SENJO<br/><br/>The Leftenant appeared and did the loud-voiced stern masculine thing that leaders do. I heard it, I understood it, I knew that throughout history leaders had sharpened their soldiers minds and hearts with words before they met the enemy. I<em>knew</em>that the troops under a leader's command would respond more enthusiastically because of words - words of empowerment - given to them before battle but I still puzzled over why this was. It was a tribal thing, a savage thing even, primitive and dark. Those considerations led me onwards to mental examinations of killing, the right to kill, the right to defend one's self from being killed, the will to fight and fight with elan. I often, as a supportive tool to the soldiers I worked with, spent time examining such things. The answers were in men's hearts, not in their minds.<br/><br/>(http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk137/HaibaneR/KiloPlatoon_08.jpg)<br/><br/>I strode up the loading ramp of the dropship and stowed the heavy cargo drums of the sentry guns and the two bulky 'hard bags' the ammunition cylinders were stacked in. Everything had it's place. I clipped the gear securely home into recesses to ensure nothing flew adrift if we encountered turbulence or enemy fire. In my mind I had put aside the practical eventuality of enemy fire. The evidence from the scans did not support scenarios in which we would take fire during the drop. If there were hostile elements planetside my conclusion was we would be facing a hostage scenario or a colony in rebellion. The military hardware and defence capabilities of Weyland-Yutani colonies were limited. The Provost of the standard outpost under which classification LV-1875 fell had a squad of six deputies under his authority and an armoury of four M155 sub-machine pistols, four M33 combat shotguns and ten M4A3 pistols. Unless any rebels had brought additional arms with them when colonising - which was an unlikely scenario - then the fire power in their hands compared to that which Leftenant Mengsk could deploy should result in a rapid resolution of the situation, whether he chose to negotiate or use the troops he had just motivated in the manner to which they were trained.<br/><br/><strong>"Sir,"</strong>I said to the Leftenant as I prepared to take my stall in the ship,<strong>"The communications channel I opened upon entering orbit has not been responded to. The back up transmitter is four hundred metres distant from the main antenna in these installations - my conclusion is the lack of a response is above an eighty-seven percentile chance that both means of communications have been disrupted by natural hazards. I can draw no other conclusions. The intact colony structure rules out volcanic or tectonic activity. A debilitating disease or a scenario involving a rebellious element within the outpost are my conclusions."</strong><br/><br/>I connected to the dropship computer and for the benefit of an in-drop briefing uploaded the colony structure schematics I had downloaded earlier, including the visible-range images of the unknown structure and its surrounding earthworks. I sat back and buckled up.<br/><br/><em>A tribal thing, a savage thing. The right to defend one's self from being killed. The answers are in men's hearts.</em><br/><br/>I closed my eyes.<br/><br/><em>"The difference between you Senj, and those you will work with lies here-"</em>Doctor Korleinovitch had said with a smile, proudly tapping my forehead,<em>"There is no man or woman on Earth who can match what you can do with your mind. However-"</em>his hand had moved lower and pressed against my chest,<em>"Beware of what men have here. I can teach you much. I can teach you more than I know myself, but I cannot open to you the mysteries of men's hearts."</em><br/><br/><em>"Your job is to serve men..."</em><br/><br/><em>"Your journey is to understand them..."</em>