Quiet at the Riverside clinic was the comforting, crisis-avoided kind. Sunbeams streamed through gleaming windows, illuminating motes of dust that twinkled and danced in the heat. Reuben Stone, annotating a fresh, foreboding data stream from the Kojin Foothills on his System screen, allowed himself a moment's reprieve. Anna Brooks carefully restocked a cabinet in the corner of the room with antiseptics, her hands steady and smooth. In the corner, Miriam labored carefully over a minute map of the new water pipe system in the village, her tongue thrust out in concentration. The [MORALE] figure in the clinic thrummed a soothing, familiar green.
The peace was rudely interrupted by the roar of engines and the whine of tires spinning too hard on gravel.
Reuben looked up as three black, unmarke
