Freya yawned as she got a notification that they had two minutes remaining until the next wave started. She looked around as some of the demo people were coming back to the fort from setting their mines and traps. Inside the fort she frowned as something seemed off. She looked beside her and Lurch was doing something on his drone tablet. She looked at his screen and saw he was examining a feed of the fort from a drone flying overhead. She saw herself smack dab in the center of a building in the corner of the fort, close to the front wall near the gate. Then it hit her.

She keyed up the command channel then stopped herself, remembering Mother’s comment about command point chasers. She clicked off the channel and selected her fire team channel. “Hey Cannon, I think we need to redeploy the scout teams.” She said on the channel.

“What do you want to do? Switch roofs?” Came the reply. “If it hasn't escaped your notice, we don’t have enough roofs as it is. Wait, are you asking to go to the wall?”

“No!” Freya replied, struggling not to get angry with her sarcastic tone. “All the teams including myself are in the center of the roofs. We need to move them to the edges. It will make surviving an attack from those flying things much more likely. Also, we need to move the mortar teams. The enemy will have their position mapped out. They’ll go right for them.”

“Okay, I agree with moving the scout teams to the edges of the roof. You’re the sniper and I concede to your knowledge.” Cannon replied, sounding less sarcastic this time. “But why do you think the enemy will know our position? That’s not how wave missions work.”

“How is any of this like how we thought things work?” Freya replied, feeling upset. “You said it yourself. Everything so far is wrong. I think the old way of thinking and planning about wave missions are wrong. We need to adapt and plan for the unexpected.”

Freya waited anxiously for Cannon’s reply. She sighed in relief when her radio clicked on again, this time on the command frequency. “Drake, this is Cannon. My sniper wants to reposition both the scout teams, and the mortar teams. She wants the sniper teams to reposition towards the edges of the roof for cover from the flying bio constructs. She also wants the mortar teams to move because she doesn’t believe this is a normal wave mission. Not for nothing, but I believe her.”

“Drake, you know how much stuff we have to move if we have to reposition?” Came the reply from someone Freya didn’t recognize over the radio.

“Scout teams, move to the edges. Mortar teams, suck it up and reposition at least fifty feet from your last position. If they’re right then you get to live longer. If they’re wrong, you can discuss it with them over a beer they will be buying you folks.” Drake commanded.

“You have less than one minute to pick up and move, people.” Unicorn said, seconds later. “I suggest you move your scrawny asses, or be late for the party.”

Freya smiled in relief that they believed her. She tapped Lurch on the back and nodded her head towards the edge closest to the gate. She got up and jogged over to the lip of the roof. There was a rounded edge where a faded sign was rising over the roof. The lip of the sign was about six inches wide, but was made out of some kind of brick. She set her rifle on the highest part of the rounded sign and laid down behind it.

She had to keep her left foot off the sign and on the roof to keep her balance, but it wasn’t all that uncomfortable. Lurch laid down next to her and brought out his tablet again. A quick glance at his tablet confirmed that everyone was doing what Drake had commanded. She hoped that she wasn’t just being paranoid, but felt somewhere deep inside her that what she had suggested was the correct thing to do. She looked at the time to the next mission then took a deep breath and got ready.

“You got Tom’s own balls for suggesting that in a tryout.” Lurch whispered to her a few seconds later. “Hope I’m not going to be buying a bunch of people beers for this.”

“Watch and learn, grasshopper.” Freya replied absently, as she scanned the horizon for the enemy.

“What’s a grasshopper?” Lurch asked in reply.

“It’s a bug that jumps.” Freya replied. “They’re a good sign that the area you’re in is not that polluted.”

“So it's a good thing?” Lurch asked in return.

“Kinda of.” Freya replied, as the counter ran down to zero. “It’s something my grandfather used to say when I was growing up. But, just so you know, it's still a bug and bugs are gross.”

“You’re such a girl.” Lurch said, sounding amused.

“And shoot like one too.” Freya replied and pulled the trigger. Her ballistic round sped downrange, hitting a ripple in the dirt about four hundred yards in front of her, killing it.

“Hit.” Lurch said from beside her, chuckling.

The second wave started slowly. A few spybugs appeared here and there then the scout bio constructs appeared, popping out of the ground. It wasn’t anything too severe. Mostly, Freya spent the time taking pot shots at anything she found out past the three-hundred yard mark. About three minutes in, the lizards appeared, but this time the heavy gunners on the wall were far more prepared. None of them got within a hundred yards of the wall. Freya was just starting to get worried about the pace of the wave when there was an eruption of black something about four hundred yards away, in the southwest corner of the fort.

