Freya reacted as her electronic warfare screamed at her, telling her it predicted incoming fire. She changed her vector by negative twenty V and banked her ship by negative ten H, while at the same time increasing the magnitude by ten percent. In other words, she dropped the nose of her ship downward and to the left at an angle - at the same time, she increased the power to the engines by ten percent.

Her sensors warned her that the shot was an energy pulse from the surface. Less than a second later, they told her that the pulse had passed her. She bit the inside of her cheek as she read the information that was on her screen.

“It’s not too bad.” She thought to herself. “At least it’s only energy weapons.”

Her electronic warfare screamed again and she immediately changed direction once more. A second later an energy pulse passed her by. The energy pulse was invisible to the naked eye but her sensors showed it as a red streak. While doing that, it also tracked it back to where it had fired from. She glanced quickly at the screen that showed her the point of origin.

According to what she was looking at, the enemy fire was not coming from the country that they were invading but from one of the countries that was surrounding it. Freya frowned at that, as she read what was on her screen. She dodged once again, as the ship warned her about another incoming shot from the planet. She was not sure what to do about the information besides what she was doing already. Dodging the enemy fire wasn’t too hard, but she was hampered by having to stay in the corridor displayed on her HUD that prevented her from entering anyone else’s airspace.

She dropped into the planet’s atmosphere and the incoming fire increased. She was constantly moving now. She was glad that she had changed out her engine because the ship moved so much better than it did before. It made dodging the energy weapons’ fire so much easier for her. She was both very glad and yet sad at the same time that she hadn't been able to use her new gun. The best defense against energy weapons in a dropship like hers was dodging it - she didn’t have the armor to survive too many hits. Both her passengers were quiet, letting her work, as she raced towards the planet’s surface.

She spotted some clouds below her, as she dodged yet another shot from the surface. She doubted that they would be able to hide her from sensors, nor did she think that it would slow or reduce the power of the energy pulse. She checked the time on the HUD of her ship and frowned when she saw that she only had twenty-seven seconds left until she had to level out and fly towards her destination.

“This is not going to be fun.” She muttered out loud, not realizing that she had done so.

Done said something in the background, but Freya ignored it and focused on what she was doing. She increased the power to the engines as far as she dared, trying to get out of range of the enemy fire. Every few seconds, her eyes flicked to the HUD, checking the timer, as she dodged the incoming enemy fire. At ten seconds, her sensors screamed at her, as her ship just barely dodged an energy pulse. Her ship wasn’t damaged but it was far too close. At eight seconds, she raised the nose and pulses passed both below and above her.

At six seconds, she dodged upwards, skirting the edge of the corridor on her HUD and dodging two pulses at the same time. She banked downwards immediately, to give herself some room, and dropped some of her speed to throw off the aim of whoever was shooting at her. She absently noted that she had unintentionally dodged another shot.

At four seconds, she spun the ship one hundred and eighty degrees horizontally then pushed the nose down, so that she was moving horizontally backward, but at the same angle of attack. She didn’t have time to look at how many pulses she dodged as her sensors warned of more shots. She did a barrel roll in a tight arc, dodging more enemy fire. At two seconds, the warning went silent but Freya didn’t stop moving her ship around. When the timer hit zero, she jerked the ship up hard and, without reducing speed, rocketed parallel to the ground towards the canyons and the place she and Toast had chosen to land.

She waited for nearly ten seconds without being fired on before activating the respawn pods. She didn’t want her ship to be shot down while spawning people, because she knew she would be fined if that happened.

She chanced a peek out the window and saw a sea of endless sand below her. The dropship was high enough from the ground that she was not spraying the sand behind her, but she was not really comfortable traveling at the speeds she was going at. She slowed down, glad that Sergeant Torres hadn’t placed a time restriction on her landing.

“One and Done, get ready for a drop.” Freya told them as she spotted the edge of the canyons.

“Are we dropping in on enemies?” One asked, sounding like an excited puppy.

“No enemies spotted at this time. This is not a hot drop, sorry.” Freya told her.

She flew to the edge of the canyon and found the outcropping that she had seen on the map back in the briefing room. “Drop in five.” Freya told her passengers, as she reduced her speed. She watched the countdown on her HUD and, when it reached zero, she hit both docking release clamps at the same time, dropping the Mechs.

“Dropping now.” She called out as she released the clamps. Her ship bounced upwards a few feet as both Mechs dropped to the sand below. She corrected her flight and flew to the outcropping. She raised the nose of her ship and dumped her speed as fast as she could. The dropship glided downwards as it lost speed. She lowered her landing gear and increased power to her maneuvering engines to slow her descent. She touched down behind the outcropping with barely a bump.

