Freya watched as Unicorn leaned closer to Drake and quietly said “We got a minute and ten left” as Freya followed her two temporary bosses towards where the squad was forming up.

“Long line too.” Drake replied, making Freya look over at the lobby door. She had to agree with him as most of the platoon was already there waiting their turn to enter the light.

“Let’s split the team up here, and get a more comprehensive plan when we are on the ground.” Drake said as Freya watched him turn to look at Unicorn.

“I hate this. We aren’t getting a lot of time to make this work. By Tom’s thumb, I don’t even know anyone in my platoon, let alone what they are good at.” Unicorn said as they walked up to the squad.

“I hear ye.” Drake said as they stopped. Freya didn’t stop and kept on walking, around the two and towards Monkeyman and Lurch.

“We got any Master weps here?” Drake asked, speaking in a loud voice. Freya looked around for a response, but no one spoke up.

“Ok, all my assault people, listen up. When we get to the lobby, I want you to equip something that will penetrate the Ketica armor, but has a fire rate of one second or faster. This is a wave mission so plan on seeing a lot of enemies.” Drake told them. “I want you all on the wall as soon as we hit the ground. First squad takes A and B side. Third squad takes C and D. Make sure you’re spread out. I’ll go over your placement on the ground. If you have questions on what gun to take, get with me or Unicorn.

“Any engineers here?” He asked, after taking a breath.

To Freya’s surprise, Unicorn raised her hand. Freya looked around at the rest of the platoon, but no one else raised their hands. “Demo people, take repeatables and time delays. Don’t waste your disposables unless you have to. Questions, come to me.” Unicorn said, as everyone turned to look at her.

“Any snipers?” Drake asked, soon after Unicorn finished speaking.

Freya raised her hand, but no one else raised theirs. “You’re a sniper. I thought you were an MDO. Why does a sniper have a dropship?” Drake asked, staring at her.

“Drake, time.” Unicorn reminded him.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He replied, shaking his head. “Take your highest pen weapons with faster reload times. Target the enemy supports with an emphasis on the Denial Spheres. Questions, get with Magic. Any MDOs? No, then you drone people split up and work with a sniper. Your target’s colors are blue for mortar teams, green for scouts, red for high priority for assaults. If you have weaponized drones bring them along. I only want one person from each squad doing the targeting. Get with your squads and quickly pick who is doing what. Questions?” Drake asked, looking around.

Freya looked around for any Master Drone Operators as Drake spoke, but no one raised their hands. She noted that Unicorn and herself were the only ones who had progressed to the end of their templates. She knew that it was rare for anyone to get to the end of their template, but still she expected more of them on a spec ops platoon. She wondered if there were more in the other squads.

“Ok, let’s get in line. Time is running out.” Unicorn said, motioning for people to fall in with the rest of the platoon, who were waiting their turn to go through the door.

“Get your stuff in the locker room then enter the mission. Don’t wait. We don’t have time to get a good mission planning session in before our time runs out. I’m squad leader for this mission with Unicorn as second in command. If we go down then it’s by the numbers. First fire team leader in 1st squad, then first fire team leader in 2nd squad. And so on. If you have questions, ask them as we move. Let’s move out, people.” Drake said, waving them onward as he walked backwards towards the line.

Freya fell in line with the rest of the platoon. A man with blueish-white eyes came up asking her what rifle he should take. Looking up the specs she asked him which rifle he was more accurate with. He told her that he was far more accurate with his second rifle than his first, but his first had more penetration power. After reading the specs she told him to go with his second one. It had enough penetration power for long shots but it would lose steam with any extreme shots. Guessing that they wouldn’t have too many of those she picked his second rifle.

After he left, she found herself at the door to the lobby. She quickly placed her hand on the scanner and walked into the light to find herself in a very clean locker room. She quickly found the nearest locker that was unoccupied and started to get her armor on. As she did so she noticed people were already heading into the mission door. She grabbed her rifle and stepped behind Monkeyman, who was waiting at the door to the mission. Seconds later, it was her turn and she stepped into the light once more.

