Freya cursed and pushed the door open. She saw Patterson across from her but she quickly looked away and rushed to the locker to equip her battle uniform. Once she was dressed again she turned to Patterson but he was already walking out of the dropship. She cursed again and followed him out of the ship.

“Patterson, wait. I’m sorry.” Freya called to the Private First Class’ retreating back.

“It’s cool.” Patterson said, absently waving his hand. “Well, it’s not cool, but I get it. You’re not the first person to get themselves killed doing something dumb. Buy me a beer at Chivia’s and we can call it even.”

“I’m really sorry. I knew the moment I pulled the trigger I screwed up.” Freya said, not wanting to let it go.

“We’re good, Magic. Seriously. That listening post needed to be destroyed. Look, for future reference, the enemy knew the moment you killed the two spotters. They just didn’t know how the two died. For all they knew, it could have been a misfired round. The equipment was still working so they held their fire. Once their equipment stopped, they had to destroy the listening post just in case there were marines nearby. What we should have done, and will do in the future if this happens again, is take everything that looks important, then blow the post from a distance. And run like hell.”

“I’m sorry.” Freya said, feeling depressed.

“Look, it’s cool. It was a rookie mistake and it won’t happen again. Heck, we got some serious mission points for taking that camouflaged listening post out. Granted, we took a hit when you shot up the targeting computer but, by my estimate, we’re still ahead. By the way, how the hell did you see them under all the camouflage?” He asked her, as they reached the Mech ammo pod.

“I saw something shiny reflecting the sunlight.” Freya explained.

“Must have been defective camouflage.” He replied, pulling his huge gun out of the pod.

Once he had rearmed, they joined up with the other four that had respawned. A PFC named Petey from fourth squad, who had more levels than anyone else, had respawned to the temporary squad leader position, so he led them back to the fight. He had Freya go first, to scout the area, with Patterson following her at a distance. The rest would follow behind them.

Freya led the group through the cave and down towards the dry river bed. The combat had moved on from the entrance of the cave to further down the canyon. The makeshift squad broke up as they caught up to the command squad and went their separate ways. Freya led Patterson to where Toast and Tike were located.

“What happened?” Toast asked, as they caught up to the squad. Toast and Tike were sitting about a thousand meters from the rest of the platoon, taking a break. Tike was covering for Toast, who was chugging a nutrition drink. Freya slid beside Tike and took over. Tike nodded her thanks before climbing down to sit by Toast.

“Took an unlucky shell. Good news - Magic here spotted two scouts who were hiding behind some defective camouflage. We took them out, then bam. Must have hit the targeting computer with a stray bullet, because the next thing we know we were waking up in the pods.” Patterson told Toast.

Freya flinched as Patterson covered for her. She didn’t turn around, but she could feel the others looking at her. To take her mind off what had happened, she looked around. The terrain had changed a little bit. There was some brush now in the river bed. Also, there were a few stagnant pools of water with really big bugs flying around them.

“Unlucky.” Toast said. From the tone of his voice, Freya was not sure if he believed Patterson’s version of events or not. If he didn’t, he didn’t bring it up again. “Now that you guys are back, we need to push forward. We’re behind schedule. Our next step is to climb this cliff and try to spot where the artillery is hiding. We’re going to push as far forward as we need to, to find them. Same partners as before. Anyone have any suggestions or questions?”

No one said anything, so the squad policed the area for any signs that they had been there then headed towards the cliff. Toast walked east with Tike while Patterson led Freya west. Patterson walked about three hundred feet away and motioned for Freya to go first. She pulled her last rope out of her backpack and started to climb up the cliff. She wished that consumable equipment respawned when they did.

The cliff looked much like the last one they had climbed, except much skinnier. Patterson pointed them west and they crawled away from their platoon. Freya looked over the side of the cliff, scanning for the artillery cannons, but didn’t spot anything. The fighting had died down and the cannons had gone quiet. While she didn’t want any more marines to die, she did wish that they would do something to draw the artillery’s attention again.

They spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the clifftop. Patterson wanted to wait until nightfall before going down and Freya agreed. Once it was dark enough, they climbed down the cliff. Freya went first and waited for Patterson to rappel down, before she raced across the river bed. It was more like a creek now, with a small trickle of water running east.

“I’m out of rope, so unless you have an extra one, you’re going to have to climb without one.” Freya whispered to Patterson, as he caught up to her by the next cliff.

“I got nothing but spare ammo in my backpack. I guess we’re gonna have to do this freehand.” Patterson said, with a sigh.

It took him a lot longer to climb to the top of the cliff than it had with a rope. Freya, on the other hand, made it up the cliff a lot faster, because she didn’t have to stop every twenty or so feet to hammer a spike into it. She waited for him to get to the top before they headed out to clear the clifftop. Sometime around midnight the fighting started up again.

Patterson told her that he thought either the platoon had stumbled into an ambush or they ambushed the enemy. Freya couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on, so she hoped that it was her platoon that was the one doing the ambushing. Either way, she wasn’t notified about anyone using the respawn pods, so she thought they were holding their own.

Around three in the morning, they agreed to stop and get some rest. Patterson took the first shift, while Freya leaned up against a rock and closed her eyes. She was asleep within seconds. She’d had no idea how tired she was until she closed her eyes. What felt like only seconds later, but was really two hours, Patterson woke her up so he could sleep.

Just as the odd looking blue sun was just coming over the horizon, Freya felt her instincts kick in. Something was wrong. She didn’t want to wake up Patterson just yet, as he still had about fifteen minutes or so to go. She stood up in a crouch and looked around, scanning her surroundings.

She scanned the area, but didn’t see anything that pinged her as wrong. She slowly turned in a full circle, but nothing stood out. For some reason, she found herself wanting to look down at the ground. She gave in to the feeling and started scanning the ground. Following her gut, she looked east and found something shining on the ground.

“This is just like the listening post.” She thought to herself, as she felt a headache start to creep up from her neck. “Does this mean I’m psychic?”

She kept her eyes on the shiny thing on the ground and, as her headache started to get worse, an outline of a big metal thing appeared. “Yep, I’m psychic!” She thought to herself happily, as she traced the big metal thing upwards with her eyes.

“What the hell is that thing?” She wondered to herself, as her gaze rose up and up. Then she recognized it.

Cursing, she backed away from the thing and crouched down beside Patterson. She tapped his leg. When he didn’t move she tapped it again. He sat up abruptly and turned to look at her. She quickly made a shushing motion with her finger and motioned him to stay still. Continuing in Marine battle language, she signaled ‘danger area’, ‘enemy in sight’, ‘Mech’, then made the signal for ‘range less than one hundred more than seventy-five’.

He got up in a crouch and looked to where she pointed. He looked at her weirdly and made a complicated series of gestures she interpreted as ‘are you injured’, ‘you’ and ‘crazy’, and lastly ‘no enemies in sight’. He ended his gestures by making an L on his forehead.

Freya frowned and repeated her gestures - faster this time because she was irritated. She ended by giving him the middle finger.

He gestured towards her again asking her if this was like the last time, when she saw through the faulty active camouflage. She exaggerated her nod yes making it much bigger than she normally did. He shrugged then signaled her to retreat five hundred feet and deploy a drone. Then gave her the middle finger back.

She resisted the urge to add some more gestures and nodded and made her way away from the Mech in a fast crouch, hoping that her active camouflage didn’t fail.

She stopped a little more than five hundred feet from where she had seen the Mech and found some cover behind a pair of large rocks that were leaning up against each other. Patterson found cover slightly closer and on the opposite side of the clifftop. Seeing that he was safe, she fired off her surveillance drone and programmed it to send the feed to the platoon leader and One and Done, as well as Patterson and herself.

She watched the feed as the drone rose into the air and directed it to point its camera at the area she thought the Mech was in. To her dismay, she didn’t find it. She ran a diagnostic program on the drone but it came up clean. Swearing mentally, she did everything she could think of to bring the Mech out from behind its active camouflage, but nothing worked. Continuing to swear to herself, she stared at the feed, feeling the headache get worse.