Freya quickly moved her rifle in that direction and blinked in surprise. Thousands of those flame-spewing bat bio constructs were exploding out of the ground. The gunners on the wall turned their attention towards the cloud of bats. Hundreds died by the second, but it did little good as thousands exploded out of the ground to replace them. On the radio Freya could hear Unicorn screaming at her mortar teams to target the place where the bats were coming from.

“Priority target.” Lurch called out beside her, bringing her attention back to the job she had been ignoring.

Freya quickly found the waypoint and the target. It was a denial sphere. Freya switched to her beam setting, quickly lined up a shot and fired. The sphere deflated and dropped to the ground. Even before it dropped to the ground, Freya was swinging her rifle towards the next green waypoint. She took a quick shot and watched just long enough to see it hit her target as she moved on to the next one.

She totally forgot about the bat problem until things started exploding inside the fort. She took a quick peek and saw balls of fire dropping from the air. She looked up to see bats circling around above her shooting long streams of fire into the fort. The fire would hit and, if the bat wasn’t killed right away, whatever it targeted would explode after a few seconds. She absently wondered what chemical the bats were spewing as she tried her best to ignore them and focus on the targets Lurch was calling out. In the back of her head she kept waiting for the stream of fire to fall on her and zero her out.

She was targeting a denial sphere when she spotted an odd-looking lizard popping up from the ground. It looked like a normal lizard except it was slightly thicker and had a shell on its back. Freya took the shot and killed the sphere before she returned her gaze to the odd-looking lizard. She saw the lizard bend down like it was bowing, and a wet-looking greenish-blue ball spat out of its shell. The ball sped over the battlefield at a deceptively fast pace before falling just inside the fort. The wet-looking ball exploded as soon as it hit the center of the roof of a building.

Freya quickly tracked the lizard who had fired the ball and, in less than a blink of an eye, it fell to an energy round from her rifle. She spotted a second lizard a hundred or so feet away already bending down like it was bowing. Freya took the shot and the lizard fell to the ground, shooting the wet-looking ball into a crowd of scouts that were racing towards the fort. There had been two normal-looking lizards in the crowd, but they jumped away and avoided the explosion. Lurch was frantically calling out more priority targets beside her, so Freya moved on.

At some point during the attack, Freya became aware that the queue to her dropship had exploded, as many people from the platoon were zeroed out and were awaiting a respawn. She focused on the quick movements and rapid shots at any denial spheres she found. She also targeted any mortar lizards she saw. The world around her disappeared, with only Lurch’s voice and the slight vibration of her gun to keep her company as she found and killed her targets.

She only lost her focus when she got a notification that a base had been destroyed and all the enemies from that base were now headed towards the northwest, central, and southeast bases. She tried to refocus, but people started to shout how unfair that was. Apparently that never happened in a wave mission before. From what Freya heard, if a base fell, the enemy of that base would disappear. Drake came on the radio and told everyone to shut up and get back to the killing. Freya did as he ordered and was able to focus again on the task at hand.

She lined up a shot at a sphere and waited a second for a mortar lizard to pass by before pulling the trigger. She smiled as the two dropped to the ground, then her instinct screamed at her. Not bothering to figure anything out, she grabbed Lurch and pulled him towards her as she rolled off the roof. She had a second to see Lurch’s surprised face as they fell before what felt like a hand hit them, sending them flying sideways. Freya’s HUD screamed at her as her back screamed out in pain. Seconds later, she felt Lurch fall on top of her as they both hit the ground.

Darkness around her sight closed in as the pain became too much and she started to lose consciousness. Then the pain went away and Freya found herself looking up at Lurch, who was hovering above her. “I got you.” He said, sounding muffled, like they were under water.

She watched as he tossed a medi pen away and grabbed another one. His hands disappeared from her sight and she felt the icy feeling flow through her veins while the medi pen did its job. Her HUD stopped screaming at her and her eyes tracked downwards towards her health. It was hovering around forty percent and rising. The little, human-like picture of her body was blinking red around her back just above her hips. Her legs were unblinking dark red.

She blinked, confused, for a few seconds, not understanding the human picture. Then the picture changed and the blinking red on her back faded to an orange color and the red on her legs started to blink in a lighter color red. She felt someone grab her shoulders and drag her over the ground. She looked up to see Lurch pulling her, going backwards. She saw he was looking over his shoulder as he pulled her. She turned away as she started to feel pins and needles in her legs which surprised her, as she hadn’t realized that she had lost feeling below the waist.

She looked up again when she felt herself stop moving. She found Lurch hovering above her again, but this time he was smiling. “It just pinched the nerves in your spinal column. You should be ok in a few seconds. Let the meds do their job. I need to go find my console. I’ll be right back.”

