Isaac laid back, rifle gripped in his hands. He tried to relax, but the stress of a combat drop quietly seeped past through the armor each trooper.
He looked over to the team, where his IFF squawked the member's details in his HMD against the darkness.
Carlos was slumped over in his seat, sleeping or using a Sargent's tactic. Fredricks, on the other hand, squirmed from the pressure, and not from the planet's. Iris wrapped herself in her AMR, caressing it as she planted it between her feet, tapping one of them against the bulkhead.
However, the loud engines were no match compared to the shrill noises coming from the knights.
A scream cuts through the otherwise silent comms, followed by more spewing so much Latin his battle armor's computer couldn't keep up, with only the word "DISTRESSED - RESTRAIN AND APPLY SEDATIVE" lighting up in his Head Display.
However, the shrill, chaotic sounds accompanying him was suddenly muffled as a crisp, solid voice spoke through the STT net
"All units, this is Mamluke Actual."
Major Lindhall's voice formed into a smile.
"Congratulations! You have now been promoted to Homeworld Defense."
A chorus of bitter chuckles echoed in the room.
"Our ETA to the landing zone will be 5 minutes. Our Section's Current Primary Mission Objective is to secure the perimeter and 100 meters beyond of the AO. Current RoE is that all who engage us and disregard our repeated warnings are considered hostile. Disengage when overwhelmed. Let our Air support take care of it. Only use Smoke, Teargas, and frag grenades only. Expect changes to Mission Objectives as soon as the primary objective is reached."
A low mumur in the comns arose, with a growing number being comfused and anxious on the sudden change of deployment.
Isaac could hear the smile snarling in Lindhall as he stared at the growing fear with dleight.
"Don't worry, inital ground recon picked up that they barely had any advanced weaponry. A cakewalk."
A pause, as every troop craned to hear Lindhall's response, with even the Rose Knights straining to hear his words.
"Let's show these savages who the SI really are."
A chorus of 'Oorah!' echoed in the comms so loud that it seeped through their armor."
"Heh. Load of shit."
Isaac merely shot a look, informing Torres to be quiet.
Jasper then looked straight at each squad leader's eyes, before switching to a channel with the Japanese.
"Force recon takes care of guarding the walls. Japan's Commandos will also assist."
Immediately, his Japanese equivalent, the senior officer, chimed in.
"We'll take the one overlooking the city. Clear fire range, high angle to snipe off targets."
Torres whistled.
"I'll take the east then. It's a little crowded for our sights, but nothing our drones can handle."
"South is the port area. Looks like no activity there. I'll assign it to Marie."
Torres shook his head, chuckling.
"I'm not taking that bet."
Jasper rolled his eyes.
"C'mon Ian. Save it for the poker sesh later."
"STT, Sound off, check your comms. Mamluk Actual, check."
"Mercury Two, check."
Isaac watched as each trooper in the cargo bay began to chant an old, irrelevant tradition from a bygone era. It was merely one out of many things that made the corps the strangest organizations fielded by the Commonwealth.
"Raider Two-One Actual. check." The First Lieutenant replied, grinning under his visor.
Isaac felt Princess Pina lightly tap on my left pauldron. Isaac turned to her, who was openly brandishing her weapon with a tight grip, which couldn't fit in the automatic retention lock.
He switched to Knight's channel, purposefully away from ours.
"Uh, what are they talking about?"
"Final Debriefing. We'll be in Italica in the next minute."
"Next minute?"
Isaac nodded, tapping into the GPS feed from the ship.
"Yep. How's your first time in a Dragonfly, your highness?"
She shook her head, eyes confused. Isaac chuckled.
"I've done this a few times already. But I've heard superior officers go around a thousand. Our specialties are in large demand for our war."
"And what are those specialties?" She asked.
Isaac rested in beneath the confines of his head, remembering the end of the suicide track and the badge that accompanied his scarlet beret.
"We're in the business of fucking up people's day when they least expect it, and we're setting up for business."