This time she found herself standing in a hangar bay with her dropship waiting on her. The hangar was much smaller and was dimmer than her hangar bay on the Monarch. It also didn’t have two giant Mechs which made Freya sad. She looked around for her Crew Chief, but didn’t see anyone. Frowning, she started walking towards her ship when the ramp lowered itself and a person started walking down it.

Freya knew it was a woman by the way the person was walking. Then Freya smiled when she saw who it was. “Diaz!” She yelled out and ran towards her old crew chief.

“Wait, slow down there, bullet catcher! No running in my bay!” Her crew chief called, holding her hands up in a stopping motion. Freya slowed down, but didn’t stop running all together.

She grabbed her crew chief around her waist and lifted her up into the air, making the other woman giggle. Freya quickly put her friend down and stepped back. “I’m so glad to see you.” Freya said, surprised at how emotional she was getting. The hangar must have been dusty because she had to blink some tears from her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.” Diaz told Freya, wiping her tears from the non-existent dust. “Damn hero, it’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too.” Freya said, starting to feel awkward at how much emotion she was feeling.

“Screw it. Come here.” Diaz said, holding her arms out for a hug. Freya laughed and hugged her friend. She closed her eyes as the other woman hugged her back. They held each other for a few seconds before Freya took a step back.

“So how’s my ship?” Freya said looking away from Diaz to her ship.

“Took me forever to build it, so please don’t crash this one.” Diaz said, pulling out a tablet from her back pocket and unfolding it.

“I didn’t really crash the last one. They took it apart and didn’t put it back together again.” Freya said defensively.

‘Ehh, whatever.” Diaz said dismissively. “So, not two week in and you’re already on a classified sim mission. What gives?”

“Just my luck.” Freya replied, shrugging her shoulders.

“It just says wave mission then classified.” Diaz said looking down at her tablet.

“That’s right.” Freya replied. “And, sorry, but that’s all I can tell you.”

“No worries.” Diaz said looking up at Freya’s ship. “Wave mission, hmm. That means I’ll most likely have to rebuild your ship again when you get done.”

“Have faith.” Freya said in mock outrage. “I flew my last dropship back to the Monarch after my wave mission.”

“This one is going to be different. Classified wave mission means tougher mission. I bet you a beer at Pop’s, grey side not your Marine side, that you don’t fly this one back.” Diaz said, waving her hand at the dropship.

Freya sighed then shook her head. “I want to say yes to that bet, but I get the feeling that you’re right.”

“I always am.” Diaz said, sounding like a cheap guru movie character, making Freya laugh as she started walking towards her ship. She walked around the outside of the ship doing the preflight check off with Diaz. As she expected, she didn’t find a single thing wrong with the ship. Freya walked into her bay first, followed by Diaz. They both stopped to kiss the nameplate before moving deeper into the dropship.

“Good work as always.” Freya said, once she checked everything on the list in her pod bay.

“I know.” Her cocky crew chief said with a grin. “Good to see you again. Now get in there and kill a few bad guys.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Freya said, giving her friend a sloppy salute as she closed the door to the pod. As soon as the door closed, she despawned and respawned in the cockpit.

The cockpit felt strange to Freya as she looked around. It felt comfortable, like climbing back into her bed, yet at the same time it felt smaller in size. She sat down in the seat and spun it around until it was facing forward, then she stopped and just sat there for a few seconds drinking in the sights and smells. It felt oddly comfortable.

“You gonna sit there all day or do you want to take her for a spin?” Diaz asked over the radio, making Freya jump. Feeling embarrassed, Freya quickly started her preflight checkoffs. Once she was done, she started the engine up in the start up phase. Once it was warm enough, she switched it over to flight engines.

