“Magic, hold your position out here. Tell us if we’re in danger of getting cut off.” Wilson ordered her over the radio.

“Roger that.” Freya replied as she watched her fellow marines run past her.

Freya waited until her squad made it into the building before she got up and left her position. She changed out her rifle with her GMZ because it had a larger magazine and a shorter barrel. She kicked the normal-sized door in and entered the hangar. She quickly ran through the building looking for anyone, but to her relief it was empty. She found the stairs to the second floor and ran up them.

She found a corner office that had a nice view of the tower and the rest of the spaceport. She locked the door behind her as she looked over the office. It was a nice, fancy office with a desk that faced away from the windows. The desk was made from some kind of red-colored wood. It looked really expensive. Freya swept everything off the desk and put her rifle down on it. She went to the window and cut a small hole in it. Then she went back and picked up her gun and slid it closer to her leaving a scratch on the desk. She pointed the end of her rifle towards the hole in the windows so that she had a clear line of sight on the H-shaped command center. She used one of the comfortable chairs to sit on while she kept watch. She had a nice view of the sun setting. She could see the moons off in the distance.

While she was waiting, she turned the boost off to recharge its battery. Pulling out a sticky sensor grenade she pulled the pin. She opened the door and tossed the grenade out the door. It landed and stuck by the floor near the stairs. It wasn’t really a grenade but they called it one because to activate it a person had to pull a pin. It was just a small, round ball the size of a marble. She closed the door and, before she could sit down, her mini map showed her a flashing grey circle. It encompassed the entire office and part of the hangar. She sat down again and kept watch. She thought about hacking the systems in the hangar, but it was a privately-owned corporation and she didn’t care about the company’s corporate secrets. That and, since it wasn’t a military target of opportunity, she could get in trouble for inappropriate hacking.

Her clock had just clicked past six minutes when she spotted a bunch of military trucks heading towards the command center. “I have seven militray trucks heading our way.” She informed her squad, who were still inside the command center.

“Copy that. We’re almost finished here. Heading out in sixty seconds.” Wilson replied.

Freya looked on as the trucks raced towards the building. “I don’t think you have sixty seconds.” She replied. “You might have twenty.”

“We’re rushing.” Wilson replied.

Seconds later the blast glass part of the H in the command center exploded. “We’re done here. Heading out now.” Wilson told her. Freya bit her lip as the trucks arrived and surrounded the entrance.

“Too late. They have you surrounded.” She told him.

“That's fine. Give us a couple of seconds then open fire. Don’t wait for us to start it off.” Wilson ordered.

“Roger that.” Freya replied and scanned the massing enemy. She found two officers that she marked but first prioritized the gunners on the trucks. She made sure to assign the heavy weapon gunners first, on her hit list, before she targeted anti-personnel gunners. The heavy guns could punch through walls much better than the anti-personnel guns could, severely limiting her platoon mate’s ability to hide and protect themselves.

She counted to three then fired. The round went right through the circle she had cut in the window and hit one of the gunners. She quickly changed her target and pulled the trigger again. She targeted the third gunner just as he was ducking into the truck. Her round hit him in the head. She saw a flash of something that exited the far side of the armored turret’s wall.

The other turrets turned in her direction. She didn’t bother to hide as she fired once more. She took her next target out before he could fire on her. The glass window exploded as the rounds from the other turrets ran through the room. Freya stayed where she was and lined up another shot to kill the fourth gunner. Then there was a flash of white light and a truck bounced up into the air as black smoke billowed out from under it.

Both of the remaining gunners panicked and turned around to fire into the lobby of the command center, saving Freya’s life. She took aim once more and put a round through the armored shell that protected the gunner. Her round went right through the armor and the gunner. She was moving her scope to the next gunner when there came a white flash once more killing everyone inside the truck. Freya looked on in awe as gunfire raged out from inside the lobby killing whoever was left inside the truck.

“Clear.” Wilson said over the radio.

“Clear from what I can tell.” Freya said, standing up but nearly fell down again as her knee gave out. She looked down in surprise and saw that she had been shot. It was a glancing blow to the side of her knee. All she could see was blood seeping from her blackened armor. As she looked at it she felt a wave of pain race up from her knee. She cursed as she pulled out her medi pen. She fitted it into the med port and closed it. The pain slowly faded away to an icy numbness. The med port popped open and she pulled the used pen out to slot a second pen in. She checked her HUD and saw that her health was down to eighty-one percent. The problem though was that the medical body image on her HUD was glowing red at her left knee.

