The stretch two territories down the rim belonged to a kingdom called Solmire, ranked 2,141st, and on the Hub map it was dying by degrees.
Marcus watched it through the lull, and the more he watched, the worse the shape of it got. The red was not flickering the way a hard-pressed territory flickered. It was deepening, steady and patient, the color of something bleeding out. And the mission hanging over it had already doubled its contribution price once, which meant the Hub itself had raised its estimate of how bad things were down there.
"Talk me through it," Big D said, coming up beside him on the rise.
"Two of the towers that turned away from us reached them an hour ago. Their line was already thin before that." Marcus pulled the territory's feed wide so the old man could see it. "And here is the part that matters. They are dying faster than they can come back."
