by Aer-ki Jyr
“Anyone that felt otherwise would have to turn in their good guy card,” Dravis pointed out.
Sally halfheartedly smirked. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Iden-202747 walked into the cockpit of the dropship and stood just behind Davi who was intently watching the control board as he flew the eagle in formation with two others, both Falcon-class, with him lagging a bit behind.
“What’s wrong?” the acolyte asked.
“This bird took some damage on the way in. A couple of plasma hits to the hull, nothing major, but they hit on a patch from previous hull damage and I’m not getting full speed out of the gravity drives. I’m not showing any warning lights, but something is off.”
“What kind of damage was done?”
“I’m not sure, this is my 4th dropship in 2 days. Everything was fixed, but I’m guessing those hits found a crevice and seeped through. I don’t know, maybe just my imagination, but I’ve flown enough eagles to know this one is a touch slow.”
“Don’t suppose there’s anything we can do about it in flight?”
“Not unless you’ve got a tech back there?”
“I can check…” Iden said, half turning as a beep from the pilot’s battlemap pinged. The Archon immediately brought up his own in helmet and saw the cause for alarm…Skarron fighters heading their way that had broken through the skeet formations covering their tail.
“Oh shit, not again,” Davi said, having a quick conversation with the other dropship pilots.
Iden checked the battlemap at further range, seeing that there were no other friendly units nearby…then suddenly the three dropships split up, each going a separate way. There were only two fighters coming up on them, so this way, he knew, at best they could only shoot down two, assuming the third got far enough away.
He watched the pair of enemy fighters continue forward for a while, then they split up, one each coming at the middle and starboard dropships…with theirs being the starboard.
“Don’t suppose you have any special powers that can take down fighters?” Davi asked sarcastically.
“I don’t have the range, no,” he said, thinking hard. “If we’re going to go down, find us some terrain.”
“I’d prefer not to go down at all,” Davi countered, trying to milk a little more speed out of the smaller dropship. It was faster than a falcon, but this stupid drive wasn’t cooperating.
“I’d shoot out the back, but our rifles aren’t going to scratch their armor with its shields up,” Iden said, stating the obvious.
“Well, we’ve got about 2 minutes to figure something out,” Davi said, seeing a thick section of forest slightly further to starboard. It would take them further away from their destination, but it looked like they weren’t going to get there anyway so he took the Archon’s suggestion and altered course, guessing they’d make it there in about 45 seconds.
“Do what you can,” Iden said, abandoning the cockpit and heading aft where everyone else was. There were 36 people onboard, not counting himself and the pilot, and only about half of them had armor.
“Listen up!” he yelled through his helmet’s external mic. “We’re about to get shot down. Ready yourself, and grab whatever supplies you can find. One way or another we’re going to be on the ground shortly.”
As soon as he heard the Archon Rio’s attention immediately turned to the light cargo onboard the dropship, then his eyes crossed over to the emergency kits imbedded into the walls. He ran over to one and began to pull the panel off when a Knight came up on his left and detached another. Inside Rio’s was foodstuff packets, highly concentrated, with a carry satchel rolled up and stuffed in next to them.
He pulled it out and filled the bag up, then attached it to the back of his armor. Inside the Knight’s were weapons, several pistols of both plasma and stun variety. The taller man pointed to his bag and Rio turned around, giving him his back while he stuffed them inside. They could be passed out later if needed, but right now they needed to be secured and Victor preferred not to have anything else to carry aside from his partially damaged shield.
Elsewhere other commandos were tearing apart emergency supplies and rifling through the crates onboard and salvaging what they could. The Archon had all the unarmored individuals cluster together in the center of the bay, then layered the commandos around them. If the IDF held up they shouldn’t feel the crash/landing, but that wouldn’t stop shrapnel from coming through. If it did hopefully it would hit an armored person first, which was the basic idea, though in Rio’s mind it was probably just a last ditch effort to do something when they really had no good options. Dropships were maximized for speed and cargo carrying capacity rather than multied out to carry weapons.
Doing so would reduce their efficiency, and in truth they were never meant to go anywhere dangerous unescorted…though right now he really wished they’d installed at least one gun turret so they’d have some way of defending themselves.
When he’d finished filling his satchel he joined the ring around the unarmored, putting his back to them so to also shield his supplies, then he activated his armor’s shields and took a knee, waiting for the inevitable to come.
When it did it came in the form of a hole punching through the ceiling. One moment there was solid metal, the next there was a shower of superheated fragments as a piece blew apart from weaponsfire. The outside air sucked out the smoke and left the hole visible, then more impacts could be heard, or more accurately more explosions as the Skarron plasma hit and blew apart pieces of the hull. He looked up, then sucked in a quick breath as the blue sky twisted to the side and the ground became visible, with the gnarly trees growing closer at an alarming rate…then the ground rotated out of sight and the sky returned, with him realizing that they were falling in a death spiral.