“I’m hit. Took a round to the knee.” Freya said as she pulled her last medi pen out and used it.

“Can you walk?” Wilson asked her.

Freya stood up and, while the pain was really bad, she could still walk without it giving out on her. “Yeah, hurts but I’m good.” She told him. She looked at the medical body image on her HUD and it showed that her knee was now orange. She took a few more steps to check, but her knee didn’t fail her this time. Her health, even after three medi pens, was only eighty-four percent.

She limped out of the office. The stairs caused her a lot of problems. She had to hold on to the railing and use it as a crutch to get down the stairs. Her makeshift squad was waiting for her when she limped out of the doorway. One hurried over and threw her arm under Freya’s to help her move towards their next objective.

“Leave me.” She told One as she pushed her friend away. She turned on her active camouflage, along with the boost. “I can make it on my own.”

“You sure?” One asked.

“Go, or they’ll pick us all off.” Freya told her, pushing her friend further away. One looked at her for a second before nodding and joining the rest of the makeshift squad.

Freya followed them as fast as she could, but they quickly out-paced her and disappeared into the distance. She stopped next to an empty landing pad to rest her knee. The spaceport was a large circle with a bunch of small, square landing pads designed for shuttles to land and take off. She counted at least a hundred landing pads that she could see. Between the landing pads were small ports that the ships could hook up to and get energy to recharge their batteries and take on water, if they were passenger ships. Here and there, she saw a few cargo hauler Mechs that were abandoned, along with the occasional short but wide cargo carts that were attached to each other like a train.

Freya looked around, hoping to see a shuttle that she could steal, but all the landing pads near her were empty. Out of options, she forced herself to stand up and start walking towards the lift center once more. She did her best to ignore the pain as she limped across the spaceport. She thought about stealing a cargo Mech or a cart but she dismissed the idea almost as soon as she got it, as she would stick out like a sore thumb.

She had to duck down and hide not two minutes later as a train of military trucks raced by. She counted two armored personnel carriers and four, heavily armed, fast attack trucks. Every truck had a gunner standing on the roof behind heavy, armored plating. She cursed as she fumbled with her belt pouch and grabbed a sticky grenade. She tossed it at the trucks and it stuck to the bottom of one of the personnel carriers. It wasn’t long before the sensor grenade was out of her range, but that wasn’t why she stuck it on the trucks. When it got closer to the lift center she hoped that it would park close enough that someone from her platoon would pick the signal up.

She looked up as a shuttle flew by. It was an assault ship and she bet it was heavily loaded with enemy troops. Once it was past she got up and started limping towards the battle. Biting her lip she realized that they might fail this mission. The enemy was responding a lot faster than they had trained for during the past two days of practice. She forced herself to limp faster to get to the fighting as fast as possible.

She passed just south of the round circle that was the lift. Looking at it she didn’t see anything exciting. All it was was just a large outer circle that was lit up with yellow lights. There was white thin circle that was glowing slightly near the center. Both inside and outside the thin, white-glowing circle was just normal looking black tarmac.

Freya stopped near an empty landing pad when she got close enough to the battle so that she could change out her rifle to her long-barrel once more. She used her scope to look at what was happening at the life center. The lift center was a small, single-story, bunker-looking building about five hundred feet from the lift.

She saw that, of the six trucks that had passed her, there were only two that were still in once piece. She did note that there were only dead bodies manning the turrets now. There were also a bunch of very still bodies on the ground between the trucks and the lift center. Looking through her scope she spotted at least one heavy auto turret inside the lift center. She smiled at the sight. She hadn't realized anyone had the skill to set one up let alone buy one. She had checked out the price for a disposable auto turret and it cost over one-thousand credits. She had no idea what the skill price to use it was but she didn’t think it was cheap.

