Director Brentili'ik stared at the screen, hugging herself tightly as she stared at the pictures that kept popping up.

Telkans in armor, fighting monsters. Next to Terran troops in armor, next to warborgs, from vehicles, from windows and rooftops and hidden nests in destroyed Precursor machines. All them meme'd.

Too many of them contained her husband.

Every time she saw him she shivered.

He had circles on his torso with a diagonal line though it.

Yesterday the circles were covered by red discoloration from being spit on by a giant creature. His armor was damaged, but he still went out and fought.

And the shelters loved him.

This morning it had started on the night side of the planet.

Admiral Howell had started doing orbital bombardment on fungal sheets in the oceans to break them up and hopefully give the ground troops some time. He refused to hit the land masses but he did high atmospheric strikes to break up drifting clouds of spores.

She turned away and looked at the other holotanks. Different locations, different amounts of alien life, slowly covering a planet she had fallen in love with only a year ago.

"It shouldn't hurt so bad. I barely knew it was my planet a little over a year ago, now I feel like someone is tearing out my heart," Brentili'ik said, hugging herself again.

"It's your home. You just got it back from the Overseers and now they're taking it away from you again," Harvey said. "I understand."

"Like when your planet was destroyed," Brentili'ik said softly. She had watched the terrible videos of it then watched videos of how it was like it never happened except in places where they'd left the glass to remind them.

"We'll fix it. The Clone Worlds has already offered Elven Queens and everyone has agreed," Harvey told her.

She turned away. "My people are fighting so hard for it, like it means something more than just where we were born and served as menial labor slaves for so long," she said. "I don't understand why I want to stay with them, why I want to fight so hard with them."

"Because it's your home," Harvey told her. "And it will be again. Not for you, but for your descendants."

"I wish my husband were here," Brentili'ik said softly. "I miss him so."

Vuxten kissed his paw and reached out, touching his pads to the flat 2D printed picture of his wife pointing at the sky where a ship was hanging in the blueness, the title "A New Home Awaits" at the top and "Do Your Part" at the bottom.

"Corporal Vuxten," pinged in his implant, with the number 683.

"Go ahead, 683," Vuxten answered.

"Your armor is repaired. Do you wish us to repair the cosmetic damage?" 683 showed in text.

"No, it's fine. Thank you and your men," Vuxten said.

"We also serve, those who stand and weld," 683 answered and then cut the channel.

Vuxten reached out and touched another poster of his wife, this one pointing podlings and broodcarriers toward a next in the forest. "NEW NEST SAFE WARM" it said in broodcarrier icons.

An icon flashed for Gunny Wentmark in his vision. He opened the channel.

"Vuxten, how's the shoulder?" Wentmark asked.

"Stiff. Touches Softly, the gold mantid medic, said I should be all right in a week or so if I stop touching myself so vigorously," Vuxten answered.

The big human chuckled. "Good man. Armor up, we're rolling out in five."

Vuxten clicked through his channels, summoning up the links for his two Lance Corporals in charge of the two squads.

"Rolling out in five, armor up," Vuxten ordered.

Two of his men were in the brothel, three others were drinking beer, but Vuxten didn't care. He might joke about the brothel, but he missed his wife and broodcarriers and was uninterested in what the brothel was selling.

He reached the armory, where the power armor was stored. There were greenies swarming over the armor, getting it ready for deployment. The atmosphere had gotten more humid, the armors were overheating faster than they had before so the little green engineer caste mantids were trying to fix the issue. Some of the spores latched onto anything hot enough to act as a heat dispersal system and melted on it, coating it thicker and thicker until it didn't radiate the heat any longer.

His own armor was easy to spot. Red circle on the chest with a silvery stripe across it. Purely cosmetic now that the greenies had filled in the slash and ground the filler down. They'd replaced his shoulder pauldron where it had been cracked, replaced his rocket launcher system on his other shoulder.

When he stepped up to it he put his hand on the chest and softly vocalized his access code in time with his implant broadcasting a different string of numbers and Telkan letters the same length.

The Cult of the Blade calls this praying, he thought to himself. Some of my men do too. Some part of me thinks I should stop it, remind them its merely advanced technology, but I worry that their belief is the only way they can hold on.

He remembered that his group, all the back at the CorpSec building and that terrible night the Precursors attacked, had eventually all quit, unable to continue. Marine training was supposed to help with that, but he knew something.

We Telkans are a gentle people, he repeated his wife as his armor opened up. He unzipped his jumpsuit, stepping out of it, and stepped backwards into his armor naked. The suit closed around him and he felt the linkage plug slide into the jack at the base of his skull.

The armor went live, running through a quick system diagnostic. His armor was at 100%, his creation engine nanoforge at 0% slush and at 2% heat and rising to the standard 5%. He noticed his armor had a half-dozen micro-thermal sinks in addition to the normal amount. Finally the system unlocked and he 'felt' it go live around him, motor controls from his brain going to his armor before even his muscles got it. One in a while you could get muscle strain from pushing against the armor as it moved, either the armor too slow or two fast, but the heuristic systems quickly compensated.

Vuxten blinked at the online icon and the crash-cage released.

His men came in slowly, hurrying all the same, but the last one, Lance Corporal Doxik barely got his armor out of the cradle at the 4:51 mark.

"Vuxten, there's a air mobile carrier outside, mount up," Gunny Wentmark ordered.

Vuxten hurried out, his men following him, instinctively spreading out five meters apart in two lines five meters apart. They followed him out to the flight pad, where the sky was filled glittering of battle-screens tuned to act as sterilization fields like in a mobile surgical hospital.