The crash was noisy, but he didn’t feel any vibration thanks to the IDF…until it was knocked out as the dropship rolled through the trees. Suddenly he and the others were floating around inside the bay, then slammed up against a wall as it came to a stop. Bodies and crates fell on top of him, but fortunately he had his armor to protect him…not all of the others were so lucky.
He let the Knight work his way off him, then the man pulled up one of the crates and moved it aside, freeing Rio’s legs and allowing him to get up. As he did he looked to the left and saw one of the mechwarriors with a bloody gash in the side of her head where a crate had hit. He moved over to her and pulled the crate off, only to see that her head was caved in some two inches where the corner had hit and punctured her skull.
The commando checked for vital signs anyway, but as expected found none. He pulled Sally’s body up and off the man below and laid it aside as everyone worked their way through the mess. Fortunately the bay had been mostly empty and no large crates had been in play. That said, when the pilot finally came out from the cockpit with blood streaming down the right side of his face from a gash on his head, he realized just how important his armor was…and how that he, one of the uninjured ones, had just become more important to their survival.
“See to them,” the Archon said, passing Rio and trying to open the rear hatch, which was now on its side according to the gravity. When he couldn’t get it to open he tore open an emergency panel and hit a manual release. That cracked it a few inches, but otherwise it didn’t move.
“Secondary exit?” Rio asked, walking up beside him as he began to wedge himself into the breach to widen it.
“No go,” Iden answered, with Rio adding his own leverage and the both of them moving the big door more than a foot when several blasts were heard overhead.
“My battlemap is down,” Rio noted.
“The front of the dropship is pancaked, including the relay and emergency beacon. I’d guess that’s the fighter trying to finish us off.”
“Stay or run?”
“Depends on how many trees,” Iden said, continuing to push and getting significant resistance from the door.
“I think I can slide through,” one of
the other commandos said, standing next to them.
“Try,” the Archon insisted, still applying pressure.
The slightly shorter commando passed by Rio and went through feet first. He got caught at the waist but managed to wiggle his way through, then a moment after he was out of view they all got a battlemap update as his armor began to map out the surrounding area with low level sensor pings. He also sent them a visual as he scanned the area, catching sight of the Skarron fighter making a looping turn to come back for another pass.
“Back or go,” Iden told him on the comm, with the commando taking off into the woods.
“Allow me,” the Knight said, stepping in between Rio and Iden, inserting a leg into the gap then pushing off with his other and shoulder to form a bigger wedge that moved the stubborn panel further out on its hinge and enough to easily get the other commandos through.
A waypoint flashed on Rio’s HUD and he dove through the gap as the explosions peppered the upper hull and dissipated. Behind him a cherry red spot appeared and disappeared on the port side…which was now the roof given how the dropship lay. Knowing that wouldn’t hold long, Iden ducked out after three of the commandos went through and got himself into open air.
He looked around at the trees…tall, thick, crooked, and not much in the way of leaves but there were enough branches to take some of the plasma.
“Perimeter at 100 meters,” he ordered. “I need a hideaway for the wounded.”
As he said that he moved around and got a view on the Skarron fighter, wondering why it wasn’t just hovering over top and blasting into them. Almost as soon as he made the thought the thing decelerated at range and began creeping up on them…with him knowing that was exactly what it intended to do next.
He opened a comm to the Knight. “I’m going for the fighter. I think I can at least slow it down with my psionics if I get close. Get everyone out and moving. I’ll catch up if and when I can. Don’t wait on me.”
“Understood,” Victor said, keying his own comm and coordinating with the commandos still inside the dropship to get everyone out ASAP. As he did he saw the silver armor run off through the trees in the direction the fighter was coming from, then eventually disappear as too many trunks and branches got in the way of his vision.
He could still read him on battlemap, but he trusted the Archon knew what he was doing…and as he said, would buy them a little time.
Victor came back under the opening where the ramp was wedged against several trees and helped to pull out a very bloody woman and two men, Chad included, and sent them along the line of unarmored people heading off through the trees following a pair of commandos he’d just assigned to the task. He poked his head back in for one last look, then seeing nothing but the 2 corpses he mentally abandoned the dropship and followed the perimeter commandos out as they collapsed around the vulnerable personal in a flanking escort, leaving the dropship and the Archon behind.
Everyone was running as best they could, but it was much slower than Victor was capable of so he took a few moments to look back, finally getting a good view of the damage to the dropship, who’s front section looked to be completely missing. He was surprised the pilot had survived at all…then he suddenly saw and heard the Skarron fighter dip down from the sky and into the trees, breaking through several of them before pulling up and racing back into the sky.
Their momentary diversion a success, Victor did as ordered and left the Archon behind, goosing his charges along as quickly as he thought they were capable of moving.
6
January 21, 2549
Reesi System
Metropolis
“What have we got?” Nevi asked, leaning against the trunk of an ugly tree as Rio took a look ahead from several branches above him.
