on Wisbeef. He was on the ground when the civil war broke out, and d'you know what he was attempting to organise when it all went seriously pear shaped?"

	"Not a piss up in a brewery, that'd be way too complicated for "im."

	"No Hitchy, worse, he had arranged a peace conference. But the problem was, there was no civil war on Wisbeef when he got there. It only started once there was a peace conference."

	"Shite."

	"You know how tense it is out there, and he is going to thunder his way in and say all the wrong things."

	Hitchmouth suddenly touched Sanjit's forearm with surprising tenderness. "Sanj." He said, his face a perfect rendition of an eight year old boy who's just made up a secret plan. "Let me tek him out."

	Hitchy, please."

	"No one'll know, they'll think it were Mulambimbi's. Look, I'll even use a bow and impact arrow, head shot. Boom, end of story."

	"Hitchmouth." Said Sanjit slowly. "Much as I know the pleasure it would give you to see our most eminent commander turn into a strawberry jam smear on the virgin woodland floor, I cannot condone the murder of a member of the UP, no matter how dangerous he is to the local community. No, you'll have to track him down, he's using his hand held so he'll be easy to find. Go and get him Hitchy, and bring him back with his head still attached to his shoulders."

	"Oh bugger." Said Hitchmouth.

	For a moment Sanjit wasn't quite sure why Hitchmouth had reacted the way he did. normally any encouragement for the over armed soldier to leave base and get out in the field was met with enthusiasm, the more complex and risky the mission, the more Hitchmouth relished the prospect. But now he stood motionless, with one hand raised, his eyes looking toward the low roof of the bunker.

	Then a shudder in the ground gave Sanjit all the data he needed. A fire-fight had started and by experience he knew it was only going to get worse.

	A flash suddenly lit up the room and Hitchmouth, as usual, dived for the floor.

	"Incoming!" he said with ill concealed joy. "At last! Serious bangs. Now some of those twats are going to get well toasted."

	The noise outside was instantly deafening. What had started with a single explosion soon erupted into a cacophony of thuds, rattles and gut wrenching crashes.

	Hitchmouth slid toward the central control panel. "Emergency power up!" he shouted, Sanjit lifted a flap on the floor just beside him, pulled a handle up and turned it.

	"Power up!" Sanjit replied, not sure if anyone could hear him over the deadly roar of battle.

	A low whine started as the systems deep buried vacuum sealed flywheels kicked into action. They only had 2 hours power from the flywheels, unless they used the pulse weapon repeatedly in which case it could be as little as 10 minutes. They only ever used them in dire emergencies and Sanjit didn't hesitate to agree with Hitchmouth that this was indeed, one of those. The central control system came on and Hitchmouth started registering fire points and mapping impact zones.

	"Looks like that Naff bastard we had in here was right, the Mulimbimbi's have got some serious fire power from somewhere. There's no way a frigging bow and arrow would have that range and impact register."

	Sanjit joined him at the mapping screen. Lines and circles appeared in constantly changing patters as the UP gunnery system tracked possible targets.

	"There is a lot more business going on out there that I thought." Said Sanjit. Then he suddenly put his hand over his mouth. "Oh my giddy aunt. Hitchmouth, the commander, I had momentarily forgotten. He is out there." He pointed to the screen, an area which was constantly re-circled with impact zones. "I last saw him walking towards here."

	"Hey hey, the Mulimbimbi madness zone." Said Hitchmouth with a chuckle. "I'm just waiting for one of them to get punch drunk and send a round our way, then I'll let rip with all four pulse cannons. C'mon you little bastards, make an error. Lob one on the UP, we've got just enough charge left to remove that side of the mountain."

	"Hitchy, the commander is there. We have to get him."

	"Div off. I'm not going out there." Said Hitchmouth, eyes fixed to the screen and finger hovering over the fire button.

	"And Doctor Smutts and Hjmugh."

	"Hjmugh was a Naff terrorist, we're not savin" "im!"

	"We have a duty to protect them."

	"No!" shouted Hitchmouth above the never ending din. "We have a duty to monitor the war, and boy, there's a lot of war going on at the moment."

