“I can’t believe we’re stuck with these…academic fuckups!” one of the blue armored men muttered to another in the dark chamber.
“I thought we were just gonna kick ’em out the back door when we hit three hundred meters,” his comrade replied.
“Stow the chatter, grunts. Whatever you think, these VS boys’re stuck with us. Treat ‘em like you would any of us NC,” Squad Leader Carter McElrich ordered. Even so, he tightened his grip on the Piston when one of the VS Acolytes came back to this area of the Galaxy.
One of the VS grandmasters that they were escorting turned to him in a bow. “Thank you for keeping your men in line. It would prove…unfortunate if there was an accident,” the older man, in his soft voice, said.
“I didn’t do it for you, you weak little fuck. I did it ‘cause the suits think a temporary alliance can help bring down the TR. If I had my druthers, I’d put a shell in your skull and kick the rest of you out the drop door, but the truce says I can’t slaughter all of you. So consider yourself lucky, bitch,” McElrich spat at him.
“Drop zone reached, drop on my mark!” the pilot spoke, speakers crackling as they passed through some kind of field. The back door hissed, then dropped down an inch.
The NC who were nearest the door buckled on their gear and slammed magazines home into receivers, then stood up. Most were equipped with the jump jet backpacks that were standard issue to light assault troopers, but more than a few had specialist gear. Then there was a hydraulic whine, and a tremendous thump. The MAX had come online, and was prepping to drop.
On the other side of the Galaxy’s troop compartment there were twelve men in insectoid, grey carapace armor. These men briefly checked the battery levels in their weapons, then stood in silent, grim attention. The tallest one of their number was their own MAX, who waited behind the troops.
McElrich checked his Piston, then slammed his fist against the drop doors release. With a roar of wind, the door dropped to form a ramp out the back of the Galaxy, and he took a running leap off into the cool night air of Auraxis.
The drop site was an ancient crater, a scar in the swampy growth that was the continent of Hossin. At least we got airdropped ahead of the TR boys, this’ll be a hell of a fight once the main forces reactivate the Warpgates, McElrich thought as the wind whipped by his exposed lower face. He rolled over to survey the twenty-three other rapidly falling men and women behind him, checking that they were managing their descent. Even the most hardened of vets could get cocky and suffer a botched drop. McElrich himself had suffered a couple of those, and getting reconstituted thanks to the Vanu Reanimation Engine was never a pleasant feeling. That, and the psychological leftovers were always a problem.
He realigned himself with the ground, did a last second weapons check, and then heard a scream. A scream from one of his boys. He whipped himself around once more, which probably saved his life. A bolt of plasma from the VS MAX burned through the space his face had been a second ago, and then he opened fire.
The automatic Piston was a powerful, destructive example of Auraxian Firearms ballistic technology. Firing at a rate of two-hundred twenty-five rounds per minute, with a muzzle velocity of three-hundred meters per second, the tightly-clustered group of magnetically accelerated projectiles turned the first VS light assault’s upper body to mincemeat, shredding through the armor and the flesh underneath. As soon as he opened fire, he went onto the squad’s subvocal communications network. “Shields up, boys, these bastards are fixin’ for a killin’,”
All around him his squad racked their guns, turning on the VS troops. A gunfight erupted, the heavy thumping roar of the NC coilguns and the pulsing thrum of the VS plasma-based weaponry splitting the night sky. The two MAXes dueled in the air, trying to get their heavier weapons to bear on the other while the little infantry slugged it out.
Three of the NC troopers had fallen, blood raining from still wounds. Six of the VS had been killed in the opening volley the close-range specialists unleashed upon them. The VS MAX had been killed as well, although the duel had left the friendly MAX in shambles as well. As they descended, suddenly the nanites that followed them out of the Galaxy cut out. The fall went from a controlled, usually safe drop to an uncontrolled free-fall from a hundred and fifty meters up. The light assaults might survive, provided they controlled their use of the jetpacks, but the MAX, the heavy, the engineer, the medic medics, and the lone infiltrator wouldn’t survive the fall period. “Lights, grab the specialists, then controlled descent! Keep ‘em alive!” McElrich hollered, latching on to Michaels, one of the medics.
The light assaults drifted over to the less-freefall-acclimated troopers and latched on, even the VS following his orders. Their squad lead had fallen in the gunfight, and both sides were more preoccupied with surviving the fall than killing each other. There was a pulsing, throbbing bellow that seared the air, and then a flash as something in the Vanu artifact below activated. A wave of bluish electricity rolled through the squads.
On a hillside about a hundred meters away, a man in a skin-tight suit appeared, as if from thin air. The microfilaments in the suit responsible for the refraction of light whined ever so slightly as they cooled off from the power that had flowed through them. A sniper rifle rested on the rock next to him, and as he picked it up and chambered a fresh round, he spoke under the helmet. “Command, this is Ghost. The rebels and the VS have discovered the artifact. I’m moving in to place a drop beacon.”
“Good work, Alpha-Twelve. Place the beacon, and First Platoon will drop behind. Loyalty until Death,”
“Strength in Unity.”
McElrich would sit on an ill-fitting chair sometime later and wonder if the Vanu really were dead, or if they had just hidden themselves. The events that were to take place were too outlandish to believe were simply the chance malfunction of an ancient weapon system.