#hyperion sector

Location: Hilden III

Time: 1135, 6-3 GM, 1335 A.C.

Doran tapped one finger idly against the control stick as he circled the tower, watching the bursts of light indicating small arms fire dance through the windows. The pirates were putting up a good fight, but they were clearly outmatched and, thanks to the few suits of powered armor, outgunned.

“Doran, we’ve got ten bogies warping into system and heading your way. I’m moving my squadron off to engage.” Hezdor’s voice rang through Doran’s headset clearly, and Doran, thanks to years of practice, kept his focus entirely on the tower.

“Copy, Hezdor, good hunting,” he responded. Hezdor ended the chat with an affirmative grunt, and the line went dead.

The feline went back to tapping out the nondescript beat against the control yoke. The dropship’s variable autopilot was doing most of the work for him at the moment; he hadn’t even moved the stick since he’d moved into the circling pattern.

“Doran, we’ve got the hostages. Get set to pull us out of here.”

“On it,” Doran said, a slight sense of glee flooding through him at the prospect of actually being able to move the damn stick himself. He turned it to guide the dropship in to the shattered window of the tower. The landing was at least smoother than the previous one; there was no one to shoot at him any more.

Nonetheless the rest of the Falcons hurried back into the troop bay, guiding or half-carrying hostages in and started to buckle them down. Gear stomped through the door to the cockpit and slid into the copilot seat behind Doran, reaching up and removing her helmet. The sound of the beings in the troop bay behind them was silenced as the door to the cockpit slid shut with a soft hiss, and Doran began making sure the ship was space ready. No enemies within two thousand klicks

He felt a gentle pinch on the tip of his ear. The offended ear twitched, and he turned to glare at Gear, who laughed.

“Have fun practicing your circles in the iron tub?” She said, a teasing lilt in her voice. Doran pretended not to notice the several colors of blood up and down her front.

Doran grinned. “She may be a tub, but I’m not the one who stopped to take a bath on the way back.”

She matched his grin, her teeth glistening white. “I like you. Careful about what you find in your shower later, new blood.”

“I think this blood’s older than you give it credit for,” Doran said, turning back to face the front as the diagnostics finished and green lights went on. He tilted his head back and forth, suppressing a shiver down his spine.

Gear opened her mouth to respond, but then almost bit her tongue off as the dropship’s engines slammed to full throttle and Doran pushed the control stick as far forward as it would go.

There was a whistling and then a shrieking sound like death itself as two missiles rocketed in from starboard and passed where the dropship had just been, narrowly missing the fully loaded craft.

“Fighters!” Doran yelled as Gear gritted her teeth, her hands reflexively grabbing the armrests of her seat as the dropship accelerated to full speed, her nose pointed straight down.

At the very last second Doran pulled back on the stick and tugged it to port, leveling the dropship out. The fighters screamed by them overhead and broke away from each other, starting to circle back around. Doran didn’t even try to fire the dropship’s chingun; the rotary cannon was designed for laying down suppressing fire on infantry, and they were already several klicks away.

“You going to get us out of here?” Gear called out over the scream of engines as Doran pulled back on the stick, the dropship starting to climb upwards.

“Quiet, I’m working!” He called back to her as the fighters starting closing back in. The lock-on alarm blared. The first missiles had been dumb-fired, the fighters hoping to catch the dropship unawares. Now they were no longer messing around. Doran knew that they would have already fired, there being no real reason to wait around to kill your prey.

So he completed the long loop back up the tower and aimed the dropship’s nose straight in at it. Gear swore a blue streak and just clamped down harder on the armrests as the dropship tore through the office tower, vibrating as metal ceiling ground against the top of the ship.

The alarm intensified as the missiles closed in, and Doran slammed on the port side pedal and then the starboard one, skidding the dropship around the central column that made up the central maintenance and transportation portion of the tower. Then he mentally crossed his fingers and prayed to every damn deity he could recall...

It worked. The missiles exploded, tearing through the central column of the tower. The fighters may have had stealth on their side, but their missiles were not equipped with expensive sensor packaging. They could track around most solid targets, but the tower’s central core, like most skyscrapers, was constructed of a low-density but incredibly strong plastic, reinforced with titanium-alloy rods. It didn’t read as a solid object to be avoided by the missiles’ sensors, and so they’d slammed into it at speed.

Dust and chunks of building rained around them as Doran pulled back on the throttle, keeping his foot on the pedal. His sensors also may not scan the central column properly, but they could still pick up a stealth-equipped fighter with dust and debris pinging off it.

