CNS Cynthia, 209km above Terra
506th Drop Division, 5th Infantry Corps
Light Squadron
A massive cradle arm swung through choking air, the hull of the giant battlecarrier across the darkside of the planet dotted with lights in an attempt to resemble the dark twinkling expanse of land, sea and sky below. Hundreds of kilometers above the planet the CNS Cynthia loomed calmly over the picturesque battlefield below it; bright lights and sudden flashes noted the warfare below, while all around it in the thin air of the atmosphere the battle in space continued to rage. Through the miniscule porthole of the SPECTRE pod, Corporal Wallace Cayman felt the creeping anxiousness of the upcoming drop overwhelm him. Though he was bulwarked in jet black armor, his palm sweated profusely and his brow felt wet from perspiration. While he was protected by ballistic plating and some of the most advanced technology the Coalition could field, he still felt the bubbling doubt and fear that plagued every fighting man in this outfit.
They weren’t afraid of death. Not afraid of giving their lives for people they never met, never knew and, personally, never cared for. No, all they were afraid of was missing the fight, and letting some other amateur pretend he won the war. They were here to fight, and they were here to win.
“Captain Morse to all Light actuals, t-minus ten to launch. Button up and buckle up kiddies.”
The speaker’s vox was garbled with a static; out on this spindly wing of the Cynthia, known as the “Drop Arm”, the ship’s radiation coating and disruption equipment wasn’t as powerful as it was on any of the larger parts of the ship. This resulted in a choked, white-washed message that made Cayman look back up at the large, blaring red light in his pod. When that light turned green, well, he could officially call himself a Naval Cavalry pilot as the 40 ton drop pod fell to the planet from a distance of over a hundred kilometers.
A few silent minutes went by and Cayman was back alone with his thoughts, locked away in a high-velocity entry vehicle nestled into the Drop Arm. He peered back up at the light display and brought a hand up to the holographic prompt before him; restrained into the pod with a distributing-hold mechanism on the inside of the pod like a turtle. He used both his arms to interact with the hologram. Windows shined to life next to him and above him, panels of alloy capable of becoming transparent letting the sights below reach the Corporal. After a few more commands the Corporal looked over at a video display against the hard metal of the drop pod.
“Now we can get shit done. Let the marines evacuate their fucking protected humanitarian personnel.”
Corporal Cayman put his hands back down at his side, one of them reaching the holster for the MR-32 assault rifle mounted in a carrying pack in the hold device with him. He recognized the voice from another Corporal in his squad, Janner.
“Shut up and get ready to be stuck tagging the corpses we kill because your sorry ass is busy talking about the civvies, Echo team fucks.”
“Your stupidity is audible even though I’m a hundred meters away from you. This is not comforting at all.”
Corporal Cayman saw a distant flash a few dozen kilometers from the ship and felt a subtle jostle for one moment as the ship’s massive anti-planetary guns fired. Something seemed wrong however, across the darkness of space several more great flashes raced further below through the atmosphere of the planet and Cayman felt the entire Drop Arm attached to the battlecarrier shudder.
“Oh fuck this is where the simulation goes wrong!”
Two giant spiralling balls of flame toppled in front of the drop pod, a pair of destroyed drones caught in the fall of the planet that exploded in a choked red flame that suddenly made a spider web across the digital viewpoints.
“Now we have an excuse to get groundside dammit! Push the fucking button!”
Cayman took a sharp breath as he heard the communications shut out after that command; darkness enveloped him save for the light display now shining bright green. First he reached up to secure the huge mechanism in front of him that locked the entire intricate system in preparation until he heard the audible tone that sounded before the SPECTRE took the terminal launch out of the starship.
Nearly a hundred kilometers later Cayman held his arms out in front of him, palms on the dead display after the entry vehicle had finished tumbling in a wide spin until the final correcting thrusters activated. Now though, Cayman knew he was merely on a single direction of entry striking an incredibly specific place from hundreds of thousands of meters above the ground. What he did not know was where that place was.
After the inertia had evened out Cayman felt the creeping impressions of G-loc dissipate as lights from a digital interface splashed across the face visor of his helmet. Soon afterwards though he was greeted with a prompt warning the system was going offline. The impact he would sustain, considering where he hit, could annihilate the electronics onboard with him; while due to the engineering of the pod it was the human that, in all tests and prototypes, had the best durability surviving impacts in it. A trooper without his gear was formidable, but not the ideal situation for how the Drop Infantry fought.
He made sure to check the MR-32 again, one finger poking down at the netting that held a bundle of ammunition and particularly a spare can of 10.9mm LAR-90 GAW ammunition. Around it was ammunition stacks, portions of magazines arranged in threes, of 10.6mm ammunition. Corporal Cayman remembered the timer of drop entry though, this was not his first drop. Taking his hands back up to the large bulwarks across his chest he pushed a manual button mounted on the hull of the pod that activated a single, rudimentary, scratchy window in a long vertical rectangle in front of him, the porthole a small circular addition near his head. The horizon reached up at him as the pod descended across the urban cityscape and through low-lying clouds or burning structures leaking blackness across the trooper’s wake of fire.