She scanned the nearby landing pads and spotted a few enemy troops taking cover. Taking her second mobile sensor grenade from her backpack, she programmed the cloud to fly over the landing pads that the enemy soldiers were hiding behind. Setting the grenade’s signal to all, so that it would appear on everyone's mini map, she tossed it behind her to hide the sound of it going off. Seconds later, a small puff of smoke flew over her, slowly spreading out and fading away. She used her scope to see if anyone had heard the noise of the grenade going off, but since she didn’t see anyone looking in her direction she assumed she was safe for now.

She couldn’t see any way into the lift center so she looked around for a more secure hiding spot. She knew sooner or later this place would fill up with a lot more soldiers and vehicles. Plus, while her battery to her boost was fine for now, it would need to be charged up soon.

She spotted a small cargo shuttle about two hundred yards behind where some of the enemy soldiers were hiding and limped her way towards it. The shuttle was painted white and was about two hundred feet long and about eight stories tall. It had a flimsy metal gangplank near the back of the ship leading up to a sealed door. She climbed up the stairs.

Taking her sabotage kit out of her backpack she attached her modified maintenance scanner to a cord and then found an outlet to plug it in. It was a civilian shuttle and only had the bare minimum security programs on the door. Her military hacking programs easily bypassed them and unlocked the door. Smiling, she opened the door and quickly stepped inside.

She found herself in an airlock. She killed the lights in case there were any people still aboard the ship before hacking her way through the second lock and into the ship. Just outside the airlock were two hallways that connected in a T-shape at the airlock. One went directly across the ship and one went to the bow and aft of the ship. From a military standpoint, it was a stupid design, but for a civilian it made it easy to get where the crew needed to be.

She went towards the bow of the ship, looking for the bridge. It took her a few minutes to find the tiny cockpit. It had two pilot seats and a third communication/navigator's seat behind them in the tight cockpit. It wasn’t as confining as the virtual cockpit for her dropship but it was pretty close. The cockpit was empty and the systems were shut down.

She sat down in the left pilot’s seat and connected her maintenance scanner to the flight systems. She could use her Personal AI, but it was safer to use the maintenance scanner when booting up the flight systems. Seconds later she was in. She read the ship's manual and sighed. The ship had the ability to fly but not very fast and it would take at least an hour for it to get up enough power to move. There was no way she would be able to hide the fact that she was stealing the ship.

The ship didn’t have any offensive weapons nor could she sabotage the ship to blow up without powering it up for an hour. She didn’t think the powers that be wouldn’t notice an ship starting up for that long without sending a team in to investigate what was going on. That did give her an idea for in case things started to go badly for her friends inside the lift center. She turned off the boost for her armor suit when it sounded the fifty percent warning for the battery. She looked around and tried to think of a way to use what she had as a weapon against the enemy but so far she only had a few minor ideas. Nothing Earth-shaking.

She did turn on the ship's sensors to watch what was going on with the lift center. She saw the assault ship was flying away. On the ground she saw that the soldiers had set up barriers in front of the lift center about a hundred feet from the building to protect themselves from the auto turrets. She did see a few more dead bodies by the barriers being dragged to a makeshift medical aid station. That gave her an idea, but she needed to know what the ship had onboard. She downloaded a program to find the quartermaster’s files and bring up a list of what they had stored. It only took a few minutes for her to see that the ship was mostly empty of cargo.

The stuff it did have in its cargo hold was nothing special nor did it have anything that she could use. There were some cleaning products but she didn’t know if she could make a bomb out of them because she didn’t have the full, out-of-template bomb-making skill. She checked what kind of fuel the ship used and hit another dead end when she saw it recharged its batteries with a plasma dynamo. Sure, she could sabotage the dynamo but all that would do would be to melt a few floors of the ship. It wouldn’t really cause an explosion that would affect anything outside of the ship.

Frustrated, Freya slammed her fist down on the console in front of her. “Come on, think. There has to be a way to help out.” She told herself, hitting the side of her helmet. She looked up at the ship's monitor and saw a line of military trucks heading across the spaceport. Above them were two assault shuttles. Cursing, she grabbed her rifle that was sitting next to her seat and limped towards the back of the ship and the gangplank. She stopped by the airlock and turned back around.

“Going out there would be stupid. I might take a few with me before I zero out, but it won’t really affect the battle that much. I have a cargo shuttle. There has to be something I can do with it. They can’t destroy the lift center. They have to take it in one piece.” She told herself as she made her way back to the cockpit.