He fired before he could even see it. The chingun was indeed designed for countering ground forces, but there isn’t much of a difference between tank armor and fighter armor, especially not at a mere 200 meters. The fighters shields evaporated, and the smoking ship began an arc downwards.

Doran tugged the stick as the dropship was jostled. The other fighter roared by mere meters away, catching its prey in its slipstream.

Without any other real options, Doran turned the dropship and gave chase to the fighter. The dropship’s engines allowed him to match its speed, even if he couldn’t close with it to finish off the fighter with the chingun.

Doran reached up and tapped the comm screen, opening a channel to Hezdor. “Boss, got a problem here!”

There was a grunt and an “on my way,” and the channel went dead.

Doran returned his focus to staying on the fighter’s tail. He couldn’t kill it and he couldn’t out fly it now, but he sure as hell was going to keep the bastard busy for a couple minutes.

Out on the flat desert, there wasn’t much of anywhere to fly. The fighter dove and climbed and dodged and jinked, but Doran kept on him, one thumb on the trigger.

Finally the fighter did the most simple thing he could: He straightened out his flight path, pointed his nose at the horizon, and rammed his engines to full. Doran cursed as the fighter started to pull away from him, the agile craft easily outdoing his transport ship. He too fed juice into the engines, trying to keep pace as best he could for as long as possible...

The fighter dropped all engine power and stood on its tail, using the entire fuselage of the craft as one giant airbrake. It bled speed fast, and Doran narrowly avoided smashing into it as he slammed the dropship on its side and pulled up on the stick, also closing up the throttle to essentially pull the same maneuver. The dropship, however, had a much narrower profile than the fighter, and so went sailing right passed it.

Doran pulled up on the stick more to finish turning the dropship in a 180 and leveled her out, feeling his gut fall into his legs.

For a split second his dropship and the fighter stared at each other, no more than fifty meters apart. Doran didn’t even really register the lock-on alarm that sounded the death knell.

And then the fighter exploded, followed immediately by the delayed chatter of railgun fire. Hezdor’s ship sailed almost lazily overhead, and the channel opened up.

“You scratched up the paint on my dropship.”

Doran sank back into his seat as Gear whooped. She’d spent the entire four and half minutes the fight had taken hanging on for dear life, alternately grinning through clenched teeth and cursing. Doran set the dropship to hover as Hezdor circled, then pulled off his headgear and turned to face her, winking.

“I find anything weird in my shower after that, I’m leaving you behind.”

Location: Kara II

Time: 0017, 1-16 GM, 1328 A.C.

When you live long enough anywhere, you get used to the sounds of the place, the way the air shifts and moves. An astute being can tell a lot about what’s going on in a building by the sounds being made in it.

Therefore someone as absolutely paranoid and sharp as Buck was able to snap his fingers to turn on the lighting at the exact moment Damien began to realize he just might not be alone.

“An’ yer dead,” Buck said lazily, lowering his hand to the armrest of his chair. “Much better than last time, though. Out racing again?”

Damien seemed almost proud of himself before Buck’s question hit him. Then all expression fell from his face, and he stared back at his adoptive dad.

“Gotta do something for fun.”

“Could do something where yer less at risk of getting arrested.”

“I can out-drive any damn Enforcer on a bike on this planet an’ ye know i’.”

“Something a little less hazardous to yer health, then.”

“As if ye get to judge me for tha’.”

Buck’s teeth clicked together audibly. He didn’t bother trying to mask his irritation, even if it just showed as his eyes narrowing slightly. Damien’s own mouth snapped shut as well. Clearly he’d been having that particular thought for a while now, 

Buck let the silence hang in the air for a good ten seconds before responding.

“An’ ye also know my subordinates generally risk their lives as much as I tell them to.”

Damien crossed his arms at that. “Never asked to be yer subordinate.”

“Ye didn’t seem to mind when I was teaching ye how to swing a punch.”

“An’ then left me out to dry when I did hit someone.”

Buck ignored the jab, continuing on. “Nor when we taught ye how to take care of a weapon.”

“Field stripping a rifle after ye got back from a job for cleaning.”

“Nor how to use one.”

“Firing at non-descript holograms.”

“So you regret being taught how to hunt monsters?”

Damien’s mouth snapped shut once more. Buck could practically see the loading screen in his head.

“I regret not having been given the chance to put the skills to use in the real world as of yet. Boss.”