An idea from Tic-Tak's men that had worked to keep the spores out.

There was a warborg waving them in, up the ramp, and Vuxten led the way. Once they were in they were strapped into drop cradles.

"You've all done this in training. You are all Air Assault qualified," Lieutenant Rogers, who had taken over for Lieutenant Bent Spoon after the Telkan Combat Liaison had been speared through the center by a chitin spike. "The Icarus Landing System will drop you easily onto the ground. Do not be afraid, follow your training. Your armor will 'nudge' you slightly."

Vuxten swallowed. He'd hated it the six times in training, even though he'd managed to drop into the inner ring all six times.

At least it wasn't a hard-light chute drop.

He felt the ship lift off, a slight drop feeling in the pit of his stomach. It vibrated as it tilted slightly and lifted off.

"We're going in as a a reinforced company. Two squads of Telkan Marines as scouts, two platoons of Terran Marines, two platoons of Warborgs, six robot combat armors, and our shuttle. We're going to scout out a landing zone for elements of V Corps who are coming in to support us while the shelters reconfigure," The Lieutenant continued. "Telkans will drop first, makes sure the landing zone is clear, then the rest of us. If the Telkans come under heavy fire, we'll be doing a hot drop, men. This is a non-abort mission."

He paused for a moment.

"Spores are preventing sat-recon, so we're going in blind. Vuxten, I want you to look through the dropship's eyes. You're the only one who's actually been there in over a year," the Lieutenant finished.

Vuxten felt his stomach clench. He knew what that meant.

"Vuxten?" a voice asked. It was female. "Hi, I'm Pamela. You can call me Peacock. I've going to let you see what I see."

"Roger, ma'am," Vuxten said. The voice sounded strange to him but he didn't know why. His visor went staticy for a moment then came up.

They were passing over a city. It was dark, the buildings broken and shattered. He could see the streets vividly, color-pallet night vision. There were multiple targeting carats up but he didn't pay attention.

He recognized those buildings, knew what he was seeing. He could practically taste the dead air he knew would be in those streets even though almost every available surface was covered by moss and glowing motes floated in an obscene parody of traffic signals and vehicle lights.

"The moss and vines are new. Those plants are new," Vuxten heard his own voice saying, like he was a hundred miles away. "Lots of plants around the Precursor stuff, I've seen that before. They like the batteries and the reactor mass, feed off of the propellant and explosives, use the superconductor as food. Anyplace there's Precursor vehicles there will be heavy plants and attack creatures. The moss and plants produce heat, so you won't be able to see them on thermal. Spores and spore ejectors to provide chaff. You won't have com beyond fifty meters reliable and a hundred meters at poor quality."

Targeting reticles kept popping up, showing across the entire screen.

"Thank you, tell me if there's anything else," Peacock said.

'ride or die 417' appeared on his HUD with several flashing icons of happiness.

His greenie was with him.

He blinked at the icons to thank him.

The city kept flowing beneath him. It looked alive, lights twinkling, but he knew it was just the lights of the bioplague infesting his world.

He knew it was coming even before the ship passed over. Peacock was looking forward in addition to down when he saw it.

The first of the half-mile wide craters. They had filled with water over the months since the atomic explosions.

Peacock suddenly cursed as the entire field filled with bioplasma being vomited up from the ground. His view went back to his armor as he heard Peacock speak.

"Taking heavy ground fire. We'll drop by the crater," Peacock said.

"No! Not unless you can tell me why there's an island in the middle of the crater now!" Vuxten snapped. "I've seen this before. Don't land! Repeat! Do not land! Repeat! Negative landing!"

"Sir, are you sure," Peacock caleld out.

"Vuxten's our man! Negative landing by the crater, get us to point Bravo," the Lieutenant snapped out.

The shit started shuddering and Vuxten knew it was taking hits. It heeled to the left, shuddered more.

"DROP DROP DROP!" Peacock suddenly called out.

His light went green and he felt the world drop out on him as the insertion system grabbed him with a magnetic hand and flung him at the ground.

'ride or die' flashed along with a picture of podlings on a slide with their hands up and the caption "WHEE!" on it.

The Icarus system kicked in and he managed to barely get into position, toes, bended knee, slam the knee and fists into the ground, ignore the entire world exploding around him. Other streaks of light were coming down and as Vuxten watched the air assault shuttle slammed into the stub of a skyraker, collapsing it on top of it as it went down.

Vuxten stood up, hefting his rifle, standing in a clear area.

"Sound off," he ordered over the section channel.

'ride or die 417'

Icons started winking, telling him his men had gotten to the ground safely.

Vuxten looked around him. He'd landed in a moss covered parking lot. The force of his landing had flipped over a half-crushed limousine. His color pallete light amplification brought everything into clear focus. The building, the vehicles, the fencing. 417 ran a diagnostic on his armor as he did a visual inspection.

The limousine, the landing, the launch, something had scratched his warsteel armor on his chest. A line went from one hip to the opposite shoulder, creating a red circle with silver rings in it and two lines across it forming an X.

He looked around at the building, feeling like it was familiar for some reason.

When he saw what was on the side of the building he couldn't help it.

He started laughing.

KISTIMET CORPORATION SECURITY HEADQUARTERS

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V CORPS (MIXED METAL) MEMO

Have arrived in Telkan System in strength. Moving to support Space Force and local forces.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

And

Here

We

Go

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