The nanosuit knows that once I'm in the debris, I'm pretty much done, either I live or die. I don't know the odds, but SECOND does, though it refuses to share that information, instead switching my perceptions off for the duration of our little flight.
It's not just knocking me out cold, that's a useless condition, no, the thing links me up with each of my squad mates' own SECOND so I can see what they see and feel what they feel. You get used to it after a while. Nothing to report here, they are scared, though not biologically, meaning it's just a nudging feeling of 'Yep, maybe I'm gonna die here…"
We lost almost a hundred, expelled from the debris and crushed in flight by pieces of junk.
Pretty much a hundred and fifty years of college education, along with… What's that? Five quadrillion bucks of equipment? Just gone, poof! No greater purpose, no glory, all dead.
When I switch back to my own body, it's to find sand and fire everywhere. I do a quick sitrep of the last hour or so, because if I'm still here, then I should care somehow, and move on after making sure at least four hundred of my boys and girls are still alive.
How do I know that when they are scattered pretty over an area the size of Canada? Not with radio, that's for fuckin' sure, I text every company commander, all three of them, who, in turn, text their platoon leaders, four of them each, who contact their squad leaders, who kick their NCOs and just take a fuckin' look around before sending a headcount back up the chain to me.
The same fuckin' thing they did back in WWII… That's fuckin' progress right here.
Thermal, x-ray, electro-mag and audio scans take a second to perform and point me to the magnetic south. Crash is to the east, but the nearest… Thing, is due south. One vehicle, from the looks of it, though it could just as well be a patch of hot iron.
Well, of course, it isn't. Takes me about a minute to get the gunship in my sight and twice as long to perform a tactical analysis.
Three 'Potential Enemy Combatants' scurry around the… I don't know, looks like a VTOL with side doors. The people are just that; people, the kind you find scurrying back on earth… Squishy and soft… So tasty… Nah, just kidding, though I do go through great pains not to be spotted as I inch closer to their landing zone, smack dead in-between two rows of dunes.
The audio cranked up to max, my cloak active, I put one foot ahead of the other, slowly, methodically, an eye locked to the battery icon on my BUD.
I hear them bickering, the gunship's owner, I mean, but SECOND is struggling to translate. Some words make sense; old gothic, latin, French, even before integration, I would have understood bits and pieces, making SECOND useless and feeling a little bit hurt at that. He feeds me threat analysis reports instead, though I never asked for them.
So, robot guys are TL4, threat level 5, about on par with a Ceph Stalker, other Post-Human Soldiers, like Psycho and Vendetta, are TL7, bunnies and kittens are TL1, as there is no TL0, nothing is ever truly armless…
These guys down by the chopper, after much scanning and extrapolating, are TL5, their energy weapons, advanced armor and access to a flying tank effectively making them more of a threat than the robots had been, though I'm fairly certain a single robot could rip right through them. Rock, paper and scissor, we beat the bots, the bots beat the grunts and the grunts beat us…
Okay, not really, I could rip those three apart from where I am and they'd never fire a shot, I've taken Ceph heavies, TL6, head on without breaking a sweat…
The point is, these guys use Ceph tech, making them better suited to take us down than the bots had been.
I reach their VTOL's tail four seconds before the cloak runs dry and materialize out of sight, white-grey, brown-grey and black-grey hexagons clashing with the beige sand.
Their toy is broken, that much is obvious, and none of them has the know-how to fix that junk, now they're bickering over whether to hoof it back home(home being over a few kilometers, as I'm not picking anything on long range scans), or wait for help.
Takes me a second to realize I understand them. A Second, being just the right term.
"Captain, this is insane!" A lovely little blonde, way too clean and soft-spoken to be on a battlefield, tells a hard looking officer, dirty, scarred and brusque enough to have been a NCO long before an officer.
"If we stay here, the Necrons will come and finish us off, the man explains, apparently annoyed that he must justify himself, "have faith and the Emperor will guide us through."
I get a sense of a high card being played here, but before blondie can reply, the third crew member steps in, "I have the utmost fate in His guidance, but even the Emperor himself can't save you from your own stupidity; we need a plan before heading out to get lost in the wastes."
He's younger than the Captain, but not by much, he just look it because of a far smaller amount of scars, along with overall better hygiene.
Batteries are back to full and there's something closing in on the long range scans, so I cloak and make my way to a rocky outcrop, shaped like a giant piano, and draw my weapon. No dice, too much sand or not enough water, whichever makes more sense, point is, bastard shines red on my BUD.
Broken.
The movement I spotted is not a dropship, it's not even a transport, it's a goddamn spotter. It stops about a hundred meters out and transmits our precise coordinates to… Someone.
And someone is just excited to see us here, as a dozen robots flicker to existence ten steps from the squishy trio, making it about fifteen meters from me. They are clustered like a formation of old british musketeers, but facing the wrong way, my way.
Doesn't last long, though; the humans take cover behind their VTOL, by the nose, troop bay and tail, respectively, and open up on our Terminator's fan club.
Should I duck out or join in? You know what they say; the enemy of my enemy…
Just shat his pants. I soar across the gap like an… Okay, like a flailing ape or a flayed Mike Tyson. Look, this thing's not graceful, I'm no gymnast, and when I land in armor mode, shit gets torn. The 'bot I land on bends under the weight and the massive axe-cannon slips from its grip as a result.