Before she could say anything, or even nod, he was gone. She found herself looking at the building that she had just been on at the start of the mission above her. She could see that the sign was mostly intact, with only the front part of it before the slightly rounded part started. The sign, from what she could see, was for a restaurant that focused on pastas foods. Oddly enough it made her hungry.

As she stared at the sign she felt the tingling in her legs get worse then, with an unexpected abruptness, the feeling faded and the normal feelings in her legs returned. She started to feel more clear-headed. She checked her health on her HUD and saw that it was above fifty percent again. She looked at the human body picture again and saw that her back was now yellow and the warning colors around her legs were gone. Gratefully she sat up.

She winced as she felt her muscles complain about the maneuver. It wasn’t bad, but it did get past whatever the drugs were doing to prevent her from feeling pain. The pain faded pretty fast, so she decided to stand up again. Again her back complained, but she ignored it as she felt it wasn’t too bad.

She looked around for her rifle and saw it in the middle of the street where Lurch had dragged her from. She looked up and down the street and didn’t see any enemies. That made her remember the bats, so she looked up to see most of them were gone. At least from what she could see. There were a few still flying in ones and twos, but nowhere as bad as it had been. She tried to run towards her gun, but her back said ‘hell no’, so she quickly slowed to a half-jog, half-walk with a limp towards the left. The left side of her back was telling her it was much more upset than her right side was.

Still she knelt down and picked up her rifle again. She didn’t bother trying to bend down, knowing her back would protest that movement. She slowly stood up again and made her way back towards the wall. The medi pen’s medication must have been working hard because the pain in her back lessened quite a bit on her return trip to the blown out building. Once she was back, she checked her HUD to find her health was now hovering around seventy percent and still rising.

“I’m back.” Lurch said, surprising her as he ran up to her.

Feeling a lot better, Freya looked at her mini map at what was going on. According to it they were still under attack. She nodded her head and looked up. “We need to get back up there.” She told him.

“We can climb back up, but are you healthy enough to get back up there?” He asked her.

“I’ll have to be.” She told him, as she pulled her backpack off her back. She noticed a large piece of rock buried in her backpack and winced. She turned her backpack around again and saw there was a small sharp piece sticking out covered in her blood. She immediately reached around the small of her back and felt the self-sealing foam just above her back. Feeling around it, she noted that it wasn’t as big as she expected. The foam’s circle was about two inches or so. Shaking her head to get herself back in the game, she pulled her hand away,opened her backpack and pulled out a rope and a grappling hook.

She hooked the grappling hook on the rope before handing it to Lurch. “You’re going to have to set that up there.” She told him pointing up at the top of the sign.

He nodded and took it from her. He placed the business end into his gun and aimed it towards the sign. A second later, the grappling hook shot up lazily and landed over the sign. He quickly let his gun hang on its straps and started pulling the rope until the hook caught on something.

As he did, she put her backpack down on the ground and started kicking the rock that had penetrated her backpack. It took a few kicks to get the rock to come out, but it left her nearly in tears when she was done. She waited for a few seconds until the pain faded, then slowly picked up the backpack and put it back on. As she did so, Lurch tested the rope, making sure the hook had caught on something that wouldn’t shake loose when someone climbed up.

“If it’s okay with you, I’m going to stay down here. I’ll call you over the talk around channel if I need you.” He told her, as she grabbed the rope.

“That’s fine.” She replied and hooked the rope through the D-clamps on her armor before spinning her leg around the rope to get into position to climb up it. She took a deep breath, reached up and pulled herself upwards. Her back complained, but not as much as she thought it would. It took her a lot longer to get to the top than she wanted, but she arrived without falling, so she guessed that was all she could reasonably expect.

She looked over the sign and saw that most of the building was gone. The back corner where she was was still intact, but most of the front and the left hand side of the building were gone. There was just enough room on the other side of the sign for her to place her foot down to steady herself as she laid down on the thin sign again. Her back argued about how she was laying down, but the medi pen’s medication fixed the problem after a few seconds. The pain didn’t go away completely, but it wasn’t so bad that she couldn’t ignore it.

She saw a bouncing green waypoint and pointed her rifle at it. She found a denial sphere at its location. A couple of seconds later, the sphere deflated and she moved on to the next target. The battle was still going at a furious pace. Freya quickly found far more targets than she could easily take care of. Time lost meaning as she got into the zone. She found a target. Lined up the shot. Made sure it was down, then repeated her actions all over again.

