2.13.1

Dropping Bodies

With ten minutes to spare, the ground team stood before the closed gang plank.

Romo peered over Astrid’s notes, in the middle of his turn to soak up as much information as he could. Nearby, the specialist secured her battery pack, then pulled her strawberry locks into a ponytail out of her way. She checked her hand cannon and adjusted it at her hip a third and fourth time.

Tenya and Anders donned the larger rifles. And Romo, ever the scrapper, kept a rifle, with a small pistol and knife blade at his belt.

Dell passed out comms, armored, but unarmed. Assigned to stay behind until the strike team cleared the worst of it, Dell would then join from the outside and locate the Keeper and the Guardians that protected him. But he took his role just as seriously.

After, the Aldebaran ship crew hoped to scout for the enemy dropship, but they wouldn’t wander too far from the ground team, just in case.

In her anxiousness, Astrid struggled to get the comm device to fit into the shell of her ear until Anders came to help her.

There was nothing inherently inappropriate in the way his gloved fingers brushed hair strands out of the way so he could seat the device into its proper place. After all, even Tenya would have done so.

Yet, when he pulled away with a small smile upon his lips, Astrid quelled a fresh swell of warmth.

Just as suddenly, the moment passed, and the lieutenant-commander took his place closer to the ramp. Prepared to lead, as professional as always, with the chief at his side doling extra ammunition for their packs.

Dell, too, excused himself and scampered up the stairs back to the Bridge.

“Well… that was certainly interesting,” Romo muttered from Astrid’s side.

“Hm?”

“What just happened there.”

Still clueless, it took a very intentional glance to Anders, then back to her, before Astrid caught Romo’s meaning.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Astrid diverted her gaze to the seam in the floor of the hold upon which they waited.

“Mh-hm. Did you forget what I do for a living, Lightning Bug?” Romo teased her. “You’re a terrible liar.”

“I believe the standard procedure is to deny everything,” she deflected.

But beside her, even in a whisper, Romo huffed a short laugh.

Just then, the piece in her ear, and presumably, the others’, sprang to life.

“Bridge to Ground Team. All systems are live,” Shaely chimed. “Prepare to disembark. One minute.”

Anders waved an arm to the two still at the lockers.

Astrid and Romo shared a look, a smirk on the latter’s face, before they joined.

Once more the team passed around the quick sketch of what to expect before the officer at the head tucked the paperwork into a utility pack and secured his rifle in his arms.

“You ready for your first active air drop?” Tenya hip-checked the Channeler, back to her sprightly self. “We’re about to test all that fancy training!”

“Technically not my first.” Astrid mocked her own first chaotic descent from a ship the previous year.

“This time try to catch yourself on your feet instead of your face,” Tenya jeered.

Instead of offended, Astrid felt herself grow excited. Finally, they were able to do something useful.

The team bounced on their toes to warm up their bodies.

When the door below finally split, wind swept up into the hold and filled them with a burst of adrenaline. Ricks expertly hovered and delivered them just meters over the ground.

The courtyard lay below, just as Karsten described. A wide concrete slab with a massive, round, metal door at its center. Strewn across sat a cluster of engineered pods, like the Guardians on Endra mentioned. Like personal infiltration rockets, prepped for ejection.

Those they ambushed turned, in alarm, at reinforcements they never expected.

A twisted smile the likes of which Astrid never thought herself capable, crawled up her cheek. She caught Tenya’s eye out of her peripheral, and the chief, too, grinned.

Anders jumped first, one hand ready to brace, and pulled his rifle into position as soon as he landed. Instantly he sprayed cover fire to send the strangers fleeing to make room for his team.

A pack of fighters, presumably the invaders, scattered. They showed to have breached the vault door on one end, the slow and hard way, with Halligan bars and hammers. But it must have taken them hours, and that Astrid spotted no Channelers above boded well.

When weapons raised at the newcomers, half of them glinted in a familiar white casing.

It should have worried her, but Astrid thrilled at the display.

