Edimes' Invasion: Part 1

Author Note: I read a few reviews of my story and after rereading the other military sci-fi stories like Wysp's "Strategic Analysis of the TSAB" and Lord Admiral Belisarius's "The TSAB Arcturas War" I decided that while these fics are interesting, I was actually aiming for something with more sci-fi oriented and less like what I was originally aiming for. I hope that this is better than what I previously wrote. Please review and comment on it.

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"This Colonel Kellman to all Shock Troopers, we are currently at an altitude of 15,000 meters and are now descending upon the LZ at a rate of 50 meters per second. In a few minutes, I expect everybody to be ready to make the jump and all of the transports to have slowed down so that they don't make any impromptu final descents. For any that don't, I sure hope your ejection seats aren't faulty. Kellman, out."

Lieutenant Lin Corsov was standing in the back of one of the aforementioned transports, and to the outside observer looked to be doing little except standing around and putting the cargo netting on the side of the cargo bay in a death grip whenever the transport started to rock about. Whenever that happened, the sword at her side would clang against the sides of cargo bay and the rifle slung over her front would crash into the soldier to her side, but the sound was always drowned out by the sound of the air rushing up against the craft as it moved through the atmosphere at high speed and the soldier at her side only gave her the occasional looks of annoyance beneath his gray, full-faced helmet.

Lin checked her parachute and emergency parachute. It only took a few seconds, and then she went back to what she had been doing earlier. To the outside observer, what she was doing before was nothing, but really what she was doing all had to do with the military network that her helmet was connected to.

Unlike other soldiers who simply had to check their weapons and parachutes during the jump, the Lieutenant, since she was an officer, had to do other things, namely go over objectives and map displays available over the network in order to insure that they were so well ingrained in her mind that she didn't need to keep opening the relevant pages during the mission. On top of that, she had access to communication link that the transports were using and could get any data from them that she needed.

After going over the objectives and horribly complicated layout of the city of Clanagan, she sent the mental order to the network to set up a link to the transport cameras. Staring at clouds sounded more fun to her than going over mission details that she still hadn't memorized.

"Colonel, this is Commander DeMay of the Second Air Wing, I have picked up a large number of contacts at 12,000 meters. The on board AI indicates that there are some seven hundred contacts out there, and one especially large energy signature. Pulling up a visual now."

Lin sent the mental order to the network for the visual link, and it popped up without delay. There she found one of the strangest sights that she had ever seen. It was a red headed woman dressed in a weird wight dress with blue highlights and a set of pink "energy wings", as she quickly labeled them, coming out of her shoes. In her hand was a staff that ended in two intricate, golden prongs with a box on the bottom and just behind the pronged end that looked like one of the energy cells that one would put in a rifle. The staff was pointed towards the camera, and a massive set of concentric circles were formed with dozens of runes inscribed in each.

Lin's first thought was that there was something that appealed to her inner child about some girl that, women really, that was flying through the power of magical wings on her shoes. Her second thought was that the worryingly large ball of pink energy in front of the magical circle was growing very rapidly. Her third thought was interrupted by the Colonel.

"She shouldn't be a problem so long as we don't bunch up. All transports, put some distance between you all so this doesn't become a slaughter when unleashes those witch powers of hers. The little ones shouldn't be able to hurt you, so don't be afraid to get closer to them if you need to. If they really bother you, fire a few particle cannons at them. Kellman, out."

Though her third thought was interrupted, Lin made sure not to forget about it, as she was sure that it might be a gem of a thought. Her thought was that it would be best to check her personal kill screen, which was used to list the number of kills a soldier got in officers and in enlisted in order to determine the bonuses they got for their pay if they returned back from their tours. It also had a list of high priority targets whose abilities made them especially dangerous.

While she was busy sifting through all of the most dangerous people in the TSAB military, two soldiers towards the front of the cargo bay started up a conversation. Lin absentmindedly noted that they were probably veterans, as green soldiers like herself and most others on her transport were usually too nervous to converse on their first mission, or at least she had been told that by some of the more experienced lecturers at the officer academy back on Edimes. She paid them little thought as she tried to find out who this mysterious witch was.

"Hey Mike, what do you think we should blow up first?" asked one of the soldiers.