“Ok, psychic powers. Do your thing.” She thought to herself, still staring at the feed. As if something heard her, the headache got a hundred times worse. She started to feel nauseous and everything she was looking at started to look funny. Her health dropped about ten points on her HUD.

She smiled as the twelve foot tall Mech appeared on her feed, but then frowned as a second Mech appeared. She cursed again as she realized this Mech was much bigger than the other one. It was thirty feet tall and dwarfed its companion. It was all legs and torso and didn’t have arms or a head. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was a Heavy Assault Mech. The smaller Mech beside it was its lighter and much smaller cousin; a Light Attack Mech, which was what One and Done piloted.

She watched the two Mechs for a few minutes. They didn’t move. They just stood on the clifftop facing towards where Freya’s platoon was coming from. Her headache wasn’t getting worse but she did wish that she had bought the emergency medical mod for her suit. She had decided it was a waste when she was told that, since she was wearing light armor, she didn’t have enough armor to survive being shot. She did buy two Medi pens on her last trip to the store, in case someone else got injured, but they were in her backpack and she didn’t want to look away from her feed and lose sight of the Mechs.

She was still thinking of the Medi pens in her backpack when the Light Attack Mech moved. It turned its head to look directly into her video feed. She cursed as she realized that it had spotted her drone.

“Stay under cover and keep the drone active as long as you can.” Patterson said, breaking radio silence. On her drone feed she saw his active camouflage drop as he opened up with his big gun. It looked like little, red fireworks exploded out of his gun as he shot at the Light Attack Mech. She could see sparks exploding on the knee of the Light Attack Mech as the bullets hit it.

The Light Attack Mech looked away from the drone feed and towards the gunfire. It took a step towards the edge of the cliff and raised its arm towards Patterson. Two things happened at the same time - the Mech stumbled as its knee crumpled and it fired off an energy gun from its arm.

Freya got a notification that her armor had increased her hearing protection by forty percent to prevent hearing damage. On her drone feed, she saw an explosion and Patterson disappeared in a cloud of dark-grey smoke. She was horrified to see what looked like his leg spin out of the cloud and fly over the edge of the cliff.

On her feed, she watched as the Light Attack Mech tried to stand up again but failed. It seemed to give up, then raised its arm and aimed it right at the drone’s camera. She raised her rifle slightly before letting it fall back down. There was no way that her gun was going to penetrate the armor of a Mech. She watched helplessly as the Light Attack Mech took aim.

Out of nowhere, something hit Freya, knocking her backwards. It felt as if a gigantic hand had slapped her whole body. She landed hard and a sharp pain exploded from her leg, making her scream in pain. Her HUD flashed at her urgently as her health dropped to fifty percent. The left leg of the human body on her HUD was flashing red. A blue box appeared, hovering in front of her.

You are gravely injured, but are still able to fight on. Do you wish to terminate and respawn or continue to fight?

Respawn? Fight on?

Once she was able to read the notification, Freya resolutely clicked ‘fight on’. A new icon appeared on the right side of her HUD, by her map, as the box faded. She focused on the it.

Bleeding. You have 1:12 until unconscious and 1:44 until death.

She reached up and unlatched her backpack, then screamed in pain because she accidentally moved her leg when she pulled the backpack off. She gasped and she felt lightheaded and dizzy from the pain. Taking deep breaths, she fought to stay conscious. When she felt like she wasn’t about to pass out, she pulled out a Medi pen from her mostly empty backpack. She opened her right breast pocket and slotted the Medi pen in. Closing the pocket, she gasped in relief as the pain faded. However the Bleeding icon was still flashing at her. She tapped her pocket again, pulled out the empty Medi pen, tossed it to the ground and replaced it with her last Medi pen. Closing her pocket, she closed her eyes in relief as the icon disappeared. Even using both her Medi pens, her health only rose fifteen percent. The leg on the human figure on her HUD was blinking orange now instead of red.