“Trouble,” the other commando answered, using his helmet’s magnification to scout out the plain ahead. They’d been traveling for more than a day and had lost six people to Skarron fighters strafing them, but eventually they’d either eluded them or the Skarrons had bigger things to shoot, for they hadn’t seen any for the past 11 hours. It was just coming up on the night cycle, with a little daylight left in the very long rotation that the planet had, but ahead of them the forest ended and a grassy, muddy plain lay…which would leave them exposed out in the open with nothing to hide from the enemy in.
“Fighters?” Nevi asked.
“No,” Rio said, shaking his head in dismay. “There’s a grounded transport several klicks to the southwest and it’s got a good flood of infantry around it.”
“What they hell are they doing all the way out here? Wait, are they setting up a new LZ?”
“I doubt it. It’s just a single transport and there are no walkers. I’m pretty sure they’re here to hunt us. There are no other Star Force signals in the area.”
“Shit…why are they going to so much trouble?”
“I guess they don’t like us very much,” Rio commented, searching the limited view he had. There were several branches up and around him, for he didn’t want to climb high enough to make himself visible and give away their position. The survivors had hunkered down for a few hours of rest a ways back, with Rio and Nevi scouting out the area ahead while some of the other commandos who weren’t tired did likewise in other directions.
But they had to go across that plain to get to their destination, which was a small Star Force city still some 50+ kilometers away. They’d tried to get a signal out to alert the others to their position, but in order to do so they had to use the ‘open’ method of communication. Upgrades to the armor had included a transmitter capable of reaching orbit, but the signal wouldn’t be stealthed like their normal battlemap transmissions. Those signals had a much shorter range, and when they’d reported in their position they’d immediately drawn an enemy fighter response…basically waving their hands and saying ‘come shoot me.’
They’d lost two people to that, and weren’t about to do so again. Fortunately they’d gotten a response from an orbital relay that was one-way, informing them of the current status of the surrounding units and cities, so they knew the one they were headed toward was still intact, but the area they were located in was deemed ‘hazardous’ and there was no way an extraction team could get to them at the moment. Normally that wasn’t something that Star Force ever said, but with the level of Skarron units deployed Rio didn’t doubt it was the truth.
Their only chance was to stay off the radar, and Victor, the lone Knight in the group, had assumed command in the Archon’s absence and ordered no further comm attempts. The battlemap transmissions continued, along with a reduced local comm range, helmet to helmet, but nothing that would go more than a few miles and potentially alert the enemy to their location.
But they had to go across the plain, or else stay put and try to wait the enemy out with the limited emergency supplies they had. Fortunately one case had ambrosia doses, so Rio wasn’t feeling that loss just yet, but they didn’t have a lot of time to burn and still had a good day’s run ahead of them…with a lot of people who couldn’t run, meaning they were several days away from getting to their destination.
Part of him almost wanted to try and hijack the Skarron transport, but the hundreds of Hobbits spilling out around it squelched that idea immediately. He could spot a few elites as well with their shiny armor reflecting the last of the daylight. Night would help, but not as much as you’d think, given that the Hobbits could see well in the dark.
That meant they were stuck, and Rio wasn’t sure what they were going to do. He made a recording of the transport and panned his head around to get a good view of the area, then climbed down the tree and headed back into camp with Nevi, where he shared his visuals and sentiments with Victor and the others.
“They can’t be here for us. That’s way too much effort,” the Knight immediately said, not liking their luck. “There must be some other objective in play.”
“Well we can’t get through there either way,” Nevi added.
“No, we can’t,” Victor agreed. “And we can’t stay put. We’ll have to head north and get more distance between us and them before we try to cross.”
“That’s at least a 3 kilometer gap to cross,” Rio pointed out. “The civies will be sitting ducks.”
“Not just them,” Dravis added from the second row of what had becoming a growing circle of troops mingling together to discuss the matter. “I can run, but without armor I can’t take any hits either.”
“It’s the running part that worries me,” Rio answered him. “We have to make the crossing as quickly as possible and hope that their air cover doesn’t find us. And even if we get across I bet someone will notice and send those troops after us. We’ll be running for our lives and not everyone can keep up.”
“Perhaps one of you should go on ahead and try to bring back help,” Davi said, being one of the slower ones and very out of his element without a ship to pilot, having to rely on his secondary training and overall fitness to sustain him.
“They’ve got no help to send,” Victor reminded him. “If there was it would already be on its way. Based on their last transmission the city we’re heading towards might not stay in Star Force hands for long. They’re already beginning to evacuate the civilians, so they expect to get hit. This transport may be the first part of that assault. Even if it’s not, we can’t wait and miss our opportunity…otherwise our trek gets impossibly longer and our supplies are not increasing. We have to cross the gap and soon. The question is where.”
“We can’t risk the unarmored personnel,” another commando, one of the eldest in the group, said with finality. “We need a test to see how the Skarrons will respond. A two or three man team crossing at speed. If they make it across undetected then we can plan out how to get the slow ones across. If they don’t, at least they can run and gun.”
Victor nodded. “I agree, save for that we might be squandering our only attempt at surprise.”