She sat down in the same cockpit seat and turned the monitor back on. The enemy were taking their time. They stopped about three hundred feet away from the lift center and started setting up defenses. The assault ships dropped off barricades and more troops while the trucks circled around the center. She checked the mission time and swore. Her platoon had to hold out for another eighteen hours.

The plan was to fortify the lift center. The center had anywhere from two to six floors, with only the first floor above ground. They had trained at slowly falling back, delaying the enemy from taking the center, but looking at how many soldiers were arriving she didn’t think they would be able to hold off until the mission timer expired. As she watched, two more assault ships arrived, dropping off more soldiers. She guessed there were about two hundred soldiers on the ground surrounding the center and more were coming. The only saving grace so far was that neither side wanted to damage the center too badly.

The enemy slowly built up their defences over the next hour. Freya guessed that they had about five hundred soldiers now on the ground and about twenty armored trucks. “No tanks though. I guess they didn’t want someone to accidentally hit something they weren't supposed to.” She thought to herself, as yet another assault shuttle landed and more equipment was pulled out.

She could see the enemy getting organized to start their assault. She doubted it would take them more than an hour. Depressed, she looked over at the assault shuttle that was sitting less than fifty feet from her ship. “If only we had an assault shuttle on our side. A few strafing runs would really shake things up.” Freya thought to herself as she drank a nutrition drink. She froze for a second, staring at the assault shuttle then she cursed to herself and dropped her drink.

“I’m so stupid.” She told herself as she jumped out of her chair. She ran as fast as she could down the hallway towards the airlock. She used her Personal AI to unlock the door to the airlock and then cycle though it. She made sure that her boost was on and her active camouflage was working before she stepped out of the ship. She quickly closed the door and limped down the gangplank.

She made sure her Personal AI was still connected to the shuttle behind her as she limped towards the assault shuttle. When she was about ten feet out from the assault shuttle she crouched down behind a pile of green bags, favoring her knee. She used her connection to the cargo shuttle to start the ship’s engines and power up the ship.

It took the enemy a lot longer than Freya expected to notice that the ship was powering up. She was starting to get worried, as the soldiers who were unloading the assault shuttle were getting close to being finished with their task. She let out a sigh of relief when a sergeant came running up to the soldiers. She didn’t hear what he said. as he must have used the radio. but the soldiers dropped what they were carrying and rushed towards the cargo shuttle.

Freya watched them leave with a slight smile on her face. They left two soldiers behind to guard the ship. They moved away from the ramp like idiots and watched as their friends ran towards the cargo ship. Freya easily avoided the distracted guards and limped onto the ship.

The assault shuttle was slightly bigger than her dropship and. instead of respawn pods. it had seats for soldiers to sit in. There was enough room for their equipment in the middle of the shuttle. There was no cockpit on the shuttle because, like her dropship, it was really just a drone. She had trained on assault ships when she was getting her pilot's license so she knew right where the receiver was for the drone pilot to connect to the ship. She used her sabotage kit to gain access to the equipment so that she could use her Personal AI to hack into the signal and bypass the pilot to take control of the ship.

She looked back at the ramp as her programs started to run. The two guards were now where they should have been in the first place standing guard by the ramp, but they were still distracted enough not too look into the assault ship and see part of the bulkhead was broken open. Her programs pinged her one after the other as they finished. Just like that, she now had the ability to bypass the drone pilot’s signal and take control of the assault ship.

She carefully closed up the wall so that there was no evidence of what she had done before she made her way towards the two guards. She slid behind between the back of the left - guard and the ship and limped as quietly as she could away from the assault ship. She looked carefully around but no one seemed to spot her.

At first she simply walked away from the assault ship with no idea where she could go and hide, but she changed her direction and walked towards an enemy command center. She slid under a tarp that was covering some spare equipment before she brought up her holographic drone controls. If she tried to do what she was about to do on a Federation military ship she would have been brought up on all sorts of charges for endangering military equipment and lives. She would have been sent to prison so fast that she wouldn’t have noticed that they stripped her pilot's license away from her.