The Princess let out an astonished noise, fully purging her nervousness.
"Seems like your group truly is special, committed to 'fucking up people's day'." She replied, the last words phrasing as if he didn't fully understand such words.
"We're podheads. We still try to size each other up. The problem is, Force Recon is way below the hierarchy. We're the adopted child of the STT."
"Seems like we're the same." She nods to her fellow knights.
"How does a princess like you end up in such a unit?"
The Princess cocked her head, confused.
"You mean you don't have leaders commanding units in your world?"
Isaac chuckled.
"Too dumb or cowardly, or otherwise, too impractical to send a high-value target in needless danger. At least now, our leaders are all veterans."
"Yeah, my brothers are like that. Do you have the same issues?"
Isaac's voice fell flat, and, had his helmet not covered his face, Pina could see the enjoyment of the conversation drain him.
A few moments passed until the comms were overwhelmed by the voice of the STT.
"STT, Condition One rifles!"
He checked his rifle's bolt mechanism for a few more seconds than usual, feeling the carbine's internals work like a charm. The thing was still factory new. He looked over to Pina, who was communicating with her knights.
The fuselage began to lurch, the engines now in a low roar.
As the dropship began to hit the dirt in the pavement, the ramp opened.
"Go Go Go!" Shouted the crew chief, chattering out the word like a well kept burst.
All of the STT went out in a more fast, professional manner, establishing an initial perimeter, while the knights were violently lurched out.
Isaac's HUD was going haywire as he felt dawn's light against his visor. His IR and Thermal visions were being redirected to several fires outside the Palace walls, while his Threat Assessment tracker had given him hundreds of diamonds to pick from.
Yet he focused on the princess, who was speaking to a ramshackle of men that looked like they could easily break with his dog tags.
The four-unit team expedited to the walls, ignoring the torn-up lawn from their armored boots.
"Fredricks. Deploy drones to a coverage mode. Set them to recon mode."
He then turned to his remaining team members.
"You two, find a good position. Overlapping zones of fire. And make sure there are no blindspots."
Approaching the wall, Isaac could see the ravaging fires in the city through his IR, which lit up the darkened city. A large number of fires were present in the places with large amounts of thatched roofs and wooden structures, while the more concrete houses were mostly intact. A large number of people in the city, and he knew only a small fraction made it in this tiny palace.
He caught the attention of the crowd of exhausted pair of eyes from the men and women guarding the gate, the ramshackle of weapons that were chaotic as the feelings that varied on their grime covered faces plastered over a layer of tiredness.
"Who's in charge here?" He asked in his proximity comms, as the team began to settle in their positions. Fredricks unpacked the long cases, before activating the hive inside.
The drones flew like fireflies, mesmerising the crowd of weary civilians, as they whirred above with the hum of their engines.
An older man stood up, his withered state even more pronounced in Isaac's augmented vision.
"Gaius. I suppose I lead this detachment."
"First Lieutenant Isaac. I'm with the Commonwealth Defense Corps. You're relieved of command."
Gaius raised an eyebrow.
"Relieved?"
"Get some rest. We'll be taking it from here."
He looked around, and shook his head.
"Nonsense. You are only four men. And this is our home."
Isaac looked around, seeing his cohorts steeling themselves up, however, their weary eyes silently pleading for release as they weakly clutched their gear.
"Alright. You. Tell me everything that happened here."
Gaius looked to him, explaining how a entire legion pillaged the town, and after that, the two countesses squabled over the thone. Then those damn merchants and gangsters began to back them up.
Before Isaac could reply, Fredricks chirped up
"Sir. Our Recon Drones are picking up unidentified foot mobiles. At least several dozen. Singing some kind of warchant."
"Warchant?"
As soon as those words came out of his mouth, the old man spoke up in a jolt.
"They're doing it again." He stammered, whispering under his breath.
"Doing what?"
