Freya sighed and dropped her helmet on her bed then fell backwards next to it, completely exhausted. The platoon had been running practice missions for weeks now. The spec ops version of practice missions was very different from what she had experienced in her last platoon. For one thing, the practice mission could and often did last thirty-six or more hours. Sleep was a luxury that was hard to come by, and she was really feeling it now.

They also didn’t have days off. The only time they had to themselves was when the practice mission ended. Freya and her friends stopped going to Pop’s as it was too far away and they were too exhausted. Instead, they started bringing beers to Monkeyman’s room where they just hung out talking or playing some random three-D game Monkeyman had laying around.

The way Mother went about running the practice missions was also different. They often spent far more time planning than actually doing the objective or mission which more often than not lasted only about fifteen to twenty minutes. On top of that, Mother and Sergeant Kruz ran them ragged. They practiced ad nauseum on things like how to spot a kill zone on a warrior construct or how best to kill a mortar beast. They practiced every single day on the best way to kill each and every construct, whether the enemy was in a group or if they were alone. Mother also had the platoon practice killing them by themselves or as part of a team. They spent at least an hour every day on that one task.

They also spent a lot of time practicing how to do everything they were tasked to do while protecting someone. They never drilled with the Psy Ops guy they were supposed to protect, as apparently he was too busy doing whatever he was doing while not with them. They normally used someone from Third Squad to play the PM, or the protected mark. Mother even got in on it a couple of times. It was always a pain when she played the PM because she liked to play as an unpredictable child where she would often go wandering away from the PD, or protective detail. She always had some annoyingly funny reason, like she had to go potty or there was this bug that she had to follow because it was cute. Often she got herself killed and got the team that was in charge of protecting her in trouble. Freya did more running laps for letting her PM die than she did in boot camp.

She also discovered a downside to how she was assigning her stats. She and her new platoon discovered she had the lowest number of health and health regen mods assigned. That meant she died a lot. Like in any mission that went sideways. She also had problems with some of the platoon’s movements like jumping down from cliffs or large hills. She was ordered to get her health and health regen up to at least one hundred as soon as she could. It was the minimum that Mother required for the platoon. Freya had some mod points left over, but not enough to get them up to the minimum. She ended up bumping both stats to 91 which left one stat unassigned. Mother let it slide as long as Freya used some of her mod points from the next sim mission on them.

The platoon was also very different from her last platoon in how they acted with each other. With the Iron Hand, the platoon was a family that hung out with each other at barbeques and whatnot. The Honey Badgers weren’t like that. They worked with each other while doing the missions, but once it was over everyone went their own way or hung out with their team. Freya was glad that she had Monkeyman and Lurch in her squad because otherwise she wouldn’t have anyone to hang out with. Cannon almost never hung out with them. She was always off doing her own thing. It was startling just how different the platoon was compared to her last platoon in that way. Spending time with her friends in Monkeyman’s room playing games with him and Lurch made everything bearable.

Freya sighed and got up to take a shower. She wanted to sleep, but she had promised Monkeyman that she would hang out with him and Lurch. When she felt clean again she got dressed into the comfortable civilian clothes she wore when she wasn’t working. She dressed in simple blue pants and an old-fashioned red hoodie. The hoodie had a large Federation Marines logo on the front of it. She had found it in a small shop in the PX mall a while ago. She wore her slippers that she got while on the Monarch.

Monkeyman’s room was four doors down on the opposite side of the hallway from hers. He had a simple screen on his door which he wrote all sorts of quotes on. His current quote was from some pre-empire female leader talking about the Marine corps of her time..

“The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps! ” ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Freya chuckled at the accuracy of the quote, and put her hand on the lock of Monkeyman’s door. He had set it up so that she and Lurch could enter his room anytime they wanted. He promised that he wouldn’t ever be naked outside his bedroom. So far he had kept his promise. The lock accepted her bio reading and the door opened. She stepped into the light, and found herself in Monkeyman’s dirty kitchen. She walked past, ignoring it. It wasn’t the first time she had seen it that dirty. He had a habit of not cleaning it up until he ran out of dishes. Then he cleaned it to the point that it would pass inspection by the hardest inspector in the Marines.

She found them both in the living room. They greeted her as she found a seat on a really big and comfortable chair. It was one of those auto-adjusting chairs that molded its way around a person. It was way nicer than anything she had ever sat in before. When she first sat in it weeks ago she made a note to go buy one for herself. She hadn't yet, but she was going to.