The words were slowly in coming, chosen and delivered with care. The last one stung a bit; Damien only ever called him that when he was annoyed. For a split second Buck almost corrected him, but he righted himself.

“You will be given tha’ chance as soon as I believe ye are responsible enough to put those skills to use, not merely capable.”

Damien frowned. “Of course ‘responsible’ in this case being ‘stop doing the thing you love’?”

Agent H405 Note: Let it be on record that I strongly object to the declassification of this transcript. The only reason it is being released is that the judiciary committee discovered that there was an audience of around 350 enemy personnel in personal attendance of this broadcast, along with an unknown number listening in remotely. While this does mean it is unlikely to compromise our agent(s), the faction we are dealing with has demonstrated themselves to commit purges of their ranks in the mere hope of killing our agents before, as well as retaliatory strikes against Commonwealth targets, both civilian and military. Please refer to the “Shrike Incident”.

I cannot stop this transcript from being released, but I’ll be damned if it’s released without letting everyone know this was not unilateral.

Location: [REDACTED - Operational Security]

Time: [REDACTED - Operational Security]

[Begin recording]

Electronic Voice (EV) [Unidentified: Voice is virtually generated and has no biological origin]: Attention. Attention. General Tanz is now speaking.

Tanz [Identified: Voice pattern matches Gregory Syphon Tanz. See attached dossier for more info.]: Let me get straight to the point. Someone’s been acquiring us some shit shielding. Now, I know I’m not the only one mad about this. No one wants shit shielding, so allow me to educate anyone stupid enough to not know what shit shielding is.

Shit shielding is shielding that is shit. You see, when energy shielding is struct by any projectile, solid or plasma, it burns off some capacitor energy to form a field to prevent it from hitting your dumb ass. How much energy it uses depends on the quality of the shielding. The lower the quality, the more energy the capacitors burn as more is burned off as light and heat.

Yes, that’s right. The best quality shields you’ll find are the ones you’ll barely see when hit. The flashier they are, the faster they’ll burn out, and the faster you die.

So when you’re out an getting us some replacement equipment, it would do you well to test out the quality of the shielding thoroughly, or else you’ll end up like poor Mr. Johns here.

[At this point a holoprojector at the front of the room comes to life, displaying a grisly screen. A Felinus is stretched out on a rack with his hands stretched out to either side. The audience gasps as they realize that his chest is cut open, his lungs having been pulled out through the top of his rib cage and thrown over his shoulders in the typical “bloody eagle” fashion. “Mr. Johns” is clearly expired, even though another, unidentifiable figure can be seen moving in the background.]

Location: Kara II

Time: 1630, 1-15 GM, 1328 A.C.

Damien dodged nimbly between two other teens as he raced out of the school building. The first day of class was over, and he had somewhere to be.

Ignoring one of the fellow teen’s grumbling, Damien raced over to the bike rack, rapping at his wristpad interface to unlock the hoverbike’s locks.

Before it was even fully unmounted from the security lockup he was strapping on the safety harness that was standard for any hoverbike owner with more than two brain cells left to rub together. On Kara II a harness had to have a minimum four-point-oh safety rating, meaning that, theoretically, it would save him from any impact up to 1,400 kilometers per hour.

That was, however, likely not without injury, but Damien had never had the misfortune to have to test the harness’ capabilities.

Snapping the final clasp into place, Damien swung his leg over the bike and fired up the ignition. The bike thrummed under him as he guided it out of the school’s parking lot and onto the main road.

Damien drummed his fingers impatiently as he followed a father in a family car, his own instincts driving him mad as he was forced to obey the strict speed limit.

Finally, however, the car passed a certain intersection. Well, less of an intersection, and more of a natural path that lead through a thick forested area. Damien grinned, flipped the visor on his helmet down properly, and twisted the accelerator.

He flew down the path, a couple of tree branches smacking at his helmet like a reproachful mother’s hand.

Suddenly the path dropped away. Damien knew it was coming and yanked the bike hard around to the left. Suddenly he was riding along the edge of a cliff, high above most of the rest of Kara II’s capital, several hundred meters of sheer white cliff beneath him.

His grin broadened as he pushed the bike faster, turning his head to look out over the city.

Kara II’s main academy was situated on one of the highest plateaus in the area, giving the white and grey metal buildings a good view of the surrounding area. Tunnels honeycombed the rock underneath the plateau, allowing easy access to the bottom of the canyons around the school, and two tall, curved bridges with not a single sharp edge connected the plateau to two others nearby.