She checked and rechecked her connection before programming a flight path for the assault ship. She peeked back out from under the tarp. She didn’t see anything to warrant her delaying her attack so she let the tarp fall back and scooted further under it. She took a deep breath then hit the button in front of her that said ‘activate’.

Three holographic screens appeared to float in front of her. They weren’t real holographic screens, as they were appearing only in her head like her status screen. She mentally shut the connection to the enemy drone pilot off and took control. She waited a few seconds but the assault ship didn’t explode. Smiling happily, she closed the ramp to the back of the ship and powered up the engines.

She could hear the engines’ whine from under the tarp so she knew it was working. She changed one of the screens so that she could see what the ship saw with its sensors. She saw the two guards slowly back away. They looked more confused than alarmed. Freya smiled as she activated the weapons systems. Now that got a reaction. She saw the two soldiers turn and make a run for it. She ignored them and lifted the ship up off the ground.

She tabbed to a different screen and started marking off targets for the weapons systems. It only took a few seconds, but when she tabbed back to the main screen she saw that the enemy camp was starting to react. She saw people nearest to the ship start to fire at it. It was only small-arms fire, so far, and she was flying an assault ship. They would have to do better than that if they wanted to bring her stolen ship down.

She turned on the autopilot and watched as the ship started its pre-programmed attack flight path. It targeted the soldiers who were in nice large groups as they got ready to attack the lift center. She only programmed it to fire two small anti personnel rockets at soldiers who had grouped up in gatherings greater than ten people. She should have only programmed it to fire one as she underestimated just how powerful the small rockets were. The stolen ship flew over the enemy encampments, devastating foot soldiers.

It didn’t escape unscratched though as warnings started popping up on Freya’s holographic screens. She changed the program and the ship stopped shooting its anti-personnel rockets and switched to its massive, high power, energy weapons. This time it targeted the trucks that were surrounding the lift center.

The enemy had set up the trucks to prevent a breakout from the lift center. They didn’t take any precaution on keeping them far enough apart in case their enemy had air support. It cost them horribly as the stolen assault ship ripped into them. In less than a minute the enemy had no more undamaged trucks and more than half of their soldiers were dead. Freya switched back to anti-personnel rockets and had the ship’s weapons system target any groups greater than three. The fast-firing rockets took their toll of the enemy until the enemy’s other assault ships shook off their inaction and started attacking Freya’s stolen ship.

A ship that was being flown remotely like Freya’s was no match for one with a pilot who was flying it from a virtual cockpit. It didn’t take them long to shoot down her stolen ship. In one last show of defiance, Freya was able to guide the ship so that it crashed into a small group of fleeing soldiers. Freya smiled as she turned off her holographic controls.

She slid out from under the trap and looked at what she had wrought. She had been too busy to hear what she had done but now, looking at the result of her attack, she was stunned at the devastation. What she was looking at reminded her of her first mission back in bootcamp. Specifically, right after the artillery fire at the enemy in the jungle. There were craters and dead bodies everywhere. It made her smile.

She blinked as a Sergeant walked unknowingly past her, not five feet from where she was standing under boosted active camouflage. She stalked behind him as she pulled her knife out. She waited until he stopped then she attacked. She buried her knife in the weak part where the helmet met the armor on the back of his neck. She felt the knife scrape on his spinal cord as it found its way into his brain. He dropped like a puppet that had its strings cut. She let him fall and moved away.

She followed what her HUD told her was a colonel. He was walking around yelling at people trying to get them organized. Freya waited until he passed a tent that blocked the soldiers’ view of him. Her knife found a temporary home. She let his body drop where it was and went in search of other targets.

She found a Warrant Officer in the middle of a group of non-commissioned officers giving orders. Freya tossed a grenade into the group and moved on. Seconds later there was one less enemy Warrant Officer and a few less enemy non-coms. Freya smiled as people dropped to the ground around her, frightened.

She added a few more kills to her spree before her armor warned her that the battery for her boost was down to twenty percent. She slid under a burnt-out enemy truck that was only smoking instead of being on fire. She let her boost go as she examined what was going on around her. All in all she was pleased at what she had done.

