Lieutenant Thomas Wolf gazed out the porthole, taking in the serene view of yet another planet. The system’s sun flared one final time before vanishing behind the curved horizon in a final flash of light. Their orbit had finally taken the three-ship formation to the night-side of the planet.
“The formation is on final approach. Braking burn in five minutes. Acceleration burn to follow confirmation of final pod clearing minimum safe distance. All personnel, please report to your assigned positions for high G maneuvering. All platoons please suit up and board pods for orbital insertion,” the ship’s AI announced, its voice almost unnaturally polite.
Wolf sighed, shaking his head. I wish they’d stop buying corporate ship AIs, he thought bitterly. Wolf turned away from the calming view, steeling himself for the coming fight. He was assigned to make and hold a beachhead. His company only needed to secure an LZ large enough to allow the Engineers to build the pad. After that, the FOBS could land letting his company get a some R’n’R before acting as a QRF deploying to the worst fronts on the planet.
“What’s the word, LT?” the newest addition to his platoon asked as Wolf entered the ship’s armory.
“Stow it, Private! You should already be in your armor and running diagnostics, not chatting!” First Sergeant Ni’lan barked.
Wolf suppressed a grin, thinking about his green-skinned friend. Once he was suited up, he ran the usual diagnostics and, a few minutes later, checked on his platoons status. After confirming everyone had finished their checks. He scanned each of his troopers’ vitals. All read as green and ready for action.
“Ni’lan, I need everyone strapped in and ready to drop in five,” Wolf ordered using the direct line he had for his Sargent. While he let Ni’lan handle the troops he stepped up to the pod’s entrance. He grinned as he listened to his first sergeant organize the short march to their drop pod.
In what felt like moments, the platoon lay strapped in their racks. Each trooper looked, and likely felt, like a mummy bound in the mass of carbon fiber securing them in place. The straps held them motionless, preventing injuries when the pod was literally shot at the planet. They would be stuck in their bindings until they hit the dirt. Wolf had done this so many times he nearly nodded off from the tedium. The sudden jolt and clank of the pod locking into the chamber sent a surge of adrenaline through him, snapping him awake. “First launch in five, four, three, two, one. Good hunting, troopers,” the ship’s captain called just before they were shot out of the tube at nearly nine Gees.
The pod’s occupants went from nine times standard gravity to weightlessness the sudden change making even Wolf’s stomach do flip flops. The pod was sent gliding in a shallow arc towards the planet’s atmosphere alongside the other pods. “Delta-Two, what’s our ETA to planet-fall?” Wolf asked the pod’s rudimentary AI.
“Atmospheric entry in twenty seconds. Touchdown in five minutes,” it replied. As if on cue, the pod lurched violently. “ETA updated; enemy anti-air fire detected. Atmospheric entry in ten seconds. Touchdown in five to seven minutes,” it corrected.
Fighting the urge to do something, Wolf forced himself to relax his tense muscles. At this altitude, it had to be SOMs, Wolf thought. The suborbital missiles the most likely defensive measure on a backwater like this. “What kind of fire are we taking?” Wolf asked, hoping he was wrong.
“A suborbital missile cluster got within approximately sixty kilometers of the pod formation. The leading edge detonated upon targeting lock from pod Point defense. A large quantity of shrapnel and chaff was produced, masking the rest of the cluster. Evasive action was taken to avoid the largest calculated debris field and disrupt possible targeting solutions,” the AI replied. Just as it finished, the pod’s point defense system hummed to life, followed closely by the pod’s armored hull ringing like hail hitting a tin roof.
The cacophony gave way to a dull roar, steadily rising in intensity. “Atmospheric entry confirmed. No damage detected to the internal pressure hull,” Delta-Two stated. Wolf barely understood a word of it. He could scarcely hear his own thoughts. The roaring of the atmosphere igniting into plasma as it buffeted the pod’s hull drowned out everything.
Wolf clenched his eyes shut, forcing himself to focus on anything but the deafening roar outside the pod. The inferno raged for several tense minutes before it faded, only to be replaced by an unnerving chorus of alarms.