She got another blue box telling her that her leg was broken in several places. It asked her if she wanted to immobilize her leg to prevent further harm. She hit accept and screamed when her armor straightened her leg and froze it so that she could not bend it. She whimpered while the pain slowly faded away, as the medicine that was in her system numbed it.

As the pain faded, she saw that the drone feed was still active. Clicking link, she brought the feed back. The battlefield had changed drastically while she fought to survive. What was left of the Light Attack Mech was lying on the ground with most of its upper body gone. A trail of broken pieces of metal, that was either on fire or smoking, trailed out behind it.

The Heavy Assault Mech was walking sideways away from her. As she watched, about twenty missiles launched from its chest and streamed toward a target out of the camera angle. In return, something flashed and the big Mech rocked backwards. Bits of metal fell off it.

The feed started to flicker, then died. Freya cursed and checked it again. She was disappointed to learn that her drone had run out of power. She tried to fire off another one, but all she got was a warning telling her that the cloud forge was still in the process of printing and that it would be another eighteen minutes until it was complete.

She reluctantly raised herself up and looked in the direction of the fight. She saw the big Mech off in the distance, running away, with two Federation Marine Mechs chasing after it. She smiled as the big Mech tried to fight off the much smaller but faster Mechs and failed. They ran in circles around the bigger Mech, like sharks circling their prey, peppering it with shots.

The big Mech tried to jump off the cliff, but failed as something blew up in its chest cavity and knocked it backwards. It stopped running and desperately spun, trying to keep one of the Federation Mechs in its sights, but the Mechs were just too fast. The big Mech was taking a lot of hits as the two smaller Mechs closed in. Freya could see small explosions rocking it as they closed in. Finally, something big exploded in its chest and an escape pod launched out of the top, only to be shot down by one of the Federation Marine Mechs.

Freya raised her fist and cheered. She laughed and laid back down on the ground. She was still lying on the ground, when her radio came to life.

“Magic, this is Toast. Respawn to the dropship. The platoon leader wants you to bring it into the canyon. Find a good spot and redeploy the ship.” Toast ordered her over the radio.

“Could have told me before I wasted the two Medi pens.” She grumbled, before keying the radio up. “Copy that, respawning and moving the dropship into the canyon.” She sighed and activated her suicide implant.

You have died. Cost of respawn: 0 credits.

She opened her eyes to see her reflection in the respawn pod’s window. Reaching out, she activated the pod again - this time she found herself standing behind her chair in the cockpit of the ship. She sat down and powered up the engines. She checked her screen and learned that none of the pods were active, except the one that contained her clone. She closed the ramp.

She gently lifted the ship up and spun it until the nose was facing the cliff. She boosted upwards, trying to stay as close as she could to the cliff, in case the enemy had something around that could shoot her down. She was checking her map, looking for a good place to deploy, when she spotted Patterson entering the cave into the canyon. She flew to the exit of the tunnel and waited until he came running out.

She keyed up her radio. “Need a ride, marine?” She asked him, landing the ship in front of him and lowering the ramp.

“How much to go to Chivia’s?” He responded, as he clambered in.

“Two beers and some of that awesome cheese.” She told him, as she closed the ramp, spun the ship around again and started following the dry river bed, back to looking for a place to deploy.

“I’ll gladly pay you next Tuesday for a ride today.” He replied.

“Ok.” Freya said, not getting the reference.

She followed the river bed until she saw a good spot, then landed her ship under a small overhang of the canyon wall - about a mile behind the platoon. On her monitor they were marching up the river bed. As soon as she landed, she downloaded to her waiting clone. As she was leaving the ship, One and Done came walking up in their Mechs. Freya gave them a wave as she passed them, joining Patterson - who was waiting on her. They waved in return, as they went to reload their weapons.

Half an hour later, Freya and Patterson rejoined their squad. Freya noted Toast had a black scorch mark on his armor, as she ran up to where he and Tike were waiting. “What happened to you?” She asked him, pointing at the black mark.