Over the next several hours the enemy soldiers slowly got organized. Freya hampered their efforts. She wandered around outside the enemy encampment and, any time she saw that the enemy was getting organized, she shot anyone who looked like they were in charge. She used the burnt out vehicles to hide under to recharge her boost because the enemy made the mistake of leaving them where they were, unguarded.

Despite Freya’s best efforts, the enemy slowly got their act together and started placing auto turrets all around the encampment to hinder her sniping. She eventually had to stop leaving her hiding spot inside the enemy defensive ring for fear of getting shot. She decided to wait for a better opportunity, as her next attack would most likely get her killed.

It took the enemy hours to get ready for the first assault on the lift control center. They fired rocket-propelled grenades into the windows before they attacked. Freya guessed that they must have been hoping to take out the auto turrets. It didn’t work and the soldiers who were attacking were gunned down to the last man. The failed attack delayed the enemy for several hours.

While the enemy was waiting, the assault ships were busy ferrying more soldiers in. These soldiers didn’t look like the battle-ready soldiers that had been at the encampment before. They were a lot more hesitant and skittish. Freya snuck out from her hiding spot and tossed a chemical grenade, with the timer set for five minutes, into a pile of ammunition. She had just enough time to get back to her hiding spot before it set fire to the pile. The ammunition exploded with a thunderclap. She didn’t think she killed that many people, but the effect on the skittish soldiers was profound. It took them forever to organize again.

The second attack on the lift command center started with a prolonged fire of rocket-propelled grenades through the windows and the single door. Freya was slightly amused that they kept firing the grenades for over two minutes. Then they sent their soldiers in. Freya guessed the prolonged attack with the grenades had taken at least one of the auto turrets out as only a third of the enemy soldiers that were charging the building were killed. The rest entered the building through one window and the door. The enemy commander decided it was a good time to send in the second half of his troops. Most of them made it to the building. The sounds of fighting seemed to last forever before slowly fading away. A few enemy soldiers came trickling back out carrying their wounded.

Freya was not sure how many soldiers went in, but she guessed only about twenty-five came back out. In the meantime, the assault ships kept ferrying more troops to the encampment. They also had at least one ship circling around the encampment after her last attack. She was getting worried about dropping her boost even hiding under the wrecked trucks. She started to look for one more opportunity to attack that she could pull off before they zeroed her. She saw a few, but they wouldn’t really hinder the enemy’s effectiveness all that much. She didn’t think that she could scare the enemy soldiers who were being flown in anymore.

When the mission timer fell below two hours, Freya started to get serious on trying to find a way to hurt the enemy. They had massed about five hundred soldiers again. While these soldiers didn’t look all that impressive they still had the numbers on their side. She was worried that a flood of soldiers would finally be enough to take the lift center. She looked for a way to either delay the next attack until after the mission timer ended or kill enough soldiers to make the next attack worthless.

She went through her options. The only thing in the encampment now was the enemy soldiers. Their ammunition supplies were heavily guarded. The assault ships were only bringing more soldiers in now and they were also heavily guarded. She didn’t see a way of stealing another one. She thought about looking for the commander, but if he was even at the encampment he must have already had a plan in place so killing him probably wouldn’t change anything.

She only had a single grenade left and she was out of all her sensor grenades. She had her knife, some rope, her sabotage kit, both her rifles and her pistol. She had a few other things in her backpack or her belt, but for the most part she was out of ideas.

To make matters worse, the assault shuttle was still circling around the encampment. She knew, the moment she attacked, if she wasn’t gunned down by the soldiers on the ground, the assault ship would take her out. The only plan she had was to follow the massing soldiers into the lift center and slowly whittle them down from the rear. It wasn’t the best plan, but it was the only one she could think of.

The next attack started like the ones previously had, with two minutes of rocket-propelled grenades fired through the windows and door. Freya slid out from under the wrecked truck she had been hiding under and followed the last few soldiers into the lift center. She looked around at what must have been the lobby of the building, but was now just a blackened, bullet-ridden ex-death trap that was filled with burned bodies. She saw two destroyed heavy auto turrets that had been hiding behind metal plating that had been placed in front of the two windows.

Freya stalked the last soldier past an elevator door that had been ripped open. The soldiers ignored it as they jogged towards the stairs. Freya paused to look into the elevator shaft. The plan had been to fill the shaft with sealant foam. It was the same compound that the Marine armor used to seal a suit in case of integrity breach. It was a quick-acting substance that was harder than cement that was designed to prevent any environmental leaks in the armor. Freya noted that the plan had worked.