“One in position. No contacts in sight.” One said over the radio.

A few seconds later, Done responded. “I’m in position. Nothing on my HUD.”

“Confirmed. Both Mechs in position, no enemies in sight.” Freya replied as she checked her sensors as well and they showed that she was in the clear. She set her new gun to sentry mode before she checked on the time left on the spawning pods. She had just over a minute before the first six members of her platoon would spawn. She lifted her hands from the command console and shook the stiffness out of them.

First and second squads were in the process of spawning. Freya’s squad, along with Sergeant Torres and Corporal Leni, would spawn next. The plan called for Freya and her squad to climb up the cliff and make their way into the canyons, after they spawned, while first and second squads guarded the dropship. Once everyone was in position, then they would blow the cave’s wall and make entry into the canyon.

Freya looked at the timer on her HUD again and sighed. “The waiting is the worst part of being the pilot of a dropship.” Freya thought to herself, as she cracked her fingers. She liked the excitement of flying into enemy fire and the joy of surviving, but this waiting was getting on her nerves.

She checked her sensors again and noted that there were still no threats. She had landed her ship about a thousand feet from the entrance to the cave that they were going to use to pass through the first canyon wall. She could have put down closer, but it would have been too close if the enemy decided to shell the area. At a thousand feet, they were close enough to the cave for an easy march and far enough away that the ship wouldn’t be hit if they were targeted with artillery or mortars. The outcropping would also help to hide the dropship in case they had something that could bypass her active and passive scanners.

She was notified by her ship that first and second squads had finished spawning. She turned on the video feeds to the pod bay and watched a bunch of naked people leave their pods and get dressed in their battle uniforms. Freya didn’t immediately log out of her cockpit when she was notified that her clone was in the process of being printed. She stayed at her post watching her sensors for any active threats until the last minute.

Freya opened her eyes in the respawn pod,quickly pushed the door open,rushed to the locker and equipped her battle uniform. She was more self conscious about being naked in the pod bay than normal, for some reason. Once she had her stuff on and had checked to make sure there were no equipping errors, she made her way out of the dropship. She was careful to keep her gaze on the ground until she was on the ramp leading off the ship.

She looked around and blinked. Everything had an odd blue tint to it. It wasn’t overpowering, but it make things look somewhat odd. She readjusted her big gun, that was slung over her shoulder, and walked slowly down the ramp to the ground.

“Excuse me.” Patterson said, as he passed her heading to the Mech ammo pod. Freya tilted her head as she saw that he was only armed with a compact rifle. While she was not an expert on rifles, she could easily see that the one he had equipped was not all that great.

On top of that, she noticed that he was wearing some kind of weird, metal weapon harness. The harness was empty. She was about to open her mouth and ask him where his weapon was, when he pulled out a huge Gatling-style gun from the pod. The machine gun was roughly five feet long and about a foot wide. He had to stop pulling it out so that he could attach it to his odd looking weapon harness.

Freya watched open-mouthed as he finished pulling the weapon out of the pod. She expected him to leave once he was done, but he didn’t. He started pulling huge ammo rods out and pushing them into his backpack. The rods were about three feet long and about six inches wide. He pulled out four of them and somehow squeezed them all into his backpack.

“You don’t see that every day,” Tike said to Freya, coming to a stop beside her. “Patterson, why don’t you just pull a fricken tank out of there - it would be faster.” She called out to him.

Patterson ignored them both and swung the huge machine gun over his shoulder. He bent his legs like some cowboy in a movie and quickly reached up over his shoulder to pull the weapon down. He swayed to his left, then his right - aiming it. Freya found the way he moved strangely attractive. To her, the way he moved looked like he was dancing.

“Wow, geekboy has some moves.” Tike said quietly beside her.

“Yeah.” Freya replied, feeling her cheeks burn a bit.

“Patterson, if you’re done showing off to the girls, I would like to get this mission started. Wait, can you even climb with that thing?” Toast asked.

“Yeah, no problem.” Patterson said, turning around to find both Tike and Freya watching him. Freya quickly turned away and started walking towards Toast. Tike didn’t move for a few seconds, but looked Patterson up and down. When she was done, she turned and followed Freya.

“Tike, you’re with me. Patterson, you’re with Magic.” Toast said to them, once they had gathered around him. “I’ll take the east side of the cave and you can have the west.” He said, looking at Freya. “Take it slow and don’t do anything to give your position away to the enemy. Questions?”

No one in the squad said anything, so Toast turned away and headed towards the cave. Magic fell in behind him. They split up right before the cave’s entrance. Toast headed towards the cliff with Tike, while Magic and Patterson headed to the opposite side.