"They're mocking us! They bring prisoners, only to kill them right before our eyes. They're savages!" Gaius's voice trembled with fear and desperation, his eyes wide with panic. He frantically scanned his surroundings, his hands trembling as they cradled his head. "It's Delilah!"
"The warrior bunny?"
Gaius nodded frantically, his voice quivering with desperation. "She's a maid of the Formal clan. You have to save her. Please!" His grip on Isaac's arm tightened, his eyes pleading for help as if his life depended on it.
Isaac tapped into the sliced image Fredricks sent him, the lone uav highlighting the Person of interest in a spectral hue. He then accessed his wristpad, awakening the lonely holographic feature to do its very purpose.
"This man here?"
Gaius nodded solemnly, eyes riddled with fear and rage.
"Looks like we have a hostage. Iris. you hear that? Fredricks. You and I will load teargas, Then immediately begin to rappel downwards for a smash and grab. You two, provide cover fire."
"Alright. This will be a battle we will win."
Isaac glanced to the small split screen in the corner of his vision, watching the drones monitor the group, slowly creeping to the walls.
There, his optics could see her clearly.
She was the same as the one near the crash site, except her fur was darker, more matted,
More bruised riddles her frame.
Isaac's finger rested on the launcher's side, watching the man haul the wounded thing.
He watched as the man luaghed at hus captive with delight, as her frame struggled to stand up, as if it was his personal private show. The woman didn't budge an inch, bitting off her pain..
"Commence."
Iris and Carlos barked off their rifles, as Isaac fired off the tear gas, the canister lobbing below. He stuffed the grenade launcher another teargas canister, sending this one farther off.
He immediately rappeled down the palace walls, hoping that the rope didn't break.
As his boots made contact with the ground, Isaac turned, raising his weapon sights, slowly approaching the chaos covered in smoke.
He caught Fredricks running perpendicularly towards him as they closed the distance to hostage, their IR lights piercing past the fog as he could see the vaguely human forms writhing on the ground, crying out to whatever and whoever could hear them.
Isaac laid his eyes on the target, the girl, who was limp on the ground, coughing weakly. A brief thought flashed in Isaac's mind on why.
He then caught the awkward angles of the legs, hitting him with the realization.
Isaac picked her up, leaving Fredricks as the rear guard as he fired his entire mag at the air wildly.
The gate opened, slipping all three of them in under the fog of tear gas and the hot spent primers of the flechette.
As the doors closed, Isaac met the wild, confused eyes of the ragtag group of guards, starved of any information of what just happened, until that chaoes formed into worry as they saw the bunny maid in Isaac's arms.
Immediately, Isaac called in from his Radio.
"Mamluke Acutal, this is Raider Actual. I have a POI inbound. Requiring immediate medical attention and debriefing."
Lindhall immediately came on the net.
"Copy, Raider Actual. Keep to your post, we'll handle the individual."
With that, he handed her to the group, who carried her to the palace, with only Gaius remaining, staring worryingly at Isaac and Fredricks.
"You dealt them without giving a them a chance."
Fredricks approached the man.
"They ignored our warnings and had a hostage, sir. They're free range." the private noted, but the answer he gave was bitter to Gaius' mouth, as he furrowed his eyebrows at them.
"I'd never experienced such fast movement. Such cold, killing blow. I'd never seen such in my life."
Isaac smirked.
"It's because we get the job done, sir."
Gaius paused, before shifting to him, now distraught written on his face, as the elder man sighed.
"That's why I left my time in the military."
Isaac smiled sadly, but as he tried to respond, he picked up a small mutter from his sensors.
"...Maybe this Continent deserves to burn afterall."
Noting that morsel of lore in this world, Isaac tried to ask what he meant.
But a low, ominous sound seeped into their comms before he could do so, it's tone sharp and icy enough for them to feel it's blade against their armor.
Immediately, Both troops got up the walls, looking around for any threat they may have missed.
Isaac tried to figure out the words, trying to grasp its meaning with the success of holding on to sand. It was Japanese, but it might as well as be noise to him as the sound descended deeper and deepr with a quickening pace.
