Freya looked back at Gunny. She motioned her back. Freya did as Gunny ordered and retreated away from the base. They were at least a mile or two from land, but Freya didn’t question Gunny’s orders. She just swam out towards the bay parallel to the bridge.

Freya frowned as she swam towards Landing city. It was where Gunny had pointed to. She looked back a couple of times, but Gunny only shook her head and pointed onwards. It took about a half an hour fighting the current, but Freya finally made it across the bay to Landing city. Like the last city she had been too, the part of the city near the ocean was run down.

She found a warehouse that looked to be only standing more from the dirt than the brick and mortar that it was made up from. Freya quickly made entry to the warehouse and quickly scanned the interior. Inside turned out to be a large open space that was filled with piles of garbage that were at least ten or so feet high. She went left while Gunny went right.

Searching the building took only about thirty seconds, but aside from an empty office with a really dirty tablet the place was entirely empty. She found Gunny inside the office looking out of the only window in the place. Freya waited until Gunny stepped back to look out. Sitting in a very large fenced in parking lot was a fleet of garbage trucks.

“Clear.” Gunny said looking at Freya.

Freya looked away from the window and felt her cheeks burn from embarrassment as she realized that she had broken protocol for not announcing that her search had turned up no enemies. “Clear here too.” Freya quickly said stepping back from the window.

“Good. Time to plan.” Gunny said, taking off her helmet. “What do you think we need to do first?” Gunny asked her while placing her helmet onto the desk and taking her backpack off.

“Contact the Monarch.” Freya said immediately.

“Kind of. We need to stick with the chain of command. Since I’m here with you the next step is contacting battalion command. They need to know that the orbital strike has failed.” Gunny told Freya as she pulled out a small rolled up bag. Gunny unrolled it and Freya noted that it was filled with all sorts of tools.

“How would you contact battalion common?” Gunny asked her as she pulled out magnetic forceps.

“Surveillance drone.” Freya replied immediately.

“Do you have authorization to contact them directly with a feed like that?” Gunny asked as she reached into her helmet and started to do something that Freya couldn’t see.

‘I don’t know.” Freya admitted as she searched her contacts.

She didn’t get to finish as Gunny replied to her own question. “You don’t. Unless you are an assistant platoon sergeant or higher all you can do is call me. I have authorization to call them, but from here any calls I send out can be intercepted unless I can hide it. Come here and look at what I’m doing.”

Freya walked up to where Gunny was working and saw that she had the inside of her helmet taken apart and was doing something to the circuits. It took Freya a few seconds to realize what Gunny was doing, and it was only because all the schooling she had in communications. She was modifying her radio so that it would send out a RFM band signal. Basically she was making her own data stream similar to what a civilian would use to contact their favorite social media site.

“The Monarch monitors social media sites?” Freya guessed.

Gunny paused to look back at her and smile. “That is exactly what I’m doing. There are words that the Monarch will flag on social media sites. All you have to do to get her attention is to create an account with at least two or more words that are flagged and bingo bango your account will be monitored.” Gunny explained as she turned back to work.

“No offence Gunny, but let me do that.” Freya said reaching for the helmet. “You’re making a mess.”

“You know how to modify armor?” Gunny asked, sounding suspicious.

“I have a Phd in communications. I know how to make a RFM signal.” Freya said, taking the helmet away from her boss. She grabbed the forceps from Gunny and started to work.

“Ah, I forgot that. Sorry.” Gunny told her.

“Did you know I fought in the war?” Gunny asked Freya a little while later. Freya had just pulled a chip from the helmet and was in the process of soldering a new wire on to it.

“Really?” Freya asked, surprised. The war had been fought over a hundred years ago.

“I was a recruit back then and only fought in one battle. It was the fight for earth’s moon. Took about a week to take Lunar city. It was a nice place. Too bad they never rebuilt.” Gunny said, sounding sad.

“I didn’t know they had a city on the moon.” Freya replied looking up from her work.

“They did.” Gunny said, waving towards her helmet to tell Freya to get back to work without words. “I think it started off as a mining site, but turned into a huge city over time.”

“Why don’t they teach recruits to modify their armor anymore?”

Stupid copyright laws. Worst mistake the Federation ever made carrying over those laws after the war. I guess corporate greed is still as powerful as it was back in the day. Not following those laws is how we won the war.” Gunny told her.

Freya frowned. She had never read anything like that when she read about the war. “How’s that?” Freya asked, really curious.

“Back when the war first started we were like them. We downloaded all the skill into our people and sent them off to war. We lost more than we won back them until we lost Krimpiky. It was before I was born, and it should have ended the war. You don’t lose your biggest data storage bank and not take a major hit to your military’s ability to continue to train, fight, and respawn its people. It made us adapt though, and that was a good thing.” Gunny told her.