“I’m not the greatest climber, so any chance you can lead with a rope?” Patterson asked, as Freya looked for a good climbing route on the cliff in front of her.

“Yeah, no problem.” Freya said, as her eyes picked up a nice route. She pulled her backpack off and pulled out a sixty-foot rope and a few spikes. She looked back to Patterson to see him attach a climbing harness to his odd-looking weapon harness. He had slung his gun over his shoulder.

Freya climbed up the cliff, pausing every now and then to hammer a spike into the side and attach a carabiner to it. Patterson followed her, using the rope to help climb. The cliff was about seventy feet tall and it didn’t take long for Freya to reach the top. She laid down and scanned the area in front of her through her scope while Patterson finished the climb.

“I hate climbing.” Patterson muttered, as he laid down beside her.

Freya launched one of her new surveillance drones and programmed it to send the information to the command squad and both Mechs. Her drone would only last fifteen minutes, but that should be long enough for the drone operator in the command squad to get his into position.

“Ready?” She asked Patterson, as she turned around and pulled the rope up.

“Yeah.” Patterson said and crawled towards the edge of the cliff. Once she was done pulling the rope up, she followed him. She anchored the rope at the edge of the cliff and looked down.

“We’re going to be ten feet short.” She told him, as she dropped the rope down the side of the cliff.

“I can jump that far. No problems.” Patterson said, not looking over the edge.

Snickering, Freya slid over the edge and rappelled down. Once she got to the end of the rope, she let go and fell the last ten feet. She made sure to roll out of the landing so that she didn’t break her ankles. She found a rock outcropping and used it as cover as Patterson made his way, much slower, down the rope.

Patterson didn’t take cover behind the rock that Freya was using but instead kept going another twenty feet. He found a good rock,unslung his huge weapon and took up position there. Once he was ready, Freya broke cover and raced towards him but didn’t stop there - she kept on going for about fifteen feet, where she took cover in a small ditch. She had to lay sideways to use the ditch as cover, but she didn’t find it too awkward as she brought her rifle up and into position.

They kept leapfrogging each other as they made their way away from the edge of the cliff towards the dry river bed. Freya chose a large, round boulder for her sniper’s nest. Patterson sighed over the radio as he followed her up the boulder. Freya laid down on the top of the boulder and Patterson flopped down beside her.

It wasn’t the best position for a sniper's nest, Freya admitted to herself, but she was not here to snipe anyone. She was just here as a spotter for the Mechs. She scanned the surrounding area, but didn’t see anything. Patterson tapped her shoulder and pointed to the top of the cliff on the opposite side of the canyon. She nodded and scanned the clifftop looking for anything that stood out to her. She didn’t see anything but some wooded areas, but she kept looking.

“In position.” Patterson called over the radio.

“A minute out.” Toast replied. Roughly a minute later, he called in position over the command channel.

“Copy,” the platoon leader replied on the radio. Freya scanned the clifftop incessantly.

“Blowing it in five... Four... Three... Two... One,” someone said over the command channel. At ‘one’, Freya heard a small, muffled crack behind her. She didn’t stop to look but kept on watching the clifftop.

“The door is open,” the same person said over the radio.

“Go!” Came the command from the platoon leader.

Silently, Freya counted in her head as she watched the clifftop, looking for targets. At four, she saw a flash. A half second later, a loud boom sounded behind her and she got a notification that her respawn pods were active. Before she could call out the grid coordinates, Toast was on the radio reading them off. As soon as he was done, Freya keyed up the radio to the two Mechs and gave the set of coordinates where she saw the flash. As soon as she was done rattling off the grid coordinates, the clifftop exploded in smoke and fire. Freya spotted more flashes and she and Toast took turns giving the coordinates to the Mechs, until the enemy fire stopped all together.

“Fifth Squad, move up.” The platoon leader ordered over the radio.

A waypoint appeared on her map a couple of seconds later pointing to the clifftop. Freya looked at Patterson, who motioned for her to go first in Marine battle language. She nodded to him and broke cover. She raced across the dry river bed. She found some cover on the other side of the river, behind a couple of big rocks. Once she was in position, Patterson broke cover and raced past her. They leapfrogged all the way to the other cliff and Freya immediately pulled her backpack off and got out another rope. She looked around for a couple of seconds before she found a good path to climb and started up the cliff. Patterson followed her using the rope to climb.

It took her roughly five minutes to make it to the top of the cliff. She found a crater and slid into it, using it for cover. After a little while later, Patterson followed her into the crater. Freya slowly scanned the area with her rifle. The clifftop was about thirty feet wide and ran east to west as far as she could see. Most of the trees in the immediate area were gone now, or defoliated by the Mechs’ counter fire. She looked to Patterson and asked him which direction to go, in sign language.