She checked her screens and noticed her call sign had changed. It was now B396. Nodded to herself, as she switched the maneuvering engines on above her head, she turned on her radio. “October, B396.”

“Go ahead, B396.” The flight controller replied. It was a male voice that was oddly deep. She smiled as she wondered if the flight controller was playing a joke on her by making his voice deeper.

“Requesting clearance to open the hangar doors.” She replied, sitting back in her chair.

“Request granted. Flight path, clear. Have a good mission, B396.” The same deep voice replied. Freya turned her head and listened harder trying to tell if he was using a voice modulator, but came to the conclusion that, unless he was really good, she thought it was his real voice.

“Thanks, October.” Freya replied as she raised her ship off the hangar floor and the lights started flashing red. She switched frequencies on her radio and called Diaz.

“Hey Diaz, this guy for real?” She asked as the door below her opened to space.

“His voice?” Came Diaz’s reply over the radio. “Yeah, it’s that deep in real life. Very cool. Right?”

“Yeah.” Freya replied with a smile as she lowered the nose of her ship to point it out towards space. She started her clone spawning she did so.

“Have a good mission. Don’t screw it up, hero.” Diaz said over the radio.

“Yeah, yeah. Everyone's a critic.” Freya replied to herself as she boosted her engines to sixty percent and flew out into the dark.

Freya’s first impression of the mission planet was that it was both big and gray. There were some brown clouds circling the planet, but overall it was an ugly gray color. She angled her ship into the flight path and headed towards the planet. She had no idea if the mission called for any anti-ship defense, so she boosted her engines to eighty percent and took evasive maneuvers just in case. It added to the time to get to the surface, but the last thing she wanted was to get shot down because she was stupid.

She entered the planet's atmosphere with no problems, and made her way down towards the fort where her platoon was already on the ground waiting for her. No one fired on her as she made her way down, which made her nervous. She was so used to getting shot at that when it didn’t happen it made her more worried than when it did. She quickly found her landing zone and landed a bit harder than she meant to, but her damage control assured her that the ship was fine. She set her ship’s defenses to active then despawned.

“30 seconds until first wave.” Drake called out on the platoon’s command radio as Freya finished equipping her armor and weapons. She quickly ran down the ramp and looked around. She found a waypoint with her name on it blinking on her mini map. It was on top of a building close to the gate of the fort. She ran towards the building and found a rope hanging from the roof. Checking her mini map she smiled when she saw Lurch waiting for her. She quickly climbed the rope, and found Lurch on his belly with his drone controller in front of him.

“Took your time.” Lurch told her, as she slid onto her belly beside him.

She didn’t have a witty reply so she just said she was sorry as she adjusted her big rifle and looked around at what she had to work with. The landscape was horrible for a defensive action. The ground was uneven and rocky with a lot of places for an enemy to hide in. As she was scanning the area, she spotted a few demo people running back to the fort. A quick peek on her mini map showed her a large minefield surrounding the fort.

She took a second to look away from her scope to check out the fort with her own eyes. Directly in front of her on the wall surrounding the fort was a guy with a huge heavy machine gun mounted on a tripod. It was even bigger than the gun Patterson used to use in her old platoon. On either side of him were a bunch of marines in heavy armor with normal-sized weapons. Well, larger than what she could carry, but still normal-looking to Freya.

There was one other guy on the front side of the fort who had a big weapon that was also mounted, but it wasn’t nearly as large as the one the guy in front of Freya was using. To the right hand side of her, on the far wall, she spotted one more gun mounted on a tripod while the rest had man-portable weapons.

She twisted around to see behind her and saw two more mounted guns on the back wall. She untwisted herself and checked off to her left and spotted only one mounted weapon on the last wall. To her right, scattered around the middle of the fort, were the demo people setting up mortars. She spotted Monkeyman on the ground, laying down mortar shells. They weren’t big mortar shells, but for the most part they were the same size shells as everyone in his group were carrying. Littered on the roofs of every building were scouts and their drone operators. There weren’t enough buildings for every team to have just one building so some doubled up.