The battle wound down in front of her. She found herself shooting her target and not seeing any more targets in her area of coverage. The sounds of gunfire faded out in front of her, but behind her she could still hear the sounds of continued fighting. She looked at her mini map and sighed. She sat up on the sign and carefully swung her leg around so she could spin around. She looked at the sight behind and sighed again. She put more weight on her right foot and knelt on her left knee so that she had more vision over the wall towards the back of the fort.

She used her thigh to steady her left hand, that supported her rifle, and went looking for priority targets. She got into the rhythm again and the world disappeared so that only her and her targets existed, and for a long time nothing interrupted her shooting except to replace a battery pack or load up a new ammo rod. Then she got another notification which pissed her off.

The new notification stated that the northwest base had fallen. It told her that the enemies were now en route towards the northeast and central bases. Freya gritted her teeth at the thought that both western bases were now dead. She looked at the top of her HUD and saw that nearly half of the platoon was now in the queue to be respawned.

“At least we still have my ship.” She thought to herself then winced, hoping she hadn’t just jinxed herself. She shook her head to dismiss the idea. “Get your head back in the battle!” She told herself and refocused on the battle that was going on at the back of the fort.

She focused on long distance targets as she noted that they weren’t getting taken down as fast as the closer ones were. At one point she had to switch over to the beam setting on her rifle because she had run out of ammo for her ballistic rounds.

“Lurch!” she called out, as she had to wait a couple of seconds so that the next battery pack had a chance to recharge. “I need more ammo rods. Any chance you can make a run to the dropship and get me some LG ammo rods?”

As she spoke, she realized that it was the first time she had ever run out of ammo that she could remember. She had seen other people get resupplied before, but she had never needed to get more ammo before. Granted, her rifle took up a lot more ammo than any of her other weapons did before, but still it made her question her choice of weapons. She had thought about using her Irish Nester, but the shots she was taking were longer than she was comfortable with the Nester.

“On it.” Lurch replied. She watched him run off towards where her ship was deployed. She finally took the time to pull the battery pack off her belt and slid it into her rifle. As she did so, she thought about being resupplied again. She knew as long as it was proven that she needed it on her mission it would be free, but if it was found out that she either hadn’t bought enough ammo, or was wasteful, she would be billed for it. She knew from examples they gave at boot camp she was neither, but if she went on another mission that ate up her ammo again, she would be questioned why she hadn’t bought more before she had left. She made a note on her computer to buy more ammo in the future.

She went back to finding her targets at the far end of the horde of enemies and killing them. A few targets later, Lurch returned and tied a bunch of ammo rods on her rope. She stopped long enough to pull the rods up and reload her rifle. He had bought nearly twice what she had taken on the mission before. She placed a few by her right foot on what was left of the roof. The rest she placed in her backpack to be used later.

Not long after she got resupplied, the tide of the battle finally slowed down and ended. She waited for the notification that the wave was over, but it didn’t come for another ten minutes. She was starting to get really worried, when it popped up on her HUD. She sighed in relief and relaxed, sitting upright to let the pressure off her aching back.

“Magic.” Drake called over the radio.

“Go for Magic.” Freya replied with a grin.

“You need more respawn pods on your boat. Yours is only popping out six respawns every five minutes. If we both make it in, then come talk to me if you don’t have enough money. I’ll take up a collection or talk Mother into a loan from the platoon’s war chest. Either way, your ship is too tiny for this kind of work.”

“You think this will be a normal thing?” Freya asked, then bit her lip as she realized she may have just asked an inappropriate question about the platoon. To her relief, she didn’t get a notification that she had been fined.

“Don’t know.” He replied. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Roger that.” Freya replied, as she spun back around to face the front of the fort.

There was more chatter on the radio as people from the other platoons were absorbed by Drake and Unicorn’s squads. She noted that there were far less people coming in than she expected from the two bases. They should have had at least ten marines each, but, according to her ship, they got four from one base and seven from the other. The rest were shown with a red warning sign that said unable to respawn. That made her look at the respawns at their base and she noted that, while they had lost only six Marines in the two waves, they got them all back.

Freya listened in on the radio as they talked about sending some people to the other bases, as the southeast base had only four people left in it now. In the end, the squad leader who respawned at Freya’s base decided to abandon the base and regroup at the central base. That spurred a call to the northeast base to ask the squad leader what his plan was. In the end, they sent the seven marines from the northeast base back because the squad leader thought it would look bad if he abandoned the base.

Freya thought it was a stupid decision because by the time they got there the third wave would be just about to start. That meant that, unless the demo people were insanely good, they wouldn’t have the protection of mines being placed around the fort. Freya knew one thing from the first two waves, and that was just how useful a minefield was. She watched them leave the base and run in formation towards their base. She wished them luck.