Wolf’s eyes snapped open, locking onto the tactical display in his HUD. Two pods from his ship had veered off course, along with several others from their sister ships. Wolf dismissed the pods from the other ships, they weren’t his responsibility, and zeroed in on his shipmates. One pod had suffered minor damage to its positioning thrusters. The other was a lost cause. If the readings were right, they’d drawn the short straw and bought the farm. The pod slammed into the ass end of a SOM that, by some cruel twist of fate, had failed to detonate with the rest. The breach in the hull must have let plasma flood the pod, roasting its occupants the moment they hit atmo. He would have shaken his head at their bad luck if he weren’t currently immobile.
Wolf cursed under his breath and pinged the damaged pod. “This is Lieutenant Wolf. Anyone read me?”
“I read you, Pup. This is Nickelson,” an old, gruff voice Wolf knew all too well.
“You seem to be in a bit of trouble again, Nickelson.” Wolf replied, grinning despite the dire circumstance.
“Yeah, our RCS is fucked. The debris tore through every damn tank. We were lucky they didn’t go up when we hit atmo.” Nickelson sighed, “I’m just glad the main thrusters use a different fuel or we’d be little better than a orbital debris.” He sighed. “Looks like we’re going to be hoofing it to the LZ with what we can carry… Unless you’ve got another one of your brilliant, insane ideas.”
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Wolf racked his brain trying to come up with a solution, then his pod jolted sideways, the evasive thrusters firing. That’s when it hit him, The evasive thrusters! “I think I might at that. Your pod still have all its evasive thrusters?” he asked.
Nickelson’s reply came slow, and deliberate, like he was weighing every word. “Yeah, we weren’t in the path of most of that debris when the SOMs either detonated or were hit by PDC fire.” He said, then groaned. “Pup, please tell me you’re not thinking of using those thrusters to get us into the decent corridor. They don’t have enough thrust to do the job.”
“They will, if you do exactly as I tell you,” Wolf said, his eyes tracking Delta-Three’s slow clockwise rotation.
Muting himself, he pinged his own pod AI. “I need you to help me with some calculations. Delta-Three needs to use its emergency evasive thrusters to nudge it back into its decent corridor. Give me the timing needed to get it done.”
“One moment, please,” Delta-Two replied.
Wolf scanned the other pods one more time, his jaw tightening when he confirmed loss of contact with a total of six pods. He forced the rising anger back down, it wasn’t useful to get Delta-Three to limp to the LZ. “Calculations complete. Should I send the data packet to pod Delta-Three?” It asked.
“Yes.” Wolf replied hurriedly as he unmuted himself. “Nickelson, my pod’s AI is sending a packet to yours. Have your AI implement that program to get you back into the decent corridor.”
For a moment, the only sound over the connection was the crackling of static. When Nickelson finally replied, it was with a laugh. “If this works, I owe you a keg when we get back to the ship. But if this harebrained idea throws my pod even farther off course, me and my platoon are going to haunt you until you join us in hell. Nickelson out.”
Wolf checked his own pod’s trajectory, their evasive maneuvers hadn’t pushed them out of their corridor. Surprisingly they were nearly dead on. His eyes snapped back to Delta-Three as its single use thrusters fired one at a time, first nudging the pod into position, then slowing its spin just enough for the airfoils to stabilize it.
Wolf was about to relax and await landing when a low boom echoed through the pod, followed by the dull ringing of shrapnel peppering the outer hull. “DELTA-TWO WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON?” he yelled, struggling to hear himself over the new cacophony as several other explosions erupted all around the pod.
“There is flak fire concentrating on this pod from multiple surface emplacements.” After a beat, it added. “ All hands message from Chattanooga…” The AI stated, it’s voice then shifted into an emotionless mimicry of the Chattanooga’s Captain, “Prepare for near-miss by railgun counter-battery bombardment.” The warning was laughable… Strapped into their swiveling racks, Wolf and his troopers were little more than helpless passengers, trusting the Chattanooga’s targeting sensors and the gunnery crew.
