March 14th-28th, 2767:
These two weeks have passed in a flurry of activity. Not ten minutes after disembarking from the Ajaxs, you found yourself in a debriefing tent being intensely questioned by on General Kimberly Trahn. According to her, this is nothing unusual - there has been so little information escape the borders of the Terran Hegemony that everyone who makes it out gets a personal interview.
So far, that's been about nine thousand people, all in the next best thing to a refugee camp set up on the grassy southern end of the starport, opposite the city. Nine thousand men and women - about two and half combined-arms regiments. While it was true that much of the SLDF was with General Kerensky helping pacify the Periphery, a conservative estimate of the units stationed in Terran Hegemony space would have been a solid 30 Divisions and another dozen independent regiments. Half a million troops, and all that has escaped was a bare nine thousand. Most of whom escaped with the clothing on their back and perhaps a sidearm.
You're billeted into a series of quonset huts bordering the starport. General Trahn has been busily reassigning personnel from one unit into another to try and compose something resembling order in the camp. You say your goodbyes to the personnel - now friends - who helped make up your ad hoc unit as they are reassigned to one job or another (Major Stastny departs within an hour of being billeted with you; military intelligence personnel are in critically short supply and every hand is needed to help piece together the intelligence gleaned from escapees). Over the next day or so, it becomes clear that your company is perhaps the single largest single cohesive unit in the entire camp, and certainly the largest single unit who has equipment. As such, General Trahn tells you that Echo Company will be her "go-to" unit for anything that needs doing; she's sure that other units may need extraction from Rim Worlds assaults in the coming days, and you'll be her first choice. To that end, she informs you that she'll be stripping some of your equipment and replacing it with slightly heavier gear stripped from other refugees so that you'll be more able to endure heavy engagements.
She also gives Captain Freund access to her personnel files and tells him to fill out the remainder of Echo's TO&E. Freunde disappears behind a desk for a day or so, and on March 22nd, the first of your new people report to your huts, gearbags in tow. Having the opportunity to drill together for a few months is a luxury you can't afford. ON March 28th, you're summoned to General Trahn's tent for a briefing.
"Echo Company, what we've been waiting for has finally happened. We've gotten a communique from Ozawa that a Star League unit - the 197th Royal Regiment - needs extraction. It looks like they tried the same thing you did; make for the starport and get offworld, but they got bogged down and had to pull out of the city, with only enough time to send the HPG message. Their message indicates that they'll be falling back into the desert spires to fight a guerilla war, and in the general direction of Diplan Mechyards, using the factory as a final redoubt if necessary to both replentish their own strength and deny its production to the Rim Worlders. You're going to get them out.
"Here's the plan.