Freya opened her eyes to Camp Iron Hand’s pod bay. For a second she forgot what she was supposed to do then, in near panic, she quickly opened the respawn pod’s door and equipped her armor. Not stopping to check if her stuff was on correctly, she ran outside making towards the lobby door. She pressed her hand on the door lock, but the door didn’t open.

Cursing, she looked at the lock’s screen and saw that she had two options. The first option asked her if she wanted to go to her OTIDS, her single automated drop pod. The second option asked her if she wanted to go to her hanger. She chose the second option. She sighed in relief as the door finally opened. She didn’t wait until it completely opened before she stepped into the light.

Petty Officer Diaz was waiting on her as she stepped into the hanger. “You don’t have time for a detailed preflight check off. Just check the obvious things and get onboard.” Dias said, uncharastically serious.

“Okay.” Freya told her, running for her ship. Diaz followed, running slightly behind her.

“I rebuilt everything. Look, you are going to get penalized for not setting off the self-destruct on your ship after you left, but it shouldn’t be too bad as the auto-destruct protocols set it off after thirty minutes when you left.” Diaz told her, slightly out of breath.

“How bad did I screw up?” Freya asked, feeling a dull pang of fear in her chest as she looked over at her crew chief. She wanted to stop and talk, but she didn’t have the time.

“Well, normally I would say you really screwed the pooch there, but getting the ship down in somewhat working order will offset it. You should break even. I’d say you’ll lose about one standard deviation on your mission points for not following protocol, but surviving the anti-ship weapons at near point-blank range will bump you back up to where you were before.” Diaz said, as Freya got to her ship and circled around it, checking to make sure everything was on correctly and not loose.

Freya took a deep breath in relief and nodded, not looking at Diaz. “Thanks for rebuilding her.” Freya said, as she climbed up the ramp of her new ship. She paused to kiss her fingers before tapping them on the new name plate. She noted that the version had changed to 3.0. At first she didn’t know why it was version 3.0 until she remembered it changed to version 2.0 when she got her new engine and the bigger tank for the reprinting fluid.

“No worries, it’s my job. Plus it was fun. Now go, you only have, dammit, you have four minutes until the window closes. Move your fat ass, Marine.” Diaz told her, as she pushed her towards a respawn pod.

Freya quickly stepped into the pod and Diaz closed it behind her. The last thing she saw before she respawned inside her cockpit was Diaz giving her a thumbs up. Smiling, she sat down on her chair to start her preflight check off. She skimmed most of the checklist, tabbing most of the check offs and not really checking them in real life. When she sent the checklist off to whoever read the completed version, she started the engines in the warm-up mode. Not bothering to wait until it was completely warmed up, she keyed up her radio.

“Monarch, B127. Request permission to open hangar bay doors.” She said, checking on her engine status. It was still red, telling her that if she switched to flight mode she could torque her engines.

As if reading her mind, the flight controller replied over the radio. “B127, Monarch. Pilot, I’m reading a red flag on your engines. Please confirm.”

Freya cursed and looked at the light. She waited ,not answering the flight controller as she counted in her head - knowing that the flight controller would repeat herself in a couple of seconds. When that happened, she would not be able to delay answering her. Worse, if it was still red by then, she would look like an idiot. She bit her lip.The universe apparently took pity on her and the light turned green before the flight controller asked again.

“Monarch, B127. Red flag corrected. Request to open hangar bay doors and disembark.” Freya said over the radio, as she switched from warm-up mode to flight mode on her engines. Four green lights flickered on the correct panel, telling her everything was good and golden.

“B127, Monarch. We read no red flags. Request to open hangar bay doors granted. You may disembark at your leisure, we just ask that you wait for the doors to open before you launch.” The flight controler said in a sarcastic tone.

“Waiting for the door to open before launching. Aye, aye.” Freya said with a slight smile, as she called in the blind. Calling in the blind meant that she was talking on the radio, but not identifying who she was or who she was talking to. Technically it was against radio protocol, but she doubted anyone would say anything.

