Prepare to Drop
"Well Mr. Schnee, I don't think your mother, or your sister would appreciate hearing you say that."
The eighteen-year-old let out a deep sigh.
"Doctor, please. Let me do this without the unnecessary drama, yes?"
The older man huffed at this, driving his mobility chair closer to look the young man in front of him directly in the eyes.
"Unnecessary drama, you say? We may have built this organization together with your sister's expertise, but what you are proposing? That my young friend, is what is unnecessary."
Pietro Polendina leaned forward in his chair, glaring defiantly at Whitley Schnee.
The cold silence hung for a moment between them, the droning hum of the active hardware that encased the room filling the void.
Multiple monitor screens ran with diagnostics and calibrations, the fans of multiple computers blared with cooling air. In the corner of the room, several servo arms made precise adjustments to a curious set of enclosed power armor that was currently displayed on a maintenance rack.
The same Mark II armor that the youngest Schnee was currently wearing, minus the helmet. That was currently mag-clipped to his hip.
When Pietro had asked why he was wearing it, Whitley replied that he had just gotten some last-minute training done and didn't have time to change. It didn't take long for him to learn why Whitley didn't have time.
The reason filled him with dread.
"I don't expect you to understand why, but I must be part of our maiden drop," Whitley said, his arms posted at ease behind his back.
His posture was as perfect and practiced as any member of the Schnee family would be expected to be. Back straightened, eyes focused, and the rest of his body alert yet relaxed. It seemed that even after two years of turbulence and change, some habits refused to die.
"I won't budge on that, and I am not asking for your permission either. I am merely advising you on what course to take should I not return."
The room the two were in was not the good doctor's first choice for his experiments, but his original lab was long destroyed. The Kingdom of Vacuo had done what they could to accommodate his needs, but the Atlesian scientist knew that nothing would ever compare to his original workspace and resources.
"Why do you insist on deploying on the very first engagement? And where is your sister? Shouldn't something like this be more her skillset?" Pietro inquired, rubbing his chin.
Whitley shook his head.
"Doctor, you know that there is currently a massive Grimm incursion that Vacuo needs to deal with at the moment. I imagine Winter will be quite busy for at least a week or so. And Kuchinashi needs help now."
Dr. Polendina leaned back into his chair, a weathered look on his face.
It was his turn to sigh.
"Why does it have to be you? I know you have trained and taken the time to prepare but…"
"Doctor, I just need to know if you will do this for me."
The older man shook his head and adjusted his glasses.
A mechanical hiss from behind him informed Pietro that the maintenance on the power armor was completed.
"Does your mother know about this?"
Whitley frowned.
His eyes trailed off to the area around him for a moment, taking in the deep blue hue that the lights from all of the computer equipment bathed the room in.
"She will know everything shortly."
"You mean after your ship has lifted off," Pietro clarified with an accusatory tone.
The youngest Schnee remained silent.
Pietro shook his head in disapproval at this.
"In the past, you would never be the type to do this. In fact, I recall that you completely shunned any sort of martial pursuits," Pietro said curiously.
Whitley nodded in affirmation.
"Two years can change a man."
Pietro looked down into his own hands.
"I suppose that's true. And at this point, you do have over a year's worth of infantry training under your belt. I am just worried," he admitted, his voice taking on a more somber tone.
Whitley raised an eyebrow at this.
"Worried? For me? I mean, we do have a solid working relationship, but I don't understand why you would worry as much as you are," he answered, confused.
Pietro gazed back up at him with a sad smile.
"I guess I just don't want to see another young soul be extinguished before their time if I can help it."
Whitley's eyes widened in realization. Now he understood the good doctor's concern.
An image of a girl with long, ginger hair flashed in his memories.
"What have you been working on recently?" he asked, pushing the thought away.
Pietro looked at him pointedly, knowing exactly what Whitley was doing, before turning his mobility chair around towards the large table behind him.
He walked his chair closer to the table, briefly glancing at Whitley as the young man joined him at his side.