“Have one of the decoy’s ping the Chattanooga with a detailed sensor packet. Make sure they don’t blow us out of the fucking sky,” Wolf ordered his AI.
“Understood… decoy sending data packet.” It said when the direction and tone of the explosions shifted from one side to the other. That’s the side the decoy was on. Wolf thought in amusement.
“Message sent. However, the decoy was destroyed before confirmation of receipt.” The AI informed him.
“Delta-Two, designate another decoy as a relay. Alert all pods, the enemy is targeting active transmissions.” After a beat, he added, “Position the decoy slightly above us to minimize all backscatter visible to the surface. I don’t know if they’re targeting based on radio emissions or laser backscatter,” Wolf ordered.
“Message sent,” the AI confirmed. The fire shifted again, followed by several much louder booms that shook the pod. A moment later the flak cut off completely.
“Flak batteries have gone silent. Shockwaves from the strike had minimal impact on pod trajectories. Touchdown in two minutes,” the AI reported.
“Understood,” Wolf acknowledged, running a final check on the other pods. Every pod still on comms was on track to land within its designated drop zone.
Wolf’s comm beeped, automatically connecting to Ni’lan’s ping. “Lieutenant, I hate to distract you, but I think we took a hit,” Ni’lan said over their private channel.
Wolf pulled up his pod’s systems. Sure enough, a minor puncture had been recorded on the inner hull, but the ‘magic’ fluid between the armor and pressure hull had already sealed the breach. He didn’t know how it worked, only that it hardened when exposed to atmosphere or vacuum, and that was good enough for him.
“We did, Sergeant, but the hull is intact and the hole is sealed,” he replied.
“I know, sir,” the sergeant responded, his voice growing strained. “I only mentioned it because O’gren took a hit to his helmet, and I don’t know if he’s alive.”
Wolf pulled up O’gren’s vitals only to see… nothing. “You got eyes on O’gren, Sergeant?” Wolf asked, knowing they were within sight of each other after getting strapped in.
“Yes, sir. I see where the shrapnel hit, but I can’t see O’gren’s face,” he replied.
Holding in a curse, Wolf asked, his eyes flicking to their ETA countdown in the corner of his HUD. “Does it look like the helmet’s comms gear is damaged?” One minute, thirty seconds. He mused, a stray thought flitting to the front of his mind, why does time always slow just before we hit the dirt?
“I can’t… Yes, sir, it looks like the helmet transmitter was sheared off by the impact,” Ni’lan said.
“Either way, there’s nothing we can do until we land in about one minute. Make sure the rest of the platoon is ready to dig. I have a feeling we’re in for a tough fight,” Wolf said, already planning to check on O’gren before grabbing a shovel himself.
With that thought, Wolf reviewed the immediate terrain surrounding the LZ. Good, just soft soil and sparse tree cover. Should be easy to set up some quick-and-dirty trenchworks between the pods before calling in the engineers.
The voice of the captain Ult’an, the man in overall command of the landing force came over the comms. “Alright, we’ve had some setbacks. We lost five pods, and I had to reorganize what was left into a single defensive line. I expect all of you to do your jobs. Get those trenches dug and hold the line.”
As soon as he finished, the AI’s voice cut in. “Prepare for a heavy burn in five, four, three, two, one,” the AI warned. Their beds flipped, locking them into position, facing what would be their ceiling for the next forty-eight to ninety-six hours. A moment later, Wolf felt the crushing weight of the thrusters as they burned hard, slowing them just enough to keep the impact from leaving them combat-ineffective.
While Wolf felt like a dropship was trying to use him as a landing skid, he thought back to the last time he tried to explain what a drop was like to the suit techs. The techs swore up and down that they didn’t experience the full G forces troopers thought they endured.
When the tech started rambling about shock-absorbing fluid in the crash bunks and how the skinsuit contracted to keep normal blood flow, Wolf did his best to keep his eyes from glazing over. All Wolf really understood was there was some kind of tech voodoo kept him conscious and his blood where it belonged.
