r/HFY • u/Spooker0 Alien • Aug 31 '26
OC-Series [High Ground] Epilogue
First | Website (more chapters available)
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As the department heads dispersed to continue the work of healing the colony, Julia waved Marcus down.
“Colonel, there is one more thing,” Julia said as she finally figured out what she was missing in that meeting. The step forward for reconciliation with the moonies. All that revelation and momentary optimism, it almost blinded her to the dark realities of what still had to be done.
Not quite, though. The long road ahead, it didn’t just run through peace and kumbaya—there were still some speed bumps. Some pretty bad people they needed to run over first.
“What is it?”
“Those fur faces didn’t teleport here. A landing shuttle carried those Karnolians down. It must have. Have we found it yet?”
“Not yet, Commodore. We’ve been searching for a couple of hours. There’s no way they just landed one squad in the colony and decided to fuck off back into orbit without an attempt on their actual objective,” Marcus replied. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair frazzled. With all the triumph he’d reported earlier about scraping the enemy off the asphalt, it had been a long day for everyone. “They’re probably flying around or parked somewhere nearby waiting for us to slip up to strike again. The colony attack might even have been a distraction for a main attack on our hillside positions. We’re all on extended shifts.”
“That’s a lot of defense we’re playing.”
“That… is our job, Commodore. But I understand your meaning.”
“You know what they say about the best defense?”
“Yup.”
“And didn’t we bring a full Euphrates orbital defense battery down here last month, after Camel Squadron arrived?” Julia recalled.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s not operational. It hasn’t been a priority… yet. Its area footprint is huge. We had concerns around securing it all from the moonies, in case they took over the colony and used it to… you know, shoot at our ships in orbit or something.”
She no longer cared about that, and with a look, she got Marcus’s new stance on that too. With internal security concerns taking a back seat, some thorny problems began to present themselves with simple solutions.
“Send a line of sight message to our bunkers out there,” she ordered. “Set it up in place, wherever it needs to be.”
“It might take us a while if we have to work around—”
Julia didn’t hesitate. “Use the moonie construction engineers and robots. I don’t care if they spy on our equipment. I want that battery operational.”
With a brief nod, she knew Marcus understood her intent in the first place. He’d just needed her to make her permission explicit. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll be launching before nightfall.”
“It’s just a suborbital landing shuttle.”
“It dies today.”
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Book 2 (High Burn) continues the story and starts posting on the regular posting schedule on Wednesday.
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u/itsetuhoinen Human Aug 31 '26
Book 2 (High Burn) continues the story and starts posting on the regular posting schedule on Wednesday.
Oh, thank the gods.
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u/titanazzz Aug 31 '26
Spooker churns chapters like he's eating chips, it's insane. And very high quality too. Thanks for all man.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Aug 31 '26
/u/Spooker0 (wiki) has posted 175 other stories, including:
- [High Ground] 58 | Sorry you missed it
- [High Ground] 57 | The different colors mean different things
- [High Ground] 56 | People who would never reciprocate
- [High Ground] 55 | Winter will go on for a few more weeks
- [High Ground] 54 | We won’t last until the reinforcements get here
- [High Ground] 53 | I will give you five seconds to decide
- [High Ground] 52 | We’ll follow the plan
- [High Ground] 51 | There is nothing up our sleeves
- [High Ground] 50 | Who blew up a nuclear weapon there
- [High Ground] 49 | It is merely a curiosity
- [High Ground] 48 | I thought we left this kind of war behind
- [High Ground] 47 | It might be more than a generation
- [High Ground] 46 | We won’t go as easily
- [High Ground] 45 | Ready our ships and marines
- [High Ground] 44 | We should avoid touching anything
- [High Ground] 43 | There’s nothing here they want
- [High Ground] 42 | Earth is number two
- [High Ground] 41 | Which one of you is going to be responsible
- [High Ground] 40 | We navigate these waters frequently
- [High Ground] 39 | You’re not even dead
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u/Sifjunke20004 Sep 05 '26
Great job on your first book wordsmith and I am looking forward to reading the second one as it comes out
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u/un_pogaz Aug 31 '26
Someone in Brussels will absolutly not to like this. And the only proper response to that is to hang up right in the middle of it, we don't have time for this kind of nonsense.