	Sanjit ignored him and popped open a storage pod. He flung on his body armour and loaded up his pulse weapon. As he put his helmet on Hitchmouth looked at him.

	"Oh buggeration, I'll have to come with you, you don't stand a chance out there."

	Once outside, both men now heavily armoured and weighed down with an alarming array of weaponry, saw the devastation taking place all around them. The high trails of pulse mortars rippled the air, the crashing thuds of impacts could clearly be seen inside the dense woodland that surrounded them. What was also clear however was that none of the lethal cargo was aimed at the UP command post. Some of it was going right over their heads and into the wooded hills behind them, where, according to Hitchmouth, a large contingent of Naff troupes were dug in.

	"Are you tellin" me he went in there!" Hitchmouth shouted as they made their crouched way across the thick grassland. He was pointing toward an area billowing thick clouds of black smoke, the root of which glowed white, the result of multiple hits from high impact pulse mortars.

	"Yes." Said Sanjit, struggling to keep up, weighed down with his battle kit. "Hopefully he had the sense to clear the area once the fire fight started. Have you got a signal?"

	Hitchmouth hit the floor as a stray round impacted the soft earth no more than 30 meters from their position. Sanjit joined him just in time to be showered with damp earth and debris. Hitchmouth extracted the position scanner from his sleeve pocket and checked.

	"To much shagging interference, these things are shite, they're not battle hardened. The pulse rounds are causing too much static. We're going to have to get closer."

	Sanjit pulled out his communicator. "Commander Hunter, do you read me?"

	Another round came in close to them, Sanjit noticed he momentarily left the ground as the impact shook the very ground they were lying on.

	"Let's keep moving." Said Hitchmouth. "Looks to me like some bastard has got a lock on us, and the more you use that damn thing." He poked at the communicator Sanjit was gripping. "The easier we're going to make it for "em."

	Hitchmouth jumped up and moved toward the edge of what remained of the trees. As Sanjit followed, clambering over branches and lumps of freshly revealed rock, he was very shaken when he nearly stepped on what looked like the remains of a human leg lying in the grass.

	"They're using shatter rounds." Said Hitchmouth without hesitation. "I love it, complete arms embargo for 2 centuries and they're still getting their hands on state of the art weaponry even I can't get me hands on."

	The two men dived behind a fallen tree as a shower of pulse rounds screeched overhead. All around them was the devastation of warfare, trees split in two, gaping holes in the earth, shattered remains of weapons and people, but no sign of the commander.

	"If he was in there, he didn't stand a friggin" hope." Said Hitchmouth. As Hitchmouth looked around they noticed a sudden cessation in fire, the forest slowly returned to silence. Sanjit heard a beeping sound, coming from Hitchmouth's sleeve pocket.

	"What's that?" he asked.

	"Getting a signal." Said Hitchmouth, he pulled the device out and checked it. "Up the hill, 2 clicks. We move." He said, and keeping low he started to move rapidly through the wasteland that surrounded them.

	"Oh buggeration." Said Sanjit as he followed. "Why did I have to try and be so brave."

	They made their way up a steep incline, still surrounded by impact craters and military debris, and, as Sanjit noticed in quiet horror, the truly ugly carnage of war. The weapons used by the warring sides had terrible consequences for the recipients, body parts lay scattered all around, sometimes nothing more than a stain on the once beautiful forest floor.

	"Just over here." said Hitchmouth as they clambered over the crest of a small hill.

	Below them, in a small hollow, there was a small encampment, badly damaged but with clear signs of life. Soldiers from the ill dressed and wild looking Mulambimbi group were huddled together under what protection they could find. For a moment some of them raised their weapons toward Hitchmouth and Sanjit, but a barked command from a clearly wounded officer made them stand down.

	Suddenly a figure stood up from the grubby crowd. There, in their midst, was Commander Hunter, smiling broadly.

	"Ah, Hitchmouth, Sergeant Rey, I wondered when you would get here. I think we've had a breakthrough."