Just before the third wave mission started, she watched as the six people from the last southern base came running into her base. She saw Unicorn had to double up on scout teams - since most of the buildings were gone now, they each were taking a wall that was still standing. Seeing them get set up made her think of the mortar teams. She checked on their position and found herself grinning. She looked down at Lurch, who was still at the bottom of the wall.

“Hey Lurch, looks like we don’t owe anyone a beer!” She shouted down at him over her loudspeakers. She saw him laugh and then he turned towards her to give her a thumbs up, before returning to whatever he had been doing.

“Anyone up for betting on if we get wiped out or finish this wave?” Someone asked over the talk-around channel on the radio.

“Knock that off!” Drake yelled in the same channel. “We finish this wave and keep going as long as we are told. Is that understood?” Freya joined in on the ancient Marine war cry with everyone at the base, over the radio. Then, apologizing to her back, she laid down on the small rounded sign and waited for the next wave to start.

The wave started just like the first two waves had. A few spy and scout bio constructs appeared from the ground and attacked. Then the wave slowly got worse as the lizards appeared. This time, both forms of the lizards showed up, both the regular and mortar forms. Soon there was an explosion of black bats just like last time, but this time there were four times as many explosions than before. There were so many bats that the sky turned dark. Then the warriors appeared on the battlefield and the battle got so much worse.

People were screaming over the radio about the warriors, but Freya didn’t see any of them at first. It was only after taking out a mortar lizard that she spotted a warrior. It was easy to see as it was by far the tallest thing on the battlefield. It stood about nine feet tall and looked sort of like the lizards, but without any scales. It also had a tail that it used as a whip that punched right though a heavily-armored marine like he was covered in paper.

For the first time since she bought her rifle Freya switched it to the third setting. It was the one that combined the beam setting with the ballistic setting. As she did so she looked over at the beast while it stomped its way towards the wall. From what she had learned in the skill, training she knew to ignore the head. According to her training, it only housed some of its sensory organs. Taking out its head would only limit the warrior, but not kill it.

She knew from her training that the only way to kill a warrior was through its heavily armored chest. The problem was that the Kitica were smart. They changed the positions of their vital organs around inside the chest so that it would be harder to kill them. As she was thinking about where to shoot the warrior, one of the heavy weapons killed it with a man-portable anti ship weapon. Ferya sighed and switched back to her beam weapon to kill more lizards.

Not long later another warrior appeared. Freya was going to ignore it, but a second warrior appeared, then a third and a fourth. Cursing, Freya switched back to the third setting on her rifle then looked at the first one’s chest. She bit her lip and aimed her scope at just below where the left nipple would have been, if it had been a human she was targeting. She took a deep breath and, in between breaths, she pulled the trigger. She held her breath as her shot made a softball-shaped hole in the thing’s chest. It took another step and she was lining up another shot when the thing fell like someone had cut the strings that held it up. She smiled at the sight only to frown as two of the four warriors made it to the wall and marines started to die.

She quickly targeted the closest warrior and fired. It took a second for it to die, just like that last one, but die it did. The corpse fell onto the wall, taking a chunk with it, as it fell backwards away from the fort.

“Kill shot on warriors, just below where the left nipple would be.” Freya announced over the command channel.

As soon as she got done speaking, she got a notification that her ship was gone. She spun around to look, but all she saw was a fire where it had been. There were a lot of bats circling around the area. The two buildings she hid her ship between were both gone. She cursed, only to get more bad news.

A notification popped up that the northeast base had fallen and all enemies were headed toward the central base. Freya cursed again as Lurch started screaming about priority targets. She spun back around, feeling fatalistic, seeing over forty bouncing, green waypoints. Freya felt her back twinge again as she laid on her stomach and looked for a target.

She found a sea of enemies in front of her, including more warriors. She ignored the targets on the denial spheres as they no longer mattered. She targeted the warriors as the biggest danger now. She lined up a shot and fired. A warrior fell. She lined up another shot and another warrior fell. As she lined up yet another shot on a warrior that was right in front of the wall trying to punch its way in, she saw a flash of light and the warrior fell.

Quickly she retargeted to another warrior, and got off a shot. The warrior fell, but as Freya went in search of more warriors she saw many more of them. She saw that the heavy weapons people were doing their best to take them down, but they had to keep up the fire on the rest of the horde or be overrun. Still, they were taking down warriors fast, but there were always more warriors behind them.

Freya moved faster then she had ever moved before as she targeted the warriors. Time seemed not to matter anymore as she shot, took another shot, reloaded, and shot again. She heard calls for reinforcements to the rear of the base, but she couldn’t stop to look as she was too busy shooting as many warriors as she could. Then someone got a very big weapon onto the wall and started unloading into the horde. It made a huge difference immediately and Freya had time to turn around and see what was going on behind her.