Together, they gazed down at the multitude of blueprints, schematics, and assorted parts that Pietro had scattered around the completely covered table.
The scientist selected one and held it up so that they could both get a better look.
"My priority project right now is installing jammers, as well as chaff and flare dispensers into your drop pods. That way, you and the others will be protected during your insertion from surface-to-air missiles, as well as radar-guided triple-A fire."
Pietro held the schematics for these new features up to Whitley, prompting the Schnee to take it.
Whitley politely grabbed the schematics and looked them over.
"Now, it is mostly just a matter of devising a way to apply these countermeasures onto the drop pods without compromising the other onboard systems. I don't believe our team will have many issues with that," Pietro continued to explain, pointing at a possible location on the drop pod schematic to place these new defensive systems.
"It's too bad we don't have such countermeasures against Grimm. Where is your research team, by the way?"
"Mostly asleep. You arrived here in the middle of the night, remember?" Pietro said, letting out a light chuckle.
"I suppose we won't have this protection for our Kuchinashi drop, won't we?" Whitley asked, already knowing the answer.
"I'm afraid not."
Whitley handed the schematics back to Pietro and locked eyes with the scientist.
"So, will you do as I asked?"
The old man stared at the armored young man before him in momentary defiance before relenting.
"I guess I don't really have a choice. You are seriously putting your foot down on this," Pietro pointed out, tossing the schematics back on the table.
"I want to hear you say it," Whitley demanded.
"Fine. If something should happen to you, full command and control of the Aerial Drop Troopers will be given jointly to both Winter Schnee and myself."
"Perfect. Thank you for agreeing Doctor," Whitley said with a slight smile.
"It wouldn't be right for anything to happen to you, you know? This whole program was your idea after all."
"My idea maybe, but only possible with your full backing, and my sister's military experience. If I go down, I wholeheartedly believe that the ADT program will be in good hands."
Pietro nodded, even though he wasn't at all comfortable with this.
"You know, I could just get either your mother or sister on the scroll right now. Have them talk you out of this. Or stop you from leaving."
Whitley's weak smile evolved into a full-on grin.
"Even if you did, it's late at night and Mother is asleep. There's no guarantee that her scroll would wake her. And as for Winter, she is too far away preparing for the Grimm subjugation to react in time. My ship leaves in twenty minutes."
Pietro tilted his head in defeat.
"I expected as much. Which ship are you going up in?"
"One of the modified SDC freighters. The Here We Go Again," Whitley stated proudly.
He had taken a liking to that ship in particular.
"Young man, most of what came out of your mouth tonight I'm not a fan of. But I will say this, you have a great taste in ships," Pietro admitted.
Whitley knew that the good doctor shared his favoritism towards the Here We Go Again.
There was even talk about naming it the flagship of their new fleet of dropships.
"I don't care if she's an Atlesian Psyop, I can fix her," Whitley deadpanned.
Pietro erupted with laughter, the Schnee chuckling a little himself.
Three days had passed since the fleet of dropships had left the Kingdom of Vacuo.
Now the fleet was quickly approaching their main objective, the Mistrali city of Kuchinashi.
Whitley strode down the brightly lit hallway, the pristine white walls guiding his way to the briefing room. He shielded his eyes from the blaring artificial light overhead as he approached, nervous energy bubbling up inside of him. Turning a corner, the teen found the proper room number.
It was finally time.
The automatic doors to the briefing room parted to let him through, and he entered immediately.
The briefing room onboard the Here We Go Again was modest in size by Atlesian standards. After all, the ship was a modified SDC freighter, not necessarily built to be a military vessel.
The walls and ceiling shared the clean white of the rest of the ship, only broken up by maps, motivational posters, and the banners with the emblems of various ADT stacks. There was a large TV installed on the back wall, flanked by two bookcases filled with novels and encyclopedias. Long tables lined the other walls, on which were a multitude of snacks, drinks, a microwave, and a coffee machine. This place was a rec room as well as a briefing room.
Chairs were laid out in a loose circle, surrounding the large holographic projection table in the center of the room.