“Five seconds until go.” Drake called out on the radio.

Freya quickly settled in beside Lurch and started scanning the horizon for any signs of the Ketica. She switched her rifle to ballistic rounds to give herself more ammo as her energy beam fired only ten rounds before she had to replace the battery pack. It also had a slower rate of fire than the ballistic rounds. She planned on using them until she ran out then she would switch to her beam setting.

She silently counted down in her head as she waited on the enemy. At zero, the first enemy appeared on the ground much closer than she was expecting. It seemed to just erupt from the ground like it had been there the entire time, camouflaged by some dirt. The creature was about six feet long and looked like a beetle Freya grew up seeing back home. Except it was much bigger and uglier here in this sim mission.

The thing was grey like the surroundings and it ran on four legs with two pincers growing out in front of it. It had a small dome shell that covered its back. Freya mentally classified it as one of their drones. She guessed the enemy sent it out as a probe to see what their response would be.

Freya didn’t bother firing at it as the entire wall in front of her erupted in gunfire. The drone was quickly torn to pieces. Freya instead scanned the horizon looking for support creatures. She spotted a ripple in the dirt and, before she could think about it, her finger squeezed the trigger. There was a flash of green liquid and the ripple stopped. It took her a second to realize that the green liquid was whatever she shot’s blood. She didn’t let herself be distracted as she kept on scanning the area in front of her.

“Good shot.” Lurch said beside her. “Our sensor net read that as a spy bug.”

“Good to know.” Freya said absently as she looked for another target. She ignored the enemy beetles that started erupting all over the place, trusting the heavy weapons people to do their job. She spotted a second ripple to her left. Technically it wasn’t in her area of coverage, but she took the shot anyway as none of the third squad scouts had picked it up yet. She moved on looking for other enemy targets.

After about thirty seconds of not seeing anything but enemy beetles, she started targeting them - starting on the far distant ones first. She racked up four kills before she spotted a shadow on the ground. She raised her rifle and spotted a flock of bird-like things flying in a V formation towards the fort. Not taking any chances, she fired at the one in the lead of the V formation and, to her surprise, it exploded in greenish-white fire.

Before she could call out a warning, Lurch beat her to it - calling on the radio and warning everyone in the platoon. Freya got off another shot before the heavy weapons guys turned their attention upwards and tore the birds apart before they got near the fort.

“Keep an eye out for more of them.” She told Lurch, as she found another ripple in the dirt and killed it with a pull of her trigger.

“On it.” Lurch replied. “Sensor net is reading them as flame bats. They spit liquid acid that off-gasses with a low flash point.”

“Sounds fun.” Freya replied as she started shooting the beetles in the distance again. She noted that there were a lot of them now and increasing, despite them dying in large numbers under the heavy weapons fire from the wall. She also noted that it was getting harder to see the spy bugs as there were so many beetles running around now that it was getting harder to see the ground.

As she was just starting to get worried about being overwhelmed, the mortars started falling. Huge swaths of beetles started dying. Freya smirked as she looked around for a target around the bomb sites. She took a break to reload her rifle after shooting a beetle that a mortar round had missed. Once she reloaded her gun, she spotted a flashing green waypoint on her mini map. She checked the area with her scope, and at first didn’t see anything. Then she spotted a tiny gray sphere on the ground. It was the size of a baseball and at a mile away it was very hard to see. Freya took her time and lined up a shot. A second later her round hit her target,vaporizing it. The green waypoint disappeared.

Time seemed to slow to a stop as she looked and found more targets. She spotted more than her fair share of ripples in the dirt and killed them. She lost count of how many spybugs she found and killed as well as the horde of beetles that charged the fort. After what seemed an hour of constant fighting, but, according to her mission timer, was only eight minutes, the first regular Ketica troop appeared. It was six feet tall and looked like a two-legged lizard with scales. The thing was fast and very agile. They could leap about six feet into the air and could take much more damage before they fell.