She cursed as she noted that the far wall was gone and in its place was a pile of debris. She saw that someone had set up a couple of auto turrets about twenty feet or so from where the wall used to be. They were mowing down the smaller enemies, leaving the heavy gunners to focus on the lizards and warriors. Seeing that they were ok for now she turned back towards her area.

She immediately noticed that someone had set up another big gun and it was already taking a lot of the pressure off the gunners on the wall. Freya took a deep breath and relaxed a little bit. She started targeting a warrior that was about two hundred yards out when there was an explosion of blackness right next to the wall. Freya cursed, as a huge cloud of bats exploded upwards right in front of her. She heard calls for mortars as more and more explosions of bats appeared all around the battlefield.

Freya fired on the warrior she was targeting then she stopped and pulled a grenade from the pocket on her belt. She grunted in agony as she threw the grenade to the area where the bats were coming from. She must have inspired someone because after her grenade disappeared into the black cloud of bats a few more followed. Finally someone used a bazooka and the flow of bats trickled to a stop.

The damage had been done and a few warriors had made it to the wall. One of the big guns was down and a warrior was pushing the second one so that it couldn’t fire at it. Freya’s gun moved before she had even thought about it and she pulled the trigger. The warrior that was holding the gun dropped. Unfortunately, the warrior didn’t let go of its hold on the gun. When it dropped dead it pulled the big gun with it.

Freya cursed as she saw the second gun go down, but she didn’t have time to think about it as another warrior ran up to the wall in front of her. It started punching at it, and at the same time its tail started killing marines who were manning the wall. Freya tried to get a shot off, but it was crouched so that the wall was blocking her kill shot. Frustrated, she stood up, balancing on the thin six inches of the sign. She raised her gun up and looked through the scope. She couldn't see the entire kill area in its chest, but saw its upper chest and a bit of where the nipple would have been if it had been human. Taking a chance she pulled the trigger.

The warrior didn’t drop like she hoped, but it did take a step back and scream at her. She saw her chance and pulled the trigger again, as she did so, she saw a bit of its tail come over its head like a scorpion. She didn’t see it drop because she grabbed her gun and jumped. The tail just missed her, taking the rounded part of the sign off and knocking it into where the building had been.

Freya had all the time in the world to see the ground coming up towards her. She grit her teeth against the pain she knew she would be in when she hit the ground. She closed her eyes at the last minute and tried to roll out of the fall. Her HUD flashed and she cried out in pain halfway into the roll. She found herself gasping in pain on the ground. In agony, she reached into her pocket and fished out a medi pen. Hoping that there had been enough time between shots, she flicked the bottom off and slammed it into her thigh. She sighed in relief as she felt the icy coldness roll through her body. The flashing on her HUD went away and, feeling slightly lightheaded, she stood up.

She looked over at the wall of her building to see it still standing. It was only missing a chunk where she had been standing. Even the rope was still hanging on it. She looked to where Lurch had been, but he was missing. She looked at her mini map and saw him closer to the center of the base. She had been so busy she hadn’t checked on him in a while and had no idea when he had moved. He was still alive so she ignored him for the time being and looked for a new place to set up shop. Looking around with her eyes first, she didn’t see anything remotely workable with her bad back. She then looked at her mini map and cursed. She didn’t see anything but what was left of the wall in front of her. Taking a deep breath, she reached out to the rope and pulled it closer to herself. Knowing the pain she was in for when she climbed the rope, she hesitated.

Stopping proved to be a mistake as she started to feel a little drunk from all the medi pens she had used while she stood there. Grabbing the rope, she spun her leg around it and then, biting her lip, she reached up and pulled herself upwards. The pain was incredible, but she pushed through and kept climbing until she reached the top of the wall. Taking a deep breath,she sat down on the wall, with each leg hanging on either side of it.

Once the pain was manageable, she looked up and cursed. The wall in front of her had a big warrior-sized hole in it. The good news was that the body of a dead warrior was blocking most of the hole, preventing the smaller sized bio constructs from getting in. The bad news was that a lizard construct was standing on top of the dead warrior. It got worse. It spotted her and bared its teeth at her. Freya cursed and yanked out her pistol as it jumped into the air. She fired at it as it was still in the air. The bullet hit the lizard in the chest and, to her relief, it knocked it backward a bit. The lizard’s body hit the wall in front of her and tumbled off it to the ground.

“You falling for me, lizard?” She quipped, feeling drunk on still being alive. “Or maybe just drunk.” She corrected in a slightly off-kilter tone of voice, as she put her pistol away and gingerly pulled her rifle off her back.