Though it was one of the larger plateaus around, it was still not long before Damien reached where he needed to be. One lone path, nearly as sheer of a drop as the cliffs themselves, wound its way down to the canyon floor. Leaning hard and pulling up roughly on the control sticks, Damien turned the bike around the first hairpin turn with ease, guiding it down the path.

Less than seventy seconds later (he timed it) he’d reached the bottom. Damien’s grin spread nearly from one ear to the other as he twisted the accelerator further, and the hoverbike’s loud hum rose to a roar. He rocketed out into the canyon, the hoverbike’s anti-gravity fields keeping him just shy of two meters above the churning river beneath him. Two students taking a break on the shore waved to him, but Damien was around the bend before he could wave back.

Kara II’s capital was primarily build on the cliff and plateaus that ran through the landscape like cracks through glass, with the bottom of the canyons primarily being deep rivers that provided the city with a constant supply of fresh, clean water. It was in these canyons that Damien liked to race his bike around as there was generally no Enforcer presence.

Today was different, though. He had somewhere to be.

Fleet looked up as he heard he heard the familiar sound of Damien’s hoverbike. The others barely tilted their heads to look as Damien slowed to a halt in front of Fleet. Fleet’s   fur matched his namesake, and the Equs stood just a tad tall for his species, nearly matching Damien’s height. His long, feathered wings were furled tightly against his back, and he moved with the easy, delicate grace of anyone with bones built for flight.

The Equs stood as smoothly as ever as Damien pulled the ignition plug and dismounted. “I think you may be in for an actual challenge today.”

Damien just flashed Fleet his usual cocky grin. “Had t’ happen someday,” he said, his voice clearly having picked up his adoptive parents’ accent.

Fleet smirked and crossed his arms. “Seriously, you better have put some more work in on that bike,” he said as Damien brushed passed him, popping open the drink cooler and grabbing a Juke Fizz. “I’ve got fifty credits riding on you winning.”

Location: Hilden III

Time: 1130, 6-3 GM, 1335 A.C.

As it turned out, there was no need to worry about Doran’s skills with a dropship. The entry into Hilden III’s atmosphere was as smooth as any atmospheric reentry could be.

“Damn, why does it always have to feel like falling...” Gear muttered from her seat next to Doran. Despite her apparent aversion to flying, she’d insisted on joining him in the cockpit.

“Well, we are,” Doran cheerfully replied, imagining that Gear was turning green under her armor’s helmet. “We’re cutting our trajectory down from several thousand klicks an hour to several hundred.”

“I love hearing these things,” Gear said, very much sounding the opposite. “How long until we hit the target?”

Doran checked his sensors. If nothing else it felt good to have the wide array of sensors, screens, and armor around him again. The PT-5 fighters were fast and packed a punch, but that also limited the amount of sensor gear they could carry, and they had virtually no armor. The Scarab-class dropships, on the other hand, were designed to survive drops involving heavy artillery barrages. “Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.”

“Fast, then,” Gear said, reaching up and slapping the release buckle on her constraints just as the vibrations from reentry ceased. “Best go get ready.”

“Good luck and straight shooting,” Doran said, reaching up and unlocking the chin gun. The dropship wasn’t nearly as well equipped as a fighter, being equipped with just a standard-issue plasma rotary cannon under the chin of the dropship. It was on a swivel and locked to Doran’s helmet. Wherever he looked, the gun would aim.

“Yeah, and straight flying to you,” Gear responded, moving towards the rear of the ship and into the troop compartment, where the rest of the mercs were waiting. “Get your wings out, Falcons!” she called out as the door between the compartment and the cockpit slid shut. Over his helmet’s speakers, he heard a chorus of varying responses. He winced. Assholes the Marines could be, but at least they could call out a uniform response quickly.

The dropship pierced through Hilden III’s cloud layer, and Doran got his first actual view of the monumental skyscraper, sticking up out of the plain like a sore thumb. He flicked on the ‘Ready Stations’ light for the troop compartment, blanking out all white light and replacing the lighting with red. “Two minutes,” he said over the PA system. He banked the dropship hard, keeping the throttle wide open as it screamed down towards the tower.

Not a second under two minutes later Doran swung the dropship around. He glanced at the window nearest to him and squeezed the triggers, blowing the plastiglass into dust. Then he triggered the ‘Go’ light and dropped the starboard hatch.

