Close Chandra Orbit - Republic of Humanity Territory
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Kaya thundered down toward Chandra's swampy surface, the Champ’s system screaming in her ear and across her vision.
[The drop is in a nucle—very big missile—facility. Your team has to retake the nu—missile—silos and then make sure the EAF Nu—er, Missile Launch Specialist—stays alive until the launch sequence is finished and the nuclear—shit—]
“It’s. Fine. Just say it,” Kaya ground out the words between the drop pad in her mouth. It tasted like plastic and blood. Or maybe the blood was from her mouth; she wasn’t sure.
[Thanks <3 <3 <3]
[Okay, TLDR version: Take the nuclear missile silos, protect the Nuclear Launch Specialist, hold the base until the nuclear missile fires, then leave before you get too much nuclear radiation]
“Got it.”
[Nuclear!]
“Word’s banned again.”
[Awwww (╥﹏╥) ]
The retrojets fired, the pod door opened, and a machine gun mowed Kaya down before she could grab her rifle—or even see where she was.
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered major chest trauma (╥﹏╥) ]
[Running Retrograde Backup]
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Somewhere on Chandra - Republic of Humanity Territory
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It took Kaya six more drops before she found a safe spot; of the six, the longest she lasted was twenty-three seconds. As her pod hit the ground behind a nearby hill, she sprinted to cover, already punching in the reinforcement code for her very unfortunate squad. They hailed down around her. One by one, the pods popped open, and Strathmore, Gonzales, and Rogers took up positions nearby, firing at the missile base’s walls. Good, we’re finally regrouped.
[Special Reinforcement Code Available: Missile Launch Specialist]
“Keep those udderfuckers’ heads down!” Kaya shouted as she punched in another code and sent a shell screaming into the base from above. An EAF nuclear launch facility should be rated for a multi-kiloton explosion, so hopefully, a little 80-millimeter high-explosive orbital strike wouldn’t be a big deal.
Her team was already calling in their guns, and drop pods’ retrojets screamed in harmony with the bullets whizzing through the air around her head. Strathmore’s machine gun opened up, and a moment later, the first 40-millimeter grenade exploded against the launch base’s wall. Then the [80-Millimeter Orbital Strike] shell exploded, tearing out a section of concrete.
“There!” Kaya shouted, calling in the Kingfisher Mark Two. It started its attack loop, not quite hovering as its cannon swung back and forth, firing at the wall—and the Bonvarans behind it. With the jury-rigged gunship’s support and Strathmore’s machine gun pinning the cows, the rest of the team dashed to the wall.
Gonzales fired a grenade into a pack of cows, turning them into jerky, and then the squad was inside the base. Shell casings fell like brass rain as the Kingfisher barely avoided stalling out a hundred meters overhead. They bounced off Kaya’s armor and the concrete launch pad.
A few of the base’s bovine defenders rallied near the command structure. A bullet caught Strathmore as he came around the corner, killing him instantly. Rogers shot the Bonvaran, and it collapsed on the missile bay’s doors. Gonzales had already called for a new Strathmore clone, and the pod was whistling toward the launch facility by the time Kaya and Rogers kicked in the door and shot a cow technician who’d been at the computer terminal. Kaya checked the screen; the missile was still safely in place.
“Okay, base clear.” Kaya breathed a sigh of relief.
[Nuclear launch imminent! Deploy Missile Launch Specialist!]
[Special Reinforcement Code Available: Missile Launch Specialist]
“Okay, okay. Deploying.”
The code was twelve digits long—not something she could have used in a fight—and the oversized drop pod opened in a spew of crash foam. When the foam finally cleared, a terrified-looking, unarmored EAF soldier stepped out. “Good Republic, you do this several times a day?” He said, sweating. “You’re crazier than you look.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before, reg. Get to work,” Strathmore said.
“Strathmore, chill.” Kaya pointed at the specialist, then at the command room. “He’s right, though. Get to work, reg.”
[ALERT: The death of the Missile Launch Specialist will result in mission failure since you’ll be unable to launch the nuclear missile! Be careful!]
“Got it, system. And I don’t want to hear ‘nuclear’ out of your mouth again.” Kaya called up a [Tactical Supply Drop]. If they were going to be here for a while, they might as well stock up. As the pod dropped, she looked around. If—no, not if, when—the Bonravans attacked, she needed to know the ground she was holding. There were only two entrances for now, but if an 80-millimeter strike could open up the wall, maybe this place wasn’t built to multi-kiloton standards after all. The Bonravan rocket teams could probably open up more.
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“Strathmore, cover the gate. I’ll watch the breach we made in the wall. Gonzales, you’re on floater duty, and Rogers—“
“Already ahead of you, ma’am.” The sniper said. Kaya looked around and saw her arm sticking out from a window on top of the launch building. It pulled back. “I’ll cover where I’m needed.”
[LC! LC! There’s a group approaching the nu—missile—base from the south. Main gate, uwu]
The system turned out to be right; a minute later, the rhythmic rattling of Strathmore’s machine gun and a few explosions proved that. Kaya thought about joining, but her role was to hold the back entrance, not to go fight enemies up front. She’d just have to wait…and hope her team could handle things.
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Private Robert Strathmore thanked the Republic for the hundredth time that Lieutenant Commander Cameron didn’t like the heavy machine gun. The thing bucked on its bipod, and his muscles and shoulder ached from manhandling it, but shooting it was a pleasure.
Shooting anything was a pleasure. The machine gun just happened to be a lot of gun, a lot of bullets…a lot of shooting.
