“Objective A is the main food storage. Objective B is the water farm. Objective C is the control center for the hydroponic greenhouses, and Objective D is the fuel storage at the civvie airfield. We’re sending your platoon in, one squad per objective.”
Members of the platoon are silently absorbing this information. I look at Sergeant Fallon across the room, and her face is impassive and unreadable. Finally, the platoon lieutenant raises a hand.
“Sir, you’re going to send four squads into a town of over ten thousand to take their most important resources?”
“You’ll be in battle armor, and you’ll have all four Dragonflies supporting you from above. The most dangerous stuff they have down there are sidearms and maybe some stun sticks.”
“Why isn’t the SI company going in?” Sergeant Fallon asks. “Sir,” she adds, with a bit of acid in her voice.
“The general feels that the HD platoon is better suited for this task. You folks are trained and geared for exactly this kind of mission profile, and you have a lot more experience handling belligerent civvies than we do.”
I have an unpleasant flashback to a drop into Detroit almost five years ago: our squad holed up against the side of a building, and a surge of angry civilians coming toward us like a natural disaster. Then the hoarse chattering of our rifles, and our fléchettes cutting through bodies, mowing down rows of people in a bloody harvest. I don’t believe in souls, but if I have one, a big chunk of it died that night in Detroit.
“We do a quick vertical assault with the drop ships. One Dragonfly per squad, so we can get you all on the ground in the same second. Secure the facilities, establish your perimeters, and call in the cavalry once you’ve seized the objectives. If the civvies get cranky, use nonlethal deterrents. Once you give the all-clear, the Dragonflies are going to RTB and pick up one platoon of SI each, to reinforce the objectives. Should be a cakewalk.”
“Spoken like a man who ain’t gonna be there,” the SI sergeant next to me mutters under his breath, and I nod in agreement.
I want to talk to Sergeant Fallon before we board the ships for our little cakewalk, but on the way to the flight area, she’s in a walking huddle with the rest of the platoon’s NCOs. With my fleet-pattern armor and my fleet weaponry, I already feel like a bit of an interloper among the HD troops, and walking to the flight line by myself only reinforces the feeling. Just before we get to the flight-ops area, the wandering HD powwow breaks up, and I notice some of the NCOs shooting me sideways glances.
We walk up to the ramp of our waiting Dragonflies without much enthusiasm. The troop bay is designed to hold a full platoon, and our little squad has lots of legroom. I sit by the tail ramp for faster egress, but Sergeant Fallon and two of her noncoms sit by the forward bulkhead, right by the crew chief’s jump seat and the passageway to the cockpit.
As our Dragonfly lifts off into the cold morning sky, I have a very strange feeling about the upcoming drop.
Our four-ship flight takes a course away from the settlement, to gain altitude out of sight and earshot. When we are high enough to be inaudible from the ground, we swing around and head straight for our targets.
“Prepare for combat descent,” the pilot says over the shipboard intercom.
When we’re directly above the town, twenty thousand feet above the hard deck, our drop ship banks sharply, cuts its engines, and drops out of the sky. The pilots are either adrenaline junkies or they don’t get very many opportunities to do combat descents. We’re all grunting in our seats as the drop-ship jock at the stick holds a three-g turn for what seems like minutes. Then the engines rev up again, and gravity pushes us back into our seats. The Dragonfly slows its rapid descent, and a few moments later, the skids hit the ground roughly.
“All squads,” Sergeant Fallon’s voice comes over the platoon channel. “Bastille, Bastille, Bastille.”
“Up and at ’em,” the crew chief calls out. We unbuckle and grab our weapons from the storage brackets.
Most of the squad exits the ship at a run, but Sergeant Fallon and the two NCOs with her don’t follow them. I stop at the bottom of the ramp and look back to see that one of the HD sergeants has his rifle aimed at the crew chief, who looks utterly perplexed. Sergeant Fallon rushes up the passageway to the drop ship’s cockpit, with her remaining NCO at her heels.
I jog back up the ramp, careful to keep my hands away from the carbine slung across my chest, lest the HD trooper holding the crew chief at gunpoint thinks I’m about to intervene in whatever crazy-ass plan Sergeant Fallon is executing.
“Hands off the comms gear,” the HD trooper instructs the crew chief, and emphasizes the command with a wave of his rifle muzzle. I walk past them to follow Sergeant Fallon into the cockpit, and the HD trooper gives me a curt nod.