Tike snickered then said. “We spotted a platoon waiting to ambush our people. We set up a counter ambush and Toast here picked the wrong bush. Apparently the bush was occupied and neither Toast or the enemy scout saw each other until the shooting started. They tried to shoot each other with sniper rifles. It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” Tike said, through peals of laughter.

“I got him.” Toast grumbled.

“Only after remembering that you had a handgun.” Tike said, still laughing.

“Ok, back to business.” Toast told them, but Tike didn’t stop laughing.

“You should have seen him, guys. He was like ...ahhh,” Tike said, while pretending to fall backwards shooting at an imaginary enemy.

“Tike, enough!” Toast commanded loudly.Tike’s laughter slowly faded away.

“The fort is only a couple of miles ahead. Torres wants us to head up there and spot for the Mechs. We need to prioritise any and all communications towers over their fixed defenses. Once they’re down, the rest of the platoon will advance up the river bank, enter the fort and eliminate the enemy combatants. Once they enter the fort, we’re on overwatch. If the target is too big for us, we pass the coordinates to the Mechs and they take care of it. Questions?” He asked them. Freya shook her head along with the rest of the squad.

It took them fifteen minutes to get into position. The fort was on a hill. It was about five hundred feet wide and about seven hundred feet long. It was also covered by an energy shield. Toast had Freya and Patterson circle around to the back and take up positions, while he and Tike snuck in to blow the shield generator. Freya found a good spot to set up about three hundred feet away from the fort.

Freya was getting antsy after about ten minutes of waiting in radio silence. Toast and Tike had snuck in as soon as she radioed that she and Patterson were in position. She looked through her scope trying to find them, but they were nowhere to be seen. She was just about to ask Patterson if she could break radio silence to check if they were okay, when there was a loud explosion and the energy shield dropped.

There were sounds of gunfire, then Toast came over the radio on the command channel. “We’re pinned down and we’re not getting out of here alive. We’re right on top of the comms tower. Send the heavy stuff. My squad will direct your fire.”

Freya swung her rifle around to see the comms tower, but the wall prevented her from seeing the rest of the squad.

“Roger. Sending now.” One replied over the command channel.

There was no warning before the comms tower blew up. One second it was fine and the next, shrapnel was falling as far as where Freya and Patterson were hiding. Freya ducked behind the rock as pieces of metal rained down on them. She was still hiding when Patterson lightly punched her arm and gestured telling her to get up and start talking on the radio.

She rose up a bit to look around then keyed up her radio. “Good hit. Comms tower is gone.” She said over the command channel. “Next target is ….” Freya rattled out coordinates and the Mechs in her platoon rained down hellfire on the fort. In less than a minute, they had taken out all the fixed defenses including the wall that was facing the platoon. After that, it was a mop up mission.

The Mechs advanced closer to the fort to give overwatch support, while Freya and Patterson did the same from behind the fort. There was a brief but intense firefight when the platoon charged into the fort and Freya was notified several times as her platoon mates died. Less than five minutes after the platoon made it into the fort, they got a blue box telling them that they had completed the last objective and the mission was complete.

Freya made her way back to the ship, while Patterson made his way towards the fort to leave the mission. The Mechs waited until she had logged into the dropship’s cockpit and lifted off before they attached themselves to the underside of it. She cursed Done when he bumped the ship harder than he should have. He didn’t damage it but she was still a little annoyed at him. Once they were locked in, she boosted the engines and rocketed upwards off the planet.

When she landed on the Monarch, she had to wait for the crane to lock on to her. After it grabbed on, she cleared the two Mechs to disembark. They split up and went opposite directions towards their bays. Once the two Mechs were settled in their bays, the crane lowered Freya and she shut down the engines and powered down all of the ship’s systems before disembarking.

One and Done were waiting for her when she left the ship. Diaz was busy in the little room, but she did stop and wave at them as they passed by. One arrived at the door first but motioned for Freya to go before her.

“Youngins before the aged and beautiful.” One said, smirking as she stood to the side.

“Why, thank you.” Freya replied, playing right along, as she stepped into the light.