"Don't know, Lucas. I guess whatever we want. Going to have to decide on site really, what with the whole paradropping thing and the fact that our pilots can't fly for crap," said his comrade who, for some reason, wasn't wearing a helmet.

"You're right about the whole flying thing. Remember the time we got dropped right on top of the Coerdi HQ by accident? I remember the look on their commanding general's face when I fired the grenade launcher at him. I even took a picture of that posted it on my blog. You got that nice gold watch for your sister, and then we escaped from their top military base like we were never there, except for that hole we blasted in the ceiling," said the soldier as he looked upwards slightly while he reminisced.

"Now that I think about it, I say go for the power plants, cause then they'll all be fighting in the dark during the night. It'll be just like the time we put those Fosdon generators out of commission and then knifed a nearly a whole platoon in a week. What do you think?" said the helmet-less soldier. Lucas brought his attention back to his fellow man before responding.

"I think that we should go for the sewers first. It's early spring around Clanagan according to the briefing, so there should be some rain coming in. When those sewers overflow, the enemy positions will get flooded in shit. We got those Fosdons to surrender at Ignatius by doing that. Most humiliating surrender I've ever seen. Problem is, everybody needs NBC protection for that, and that's fine except for the fact that you don't have a helmet. What gives?" asked Lucas quizzically.

The helmet-less soldier ruffled his brown hair a bit before responding with an nervous, "Well, they rushed us to the transport a bit too fast, and I forgot it in the armory while I was busy packing extra PE-9. Forgot to grab a Sunderhammer missile, too. I hope you got one of those, cause otherwise we're kinda screwed."

"Uhh, well, I grabbed extra PE-9 too cause I thought you were going to grab a Sunderhammer," Lucas said apologetically.

"Aw, crap," was Mike's only reply.

While the transports shifted about and the two veterans discussed the various times that they had forgot weapons in the armory before, Lin finally found a profile with a matching image to the mysterious enemy. It didn't take long, and as soon as the file was found, she opened it up, eager to see whether or not the Colonel was right.

Subject Name: Takamachi, Nanoha

Subject Specialization: Aerial Combat, Long Range Bombardment

Subject Capabilities: Nuclear scale blasts, concentrated long range attacks, multiple precision guided projectile usage, limited melee combat, non line-of-sight bombardment, pink beams of pure destruction, and extremely powerful defensive shielding.

Subject Threat Rating: Very High

Subject Elimination Reward: Type 19 Retirement Package, Type 7 Stock Portfolio, Category 4e Battle Honors.

The look upon Lin's face was one of a bored student studying a textbook before she looked down at the reward and then looked back at the list of capabilities of this "Nanoha". She frowned when she read about the "pink beams of pure destruction", but then took a good look at the rest of the profile and decided that this person was a fair amount more dangerous than Colonel Kellman thought.. And then the transport tipped violently to the side.

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"What the hell was that?" asked the pilot of the transport. He waited for a reply, only to be met by the questions of dozens of other pilots who were asking the same thing. He took the illuminated goggles on his head off for just a moment to wipe the sweat off of his brow. The sweat was evidence of his nervousness surrounding the dangerous mission he was undertaking, and the sweat on his brow was soon replaced.. Once his goggles were secured back on his face, he opened up the general communication channels to see if the colonel was simply busy talking to others. Hearing the voices of many other panicked and scared souls, but not the colonel, the pilot opted to pull up the tactical map in his goggles to see if anything bad had happened.

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As the transport started to stabilize, Lin started to regain the color in her face. She temporarily closed all of the screens she had open in her helmet interface and that was when she noticed that the transport was tilted towards her side, and that there were several men intertwined in front of her. The one at the front lacked a helmet for some reason and looked rather uncomfortable, as though he was holding the rest of supply laden soldiers on his back.

Beneath her helmet, Lin's mouth went agape in surprise and then she gave a tiny, nervous chuckle as she sidestepped out from under the straining man as best she could due to the angling of the transport. She started to stare at the man before she remembered what she was supposed to be doing. While she started to reopen all of the windows she had compressed, the man finally gave way. The two men on his back quickly got off no worse for wear, helping up the unfortunate soldier who had just had his midsection smashed into the side of the transport.