“So anyone hear anything about this sim mission tomorrow?” Monkeyman asked, after she sat down. He was sitting upside down on the couch with his feet in the air and his head hanging down towards the floor.

“I think it will be a run through of our mission.” Freya told them, as she grabbed a beer from a tiny refrigerator that sat between the couch and her chair.

“Pass me one?” Monkeyman asked looking at her upside down when he saw her grabbing a beer. Freya did as he asked. She smiled as he spilled some of it on his face when he tried to drink it still upside down. He ended up turning right-side up before he tried again.

“I bet it's going to be super hard.” Lurch said absently. Freya noted that his attention never left the entertainment center where he was playing a game. He was sitting on the reclining chair facing the far wall. He had a feed going on the wall so that if they wanted to they could watch his game. It was some exaggerated, spaceship fighting game. The physics of the game were so wrong that Freya never played it. She preferred the real thing.

“It’s Mother, so yeah it’s going to be hard.” Monkeyman said, pausing to drink some of his beer. “The problem is that it’s Mother. I bet you a round at Pop’s that she has some twist lined up for us. Some kind of crazy problem we have to solve on our own.”

“Yeah, Mother sure likes her twists.” Freya told them, looking into her beer. She found herself thinking of all the things that had been thrown at them in the past few weeks. Mother really did like her tricks.

Freya was bringing her beer up to take another sip when the lights in Monkeyman’s room turned red. Freya blinked, confused, at the change when an alarm started to sound. It was the general quarters alarm. Freya looked at Monkeyman in complete shock. For a split second none of them moved then Monkeyman broke the moment and stood up.

“That’s general quarters. Let’s go, people.” He told them. Freya found herself getting up and running for the door. She beat Monkeyman to it and pulled it open. She quickly stepped into the light and found herself in the hallway in the barrack that was slowly filling up with Marines from her platoon. She ran towards the stairs, nearly beating everyone there. Only Bess from Second Qquad beat her. Bess wasn’t a squad leader anymore. She had been demoted to a fire team leader. She hadn’t seemed mad about it to Freya, but it was hard to tell since they weren’t in the same squad. Freya did note that Bess was in her working uniform unlike her and her friends who were still in their civilian clothes.

Freya joined in the crowd from the other floors in the stairwell as they all raced towards the briefing room. She had just enough time to see that many of her platoon mates were in civilian clothes or, in some cases, in their underwear. She thanked the creator that no one was naked. Not that it would matter, since she had seen everyone naked at some point in the respawn bay. Still, she would rather not see her platoon mates that way.

Sergeant Kruz was standing by the door to the briefing room, yelling at them to get dressed out. Mother stood by the holo table watching them with her arms crossed. Freya ran to the closest locker and quickly equipped her armor and weapons. She turned and sat down while the rest of the platoon came rushing in to do the same. As she sat there, she hoped no one was at Pop’s because it would take them forever to get back here and muster up. Not that they weren’t allowed to go to the bar since no one had confined them to the barracks.

Freya scanned the room as the rush slowed down. She counted the people and came up with one short. She was starting to get worried as Sergeant Kruz walked into the briefing room, when the last straggler came rushing in. Sergeant Kruz gave him a dirty look, but let him pass as she closed the door. Freya turned towards Mother, but the platoon leader didn’t say anything right away. She watched as the straggler finished getting dressed before she finally started talking.

“One minute and four seconds.” Mother said, with a frown on her face. “You people who showed up after thirty seconds should be left behind.”

Freya frowned. Looking around she tried to figure out if this was just a drill or a real emergency. She had never been a part of an emergency drill like that before. If it was a drill. She was still not sure if it was. Neither Mother nor Sergeant Kruz seemed like it was a real emergency, but she was still unsure. As if to answer her question, Mother started speaking again.

“This was a drill. I expect better if we ever do this drill again.” Mother told them, while she slowly looked around the room. “Since we are all here, we are going to do the briefing for the sim mission that starts in ten minutes.”

Mother ignored the soft groans that came from the platoon. They had just got back from a practice mission not more than an hour ago. That mission lasted thirty-two hours where no one got any sleep. Freya bit her lip to prevent herself from joining those who groaned. She could see Sergeant Kruz looking at them. The last thing she wanted was to antagonize the assistant platoon leader. She hadn’t been that bad to Freya since she had been accepted as part of the platoon, but Freya didn’t want to rock the boat.