Whitley saw that everyone else was already seated and appeared to be waiting on him, even though he knew that he had arrived early. This did nothing to unsettle him because he was already unsettled by pre-mission jitters.
Besides, he had read everyone's files beforehand, and therefore had a good idea on what to expect from these people.
He saw the many different paint jobs and designs on each trooper's armor. Whitley, Winter, and Pietro all agreed to allow each drop trooper to paint their armor to their own liking.
Whitley had stuck with the default black.
He had thought about painting it white and blue, with the Schnee family crest and livery, but in the end, he decided against it.
He wasn't sure why.
Counting himself, there were twelve troopers in the room.
But only one was not wearing armor.
"Commander Schnee," the dark-skinned woman intoned, bowing her head respectfully.
Whitley approached her and shook her outstretched hand with a smile.
"Are we almost ready here, Colonel Haze?" he asked, gesturing towards the holographic table.
Colonel Acacia Haze was dressed in an Atlesian officer uniform, marking her as one of the survivors of the Atlesian military after the fall of Atlas. In fact, she was one of the only officers in the Atlesian Army that survived that devastating battle, making her an important asset for the fledgling ADT program.
Even though the Atlesian military officially didn't exist anymore, Whitley didn't see a problem with her continuing to wear her uniform. Their organization didn't even have anything like a dress uniform yet anyways.
"Now that you are here sir, we can begin," Haze replied, her piercing blue eyes drifting towards the table.
She began logging into the table's console, and then opened the file she needed for her briefing. While she did this, she also grabbed a remote to dim the lights of the briefing room.
Whitley quickly made his way over to an open seat he had spotted, greeting the other armored troopers as he went.
"Commander Whit," said a tall man with red hair, giving the teen a friendly wave from across the room.
"Is your stack ready to go, Rhodes?" Whitley questioned, waving back as he took his seat.
"Don't worry sir. All of Frost Stack will be watching your back down there," the man reassured, leaning back in his chair.
Crimson Rhodes was the leader of Frost Stack, the ten-man ADT team that Whitley would be attaching himself to for this mission. He was the type of man that was serious and professional in the field but laid back and chill the second he was off duty. Crimson was also a former member of the Vale Defense Force and had fought during the Fall of Beacon.
This was a similar story with many current ADTs.
Many were either former Atlesian soldiers, drawn from the defense forces of other kingdoms, Huntsman academy dropouts, or even just fresh volunteers that had to be trained from the ground up.
Whitley supposed that he had his sister to thank for taking care of the training regime.
"Gods. She must be livid with me."
He had been ignoring his scroll on principal ever since the fleet had set off, but he knew that he must have a sea of angry messages and missed calls waiting for him once he finally checked it again. He knew he shouldn't be ignoring them, but he was honestly scared enough of simply opening his scroll that he decided to just leave things be for now.
They wouldn't understand why he needed to do this.
"Sorry everyone. This computer is just taking its sweet time to load," the Colonel growled at the console.
Whitley and the others told Acacia that it was fine and began to converse with each other while they waited.
"Hey, Commander Whit?"
Whitley turned towards the soft female voice that he had just heard next to him.
"What is it, Evergreen?" he asked, meeting the gaze of the young woman next to him.
"You know sir, you can just call me V like everyone else," she offered, tilting her head at him.
Whitley glanced at her flowing black hair and wondered how she fit it all inside of her helmet. He also noticed the two wolf ears on her head, one straight, and the other slightly flopped over.
Even though Violet Evergreen was a Faunus, she didn't require the special modifications to her armor that some other Faunus recruits needed to fit in their ADT plate.
"Her ears seem small enough to fit in her helmet, even though her hair doesn't," he mused.
"Okay then V, what was your question? Is it about this mission?"
Whitley usually wasn't the type to call people by nicknames, but he decided to humor her anyways.
As far as he knew, Violet didn't have a former combat background like the others in her stack. She had joined as a volunteer from Vale, so Whitley guessed that he had that in common with her at least.
