"Should we look into using Mjolnir to help clear the way?" Sarah asked.

"No, not a big enough flock to risk the loses that using Mjolnir might bring about," Carrie said. "Maybe we should just go with orbital drops and brute-force a foothold."

"I don't think that's a good idea," Bunny said. "There's too many flyers in the air to risk doing that. We can't use shuttle runs either because of the Fireflys and Bombadiers. Any ideas, sir?"

I examined the map of the planet we'd been sitting in orbit over for the last two hours, planning the best way to build up a beachhead that we could use to begin our planetary assualt. In the time we'd been here, every idea had been terrible.

"Cai, show me the projected zones the Queen would be in," I said. "Also mark all flocks with Harpies in them at a one to three ratio with Vultures."

The requested zones were highlighted and the flocks were coded. The drones that'd mapped the planet for us had been able to find groups of Guardians in various places to allow us to deduce the most likely areas for the Queen to be in; before the Fireflys and Bombadiers destroyed them.

I examined the highlighted zones and the position of the flocks before I made a decision and announced it to my squad.

"We're going to perform a tactical insertion at this position and make our way toward this zone to hunt and kill the Queen here," I told them pointing at the places in question. "If there is no Queen to be found here, then we're going to kill all Guardians in the area and set sound beacons to draw the flock in the area into different places so that we can have Screechers dropped to us and from there we'll set them in as close to the Bombadiers and Fireflys as we can get them to clear a zone for our shuttles to drop in."

"That sounds ambitious," Carrie said after a moment. "Why there?"

"Look at the flocks around the zone," I said. "They have the highest ratio of Harpy to Vulture, one to three at mininmum. Flocks like that are usually close to the Queen. If she is there, then we'll kill her, destroy the most dangerous flocks, and remove the artillery Scourge in one go. If she isn't there, then we still get the most dangerous flocks and the artillery. We'll have our FOB and if the Queen is there, this planet's ours in two or three years instead of six or seven."

"Who's making the insertion?" Carrie asked.

"We will," I told her. "This isn't the sort of mission I'd trust to anyone else. Besides, I've spent too long sitting on my ass while my Nephilim fight and die. I'm more than ready to get back in the fight."

"Alright, girls," Carrie said after a moment. "Armor up. Make sure to grab survival kits and extra consumables. Rickshaw, I'll leave you to give Qin the good news."

"He's going to be so pissed about this choice," I muttered as I made my way out of the room and went to find the Wing that would be taking command of the Phoenix while I went planetside and killed Scourge. Poor guy, I should look into promoting him soon.

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"Ready?" I asked the girls as they walked up to me in the hangar. "Final armor checks?"

"I've got you," Carrie told me as she walked up to me. "Already checked them before we left the armory."

"Good," I said, turning to give her access to my back. "You girls ever used a coffin before?"

"What?" Carrie asked, pausing in her check of my gear. "Didn't you outlaw them in the Nephilim Army to prevent another Rallypoint?"

"I did," I said. "Since then, I've had some techs work out a new kind of coffin for us to use when we need to make a drop while the planet's got flocks and artillery that makes an orbital drop too dangerous."

"What did they do?" Carrie demanded.

"They've made a gun that fires the coffin out at high speeds, the hope is that the coffin will be too fast for the artillery to shoot down and the flocks will be too distracted by having to avoid it or from chasing it."

"Why will they be distracted?" Sarah asked cautiously.

"Because after the coffin's are sent down, we're going to drop," I told her. "There's going to be a total of ten coffins fired from the ship, all decoys to scatter the flock and distract the artillery. Then there's going to be us, moving slow enough to avoid atmospere burn, we're going to come in on our Seraphs and make our way to the ground while another round of coffins is sent out. Those are going to have extra supplies for us, so they'll be sent in closer to the landing zone and at slower speeds, so they don't break apart on the ground when they hit."

"So we're not going down in coffins?" Bunny said. "That makes me feel better."

"We'll still have to be careful," I told her as Carrie resumed her check of my gear. "There's no guarentee that the artillery won't see us and start shooting at us. And if the flocks catch sight of us, forget it. They'll rip us apart before we're halfway to the ground."

"Sounds like fun," Carrie said patting my shoulder. "Let's get to it then."

"Cai send word to the bridge. Fire the Coffin Decoys," I said, moving toward the open drop door.

"Let's have us some fun," Carrie said, running ahead of me and diving through the door as the first of the decoys hit the atmosphere and ignited from the friction.

I shook my head as the other two ran by me and dove after her before I accelerated into a run of my own and dove down to the planet. As soon as I hit the planet's atmosphere, my Seraph activated and slowed me so that I didn't have a burn halo around me as I usually did and I made my way down to the ground with a full view of the wheeling members of the flocks of Vultures and Harpies chasing after the coffins that still blazed across the sky with burning bioplasma projectiles from the Fireflys rushing to meet them. I found the sight oddly beautiful.

"Looks like it's all working!" Carrie called through a comm line. "This is a lot cooler to watch than I expected!"

"That's for sure," I agreed. "Touka's got the projected height that you can speed up, right?"

"Cai sent it to all of our Cybers," Sarah reassured me. "Clark and Rex are both sychronizing Bunny's fall with mine."

"That's good," I said. "With Carrie leading the way and acting as our target, we'll be able to hit ground without getting too far from one another."

"Actually, I asked Rex and Clark to keep me close to Sarah," Bunny admitted. "I didn't want to get lost."

"That's fine," I laughed as I watched Carrie pull out of her dive and begin preparing for her landing. "It still helps with something like this when I expected us to scatter over a twenty mile area."

As soon as I finished speaking I heard five booming thuds from over head. The coffins with our supplies had just been fired down.

"Keep an eye out," I told the other three, "Those coffins are the biggest indicator to the Scourge that we're doing something sneaky. They'll be looking out for something they might have missed up to now."

"You mean like four Nephilim falling from the sky?" Carrie joked.

"Exactly like that," I agreed as I pulled out of my dive and watched as Sarah and Bunny landed close by to Carrie. Now we just had to hunt down the Horde's Queen.