There was a knock at the door and Sergeant Kruz answered it by opening the door. A man dressed in a black uniform walked in. It looked kind of like a Marine working uniform but without any name tags or rank. It took Freya a second to realize that he must be their Psy Ops operative. She gave the operative a closer look. He was a short man with black hair and very pale skin. He smiled at everyone and joined Mother at the holo table where Mother saluted him. He gave a weak salute back.

“We ready for the sim mission?” He asked her.

“Yes, sir.” Mother replied. “I was just going to go over the briefing now.”

“Very well, continue.” He told her, stepping back towards the wall behind him.

“As some of you may have guessed, this will be a dry run of the real world mission. This is the last step we need to pass before we go. We have been practicing this mission now for five weeks, so you people better be ready by now. We will be landing in valley 1057 where we suspect the civilians are hiding out.

“First Squad, same as we practiced - You got the mountains. Second Squad, you got the valley. Third, you got dropship security. Bess, you got our PM. You’ll stay at the LZ unless otherwise told to move by me. Magic will pilot the ship to the surface while Fred will be staying digital as backup pilot once the ship is on the ground. Second Squad will drop with the ship to the planet surface. Once you get in the AO, Magic will hot-drop you at your zone. You will split off into teams and search for the civilians. First Squad will then respawn and wait for Third to spawn until they leave on their search and rescue mission. Third, you people hang back on security.”

“I want fast but clean sweeps. Check the obvious areas first. Check any caves both above or below the water's surface with your equipment. Don’t forget about the slime. We still don’t have a hotfix yet for the stains. Yes, we don’t think it will stain our armor, but until we have word that it definitely won’t, we will take precautions.” Mother told them.

“Squad leaders, you have five minutes for last minute orders. I want everyone assembled outside at the top of the hour. Let’s get this done, people.” Mother told them.

Freya didn’t need to plot a flight path since she had already done so on the practice missions. Not that she had a lot of time dropping on the mission planet. Most of the time they just walked through the door and started their mission off. If she had to guess she had only used her new ship twice since getting it, and even then she hadn’t really dropped on the planet. She had just started the practice mission in her cockpit at the point where she hot-dropped Second Squad. She hadn’t even started her new ship up properly yet.

“First Squad, over here.” Drake called out. Freya stood up and walked over to her squad.

Freya stood next to her teammates as Drake went over a bunch of stuff that they already knew. She knew why he did it from her leadership training in small unit tactics. It was about repetition. Once people got excited and the adrenaline started flowing, they tended to forget things. Freya was spacing out not really thinking about anything in particular when Drake finished whatever he was saying. It was only when everyone started laughing when she started to pay attention again. She had no idea what he had said but laughed with everyone else.

“Second Squad up front.” Sergeant Kruz said as Freya was still trying to figure out what Drake had said. “Magic, that means you too.” Freya quickly ran to the front where Fred motioned for her to go first.

“Honn-eey Badgers!” Mother yelled from just ahead of Freya. “Move, out!”

Freya watched as Mother walked up to the lobby door and waved her hand over the lock, and the door opened. Without looking back, Mother stomped into the light. Freya took a deep breath, feeling slightly anxious, before she followed her platoon leader through the door and into the light.

Freya blinked as she stepped into the hangar bay. She immediately saw Diaz standing around with another, lower-ranking Petty Officer. The male Petty Officer smiled as Freya walked up to them. She gave Diaz a look who shrugged.

“Hey Magic, this is Petty Officer Thomas. He’s your new loadmaster.” Diaz said, motioning her head at the new guy. “I forgot to tell you that, since we upgraded to a new ship that has cargo space, which we converted to passenger spaces, you get a loadmaster assigned to you.”

“Cool.” Freya said, smiling at the new guy.

“Nice to meet you. I’m really looking forward to working with you.” Thomas told her, shaking her hand.

“Okay, that’s enough puppy love.” Diaz told him. Freya looked at her crew chief and smiled as the other woman rolled her eyes at their new loadmaster.

“Hi all.” Unicorn's voice came from behind Freya. “Where do you want us?”

Freya turned around at the same time as her crew chief did. “Just park your marinesicles there for a second. Me and Magic got to do our checks. After we're done, Loadmaster Thomas will get you situated.” Diaz said to Unicorn, with complete disregard for the sergeant’s rank. “Come on, I’ve been dying to show you your new ship. It is so cool.” The crew chief nearly squealed.

Freya took in her new ship with a smile, but tilted her head a bit when she spotted her old ship parked at the far end of the hangar. Which, now that she really looked around it, she realized was twice as large as it had been before she got her new ship. Her old ship was attached to a Docking arm that came out from the side of the wall, which Freya had never seen before. Usually if there was a Docking arm it came out from the ceiling. It reminded her a bit of how they stacked Mechs in her hangar. She tilted her head back so that she could really look at her new ship.