Lin was quick to reopen the windows, and she suddenly that a new one had been opened on the transport comm network. She opened it without delay and then almost fainted from what she saw. There had been 239 transports in the unit she was with. Now there were less than a quarter of those left. The giant blob of friendlies that had been represented on the display now had a massive gap in between the two meager groups left. The divide between them looked as though a massive beam had sliced them in half, only instead of being a razor thin cutting laser it was a beam the size of what must have been some type of space station.

She minimized the window for a moment and reaccessed the camera that was centered on the likely culprit. The outlines of white dress were covered in a quickly fading pink aura, and she looked to be pointing and shouting. As the flying soldiers quickly moved to follow her unknown orders, another magic circle appeared in front of her. Another pink ball was formed and it started to absorb energy from the circle and grow, and then it suddenly stopped, and the witch's head suddenly jerked up as though somebody had spoken to her. For some reason, Lin couldn't see her mouth moving, and she assumed that it was an error due to the camera's limited resolution. That was when the white clad witch turned her back and started to fly as fast as the pink "energy wings" on her shoes allowed her to.

Lin breathed a sigh of relief, as she reasoned that she wasn't going to blown apart by pink beams of pure destruction. At least not yet.

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The pilot stared at the tactical display for a moment, his sweat turning cold and his breathing starting to shorten and become more strained as he started to panic. He turned the control column to the right far more violently than he should have, especially considering how rapidly the light under the switch marked "Engine Four" was blinking. As the ground switched places with the sky, the only thought going through the pilot's mind was "I don't want to die."

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The world had started spinning, and the first effect that had on Lin was that the floor became the ceiling. Thankfully, it didn't happen without the use of some tight turning on the pilot's part, so instead of smashing her head into the new ceiling, she smashed her side into the side the side of the transport before sliding headfirst onto the ceiling. She soon found, just like all of the other soldiers on the transport, that not only had down become up, but also they were all being squashed closer and closer to the doors at the back of the craft. Anybody who was able to grabbed onto some cargo netting, but a few unfortunate people hadn't been able to do so in time and were already bunched up at the end.

She also found that the helmet-less soldier was likewise pinned to the ceiling, but the look on his face was one of irritation rather than the fear that currently graced Lin's face. He took a good look around himself, and noted the soldier to his right that was just barely holding on to the cargo netting. With his left hand anchoring him to the netting, he grabbed the soldier's backpack and pulled. The soldier was able to get a better purchase and quickly thanked his helper.

"Thank you, sergeant. I was worried I might get squashed in with the rest of them in the back," he said.

"No problem, private. Always good to help a fellow soldier," said Mike before turning his head around and shouting, "Hey, Lucas! Where the hell are you?"

"I'm back here, relaxing on a bed of soldiers. It really should be rather uncomfortable, but for some reason, its actually kinda soft. I guess its because they're all green. A few months at the front should toughen them up," Lucas replied in a joking tone.

"Alright then. Could you climb up and pull the switch for the cargo doors? We might be able to tough it out, but I don't think everybody else would appreciate being smashed into little pieces," said Mike. Lucas quickly took hold of the netting and pulled his way down to where a large switch was placed on the right side of the transport. He let go of the net with his left hand in order to give his friend a thumb up. Mike nodded before he turned his head in order to address all of the soldiers who were still holding on to the net.

"Alright everybody, on the count of three, the doors will open and then its parachuting time. Is everybody ready?" he said. Every soldier he could see nodded their head or gave a thumbs up. Though there were soldiers he couldn't see at the moment, he was really only doing this to give them a heads up. With that done, he started the countdown.

"One."

Lin gripped the net tighter, eager to not be drawn out of the transport by the sudden change in air pressure. Lucas set his right hand on top of the switch, ready to open it in the next few seconds.

"Two."

Lin remembered that she could check the descent speed by accessing the transport's data link. She quickly opened up the master screen that held all of the data that the transport's instruments took in and hurriedly attempted to find the appropriate sensor.

"Three."

The massive force of the pressure difference between the transport's cargo bay and the outside air released all of the soldiers who had been shoved into the back of the vehicle and also pulled out a few of the soldier's who had been clinging to the net. Lin was one of those people, and as she got a eyeful of the outside world, she checked the descent speed and nearly failed to pull the ripcord out of surprise. The speed indicated on the instruments showed a speed of nearly 190 meters per second. As the parachute unfurled in a split second, Lin braced herself for what she decided would be a very hard jerk.