She spotted a group of lizards erupting from the ground about six hundred feet away from the fort. The group of six kind of stayed close to each other, but far enough away that a single mortar wouldn’t hit them. Freya tried to line up a shot but they were very fast. In the end she had to trust her instincts and try to predict their movements. Taking a deep break, she pulled the trigger. She smiled as her target dropped to the ground, but didn’t spare any time after it did to find a new target. They were getting worryingly close to the fort when they started crossing the minefield. In less than three seconds they were all gone.

“New target.” Lurch said, startling her as she forgot he was there.

He gave her the coordinates and she quickly found another denial sphere. This one was further in the distance than her first one. Taking a second to line the shot up properly, she pulled the trigger. She cursed as she saw the target in her scope move, dodging her shot. She switched over to her beam setting and lined up the shot again. This time her target didn’t have time to move as she pulled the trigger. Freya watched as the target seemed to deflate like a basketball with a hole in it.

“Good kill.” Lurch said beside her. “New target…”

She moved her scope again, this time her target was a little over two miles away and very tiny in her scope. She adjusted her scope and lined up the shot. Worried about its insane ability to dodge her ballistic rounds, she kept her rifle on the beam setting. She pulled the trigger.

“Good kill.” Lurch told again. “One last target …”

Freya frowned as she followed Lurches coordinates. The sphere was right at the edge of the horizon. She had to adjust her scope to its maximum setting just to see it, and even then it only appeared to her as a dot in the distance. Licking her lips she lined the shot up. It seemed to Freya to take an hour to line up the shot, but she knew it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds. Even still, she had never tried to hit a target that small that far away before. She used all the tricks she learned in the Marines as well as what her grandfather had taught her to make the shot. After blowing out all the air in her lungs and in that magical time between heartbeats she pulled the trigger.

“By Tom’s tongue, you hit it. Good kill!” Lurch cried out beside her. Freya smiled at his reaction. The dot in her scope vanished from her sight. She knew that without Lurch she wouldn’t have been able to confirm her kill. One second it was there and then it was gone. She took the time to change out the battery pack, even though it still had some charge left in it, just to be sure. She also pulled out another ammo rod and set it down beside her again, just in case.

As she was doing that she looked around and saw that the battle was slowing down. Most of the enemy were dead. Only the lizards were left and they were slowly getting slaughtered by the combined might of the heavy assault people, mortars, and the mines around the fort. She looked for more spybugs, but nothing appeared on her scope. Then the last of the lizards stepped on a mine and blew itself up.

Freya waited for the confirmation that the wave was over, but after a minute it didn’t appear. She scanned the area, but didn’t spot anything. A quick peek at her mini map didn’t show any enemies in the area, nor where anyone was shooting any more. Not sure what was going on and dreading that she was missing something, she stayed on her scope, scanning the area around her.

“You see anything?” Lurch asked.

“Nope.” Freya replied, still looking. “What does the net say?”

“It’s clear.” Lurch replied, sounding worried. “You think they have an active camo bioweapon?”

“If they do, then it wasn’t in the skill training I had.” Freya said, worried. Time slowly passed before she checked it again. She noted that the fighting had ended nearly ten minutes ago. She was really starting to get worried, when someone on the radio spoke up.

“Stay focused, people.” Drake, their platoon leader, said over the radio. “We might have gotten them all and are just waiting for the other bases to get done, or the October might have a surprise for us.”

Not ten seconds later, Freya got a message telling her that the first wave was complete. Checking her notifications, she noted that she had six people in the pods getting respawned and two more waiting in the queue. She frowned as she wondered how they all got zeroed out. They never really got close to the wall at her base. Then again they had two squads while the others had only one. Shrugging her shoulders, she stayed on her scope, but relaxed while she waited for the next wave. Below her the demo people were running out to set more of their mines in the field.