She started to look at her ship, but she got distracted by the marks painted on the floor which hadn’t been there before. Her new ship was placed in the center of the hangar, which had a new, white circle painted on the floor, with the ship resting exactly in the center. There were thick, heavy, broken red lines that ran down the center of the hangar floor, showing where the hangar floor would open to space when the dropship was ready to leave. There were also a lot more safety marks on the floor spelling out danger zones. Freya guessed the changes to her hangar were due to her new ability to take on passengers.

Her ship, when she looked up at it, looked huge to her. It was slightly more than twice as big as her old ship. As Diaz and her walked towards the ship angling towards the back, she took in all the differences. First, the back of her ship looked very different from her old ship. For one thing, the engine took up the top part of the ship. It had a thin but long exhaust vent that ran the entire length of the back, which was fatter than her old ship.

Below the exhaust vent was the ramp, which was wider and slightly taller than what she was used to. It seemed weird to Freya that the exhaust vent was above the ramp, but she knew from designing the ship it was completely safe. The exhaust vented slightly upwards when the ramp was lowered to the ground for hot drops. The ramp, which was down at the moment, was large enough to drive a quad-cab troop carrier up it, and still be safe from the extremely hot exhaust.

But they weren’t going up the ramp. Diaz led her around the ramp towards the first of the Shand’s cannons. The cannon was recessed into the ship, and Freya watched as Diaz found the hidden switch to open up the compartment the cannon was sitting in. Diaz then moved out of the way so Freya could stick her head into the compartment and check to make sure that everything was locked in correctly.

When she was done, Diaz took her to the other four cannons. They were spaced with one in the front and one in the back. There were two that ran on either side of the ship. It was far more impressive than the single cannon she had on her old ship. Diaz then went to the left side of the ship where she pressed a button and a part of her ship came down with a missile pod attached to it. The missile pod was a cigar tube looking thing with a pointed end with a bunch of small openings that were about four inches wide. The pod could fire a swarm of thirty missiles that she could load for anti-personnel or anti-ship. Once she was done with that pod, she went to the other side of her ship to do that same thing on her second missile pod.

While she was doing that, Diaz broke out a collapsible ladder and set it up so that they could check out the top of the dropship where the artillery cannon was. Diaz went up first and Freya followed her. They stood side by side looking at the huge cannon that was sitting on the top of the ship. Freya looked over the cannon with a smile. It was not what she had expected. She had expected a round tube, and to an extent it was, but the barrel was covered by a black metal cuboid. While Freya was checking out the metal covering, Diaz hit a button on her tablet and the metal covering split open and the huge barrel of the cannon rose out of it. Diaz made it rise up and down a few times. When Freya looked at her the crew chief had a big smile on her face.

“Enough.” Freya said which made Diaz giggle. She lowered the cannon back into its protective covering.

“Sorry, it had to be done.” Diaz told her as her chuckles died down. “It was funny though?”

“Yeah, it was.” Freya said, shaking her head as she climbed back down to the hangar floor.

The final part of the preflight checklist, at least the outside the cockpit part, was checking off the inside of the ship. Freya walked up the ramp and stopped to kiss the nameplate before moving on deeper into the pod bay. The bay was huge compared to her old ship. There were two lines of seats which were set so that they were back to back with each other. Freya did a quick count and nodded. There were six seats per row plus two fold-out chairs near the front of the ship, meaning that it could seat fourteen marines, officially.

There was more than enough room in the pod bay for an entire squad to stand up between the pods and the chairs which, while technically illegal, she had done many times in the past. Freya smirked. It was like speeding on the Res back home. As long as you don’t get caught, it’s not illegal. There were even handholds dangling from the ceiling for people to hold onto. The pods and the lockers looked the same, but, instead of three on each side, Freya now had nine per side.

At the far end of the pod bay, near the front of her ship, sat the huge CC console station. It had a huge chair that was occupied. Freya blinked in surprise as she spotted Mother sitting at the command and control console, already working. Freya opened her mouth then closed it, not sure what to say. Mother, who up to this point didn’t seem to notice them, finally turned around and gave Freya a smile.

“You done yet?” She asked Freya. “Let’s get this thing going.”

Freya sighed and nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” She replied, then nodded to Diaz to call the rest of the marines. She walked over to an empty pod, closed the door and despawned.