“Get your ass moving, Magic. You have a minute and a half until the window closes and you have to wait for the next orbit.” The controller told her, also calling in the blind. It didn’t matter that the controller had used Freya’s call sign because proper protocol called for the controller to identify Freya only by her identifier, which was B127.

“Moving now. B127 out.” She told the controller as the door below her opened up and she gunned the engine. She dropped out of the hanger and changed her heading so that she was moving towards the planet. She also started growing her clone in the respawn pod as soon as she had the front of her ship aimed at the planet.

She had less than a minute to get to the edge of the planet’s atmosphere before the Monarch was too far away to guard her little dropship against any anti-ship weapons. Gunny had told her that there were not many anti-ship weapons left, but safety protocols stated that, while under combat conditions, a dropship could only launch from within the cover of the Monarch. The Monarch couldn’t stop the minor stuff like small beam weapons or the smaller anti-ship missiles, but it could stop the bigger stuff and screw with the enemy’s targeting systems.

Freya gunned her ship, pushing the engines to a little over 80% as she raced towards the Karmen line, the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. She hadn’t had time to calculate her flight path before she had taken off, but she did so now. It only took her a few seconds to calculate it, and when she was done she let out a sigh of relief. She would make the Karmen line with twenty seconds to spare. She had eyeballed the flight path towards the surface before she had calculated it out, but now she adjusted her course to get a better time.

“A707, B127. Can you contact Sergeant Torres, and inform him that I’ll be in position in four point twenty-one minutes, as long as the sky is clear?” Freya said as she entered the mission planet's atmosphere.

“That was fast. Wait one.” The pilot of the assault shuttle replied. “He said to tell you everything is on schedule and to land near the fort. I’ll be dropping the guys and gals off in one point seven minutes at the LZ. It’s a cold LZ, so you have some time. If you even make it to the grey side, send me a message. I’ll buy you a beer. That last objective was a bit scary. Couldn’t do it without you taking out the active camo on those tanks.”

“No worries, A707, and Ten-four. It’s a date. I’ll buy finger foods. B127 out.” Freya said with a smile.

“A707 out.” The pilot of the assault shuttle replied by signing off.

Freya took a breath and looked at her scanners. Nothing showed up on them as a threat. No one was shooting at her, nor were they tracking her, according to her electronic warfare systems. For the first time since the tournament started, she had a clear shot to her target without worrying about the enemy shooting at her. To Freya it felt both odd and weirdly naked at the same time. She rationalized it as when they were shooting at her then she knew where the weapons fire was coming from - since they weren’t, she felt like she had a huge target on her back. She knew it was stupid to think like that as the enemy most likely had no options left to stop any ship from entering their atmosphere, but she still had an itch on her back that she couldn’t scratch.

Their new objective was a small fort buried in a mountain. It had no strategic importance except that it might be where some high-level military or political personnel were hiding out. Landing City had fallen to the Federation Marines while Freya’s platoon had dropped in their OTIDS around the power plant. Gunny and Freya spent the entire time running towards the power plant, and by the time they got there Sergeant Torres had already secured it. Freya was a bit annoyed that she didn’t get to see any action after running all the way to the power plant.

Gunny hadn’t waited for the rest of Sergeant Gawain’s platoon to respawn after a lot of them had died when she had broken the defensive structure that had let the base survive Monarch’s first orbital strike. Freya smiled as she remembered Sergeant Gawain desperately calling for a delay in the Monarch’s second orbital strike to get himself and the rest of his platoon out of harm's way. Gunny gave him twenty seconds.

Only eight members of his platoon made it out. Sergeant Gawain and the rest of his platoon hadn’t. She knew that if Gunny had given him ten more seconds he could have gotten all of his platoon out in time. Knowing that Gunny had ordered him not to enter the base, she wondered if Gunny had given him twenty seconds to punish him. That made Freya wonder if Gunny was going to get in trouble over it. She also wondered what was going to happen to Sergeant Gawain for disobeying Gunny’s orders. She hoped Gunny wouldn’t get into trouble. She liked her boss’s boss.