“The empire’s troops were well trained, but their training was very rigid. If you saw an enemy in heavy armor coming at you, you knew exactly what they had for skills. Back then there were only so many skills you could download into a human head. Well, there’s still a limit, but it’s not as shallow as it used to be. Anyway, without all the proper skills to download to our troops we had to adapt.” Gunny told her.

“Take the heavy assault. The empire had only one template for that. We have what, four or five templates now. That’s not counting all the old templates we had back then that we no longer use. It created new strategies for us to fight the war. It made us more effective than the Empire’s armies. By the time they started to copy us it was too late. We were knocking on their door. It’s why we do what we do now.” Gunny told her.

Freya snapped the chip back into Gunny’s helmet and then screwed the insides back in place. “Done.” Freya said, looking up from the helmet to see Gunny looking off into the distance.

“Thanks, Magic.” Gunny said taking the helmet and putting it on. “Keep watch. This should only take a few minutes.”

Freya moved towards the corner of the room where she could see out of the window and still be able to look out into the warehouse through the open door to the office. She sent out a sensor drone into the warehouse and looked out the window scanning the surroundings. The city was different from the last city she had been too in this mission. It was cleaner for one thing and the streets were wider and more organized. The city was also more lively. She saw at least ten cars pass by the warehouse in just a few minutes that it took for Gunny to do what she had to do to get the Monarch’s attention.

“Okay. Orders are in. Battalion wants us to find out how the base survived the orbital strike and if possible take it down. They are going to send the rest of the company down in the next orbit. They are doing to delay the attack on the city a few more hours. With that in mind we are not going to wait on the rest of the Company. We are going to scout it out and find how the base survived a freaking orbital strike.” Gunny told her standing up. Freya nodded and stood up with her.

They quickly got back into the water and swam back the way they came. Their path parallel to the bridge. Freya looked to her left as the passed the area where they had placed the explosives. She wondered if or when Gunny was going to give the order to blow that part of the bridge. She could see normal cars on the bridge going back and forth. She didn’t see any military looking ones yet.

“Okay, here’s what we are going to do. I’ll go in first. You follow close enough to watch my back as I look around. I want to look around outside first then we head inside. We retreat if there is any signs of opposition. Understood?” Gunny asked.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Freya replied, pulling out her long barrel Desus. It was her primary sniper rifle. She made sure her active camouflage was on as she swam up towards the shore following her boss.

The shore was covered in large loose rocks. Gunny ran over them like she was taking a stroll in the park. Freya ran over the rocks lightly, but unlike Gunny she looked like a Dog running on ice. She had to correct herself to keep from falling several times. Freya spotted several crap like things running away as she ran over the rocks they had been using to sun themselves.

When Frey crested the ridge, all she saw was destruction. Just past the shoreline had been what she assumed was a park or something very similar. She had no idea what color it used to be, but it was all grey and black now. She spotted several buildings that had only one or two walls still standing. The rest of the building was just a large pile of broken bricks and rubble. The destruction got worse towards the center of the base until there was nothing there, but a large crater. The crater had to be at least fifty feet deep for what Freya could see, and at the center it had a small pitch black mark.

“So that’s what the aftermath of an orbital strike looks like.” Freya thought to herself as she followed Gunny across the broken landscape.

Freya found herself constantly being almost left behind as Gunny ran across what was left of the base. She ran so fast that to Freya eyes, she could have easily left her behind if she wanted to. The only reason Freya was able to keep up was that Gunny stopped frequently to use some kind of device. She only stopped a few seconds, but it was enough that Freya could catch up. While her boss stopped, Freya never got a chance to stop afraid she would be left behind if she did.

Gunny led them in a spiral around the carter until they reached the edge of the crater. Then she just ran down the crater’s edge. It was too steep for Freya to run down so she slide on her bottom down the side of the crater. Gunny paused a bit longer than she had before at the center of the crater scanning the area with her device. She looked up as Freya came sliding down.

Gunny raised her hand to stop Freya and kept scanning. A few seconds later she pointed up toward the east side of the crater before she took off running up the side like it was nothing. Freya followed at a much slower pace trying her best not to slide down again. She had to dig her feet into the loose gravel just to keep going. She found Gunny waiting for her at the top looking around.

Once Freya was beside her Gunney patted her back then motioned towards her eyes. Then she circled her hands around her head. It took a second to get what Gunny was telling her, but as soon as she realized what she wanted she started to create a sensor drone in her cloud forge. She held up her left hand and spread her fingers telling Gunny it would take five minutes as she had the wrong drone in the forge.

Gunny nodded then pointed towards the area where the enemy support craft had disappeared into. Freya nodded her understanding. Gunny smiled behind her face shield before she took off running in the direction. Freya sighed as she did her best to keep up.

“Damn Gunny and her stupidly high wetware mods.” Freya thought to herself as she fought to keep up as best she could. That made her wonder what stats Gunny had. Was it five hundred? Was it higher? She had no idea what the cap was. She knew there was a cap, but no one had ever really explained when a person couldn’t fit anymore mods into their body.

