Things were not as expected. The view from the drones had been deceptive. It had been a sanitized overhead map of movement and heat signatures. They had counted all those heat signatures and knew exactly how many people to expect.
But on the ground, the reality of the junkyard hit Hadrian and his squad with a jarring weight: the mercenaries weren't alone. There were more people down there than expected.
Scattered among the rusted skeletal remains of abandoned rusted ships and industrial waste were civilians—common people with hollow eyes and soot-stained clothes. They weren't just scavenging; they were laboring. The squad watched as groups of them broke ground at fresh excavation sites, their rhythmic digging driven by the desperate hope of unearthing more Prime core stones for their overseers.