	Hitchmouth didn't listen, he grabbed the Commander by the shoulders as soon as he reached him and started pulling him along the low valley floor away from the encampment. The Mulambimbi soldiers looked on in bemusement as the oversized commander was dragged, complaining loudly, in a very unseemly manner.

	"Hitchmouth, I demand in no uncertain terms that you desist and cease from manhandling me like this."

	Hitchmouth said nothing, Sanjit ran along beside them as the powerful soldier dragged his booty through the low scrub. "I suggest you do as Hitchmouth says Commander." Hissed Sanjit. "Things have become very tense."

	"I'm very aware Sargeant, that rounds have been exchanged, but as I was trying to inform you, I have just managed to engineer a breakthrough in negotiations. This group of charming Mulambimbi's have agreed to withdraw out of the Waj valley and attend a peace conference at a later date."

	"Then what was all the firing about?" asked Hitchmouth as he dropped the Commander unceremoniously behind a large fallen tree.

	"Oh, well, they said they just wanted to have a quick pop at the Naffoolians from what I could gather. After they had gone to all the effort of getting their weapons all the way here. And apparently there is a contingent of Fauls who seem, for some reason I haven't been able to fathom, to be fighting alongside the Naffoolians. Apparently these Mullambimbi fellows have a serious bone to pick with the Fauls."

	"They're always ganging up with each other, nothing out of order there." Said Hitchmouth as he dropped the commander behind a large rocky outcrop.

	"But sir, don't you think you could have precipitated the exchange of fire with your unplanned intervention." Said Sanjit, sitting beside the commander and nervously checking around.

	"Nonsense Sergeant. Although I did try and dissuade them, they gave me cast iron assurances that these would be the last battles of the entire civil war, and they all looked forward to a future of peaceful co-existence with both the Fauls and the Naffoolians."

	The suddenness of the massive explosion just behind them caught all of them unawares. The massive rock they were hidden behind pushed them a good six meters down a slope, and looked for a moment as if it would roll over them and crush them. They were saved by the stout roots and stumps of some ancient trees, which had somehow survived the recent onslaught. Moments later a torrent of debris, mud, broken weapons, remains of buildings and bodies rained on them from a great height.

	"Well, there goes your Mulambimbi's sir." Said Hitchmouth with a grin. "I suggest we leg it back to base and have a brew."

	With a movement derived from years of training and experience, Hitchmouth was one his feet, aiming his weapon.

	"Put the ruddy thing down man, it's only me." Said Dr Smutts. She was clambering over the fallen trees and mountains of debris that surrounded them. "Okay, who's injured?"

	"Shaggin "ek Doc, you was that close to being a smear." Said Hitchmouth, again using the touching digits as he had with Sanjit.

	"Aha, Doctor Smutts." Said Sanjit. "We have been worried about you."

	"Don't worry about me Sergeant." Said the Doctor as she finally joined them. "I know how to look after myself, which, judging by the state you boys are in. You do not."

	"I think we are all okay." Said Sanjit. "We had a very close shave, the Commander was right in the middle of a firing zone only moments ago. Just over the lee of what was a hill, where that ruddy great big crater is."

	"Well, is he concussed?" asked the Doctor, kneeling down beside the huge slumped form. Sanjit hadn't noticed until then, but the Commander did look a little off colour.

	The Doctor made a cursory inspection. "Vital signs all okay." She said. "What's the matter with you man?"

	"What's the point." Said the Commander. "Everything I try to do to make things better, makes them worse."

	"You said it." Said Hitchmouth.

	"Come come Commander, we need your leadership and clear insight, don't we Sergeant." Said the Doctor with a wink.

	"Er, yes, of course we do Commander." Said Sanjit. "Come on Hitchmouth, let us return to the comparative safety of the command post before anything else happens."

	"A very good idea Sergeant." Said Doctor Smutts.

	"You have a nice long sleep sir, when you wake, all this will have faded into our history and we can reflect on what went wrong, and see a clear way to make it right next time, isn't that right Hitchy?"

	"Oh buggeration, have I got to carry the bastid?"