"Turn your suit's heat to maximum. Don't wanna cut through it with your nipples." Pyscho engaged the rebreather attached to his suit, the -200 degrees air inside the cryo shield would have frozen his lungs if not for the suit.

The entire team had emerged from the warm side of the shield and activated their suits life support systems. Frosty shivered and shook off the layer of frost that had developed on her suit. "Funny, I was about to say the same about your crotch." She waved the others in line behind her, forming a wedge of troops. "Alright, everyone follow Psycho, we're gonna follow the same path Nomad and Prophet took to get out. Move it!"

Psycho checked his map, and noted that while everything there looked the same, the world around him had been torn to pieces. There was a long and narrow gully that would provide excellent cover for them, but box them in should action come their way. Nomad's team had gone in from the west along a hilly area to increase their chances of making it through. As always, Psycho felt like he'd been given the shaft assignment, or rather, getting the shaft.

He could see a few fires raging, overturned trucks most likely. The KPA had moved an entire battalion onto the Island to fight the US forces and it had all been frozen when the Cryo shield had exploded from the Mothership. Psycho had no idea what they were doing but definitely from Nomad's readings inside the beast, they were preparing for a major offensive.

His HUD automatically showed him the most direct route to their target, the same aperture where Nomad had left the Mothership. The hope was to get in somehow, even if it meant cutting a hole, and getting better readings with the superior hardware. Psycho questioned why they didn't just bomb the bloody thing from Orbit if they had ships capable of it. Then again, even a nuke hadn't done anything but feed and tick them off. Caution was the smart move here.

Moving forward, Psycho shook off the cold, moving would keep him warm, and the suit's life support system would warn him of any issues. He could see that Frosty and the others were cold as well, but they moved in unison, a cohesive group. A perfect target for scouts to swoop in. "Frosty, spread out, don't wanna get bunched up, these bastard hit from the air." Off in the distance, Psycho could swear he heard a loud cry of Alien Machinery.

Frosty nodded and gave hand signals. "You heard him, spread out, pair up and cover each other."

Reaching the edge of a small cliff, Psycho sighed realizing they'd have to climb down. "That mean you're my significant other, love?"

Frosty audibly huffed. "Keep it up and I'll give you a rifle enema, love. Just move, we're point."

Psycho did as he was told after a chuckle and began to climb down, it was about fifty feet of rough steep terrain but switching to strength mode, it was easy to climb down.

Frosty kept up with him surprisingly, and he noted that her rifle had a stronger scope than the others. Psycho landed on a small edge still twenty feet from the bottom and waiting for her. "You a sniper, love?"

Frosty landed and shook off any lingering cold. "USAF Top Sniper. Can't really advertise publicly since I did it with a weapon that shouldn't exist." She looked up into the sky towards the mothership, easily 2 miles away. "That thing reminds me of a Wraith Hive. Don't suppose Lorne told you about the Wraith?"

Psycho noticed what she was staring at, several dark splotches up in the sky were moving closer. "Not a word, all I know is the Jaffa are some kind of alien allies." He froze for a moment. "They're not squids are they?"

Frosty snorted. "No, but they used to carry little squid snake things. We killed those a long time ago."

Visibly disgusted, Psycho racked a round into the chamber of his Gauss rifle and left his questions for later. He raised his rifle and zoomed in. Sure enough, Alien scouts were incoming. "Thought you said Nomad was out there, what're they heading to us for?"

Frosty grit her teeth and flicked the safety off her rifle. "Does it matter?" She keyed her squad radio. "Bunker in folks! Incoming from the Mothership!"

Taking what little cover there was on the ledge, Psycho found himself a nice stable position to snipe from. The Gauss Rifle was perfect for taking out scouts, but if they dropped troopers, the team might get overwhelmed. "You sure these things'll work right? Those little tossers are hard to hit."

Taking in a breath, and then letting off a burst of Gauss rounds towards the now visible formation of seven scouts, Psycho was impressed that two shots from the three round burst drove into the lead scout, sending it into spasms as he tried to stay aloft. He knew from experience that it'd take a full three hits to take a Scout down from his old GK-8, or a full barrage from a squad with SCARs. He wished they had Hurricane Miniguns given the level of opposition they'd face. "Not bad, Frosty. Now watch a master."

Now with no hesitation, not caring for the other rips in the sound barrier as the rest of the squad opened up with their rifles, not even caring that the scouts were spinning about, throwing dozens of troopers down towards them, Psycho simple sighted in, and squeezed the trigger.

The three round Gauss Burst flew up and tore several of the tentacles off the scout, it quickly lost control and gave off the loud unearthly scream as it careened towards the floor. It crashed into the snow covered ground throwing up dirt and rocks before coming to a halt. Psycho didn't wait for it to detonate before sighting in on the next scout, watching it take a shot from up above him and firing.

The Scouts were massacred, and one by one they fell to accurate Gauss fire. But they'd dropped their cargo and now at least seventy troopers were raging across the small valley towards their position. The scouts had landed close and with each self-destruct they threw up geysers of dirt and rocks clouding the air.