To their credit, the mercs moved fast. As soon as the lighting in the troop compartment flashed to green they were heading for the hatch. Gear lead the way, her armor’s boots crushing chunks of plastiglass into even finer particles.

As soon as they were all offloaded Doran pulled the dropship away from the building and closed the hatch up, opening up the throttle again and gaining some altitude to provide cover. He opened a channel to Hezdor.

“Team One is offloaded and getting to work, boss.”

A short grunt answered him. “Good. Stay nearby and get ready to cut out quick if you have to.”

Location: Felinus Arcturus

Time: 1303, 5-38 GM, 1335 A.C.

Sextus inclined her head as the door to Milana’s quarters slid open. “Milana, I hear you’ve been assigned a mentor in the Verti cluster.” To her right, Ara mirrored the gesture.

Milana inclined her head as well in greeting before turning back to her two bags, most of the spartan contents of her room already packed away. “I have been. Sister Valeri is currently attached to the 17th Marine division of the Fourth Home Fleet there.”

Sextus blinked. “The 17th? You’ll be sure to be blooded in battle quickly then.”

“They are often the first division with boots on the ground on most any planet against the Skrrz,” Milana said, looking quite eager.

“Be careful, Mil,” Ara said, sounding more nervous than anything. “There’s a reason the 17th is the first in.”

Milana seemed to sober up a bit at that. “I know. You don’t get into the 17th without years of experience first, and I have no real experience in battle.”

“You’ll be fine, Milana,” Sextus said, turning a bit to glare at Ara as Milana grabbed the last of her things. “They wouldn’t send if you they didn’t think you could handle it.”

“Of course, of course,” Milana said, now sounding a bit unconvinced. With one final click she closed the second bag and straightened, glancing around the small room that she’d lived in for more than a decade. Like any acolyte’s room, it was quite small, no more than a glorified closet. “... I haven’t been on any planet other than this since I was little.”

Sextus blinked. They may have all been friends for years, but none of them had particularly pried into each others’ histories before coming into the Order. As often as not, said histories were not happy ones. “You weren’t born here?”

Milana just shook her head. “I should get going. Ship is leaving in less than two hours, and I want to get a good bunk.”

Ara moved forward and embraced Milana. “I’ll miss you, Mil.”

Milana smiled and blinked as she returned the embrace, holding Ara for a moment. “I’ll miss the both of you,” she said as she let go of Ara and hugged Sextus. Sextus found herself squeezing a bit more tightly than she had originally intended.

“When we next meet, you’ll be a full Sister,” Sextus said as she let go of Milana.

Location: Pan-Special Medical Studies School, Felinus Arcturus campus

Time: 0830, 1-24 GM, 1335 A.C.

Class size: 315 in person, 3,242 remote

“-se be seated. We have what I think are some interesting questions to consider today.

“Now as many of us are aware, particularly those pursuing the fields of genetics engineering and mechanical augmentation, our society is running into a new problem to deal with: How to treat augmented individuals.

“You will all also be aware that mechanical prosthesis have been commercially available to more than 50% of known species for the past 300 years, but only in the past fifty have they reached the level of having one-to-one response consistent with that of the replacement body part.

“As with any technology, however, the field of bionics has lead to pure augmentation rather than simple bionic replacement. While expensive, restricted, and heavily enforced, we are starting to see more and more cases crop up of individuals voluntarily replacing their body parts with mechanical limbs to enhance their performance anywhere from a laboratory to the field of battle. Nowadays soldiers are not simply sent home upon losing a limb to enemy combatants; should they pass certain aptitude tests, they can be refitted with a new limb that is hardier than their original, and sent back into the field. While a bionic limb is expensive, it is even more costly to simply send the soldier home on a pension and train a replacement who may or may not survive their first combat experience.

“Certain individuals who are deemed of higher value than others are fitted with more high-tech systems generally suited to their task. Very often these are weapons systems and even full-body mechanical replacements; so-called ‘Metalheads’.

“The question we must consider when proposing to replace a limb with a mechanical one is this: What happens when we eventually do send the soldier home? We very well can’t allow a civilian on the streets of a major city to walk around with the ability to summon fifty centimeter energy blades from their arms at will, or fire micro-missiles at anyone they choose. These are obvious things that we can remove.

“However, there are other things to consider. Augmentations most commonly enhance the user’s strength and speed well above that they could ever naturally achieve. Can we remove these augmentations? If so, to what degree? In the case of the soldier we’ve already sent them into battle, where they were grievously wounded, and then we simply put a new body part on them and send them back into the fight. Can we reasonably take away a part of them that helped them survive? Something they relied on?

