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Owl balanced a pencil between his upper lip and nose and hummed to himself. Then he dropped the act and glanced at the Captain.

"So, the gist of it. The towelheads have brought seven semi-mobile SAM units into the town of… how do you read this…"

Gabe drummed his finger on the table, irritated.

"Al-Sahud-Jahubi."

"Yeah, that. It happened eleven hours ago. The Fortress State knew about it, but didn't deduce what equipment they had with them, suspecting they were just another militia group expanding its territory."

"About right."

"Okay, a question."

Gabe sipped his coffee and then nodded.

"Shoot."

"Why isn't that town on any map?"

"It's an unfinished autotown from the forties. Eurocorps came for the oil money after the universal assembler picks up and building those became cheap."

"And just some months later the oil money dries up forever. Okay. So they just never bothered to put this thing on the map?"

"They had the War to worry about. Two years after that, the Meltdown. Five years after that, the Fixing riots."

"So it's not some Fortress trick? This thing really shouldn't be on any map?"

"Pretty much."

"Okay. The official report indicates a population, though. Who are they? Squatters?"

"Yup. Refugees, squatters. I guess they evacuated a year ago. It's a real ghost town now."