On the fourth morning, the transport craft carried the cadets away from the station and toward the far side of Jalun, where the planet's surface rose into a broad, jagged range of dark mountains.
The planetary defense outpost was built into the side of the tallest of them.
From the air, it looked less like a station than part of the mountain itself. Its structures were sunk deep into the rock, with only their upper levels and a scattering of antenna arrays visible above the surface.
Along the ridges on either side, Ning could see the long, dark barrels of gun batteries pointing toward the sky, and further down the slope, a row of hangar doors had been cut directly into the stone.