He’d discovered his love of guns—and it wasn’t an enjoyment or an obsession, but a love—in Junior Droppers, when he’d finally been able to shoot something besides the single-shot, bolt-action shotgun his family kept on Nevro III just in case the bugs showed up. The battle rifle had refused his too-gentle advances, kicked the hell out of his shoulder, and sprayed explosive rounds everywhere down range except for the target.
The JD Platoon Leader had been furious, and he hadn’t been allowed to shoot the semi-auto shotgun, heavy mounted machine gun, or grenade launcher.
Robert had fallen in love with the gun, and even though it had played hard to get, he resolved to find a way back into its good graces. Or, even better, catch the eye of something with more meat on its bones. He’d graduated middle of his class—nothing special, but not too badly to stand out to the Bureau of Patriotism’s officers—and been offered a few choices.
The machine gun rippled out a long burst that sawed an oncoming group of udder-fuckers in half, and Robert took a moment to enjoy the fresh bruise on his shoulder. Where was I? His weapon—his weapon—clicked shut on an empty chamber, and he grabbed another band of heavy bullets from his shoulders. The best lover kept his guns fed, and his LC had provided all the ammo he’d need.
He’d been offered a choice after school. He could go home, work alongside his father in the Nevro IV factories making ammunition, and be satisfied with the shotgun. He could join the Regulars and get some time behind the barrel in safe deployments with plenty of firepower at his back. He could have been a gunner on a drop corvette if he wanted. That last one featured big, big guns. But it wasn’t intimate.
Not like being a dropper.
The machine gun fired over and over in short bursts; he couldn’t give it the juice it wanted, but he could tease it along, save its ammo for the next group of Bonravan attackers, over and over. Somewhere behind him, Gonzales’s grenade launcher plonked out a round that blew a rocket team apart. The grenade launcher—he’d have to try that out sometime. It’d be a totally different buzz. Maybe better than the HMG.
Then, suddenly, there were no more targets to shoot.
Robert opened up the comm channel. “LC, we’re clear here. What’s next?”
“Hold position, wait for orders. Gonzales, fall back a bit so you can react to anything else,” LC Cameron’s voice came over the helmet. “Missile Spec, what’s the estimated time to launch?”
“Ma’am, this base is over thirty years old. Everything’s temperamental as fuck! The missiles are unfueled, I have to download codes for everything from changing coordinates to arming the warhead to running a diagnostic for worn out o-rings, and—“
“How long, Specialist?”
Robert ignored the reply. It didn’t matter. Already, the high he’d been feeling was fading. He couldn’t help it; he was trigger-sexual. Addicted to the gun, to shooting. He didn’t like killing like Rogers, and while he wasn’t a misplaced coward like Gonzales, he didn’t want to die over and over. The killing and the dying were just consequences of getting to shoot something like the—
[Dropper Lost. You have suffered incineration (╥﹏╥) ]
[Preparing Drop-Ready Clone: 7/8 Clones Available]
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Close Chandra Orbit - Republic of Humanity Territory
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Kaya thundered down toward Chandra’s surface, the Champ’s system screaming in her ear and across her vision. She groaned; she hadn’t seen what killed her, but ‘incineration’ meant either flame-using enemies, an enemy airstrike, or a catastrophic missile failure. Or, possibly, more than one of the above. They’d been fifteen minutes from making it—maybe twenty if the tech double-checked his codes and everything.
[The drop is in a nucle—very big missile—facility. Your team has to retake the nu—missile—silos and then make sure the EAF Nu—er, Missile Launch Specialist—stays alive until the launch sequence is finished and the nuclear—shit—]
“I got it, system. Take the base, protect the specialist, blah blah blah.”
[Well, yes. Can I say the word, please? Uwu]
“No.” Kaya bit down on the drop pad. It still tasted like blood and plastic.
[(╥﹏╥) ]
It took her two tries to land safely this time, and she didn’t lose any troops taking the base; her orbital strike was a few feet to the left, and she called down the Kingfisher Mark Two earlier, before her team’s weapons had even landed. The specialist landed, cursing about how droppers were crazy, and got to work. Kaya stopped her squad from making any comments. Instead, she let him work at his own pace, even though it felt slow as shit.
This time, Kaya joined the fight at the gate, just in case the cause of her earlier death was somewhere over there. She told Rogers to keep a close eye on the perimeter, and instead of asking the specialist how much longer, she told him to be fucking careful.
“No shit, candidate,” he grumbled. Kaya made a mental note to report him to the Bureau of Patriotism or whichever agency monitored anti-Republic slang. That kind of thing couldn’t slide. “The system’s old as hell.”
“I know. You’re in good hands here. Nothing’s getting inside until we’ve launched this bastard. Just keep working, but double-check your stuff. We don’t want any accidents, right?” Kaya asked.
“Right, ma’am. That’d be bad news for the whole damn mission.”
With the perimeter—for now—secured, the technician working toward launch, and a very bored-sounding Strathmore complaining about the view, the swamp-rot smell, the chunked-up udder-fuckers scattered across the whole base, and anything else he could find, Kaya passed the minutes staring out into Chandra’s cloud-covered swamp. Nothing was moving on her side, the system didn’t see anything from above, and even Rogers hadn’t shot anything in almost ten minutes.
Meanwhile, the nuclear—she couldn’t think the word without hearing the damn system’s voice—missile was rising majestically from its now-open hatch. The EAF logo gleamed on its side, fresh paint dripping down its fuselage, and Kaya couldn’t help but be impressed. “Okay, everyone back off. Launch in five minutes. We don’t want to be here unless someone opened the bunker,” the specialist said. “Did anyone open the god damned bunker?”
No one answered, and after a few seconds, the squad started running into the woods to the north, heading for the beach. They’d be able to call in a Pericles to leave there. The mission was almost over.