Almost immediately, The Section Channel erupted in confusion.
"The heck is that?"
The noise stopped, hidden under a thin curtain of silence.
Until that curtain was torn apart with the harsh snarl of an AMR.
And it echoed again.
And again.
And again.
And the screams of fear were thrown into the wind as he could feel the vibration of a hundred men running.
"That fucker." Sargent Carlos noted.
In an instant, it clicked on him. The bastard knew that an AMR was overkill on unarmored targets. Yet that was the point he wanted to make, writing a message in the blood from the holes of his victims.
Isaac could hear the weird Japanese picking up again, even though it was lost by the louder sound of a chaotic stampede, which reminded him of the old buffalo herds of North America.
"Fucking crazy that Itami Fellow."
After the explosive brief firefights, Isaac could hear the silence of submission from the city as it felt the fangs of the STT.
Yet the fires still raged on, as it's endless hunger for chaos stared back into Isaac's eyes.
"Yeah, it amazes me too."
"You got into a PRC riot?"
"During the battle of Earth, back when I was in middle school. Couldn't see anything at all due to the constant fires."
Isaac noted how spiked Iris' heartbeat was.
"Iris, take five. I'll take up watch."
It was then, just as Iris looked back to her superiors, her body hugging against the wall, before standing up with great difficulty.
As the time descended deeper into the night, Isaac still felt the shock of the initial battle wearing away by the flow of boredom, as the pattern weaved by checking the drone feed, and keeping an eye on his sights.
But he looked over to his teammates and his biometrics. His and Fredricks were still within normal levels, but Carlos and Iris were spiking, bodies feeling heavy as their fingers resting on their rifles were slightly slipping.
Isaac then heard several booms in the east, then a few immediate markers popping up on his screen, signaling immediate distress. He immediately recognize the names of the casualties.
SEALs.
Without a second to lose, he tapped into the drones closest to him, his rank clearing any resistance to the system, revealing to him something akin to hell.
He seen Network Shows of Zombie shows, and this was akin to that, in full detail. As he watched swarms of writhing forms throwing themselves into flechette fire, disregarding their self preservation as their bodies were stitched by flechette fire.
It wasn't like the ones at the wall, scared to their wits like wolves.
They were like ants.
He caught the Dropship fire up its engines as it head towards the site, it's roar heralding terror.
Almost immediately, Isaac caught the Ship's large autocannon rounds churn out AP rounds at the people below, causing Isaac to terminate the drone feed.
An AMR was cruel enough.
Until the sudden a large gust of wind thrown off the Dragonfly's approach, casuing the large beast to tilt violently to its side.
"Mayday Mayday." The pilot squawked out, voice straining as his muscles were focused on fighting against his craft.
"Engine One unresponsive. Engine number two and three are limping and barely holding on."
Another voice quickly came in comns.
"This is Mamluke Actual. Can you still reach here?"
"Sir, I could, but I doubt the engines would be salvaged if we could continue."
"Noted." A pause, before his voice came back on the net.
"Land in that position." Lindhall boomed in a authoritative tone.
Isaac wondered where, until he saw the bird landing on the large houses on the edge of city, where even the bird was below their rooftops already.
He watched as the crippled Dragonfly barely managed to make it, landing with the grace of a whale as Isaac noted how such control would mean the Pilot's bones breaking.
But as soon as he took off his eyes from the bird,
A loud crack hit the middle of their position.
Almost immediately, their computers registered a target in the middle of their position, which cause them to raise their rifles automatically, whilst their brains struggled to comprehend what was happening.
In the split second before their brains registered, Isaac caught the eyes of a blood thirsty monster looking straight at him, holding a large halberd with great ease.
Isaac fired point-blank, computer aiming at the center of her figure.
Before Isaac's mind took the wheel, he thrown fifty rounds to her chest, petite frame.
She smirked, as the various flechettes that were stitched across her chest suddenly was ejected out of their holes.
"Good evening, Gentlemen."