She saw a warrior on the other side of the hole in the wall. It had the dead warrior’s feet in its hand like it was going to pull it out of the hole. It looked at her as she looked at it. She smiled and pulled the trigger not bothering to aim. The warrior dropped dead.

“Caught you!” She shouted at the dead warrior. “That's my hole!”

She raised her rifle and, without thinking, switched it to the second function and fired a beam at a lizard that was trying to sneak through the hole. Then she switched back and killed a warrior that was running towards her and the hole. Feeling great, she started picking off warriors and lizards as fast as she saw them. At one point, she had to stop because she was giggling and that made her gun shake too much for an accurate shot.

Some time later, still having a great time, she reached down to grab another ammo rod from the part of the roof that was still connected to the wall, only to find that she had run out. Cursing, she stopped to yell, “Hang on. I’ve run out of ammo. Don’t feel like you need to run away, I got more in my backpack.”

Having said that, she pulled out a couple of rods. She dropped one, but got the second one into her rifle correctly. She put the rest on the roof and started killing again. Time passed in a blur and she found herself coming down from the medication high she had been feeling. She stopped to reload again and looked up to realize that the entire wall in front of her was gone. It wasn’t a new thing, but still it surprised her. She saw that there were a ton of dead bodies in front of her, making a hill that led up to where the wall had stood. She wondered if the debris from the wall had made the hill or she did.

Shaking her head, still feeling a little drunk, she looked around to find the base in ruins. There weren't any fully-standing buildings anywhere, but she did see a lot of dead bio constructs and marines. She checked her mini map for Lurch and Monkeyman, but she couldn’t find them. In fact, there were only a few marines left on her mini map. She looked back out towards her area and saw a sea of dead bodies. She did see a lizard that looked like it was drunk as it stumbled towards her. She lifted her rifle and dropped it. Lowering her rifle, she didn’t see any more targets. She started her cloud forge working on creating a surveillance drone. It would take a while to get it built, but she couldn’t see any drones on her mini map.

She turned around to see that there was a single pocket of marines fighting the enemy behind her. She shrugged and gently turned around to cover for them. She ignored the warrior that they were all unloading on. She targeted the one behind it that was running towards them. A second later it was down. Smiling, she changed targets and got the one that was climbing up a wall for some reason. It fell on top of a bunch of beetle constructs, killing them.

“Multi kill.” She muttered to herself, still feeling the chuckles from the medi pen.

She found a warrior just outside where the wall used to be and took it down. As she did, she spotted a bunch of lizards running up behind it. They ignored the falling warrior and charged at the pocket of marines. Freya’s world slowed down as she fired and fired again, taking down most of the lizards as the pocket of marines finished off the warrior they had been fighting for the last few seconds. The lizards jumped at the pocket of marines, taking down two before they fired back.

“Crap on a crap stick.” Freya muttered and killed a lizard as it jumped towards another marine. She had accidentally switched to the third function and the round blew right through the lizard and caught a second one as it jumped towards another Marine.

“Double kill!” Freya muttered in a deep voice, as both lizards dropped to the ground.

Freya covered the other marines as they fought off a small horde of beetle constructs and killed any lizards she saw. She saw a marine drop to a beetle and cursed. She switched targets and started taking out the beetles close to the marines. She had to switch targets though as a warrior came charging right at the last two marines. Freya took it down, but it fell awfully close to the marines.

The last two marines slowly backed towards her position, killing all the beetles that came their way as Freya kept the lizards off them. They were halfway to her when a lizard exploded out of some debris taking the marines by surprise. One zeroed out immediately before the second Marine could turn and kill it. It left him exposed and, as fast as Freya was, she wasn’t fast enough for the horde of beetles that overran him. She heard him scream before he zeroed out. Shaking in rage, Freya emptied her rifle into the beetles before dropping it and pulling out her Irish Nester to finish them off.

She checked the mini map and noted that there were only two marines left in the base besides her. Knowing she wasn’t alone made her feel better. She spotted a warrior who was cautiously creeping into the base. To her relief, a single explosive round from her Nester was enough to take it out. She changed targets to a lizard as it raced its way towards her. She pulled the trigger on it, but it dodged her round and kept on coming. She pulled the trigger again and again, but the thing was far too fast for her. It was twenty feet away when it leaped at her. She dropped her Nester, pulled out her pistol and shot it nearly point-blank range. She ducked and felt its body fly over her. She spun, only to see it miss the wall completely and fall into the rubble that used to be the building. It fell limply and didn’t get up.