"Well sir, not exactly about this mission per say, but about our purpose in general," she said sheepishly, wringing her hands together.
"The purpose of ADTs, you mean?"
He leaned closer to her with interest, having no idea where she was going with this.
"Well, yes. You see, there's this rumor going around that the real reason you created the program was to replace Huntsmen completely," she explained, still wringing her hands.
Whitley guessed that was the nervous tic her file mentioned.
"Replace them?"
"A lot of people think that you hate Huntsmen or something like that."
He let out a depressive sigh.
Whitley knew that this would come up eventually.
"I used to hate them. Even though my own sisters chose that path. Perhaps I hated Huntsmen for that exact reason. I thought they were barbaric, that the Atlesian military made their existence unnecessary."
He looked away from her and back at Colonel Haze for a moment, who was cursing about having to reset the console.
"But what happened in Atlas showed me that I was wrong, even if I didn't want to believe it."
Violet's wolf ears perked up at learning this, not expecting Whitley to admit that he once had disdain for Huntsmen.
"But no, I don't hate them. Just like what we have said officially, Aerial Drop Troopers are not meant to replace Huntsmen. Our purpose is to complement them," Whitley finished, letting out a breath he wasn't aware he was holding.
"You mean, that we are supposed to drop from our ships to save towns that don't have Huntsmen to protect them? Because our ships and drop pods make it easy for us to respond to a threat quickly, right?"
"Exactly. We are a stop gap to hold the line until the Huntsmen arrive. We can also handle lower threat missions so that the Huntsmen are free to engage elsewhere. Huntsmen are our best force against the Grimm, but there are scarce amounts of them, and they can't be everywhere at once," Whitley finished, before the Colonel's cheer grabbed his attention.
"Finally, I got it! Let's start the briefing!" she declared with a relieved tone.
The holographic images began to appear over the table, displaying a virtual layout of Kuchinashi. Whitley could see precisely rendered 3D buildings, and landmarks displayed with excellent visual detail.
"As you know, for the past year, an independence movement has been growing in Kuchinashi. This movement has its roots in the criminal underground that infects this city, along with admittedly legitimate grievances with the Kingdom's government. Considering that this is Kuchinashi of all places, it didn't take long for this rebel movement to gain control of much of the city."
Acacia zoomed in on the central area of the city. Sections of the city that were currently under rebel control began to be shaded orange. The names of different rebel groups began popping up in the areas that they occupied.
"A week ago, the Mistral government finally decided to make their move. The Mistrali Army rolled into the city with thousands of troops, armored vehicles, and air support," Acacia said, prompting the sections of Kuchinashi under Mistral government control to be colored purple.
Purple lines showed where the Mistrali Army advanced, along with icons that showed the units involved, as well as their positions within the city.
"This operation has confirmed what most of the experts already suspected. That the Mistrali Army, infamous for its internal graft, corruption, and incompetence, was not prepared for the volatile situation in Kuchinashi."
The holographic map showed the Mistral government forces being pushed back in multiple sectors of the city. Video clips began to play showing Mistrali armored vehicles getting nailed with anti-tank weapons, an airship being shot down, and a squad of conscripts falling victim to an ambush.
"Of course. Stereotypical Mistral government," Rhodes commented, shaking his head in disappointment.
Acacia ignored his interjection and continued with her briefing.
"While they do have more elite troops deployed, a majority of the Mistrali Army in Kuchinashi consists of mainly poorly trained and equipped conscripts that are operating aging, outdated equipment. And also, they have little to no Huntsman support."
Every single trooper in the room couldn't believe the sheer level of idiotic decisions that the Mistrali soldiers made in some of the short clips being shown to them.
Whitley literally watched a conscript accidentally blow himself up with his own rocket launcher.
"On the other side of things, the situation is not any better. The rebels are not united, and are in fact, several different factions themselves. Most of these factions hate each other, and reports of rebels shooting at other rebels is widespread."
The Colonel tapped at the console once more, causing several red splotches to spread around random sections of Kuchinashi.