“Consider a case I’m sure many of you have heard about: That of Staff Sergeant Warren Krem, formerly of the 17th Alcott Ranger Battalion. After fifteen years of service Sergeant Krem was grievously wounded in a skirmish four years ago and required a full bionic replacement of his left arm. However, Krem was also a skilled combat medic, and was thus fitted out with an array of augmentations to aid him in his job. A year later he was credited with saving the lives of more than two-hundred fellow Marines while under fire, matching the previous four years.

“After his retirement last year Sergeant Krem dove into a burning building on the colony of Kildor-I and saved the life of an infant still trapped inside. First responders to the scene state that it was only the existing augmentations in his arm that allowed him to sedate and then perform an emergency surgery to remove a piece of shrapnel from the infant’s lung that allowed him to save the child’s life, despite being severely burned himself.”

[There’s a short pause, and a soft cough is heard before the Professor continues.]

“Two weeks later Sergeant Krem died of a drug overdose, a combination of morphine and several other commonly used painkillers. Autopsy revealed they were the same drugs that were left in his arm for use in the field, administered via telescoping needles from his mechanical arm.

“It could be argued that the arm’s medical devices should have been removed and the drug stores checked to ensure they were empty, but it is also certain that without them, the infant he saved would have died on the scene of the fire as well, even though he still would have been able to pull them from the fire.

“Aside from mechanical augmentation, we are seeing another rising trend in augmentation: Genetic. Gene therapies have likewise existed for years, essentially curing cancer and many diseases in every member species of the Commonwealth, but it is only relatively recently that the medical community has looked into optimizing bodily functions and physical actions through gene therapy.

“The process for this is... extreme, even more so than mechanical augmentation, with even moderate augmentations causing severe pain, and dysphoria is common. Undoing this process requires the same pain and mental disconnect, which would likely lead to one performing it on an unwilling subject.

Location: Hilden III Geosynchronous Orbit

Time: 1041, 6-3 GM, 1335 A.C.

“Alright, one more time,” Hezdor said. “Gear?”

“I take Krea and her team in the dropship through the top an' take the pirates from behind. We hole up in there an’ use their fortifications against them.”

Hezdor nodded. “Jonor?”

Jonor, a tall Rachas, blinked his multi-faceted eyes back at Hezdor dispassionately. “I take my team and sweep up from the ground floor, focusing on pushing the pirate forces into their own defenses that Gear now controls, pinning them between us.”

Hezdor nodded and glanced over at Doran. “I suppose I should have asked you before: How are you with a rifle?”

Thanks, Doran thought, but responded honestly. “Well there won’t be any friendly fire from me, sir.” Hezdor’s nose wrinkled at the ‘sir’.

“Fine, you are flying your team’s shuttle, then. Just stay low and try not to get shot.”

Doran nodded and muttered “bit harder to get paid,” as Hezdor moved on. He scanned the facility again. Janos Corp. had set up the single building facility in the middle of the desert. Supposedly the planet was rich in chemical compounds that made up common starship fuel, and thus had set up similar facilities all around the planet at key locations. Each one was essentially a giant skyscraper, two and a half kilometers tall, that was full of processing and reprocessing networks for the chemicals extracted from deep beneath the surface. Recently some pirates had moved in, overwhelmed the plant’s security forces, and taken the employees hostage. Apparently Janos really wanted management alive: They’d traced their chips to a room near the top floor of the tower, and were sending the Falcons in to deal with them.

“Alright rookie, with me,” he heard Gear say, and stood to follow her. The Falcons were all filing out of the briefing room to their assignments. If everyone had been wearing appropriate uniforms and perhaps carrying themselves just a tad straighter, Doran may have momentarily forgotten he’d left the Navy.

“Ever fly a Scarab-class shuttle before?” Gear said as they made their way into the cargo bay. Doran nodded.

“Ran Marine combat drops as my first assignment.”

Gear stopped and turned, raising an eyebrow. “Any hot extractions?”

Doran averted his gaze, staring at the hatch of the Scarab. Aside from the paint job, there was nothing differentiating it from a standard Commonwealth troop dropship. Chin-mounted railgun to cover the troops with rear and side doors to get them off or on as quickly as possible. He nodded. “You fight the Skrrz, that’s all you run.”

The armored Felinus nodded. “May have to do it again. Hope you’re good for that.”