Gunny had left most of Sergeant Gawain’s platoon to guard the power plant before she called in an assault shuttle to bring them to their next objective. Freya had no idea why Gunny had taken three of Sergeant Gawain’s people. It wasn't that they needed anyone else for this objective. No one had died taking the power plant. What was even odder, Gunny had stayed behind with the rest of Sergeant Gawain’s platoon to guard the power plant.

She had wanted to ask questions, but everything had moved very fast after they took the power plant. Gunny had called for an assault shuttle almost right away, before she ordered Freya to use her suicide mod to respawn back on the Monarch. Freya’s orders had been to get her ship to the objective as fast as possible, and to deploy as close as she could to the fort that they had been ordered to take without compromising the dropship's safety.

With that in mind, Freya opened the map and looked for a place to land in the are surrounding the fort. The fort was inside a mountain near the top. There was a city that surrounded two thirds of the mountain. It was a small city, but big enough to keep the Monarch from destroying the fort with an orbital strike.

That limited Freya’s options on where she could land. Someone had shaded the city in red with white lines over it. That meant that she could not land nor deploy her ship anywhere in the city. She guessed that whoever was in charge didn’t want them fighting in the city. She could see their point, but they hadn’t left her a lot of options on where she could land and deploy.

She did note that there was a waypoint that showed where her platoon was at that moment. The waypoint was slowly coming in from the backside of the mountain, where the city was mostly absent. There were a few roads and a few residential areas, but for the most part it was empty of people.

Freya looked at the mission timer and noted that she had less than a minute until she had to have a new flight path in place so that she could land. She sighed and picked an empty parking lot next to what she hoped was an abandoned building. Her arial map showed that there was some grass and weeds growing in parts of the parking lot. The street that led up to the parking lot also had lines of grass growing along it. She sent Sergeant Torres a message with the landing area marked, then she changed her flight path so that she could land in the parking lot.

The flight path had her circling the city at a very low altitude so as not to be picked up by the ground defenses. That meant that she had to fly less than a hundred feet off the ground. She chose the altitude because it was below at least two buildings in height. She hoped that meant that the fort’s scanners didn’t or couldn’t scan that low. As it was, she was already trying to land in a place that was horribly out in the open.

She kept an eye out as she passed a crane that was not on her map. That crane was not moving and from what she could see there was no one currently working in the area. Still, if she hadn’t been actively scanning the surrounding area as she flew, she might have missed seeing the crane. She might have hit it which could have made her crash, ending her part in this objective. She knew she was already going to be investigated over the ocean crash-landing. She didn’t really want to be investiagted over crashing into a stupid crane because she hadn’t been looking at her scanners hard enough.

She came in from the north towards the parking lot where she had chosen to land and deploy. She passed over her platoon and her scanners showed the platoon making its way up the mountain. The platoon was spread out in several squad Vee formations. She also noted that they didn’t have One or Done’s Mechs among them. She had not stuck around for the planning session for this objective, so she had no idea where they were. She hoped that they were just out of sight, but she knew that they might still be temporarily assigned to another platoon.

She was about a mile or so in front of the platoon when she came up on the parking lot. Her scanners didn’t spot any enemy in the area so she floated her ship downwards, killing almost all of her forward momentum until she set down. She activated her ship’s active camouflage and respawned.

She equipped her armor and weapons. She chose to equip her short-barrel GMX and her Asy Minor close-quarters rifle. While she thought she might need her long-barrel Desus before they entered the fort, she knew that, once inside, it would be useless. Her GMX could still be useful inside the fort, it was just not as useful as her Asy Minor. She also rationalized that she could and did in the past use her GMX as a long-range weapon. It was just not as good against heavily armored soldiers. It needed at least two, and sometimes more, shots in the same area to penetrate the armor.

She crossed the road and put herself in between her ship and the fort while she waited for her platoon to catch up with her. Toast was the first person to catch up with her. He was followed by Tike to his right and Patterson to his left. He motioned for her to go ahead of him as he moved off to his left, which made Tike move out further. Taking point, Freya led her squad up the mountain.