"To make matters worse, there is also the local radicalized White Fang chapter, who are also wreaking havoc in the city."
"I can't believe those guys are still a thing," one of the troopers chuckled in disbelief.
Colonel Haze, anticipating this reaction, already had her reply ready.
"There are still splinters of radical White Fang around the globe. Even after Taurus's death, some of his loyalists went into hiding in multiple locations. Including Kuchinashi."
"Well that sucks," was all the trooper replied, collapsing back into his seat.
Whitley grimaced at this knowledge.
Dealing with the White Fang seemed to be an inescapable curse for his family. Winter fought them, Weiss fought them, and now it was apparently his turn.
"We know now that at least one of the rebel groups is confirmed to be a human supremacist militia, and the fact that the Mistral government is rather…unsympathetic towards Faunus, Kuchinashi is a complete nightmare for any civilians trapped there."
"Which is where we come in," one of the female troopers said.
Acacia turned to the ADT that spoke and pointed at her in approval.
"Yes. Our mission is simple. The search, rescue, and evac of civilians. Thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded already. Some of them are running out of food, water, and medical supplies. Reports are leaking out about suspected atrocities against civilians being committed by multiple factions. This is a humanitarian disaster, and we must do something."
She turned back to the holograms and brought up a new display.
The locations of where in the city various ADT stacks would drop was displayed with their emblems. Eight blue circles, along with dozens of white circles were scattered around the city.
"It is advisable to avoid combat as much as you can after your insertion. These white circles are suspected concentrations of civilians. This map will be uploaded to your helmet visor's HUD."
Whitley scanned the map with his eyes, drinking in as much detail as he could. He would be dropping into a powder keg with four hundred ADTs.
It was time for the organization that he built with his sister and Doctor Polendina to truly be put to the test.
He would be put to the test.
"So, we are to make our way towards these civilian areas and escort them to the positions inside those blue circles, correct?" Whitley spoke up, everyone in the room turning to look at him.
"That is indeed correct. The eight blue circles are our evac points in which the designated airships will touch down and begin taking on passengers. This is also how you will be extracted, so protection of these sites and the civilians is priority."
"Are all factions cleared hostile?" Rhodes asked, his hands fidgeting with his helmet.
"Our mission is to safeguard civilians, not involve ourselves in their civil war. Make every effort to avoid engagement but do eliminate hostiles as needed. And of course, due to the sheer scale of the violence, the presence of Grimm should be practically a guarantee," Acacia clarified, meeting the eyes of every trooper in the room before settling on Whitley.
"Is that all?" the Schnee asked, his mind buzzing with all of the information that he had just received.
So many variables that he had to account for.
Colonel Haze just nodded in understanding.
"It is. Gear up and take care of yourselves down there. Now let's go save some people!"
Everyone got up out of their seats to head over to the armory before the colonel stopped them by raising her arm.
"How about a light joke for the road? In the words of the late General Ironwood…"
Whitley assumed that the other troopers were just as confused as he was about Acacia's words.
What could that maniac of a general have said that she wanted to tell them as a joke?
"War is the motherfucking answer," she finished, a devious smile on her face.
Whitley didn't get the joke at all, but he could absolutely believe that Ironwood would say something like that.
As he left his seat and followed the other troopers out of the room, he set his mind on the task in front of him.
"I have a drop to prepare for."
Author's Note:
Aerial Drop Troopers, and no Shock?
Legally distinct?
Hell yeah brother!
References:
Halo 3 ODST - This whole story is a blatant love letter to this game
Violet Evergreen – From the anime Violet Evergarden
"War is the motherfucking answer." – From the show Generation Kill
"One of the modified SDC freighters. The Here We Go Again," – From the GATE fanfiction Here We Go Again by 15Zero
"I don't care if she's an Atlesian Psyop, I can fix her." - The YouTube video: Genshin Impact is a Playable Anime by MaxOr
Ace Combat - The briefing is inspired by the briefings from the Ace Combat games. They didn't get any music unfortunately.