“I wonder, is it a total number like a person can only add x amounts of mods to their body or was it per stat.” Freya wondered to herself. They had never really explained it back in basic. She spotted Gunny who had stopped by the edge of the rock where the support drone had flown into. She changed her course slightly to meet her.

Gunny leaned in and touched her helmet to Freya’s. To Freya’s surprise, she could hear the muffled voice of Gunny tell her what to do through their helmets. “We go inside. Find cover as soon as you pass the camoed hanger entrance. I’ll go deep. Depending on what we see, I might head deeper into the base. If I do you stay in the hanger and plant all the explosives you have. Your job is to close that hanger so that nothing escapes. Don’t set the explosives off until I tell you too or you think you are about to be zeroed out. Understood?”

“Yes, Gunny.” Freya replied. Gunny pulled her helmet away from Freya's before turning around towards the hanger entrance. Freya looked towards the entrance as well and switched out her guns once more. This time she switched to her short barrel GMZ. It would be a better gun in the tight confines of a hanger. She wished she printed her Asy rifle instead of the GMZ as it would have been the best gun for fighting in close quarters.

Gunny went in first and Freya watched as she slipped into the rock like it was water. Unlike water there was no sign of ripples or anything out of the ordinary had happened after Gunny had disappeared. Freya took a deep breath and stepped where Gunny had stepped and felt nothing under her foot. She fell downwards and the world changed around her.

She found herself standing in a large cave with a bunch of large anti ship weapons facing out into the ocean. She recognized both the huge energy anti ship weapons and the missile racks for anti ship missile launchers. The missiles weren’t all that large and from her bomb making training she knew that they would only be effective in shooting down small ships like her dropship, and maybe something as large as an assault ship.

Freya looked around for Gunny and found a trail of dead bodies. Shaking her head, she followed the trail. Just past the anti ship weapons she spotted a fleet of support ships lined up in loose rows ready to launch at a moment’s notice. She also didn’t spot Gunny anywhere in the hanger. She was able to see most of the hanger from where she was because the support ships had large landing struts keeping the ships they were attached to at least five feet from the floor. There were a few enemy assault ships near the back, but they were lined up in a single row.

Freya turned back to the entrance and was able to see out into the ocean easily from this direction inside the camouflaged hanger. She looked around for more enemies, but Gunny must have gotten them all. She pulled off her backpack and pulled out a bunch of explosives. She started placing them on the anti ship weapons. She looked up at the ceiling after she had mined all the anti ship weapons on the left side of the hanger and wondered how Gunny expected her to place explosives on the ceiling. She didn’t waste all that much time thinking about it as she went over to the other side of the hanger to mine the rest of the anti ship weapons.

When she was done she still had no idea on how to bring the ceiling down until she looked at the enemy's support ship. “Can I fly that? It’s not a drop ship nor a drone for that matter. But it is a ship. I bet I can figure it out.” Freya thought to herself with excitement.

She ran towards the closest ship and climbed up the landing strut to the hatch to the cockpit. She was about to break out her sabotage kit, when she remembered to check to see if the hatch was unlocked. She was not really surprised to find it locked. It took her only a few minutes to rip out the metal that was over the lock and hack her way into the ship's systems. It was heavily guarded, but after letting her programs work for a couple of minutes she found a way in through a maintenance protocol subsystem.

That let her into the cockpit and even start the engine up, but it wouldn’t let her lift off nor could she fire any of the weapons. What she could do though was unlock the missiles. She smiled as she did so. She dropped down the hatch to the floor. Looking up she spotted the missile launcher had dropped down from the bottom of the ship.

The missiles were really small, only about a foot in length and about four inches in width. They weigh a lot though and she could only carry one at a time toward the entrance. When she piled up five of them she tore the cones off the front of the missiles and rewired them into a daisy chain. Then she placed them along the edge of the hanger in one long line. Smiling she took a deep breath and admired what she had done.

“Magic, I’m coming out hot. You got the hanger mined yet.” Gunny asked over the radio sounding out of breath.

“It’s done.” Freya told her boss as she pulled her gun off her back and turned back towards the back of the hanger.

“The bridge is blown. They sent out a call for reinforcement. I had no choice. Get clear of the hanger. If I’m not out by the time you’re clear, don’t wait for me. Blow the hanger.” Gunny ordered her.

“Yes, Ma’am.” Freya replied, turning around and running towards the entrance of the hanger.

As soon as could she jumped off the edge of the hanger and dove into the ocean. She swam as fast as she could for a few seconds before she turned her head to look behind her. To her surprise and relief she could see Gunny covered in bubbles in the water as she fell deeper into the ocean. Freya didn’t wait and sent off the command to detonate the explosives in the hanger.