At the stairs, two soldiers were standing guard by the door, but they were looking in the wrong direction. Freya crept up behind them and her knife flashed twice, dropping the two. She raised her gun and hoped that whoever was in charge missed the two soldier’s lifesigns bottoming out. She hurried down the stairs, hoping to kill a few more soldiers before she was discovered. She ran into two soldiers carrying a wounded third. Three bursts of her gun later and all three were dead. Freya really wished that she had brought her smaller rifle, but all of her training had her on the other side of the fighting. At no point did she ever think she would be behind enemy lines taking out the soldiers in the rear.

“Best laid-plans of mice and men...” Frey quoted in her head.

The stairs ended in a large room that looked like it might have been used for cubicle office spaces on the next floor. It looked like it was being used as a triage center now as there were a bunch of wounded enemy soldiers lying on the ground. They were being attended by a few medics. Freya dropped her big rifle, picked up a short barrel enemy rifle and paid the ten credits to use it. After making sure it was fully loaded, she switched it to full auto fire and opened up on the triage center. In a couple of seconds,all that was left of the triage center were the dead bodies.

“Nice gun.” Freya thought to herself, as she stole a few batteries from similar rifles that were lying near the bodies. She left her long- barrel gun behind as she moved deeper into the lift center. There were a few office spaces down a hallway just past the enemy triage center. Freya crept quietly down the hallway and peeked into each office. They were all empty except the last office, that had two soldiers in it. They were both alert and prepared. She ducked her head back into the hallway as her active camouflage kept her alive once more. She took a second to read the identification on her HUD. The soldier on the left was a Captain while the once on the right was a First Lieutenant.

Freya smiled as she stuck her stolen gun around the corner and fired it blindly into the room. There was no return fire. She peeked and saw two bodies lying on the floor. She nodded to herself and left them alone. She thought about seeing if they had any good information, but they had been too alert and seemed to be expecting her. That made her wonder who was coming up the stairs.

She found a good spot that didn’t give the enemy a good angle on her and waited. She silently counted, telling herself that when she got to one hundred she would break cover and start down the stairs. She got to forty-eight when a squad of eight soldiers ran up the stairs. They had horrible discipline and didn’t leave anyone to guard their rear. They stopped by the door where the two officers had been and froze in a big cluster. Freya unloaded on them and left their bodies where they fell.

She sighed as she looked at the stairs. Her knee was really starting to hurt again and she didn’t have any more medi pens. She limped down the stairs to the third floor. She was half way down them when she started hearing the sounds of a battle going on. She quietly stepped out of the stairwell to find a large room that might have been a cafeteria at one point. There were a lot of soldiers on the floor looking like they were taking a break. Or had been, as most of them were aiming their guns in her direction. Her heart froze in her chest when she saw all the guns pointed at her. It took her a second to realize that she was still unnoticed under her active camouflage.

She slowly moved off to the side and tried to think what to do when she saw a box of rocket grenades. A crazy idea popped up in her head. She slowly walked forward towards the grenades. Her plan was to basically toss her last grenade into the box and run like the dogs of war were after her. It was a stupid, suicidal plan, but she didn’t have anyother ideas.

She nearly died of a heart attack when one of the soldiers, who her HUD identified as a Sergeant Major, raised his arm and motioned for someone to go forward. She froze as a group of ten ran by her towards the stairs. She mentally shook her head at the lucky soldiers before she moved towards the box.

Freya passed the box as she moved around the soldiers, trying not to bump into any, and walked towards the door that was marked stairs. She was just stepping around a corporal when she saw the Sergeant Major suddenly get agitated. Knowing her time was up, she turned around and tossed her last grenade into the box, then ran for it. The enemy soldiers noticed the grenade as soon as it left her hand. She saw the Sergeant Major dive for cover along with his soldiers. Freya ignored them as she ran for the stairs, waiting for someone to shoot her in the back.