Before Psycho could say anything, Frosty got to her feet and screamed. "Everyone on the ground now! Those things'll swarm us! Switch to full auto and armor mode!" She didn't even look to Psycho as she pushed off the cliff face and fell the remaining twenty feet. Psycho knew even his old suit could have handled it but he'd have likely shat bricks on landing. Frosty landed in a crouch and the combined weight of her and her suit created a small crater around her feet. She rushed forward to where an overturned cargo truck was and used it for cover.

Psycho saw the rest of the team jump down as well, and figured he'd go for broke. "Tally ho!" He jumped out, and switched to armor mode as he fell. Slamming into the ground, he felt the suit absorb the shock as if he'd just jumped out of bed. He got up just in time to see the first wave of Troopers charge at them along the floor and walls of the was a hard position to start with, but it was the only way to reach the Mothership with some cover.

The team had spread out and opened fire, the blue contrails of their Gauss projectiles traced across slamming into the lead troopers, each one only taking a single hit to shatter to pieces. But there were just so many,

Psycho charged in firing, supporting two of his team who'd been caught out in the open and were now reloading. 5, 10, now fifteen of the troopers had gone down from their first shots. The others quickly learned and jumped up to the edges of the gully, using the high ground to their advantage.

Psycho had seen it before, and he screamed. "Take cover! Those shards hurt like a bitch!" as he said it, he watched as one of his team shattered two troopers with a well aimed burst, but took a burst of ice shard fire from behind knocking him to the ground.

Psycho still didn't know how those Alien bastards turned humidity into lethally sharp and fast ice bullets, but it didn't matter, he dove to the side and rolled to keep his back to the cargo truck where Frosty had just literally punched a trooper into submission using her strength mode, quickly switching back to armor. His back slammed into the truck knocking it back an inch as he fired a long burst destroying the trooper who'd dived at his former position.

They were being overwhelmed, but it was a winnable fight. The troopers were getting whittled by the accurate and powerful Gauss rifle fire, but the team's armor was starting to lose power from the fusillade of ice shards. Psycho decided to go for broke and with three quarters of his power left, he switched to strength mode and jumped up onto the cargo truck, and then up to the lip of the gully where the Troopers were.

One reacted and turned to him, but before it could fire or charge, Psycho backhanded it across the field sending it flying into another trooper, both smashed to pieces from the impact. With his freshly reloaded Gauss rifle, he had a perfect column of troopers who were just barely reacting now to his presence.

He held the trigger down and ignored the pain from several impacts, his armor only using its physical tensile strength instead of the nanite achieve meta-material team had noticed Psycho's distraction and switched their priorities to the troopers on the ground with them. They shot, beat, and kicked them using their armor to the limit, smashing one after another in a fight reminiscent of a matador. Psycho could hear their screams of rage as they fought off the assault with their bare hands if needed. He was impressed at how quickly they learned to adapt to their foes like of melee combat, abandoning using their rifles at such close range and instead using the tried and true combo of switching to strength mode just long enough to smash the alien robot and switch back to Armor mode.

Now surrounded by three troopers, Psycho switched back to armor mode and rolled to the side, he had room to fight now but these troopers were charging. He barely dodged one of their charging attacks, rolling on the ground and firing a shot at its exposed backside. It shattered like a circuit board hit with a hammer. Continuing his roll, Psycho felt a hard smash into his side as one of the troopers bull rushed him and gave him a glancing blow.

He spun around and grabbed the trooper by one of its small tentacles, even without strength mode, the armor gave him enough purchase to swing it over his shoulder and into the ground damaging it. He kept his momentum up and fired into the trooper ending it without a problem, the broken pieces bouncing off his armor harmlessly.

Psycho fought the rush of blood in his head and spun around again, looking for the third trooper. It had jumped up in the air and was flying right to his face and he couldn't react in time.

So when it suddenly exploded in a hail of Gauss shots, Psycho mentally cheered despite the small explosion from the recently killed trooper behind him. His suit was scuffed now, but he was alive. Frosty climbed up from the gully where the rest of the team now disposed of the last few troopers who were falling back. Nobody had died or been severely wounded, but they'd definitely had the advantage this time with their Gauss rifles.

Psycho looked to Frosty and nodded."Thanks, love. Mighta scratched my suit that one."

Frosty grunted, and then motioned."Come on, that was just round one. Nomad's team just radioed me, they've engaged a hell of a lot more scouts and troopers. They'll need our support if they want to make it out of that mothership alive."

Psycho chuckled, but didn't complain. "Didn'cha hear, love? Nomad's a trained killing machine. He made it out once with nothing but a cheap Korean piece of shite rifle and a handgun. You give him one of these and he'll stop the whole bloody Korean Army!"

Hopping down into the gully where the team was accounting their spent ammo and damage, they came out ready to fight more. Frosty waved them into formation and switched to speed mode. "Too bad we're not fighting Koreans, now let's haul ass!"

Psycho switched to speed mode as well and smiled. Things had just begun and despite the cold, he could feel the blood rush of adrenaline in his veins.


A/N: Just FYI, i do have a plot for this story...sort of. :P