She turned back around to see a bunch of beetles crawling towards her. Raising her pistol she ended them. Her HUD told her she was low on ammo so she quickly reached for her backpack only to find it gone. She looked around in panic only to relax when she spotted it on the ground below her, next to her ASO rifle. She smiled and checked her batteries, making sure they were fully charged. She had no idea why she dropped her rifle when she did. She realized how stupid it had been, as it had a beam function. Shaking her head at herself, she turned around.

She spotted a bunch of smaller constructs working their way towards her. Not wanting to jump down, she pulled up her rope and threw it over the other side of the wall. As she got ready to rappel down the wall, she spotted a beetle on the opposite side of it climbing upwards. Calling its mother a lot of unflattering names, she quickly stepped off the wall and slid down the rope.

She reached her backpack and pulled out an ammo rod for her pistol. She reloaded as she turned around. She only had seconds to see the falling beetle, but it was enough. She pulled the trigger and the round from the pistol struck the beetle, knocking it to the side and killing it. Freya released a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding, then grabbed the rest of the pistol ammo and put it into the pocket on her belt. She then groaned as she reached out to grab her big rifle. Her back was killing her again. As she was standing up, she spotted her last ammo rod - the one that had fallen at the start of the third wave. Smiling at the ammo rod, she grabbed it and reloaded her rifle.

She stood up and limped over towards the wall. Using what was left of the wall for cover, she peeked out. In the distance, she spotted a few lizards and two warriors. They were wandering around aimlessly. She took a deep breath and fired on the closest warrior. It dropped and the group froze. Freya didn’t. She dropped a second one before they started running towards her. She dropped two more lizards before they got to her. She let go of her rifle and pulled her pistol to kill the last one as it leaped at her. She dodged to the side as its body flew past her. She quickly raised her rifle and fired on the last warrior as it charged her, its tail raised to strike her. It never got a chance, as she punched a hole in the kill area with her rifle. It dropped ten feet from her.

She was still looking at it when her cloud forge pinged, telling her that her drone was built. Looking up, she fired it off and programmed it to scan the area for any enemies. She tried to bring up a list of her platoon so that she could send anyone who was still around the feed, but either she didn’t have permission to do that or they were all dead. She checked her mini map and didn’t find any living marines around her. She knew that didn’t mean that there weren’t any marines left. It only meant that there weren’t any marines in range - there could still be some left out in the desert.

She let the drone go and let it scan the area. It found a few beetle constructs on the other side of the street from where she was. They were wandering around behind a wall. She grabbed a grenade as she walked out from behind the wall she was hiding behind, walked as close as she could to their wall and threw the grenade over it. She watched it on the feed as it dropped down in the middle of the pack of beetles. She shook her head at how dumb they were as they all swarmed the grenade. When it went off, it coated the wall in gunk. She moved on as her drone went looking for constructs for her to kill.

It found a ripple on the ground about twenty feet from her. She pulled her pistol and killed it and moved on. It found a lizard eating a dead marine. It was hiding behind a wall and didn’t seem to realize she was just on the other side of it. Freya took a step back and fired at the wall, killing the lizard behind it. She lowered her rifle and moved on.

The constructs seem to think that all the marines were dead. Freya walked through the base killing them as fast as her drone could find them. She cleared most of the base and was starting to think about the fact that they hadn’t seen a single Ketica in the mission. She had the drone fly higher and slowly pan around so that she could see if there were any Ketica vehicles. She hid where she was and had her drone spin around twice, but she didn’t see anything but two more warriors wandering near the base aimlessly.

She was getting near the edge of the far end of the base and the last bit of her medication high left her, leaving her hurting and exhausted. Her limp was more pronounced as she walked towards the last two enemies that her drone had discovered. She had to wait as her first drone timed out and she had to send out a second one. The feed didn’t change after she sent it around the fort again looking for any hidden enemies. She then programmed it so that it would circle the fort near the edge of the horizon, looking for a Ketica command vehicle.

She finally reached the far end of the base and leaned on the largest remaining piece of the broken wall. The drone still hadn’t found any evidence of any Ketica command vehicles. Feeling extremely tired, she slid so that her shoulder was up against the piece of wall. She raised her rifle and found one of the two warriors that were left. It was facing away from her so she targeted the kill zone from behind and pulled the trigger. The warrior dropped.

The second warrior must have been watching because it started running at her. As she lined up the shot she had time to think about how quiet all the constructs were. Except for one or two times, they had all been silent. She mentally shrugged and pulled the trigger. The last warrior dropped a hundred feet from her. She raised her rifle as she got a notification asking her if she wanted to end the wave mission or keep going. For a second she thought about the option to keep going. She wasn’t serious, but she found it funny for some reason. Instead she hit the ‘end wave mission’ option. A door appeared in front of her and she stepped into the light.