I snatch it in mid-air and decapitate the nearest toy soldier with it, kicking another in the tibia as it takes aim. The shot goes wild, mine hits home and rips a massive chunk out of the bot's chest.
A rather enterprising tin man swings at me like a lumberjack, from the side. SECOND and I move as one, jumping, curling in a ball as the malevolent green blade shimmers so close to my lower back you'd be smelling burnt butt-hairs without the suit. Then the underwater propellers kick in, spin me back in position and I uncurl like a spring, boots planted firmly in the exact same spot I just left.
The weird axe-gun got cleaved in half. Slight miscalculation on our part, apologies.
About four of the ten remaining bots are paying attention to me, the others focus on my fellow humans. A powered punch later, three of them are paying attention to me and a fourth is trying to locate his asshole from inside his chest cavity.
Armor mode soaks up two hits before completely draining the battery, forcing ol' Raider to use the time honed technique of 'Bug out and call it even.'
But now I'm in a crossfire and it seems like my new friends are trying to scrap me along with R2-D2's meaner cousins.
Here I am, barely more than some guy in Kevlar catsuit, stuck between entrenched 'Non-friendlies' and undead, hyper-heavily armed 'solid hostiles'. The bow uncurls in a beep and an arrow perforates the first bot's face just as it lines up another shot. The thing's friends open fire, but I'm moving, weaving in the open terrain like a caffeinated butterfly. Even with an arrow to the face, number one keeps on coming and I soon find myself ducking right in the middle of his six other friends, who were really not that interested in my insignificant person before I came sliding to a stop not two feets from them.
Good thing is, I got about twenty-two percent charge built up now. The cloak crackles and I'm gone before they can fill the recently vacated space with green death rays.
The sand betrays my location, every step leaving a clear imprint, but a powered jump back to the outcrop takes care of that. There I duck and wait for the two goddamn triple-A batteries to recharge.
I know, it takes a lot of juice to power a lensing field, but, seriously, can't this suit be outfitted with a dynamo or something?
At least it recharges fast enough. By the time I'm back in the game, both sides have stopped looking for me and resumed killing one another.
The alien gun is still up here, as useless as before. The bow joins it soon enough.
Two shots in the face didn't cut it? This thing's useless.
There is no powered jump this time, instead, I sneak my way back in and give a straggler one big hug, recovering his weapon from the liquefied pond before retreating in one mighty leap.
Back on my safe little rock. The 'bots are now sandwiched between those meatsacks by the gunship and myself, and this time, they have no clear target to shoot at. I cloak, take aim, re-appear and take some pot shots at them until things get too hot, then I pop back out and wait for them to forget I ever existed.
Not a sound long term strategy, but four kills later, I'm looking at some decidedly more favorable odds of five against one… Five against four if the three morons quit shooting at me.
Using combined fire and sheer determination, the kids managed to drop one killer robot of doom. Nothing compared to my kill count? Of course, but I can turn invisible and become bulletproof, so that's hardly sporting.
The survivors are finally getting their act together and targeting the outcrop, every shot tearing a massive chunk out of it, to the point they're soon hammering an empty crater in the side of a dune.
Another of their numbers gets dropped by those pesky meatballs and they decide I'm dead.
Three of them open fire on the… Wow… They eroded that VTOL to nothing but the bottom framework!
The Captain turns from gritty, marbles gurgling badass to shrieking pile of exposed muscles and bones. Two robots look back to see why their comrades stopped firing, but see only silver ponds, silver ponds and a mass of translucent honeycombs. They vanish in a flash before I can finish my job.
That leaves me with two live and very much scared humans to extract if I want answers on what's happening around here.
SECOND handles the translation as I call out:
"Friendly, cease fire!"
The man answers first, "We are not firing!"
Then the girl, "Sh-show yourself, then we…" And she goes quiet.
Yeah, we'll what? Talk? Have a cup of tea? Not that I have much choice… Well, I could just leave them here, but, I mean, they're humans! On another planet! What are the odds? SECOND tells me, but I don't pay attention.
Cloak gives way to armor and I drop the alien gun to show my empty hands.
The girl's hidden by the cockpit, her friend looks up from the troop bay. "Who are you?" He calls, carefully stepping out from cover.
"Call me Raider, I'm head of special research and combative division at Hargreave-Rasch Corporation."
That makes as much sense to them as it does to about anyone else. None.
Still, they introduce themselves, "This is Sergeant Velros, Imperial Guard pilot, I'm Corporal Kudrensky, Demolition man… Are you with the Ad Mechs?" He seems hopeful, like a positive answer would somehow make his life much easier.
Ad Mechs? "No."
The Captain had a gun, a laser weapon somewhat similar to old M series rifles, with a carrying handle and all. I take it and adjust the sling to my own frame.
"Are you human?" Ah, wise lass, that's the real question.
The air filter and helmet rescind, leaving only the visor, held in place by a CryFibril strap, like ski goggles.
Not sure what I look like now, I can feel a decent beard on my face about half an inch thick, same as for the hairs. Haven't shaved for a month or so, it shows.
"I try."
They look somewhat relieved. I tell them to stock up and be ready to move out in five. Vendetta, Whiskers and a handful of Russians landed twenty kliks south, we need to get there before that spotter calls in more of his friends.