Tenya touched down after the lieutenant-commander and joined in the hail to push invaders back. Some adapted faster than others, to mount a defense, but then Astrid leapt, an arm already outstretched.

Energy projectiles toward her team warbled, unstable in their paths. It took remarkably little power, for the Channeler’s body lit with the energy that gnashed at her restraint for hours now.

It begged for use, and she eagerly employed it.

Romo landed aside her, and after his drop, the Aldebaran passed overhead. It took its shadow with it, and the sun struck the soldiers now locked in active combat.

When ballistic weapons took the field, those she couldn’t affect, the ground team circled up and took cover behind the pods that dotted the battlefield.

Astrid struggled to envision the machines as they were described before, but they certainly resembled what the Keepers portrayed. Metal tubes, mounted with jets at the bottom, with plain interiors, fitted with belts and benches but not much else. Each one couldn’t fit more than five people.

Yet eight littered the Sanctuary floor.

Astrid did the quick math on how many they fought above ground and could only guess how many already raided the Sanctuary proper.

But now, with the invaders engaged, the doors to the courtyard on either side shook.

Behind the north and south exits, dismantled barricades gave way to an outpouring of white armor. And between the two, the ground team, and the Guardians of Mercedes, a resistance force pinched the enemy.

Astrid knew before the fight began in earnest exactly how it would go.

She cast a bolt at an armored combatant that leveled their weapon at Tenya, then at another that took careful aim at Anders from beyond the panicked pack the soldier engaged.

But Astrid’s bolts found their marks, with less effort than that of a gun. For she felt in her core each point of wild static energy, and targeted that instead. Something easy to locate, more effortless after her time with the drones. Bodies fell with a searing score mark over their chest armor as the only evidence of a Channeler’s assault.

The ruckus on the other side of a pod to Astrid’s right drew her attention next, and with her team still circled up to cover each other, she ducked around the machine.

On the other side, a man leapt back to be startled. He then lunged for her with a heavy fisted strike.

Astrid knocked his arm with a block augmented in blue energy. Her martial skill took over, further modified by her work with Romo, Rahna, and basic training.

The man looked shocked to see a Channeler, fully armored and gleaming blue in the daylight. She struck him with a fist of sparks.

His head twisted away in a grunt. He regathered himself just for her leg to kick at his torso next. The extra push of her abilities knocked him even further away, and in the range, she pulled her hand cannon and fragged him with a shot.

Close enough to see the whites of his eyes, the proximity also revealed what the presence of energy weapons already suggested. What Astrid herself, always suspected.

In dark gear stamped with three interlocking cogs, the new Static Opposition revisited their intolerance upon the Channelers. Back with a vengeance and way fewer rules.

Her show brought the attention of others. The nearest Statics took cover behind a pod between them. But with gratified smirk that they underestimated her, Astrid felt their presence. With her free hand, she hurtled a cone of arcing sparks over the whole pod.

The energy lashed around the machine between and stunned those on the other side.

They still staggered away when she came around.

The combination of her heightened abilities, paired with her newly acquired pistol work, made her more deadly. And surprisingly, even for her, she felt exhilarated to be tested after all that work.

Those unlucky enough to equip energy weapons instead of traditional ammunition stood even less of a chance. Their distraction with the Channeler-turned-soldier on the field made them easy targets for the others, and the team took every advantage.

Even some of the Guardians grew slower in their motions, dumbfounded by what they witnessed. But others worked their way toward her. As instinctual as ever to take stand aside a Channeler.

An energy projectile charged at her from across the yard. But just like the drones in her practice, the distance provided too much warning for it to pose a threat. She tucked her head aside and let the energy buzz past her, harmless.

She smiled when, across the way, Anders booted away a fighter just to punch holes under a stream of bullets. Tenya, too, with a penchant for crowd control, kept entire pockets busy, as if to entertain them until her partners could grant them their turn for dispatch.

Something new in Astrid responded to the violence. Or rather, how well they orchestrated it together. And she readily greeted a worthy enemy upon which to unleash hell with her companions.

It should have scared her, the sensation that crawled up her spine. The realization that she’d missed this.