To her surprise, she made it to the stairs unmolested right before the grenade went off. She felt the shockwave pick her up and send her flying down the stairs. The world went chaotic for a few seconds before she landed on her side. Her knee exploded in pain and she screamed out. She reached down and grabbed her knee, trying to stop the pain. She was distracted as she saw enemy soldiers enter the stairwell.

She was absently surprised that she had held onto her stolen gun as she unloaded into the enemy soldiers. The enemy died but they kept coming in large numbers. Knowing she was about to die, Freya didn’t let up on the trigger until her gun’s battery died. She watched as a soldier stepped over his fallen comrade and ran right towards her.

She waited for the deathblow with her eyes wide open, but the soldier ran past her. She looked on with shock as all of the enemy soldiers ran past her, either not seeing her or just ignoring her. She was not sure. The stampede lasted only for a few seconds, but when it was over she was still alive. She looked up the stairs, shocked at what had happened, then she heard someone coming up the staircase.

She looked on, in deeping shock, as Mon came up the stairs with Stenna backing him. “They gone?” He asked her, his rifle pointed up the stairs.

“Yeah.” She replied, nodding her head, not believing she was still alive.

“Good. Let's get going.” He told her as he shouldered his rifle, before he reached down and picked her up. He slid her onto his shoulder as he turned around and carried her back down the stairs. She bit her lip, trying not to cry out, as she was lifted onto his shoulders. The last thing she wanted to do was distract him in case the enemy overcame their fear and returned to finish her off. The sooner she was out of the staircase the better. She guarded their rear with her pistol as he ran down the stairs.

The next floor was filled with offices and dead bodies. Mon carried her past them all and headed down to the next floor, which turned out to be the last one. He ran past four auto turrets that were guarding the staircase. Beyond the turrets was a bunch of small metal shields that her platoon was using for cover.

“Over here.” Sergeant Torres called out. Mon ran towards the far back of what looked like the control room for the lift. Mon gently put her down and Sergeant Torres opened her medical port and inserted a medi pen. Freya sighed in relief as the pain faded and the icy numbness came back.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Sergeant Torres asked her.

“Got hit while covering Wilson and his team at the control center.” Freya replied as she fought off the dizziness that came with the pain relief.

“No, I mean why did they retreat?” He corrected, as he pulled out the empty medi pen and slotted a second one in.

“I’m not sure. It might be because I blew up the third floor?” Freya said as she started to feel better.

“Well, we didn’t fail the mission, so you can’t have completely destroyed it.” He told her as he slotted in a third medi pen. That made her check her health. She gasped as she realized that she was down to forty percent. The medical body on her HUD had two large blinking spots. One on her knee and the other on her abdomen. She looked down and saw that she had a large cut in her armor that was covered in blood. She tried to peel her armor back but the white sealant was covering the tear.

“Find a place to set up. We still have an hour and forty-eight minutes left. That's more than enough time for one last push.” He told her as he helped her stand.

He had to help her walk over to the corner where Sergeant Leni was leaning up against the wall. She was holding her gun with one hand. Her other hand was a bloody mess that looked nothing like a hand.

“Hey, Magic. How’s it going?” She asked Freya.

“Fair to middlin’. You?” Freya replied, as she switched out her stolen gun with her GMZ. She set the barrel on the metal shield.

“About the same.” Leni replied. “How's the weather outside?”

“Cloudy with some smoke and broken bits falling all over the place.” Freya replied.

“That’s nice.” Leni replied.

“Wait, what did you say?” Sergeant Torres asked, as he turned back to her.

“Stole an assault shuttle and had some fun. Shh. Don’t tell anyone, I might get in trouble.” Freya told him, feeling funny.

“Magic, how many medi pens did you use?” Leni asked, sitting up a little bit.

“I don’t remember?” Freya told the two Lenis, feeling like the world was going soft.

Someone laughed and said, “Man, she is high as a kite.”

“Magic, just what did you do out there?” Sergeant Torres asked her. Freya looked up at him and started to giggle. The Sergeant’s head looked huge and his body looked really tiny.

“Boom. Bam. Ahh, don’t stab me in the neck. You can’t get away from me, Mr. Colonel, sir.” Freya said, making stabbing motions with her hand. Then she made some explosion and machine gun sounds. Freya heard someone far away laughing hysterically, but it didn’t matter because it was really far away and it had nothing to do with her.