He pointed towards the far edge of the cliff then west. Freya acknowledged that he wanted them to go to the cliff’s edge then head west. She took a few steps before she heard a loud boom behind her. She dropped to the ground and looked back. She didn’t see where the round hit, but she knew the sounds of artillery. There was now a queue for the respawn tubes. Patterson motioned for her to keep going and she nodded to him.

She crawled on her stomach to the edge of the clifftop and looked out. Another explosion rocked her. She looked around but couldn’t see where the enemy fire was coming from. She looked at Patterson, who shrugged his shoulders. He looked around, then pointed west. She nodded and crawled where he pointed, all the while looking over the cliff edge, hoping to spot the artillery cannons.

She crawled about fifty feet before she froze. She felt her instincts kick in. She felt, no - she knew, that something was ahead of them. She brought her rifle up and scanned the area. All she saw were some trees with some brush surrounding them. She shrugged her shoulders to release the tension in her neck, but it didn’t work. She knew she should move forward, but her instincts were screaming at her now. Something was ahead of her.

She was about to give up, thinking that her head was playing tricks on her, when she spotted something shining in the sunlight. She focused in on the spot, but couldn’t see what it was. Her headache was getting worse but she ignored it and focused on whatever was reflecting the sun at her.

One second, she was looking at nothing and the next she was looking at the faint outline of a person. It was odd, because she could see right through him. She blinked but the outline didn’t go away - in fact the person moved slightly. The outline of the head turned to the right and it waved its hands then, after a pause, the head nodded before turning back to look towards where Freya though her platoon must be.

She moved her scope and looked for the other person. The outline of the first person disappeared as soon as she stopped focusing on him. Panicking, Freya move her scope back over the spot where she thought the person had to be. A second or so later the outline appeared again. She sighed in relief.

Patterson touched her foot to get her attention, but Freya didn’t want to look away in case she lost the person again. She raised her fist to tell him to wait. She was reaching behind her to grab a grenade from her backpack, when another outline appeared behind the first one. It only appeared for a few seconds as it moved in and out of her field of view. She moved her scope to where she thought the other person was - the first outline disappeared and the second one appeared. This one appeared to be standing up, holding something to its face.

“Binoculars?” She wondered to herself. The outline lowered its hands and started walking away from where Freya and Patterson were hiding. The outline stopped and bent down. It looked to Freya that he was using a console, even though she couldn’t see it. She spent a few minutes looking around the area for any more people, but didn’t see any. She did find the first person again.

“Too far apart for a grenade.” She told herself.

She moved her rifle from the first person to the second. Neither of the people were moving. She practiced a few times, until she could easily swing her rifle between the two. Once she was sure, she raised two fingers in the air and pointed at the spot where she saw the two outlines.

She felt Patterson tap her leg once, telling her she was free to shoot. She took a few more seconds to practice moving her rifle then she aimed at the one who was crouched down. Her headache was killing her but she did her best to ignore it. Taking a deep breath she let the air out and held it, all the while watching the outline of the person. Gently she pulled the trigger back until the rifle fired. Quickly she move her rifle to where she thought the first person was and pulled the trigger again. She waited for a few seconds for her kill count to update then she smiled. It had risen by two.

She didn’t immediately move towards the two invisible people but waited, scanning the area to see if she missed anyone else. Once she was sure there were no more, she crawled forward to where she had shot the enemies. As she got closer, she must have passed the outer edge of the active camouflage because everything suddenly became visible.

Freya found herself in a small camp that had two tents, a bunch of boxes in the middle and some kind of equipment towards the cliff side. She spotted two bodies near the machine.

Patterson crawled up beside her and stopped as he passed the edge of the active camouflage. She smiled at him but knew he couldn’t see it because she was wearing her face shield. He turned to look at her and motioned for her to stay where she was. He then pointed towards himself and signaled that he was going to check out the tents. Freya nodded to him and brought her rifle into position to cover him.

He crawled forward and searched the two tents. He stood up and motioned for her to come to him as he walked towards the two dead soldiers. Freya stood up and went to the machine. Freya looked at it wondering what it was and how to turn it off. She looked to Patterson but he was messing with the tablet. Shrugging, Freya pulled out her pistol, flipped the switch to full auto and pointed it at the machine.

“No, wait!” Patterson called out, but it was already too late. Freya pulled the trigger and sprayed the machine full of holes. She released the trigger as fast as she could, but the damage was already done. The machine stopped working. Freya looked up as she heard something above her and bumped her head on the back of the respawn pod.

You have died. Cost of respawn: 0 credits.