Into Hell
Whitley took a deep breath to try and calm himself, deciding to once again check his gear.
He walked up to the large mirror that nearly covered the armory wall and looked himself over.
He was clad in full ADT plate, the black armor giving him a deceptive bulk to his physique. Armor plates covered his body, with many smaller plates protecting his arms, legs, neck, sides and groin. The backplate and chestplate were the largest, covering his entire torso but still allowed him some flexibility.
His helmet encompassed his entire head and locked into his neckplate when worn, unlike the Atlesian army helmet that left the wearer's lower face exposed.
He unclipped it from his hip and inspected the back of the helmet to check the spare magazine he had attached there, before turning the helmet over and coming face to face with his own visor.
The polarized visor was wide and covered much of the front of the helmet, allowing the wearer to have a decent field of vision. It was also equipped with a HUD capable of downloading fresh data, and had radio comms, night vision, and both white-hot and black-hot thermal vision installed.
The most interesting feature of the visor for Whitley at least was the fact that it included a camera for recording combat footage. This allowed the viewers to see whatever the visor could see, for twenty-four hours' worth of footage.
A feature that Whitley was going to make full use of.
The eighteen-year-old turned back to the mirror again.
He swore that Doctor Polendina had told him exactly what alloys were used for the plating at some point, but Whitley couldn't remember what Pietro had said.
All he could remember was that this power armor was classified as Mark II, with his sister's power armor being the Mark I.
Winter's power armor afforded her additional strength in combat, allowing her to keep up with even the most skilled of huntsmen or the deadliest of criminals. It was the armor that she herself credited with keeping her alive during the Fall of Atlas.
The Mark II was not capable of such feats.
Pietro considered the armor that Whitley was now wearing to be somewhat a downgrade.
It was not built for an Ace-Ops Special Operative like Winter Schnee, but instead for the much more numerous Aerial Drop Troopers. Coupled with the fact that Polendina no longer had the vast resources of Atlas at his disposal, the doctor had little choice but to have the Mark II created as a modest and streamlined design.
As a result, the ADT plate sacrificed nearly all of the strength of the Mark I in exchange for much more robust protection. This made sense due to the fact that pretty much none of the ADTs were huntsmen. They lacked the advantages of having a strong aura or a semblance and would certainly need the extra protection.
"Mark I was the 'power in power armor', and the Mark II is the 'armor,'" Whitley remembered the doctor saying to him.
Whitley's mind then returned to prepping for his mission, mag-clipping the helmet back to his hip.
He gazed down at his primary weapon, which was resting on its stock and leaning against the wall of the armory.
He picked it up and carefully inspected it for problems, turning it over in his hands to look over each component.
It was a carbine variant of an Atlesian service rifle, painted black to match his armor. He had opted to kit it out with a medium-range scope, a suppressor, and already had a full magazine loaded.
After Whitley had decided that his carbine was good to go, he counted all six of his magazines that were slotted into his chest rig. He individually checked each magazine, remembering which had normal rounds and which were loaded with Fire Dust tracer ammunition.
His attention then went straight to the belt around his waist, which had both of his grenade pouches.
"Four frag and four gravity," Whitley recited in his head, as if he was checking off grocery items on a shopping list.
"Suppressed pistol with red dot. Four mags," he continued his meticulous inspection of his loadout, before opening up his individual first aid kit to check the contents.
This obsessive habit of checking and re-checking all of his gear was a leftover from his studies in the Schnee Manor. With all of the pressure of the academic lessons and learning the business intricacies of the Schnee Dust Company, he had developed the lifestyle of someone who constantly scrutinized everything to a ridiculous degree.
He huffed to himself in annoyance, wanting nothing more than to drive away the phantom stress from remembering those times.
Satisfied with finding all of the bandages, painkillers, SwiftClot, tourniquets, and other medical items he had required, he closed his first aid kit and stowed it inside his black tactical backpack.
Inside Whitley's backpack were additional medical supplies, food, water, and even thermal blankets, intended for civilian use.
He had also managed to stuff four spare magazines for his carbine into the pack as well. The teen had originally wanted to cram spare everything for his full loadout inside, but he knew that the extra ammo and grenades would absolutely not fit.
"Besides, with all this gear, I will be weighed down enough as it is," he mused, closing his backpack after his final check.
He exhaled as he stood to take one last look in the mirror. A white-haired teenager stared back at him, his icy blue eyes filled with both nerves and excitement.
Here was Whitley Schnee.
A boy born with silver spoon in mouth and the wealth, status, and vast resources of the Schnee Dust Company at his back. Someone who had abhorred any form of fighting and scoffed at his sisters when they chose the battlefield over running the family business.
Now the same boy was properly trained, kitted out for combat, and about to jump feet first into hell.
The mirror in front of Whitley held an image that would have been unimaginable just two years prior.
"Do not forget why you are doing this," he firmly ordered his reflection.
He abruptly turned away from the mirror and made his way to the door.
The embarkation deck was located on the lowest level of the Here We Go Again.
Whitley scanned the entire level as he made his way down the metal steps that led towards the rows of drop pods below. Each drop pod was locked into a metal chamber that was designed to release each pod with precise timing.
There were forty-one in total, split into three rows of ten, and the last row of eleven.
Frost Stack's row and his own.
He saw numerous maintenance personnel inspecting each drop pod thoroughly, some searching the surfaces with flashlights for impurities, while others had panels open on some of the pods and were inspecting the internals with borescope cameras. Whitley also noticed that there were a few maintainers running final diagnostic checks on pods that were deemed ready to go.
A calm female voice on the intercom declared to the entire ship that all Aerial Drop Troopers were to be seated in their pods within twenty minutes.
As Whitley cleared the final step of the metal staircase, he immediately approached the cluster of idle ADTs on the far side of the room.
For now, they seemed to be chatting amongst themselves, with some inspecting their equipment one last time. He made his way over to them, weaving his way past maintenance personnel that had finished their work and were putting away their tools.
"Needle One, Vampire! Vampire!" the woman's voice on the loudspeaker declared.
After this, Whitley could hear and feel the rumble of jet engines as the first salvo of the Here We Go Again's cruise missiles were let loose.
"Hopefully all of the air defenses will be knocked out," Whitley thought, his mind on the nightmare scenario of his drop pod potentially getting hit by a SAM.
The objective of these cruise missiles was to take care of as many air defenses in Kuchinashi as possible, no matter what faction they belonged to. This was a gamble as Mistrali Army surface-to-air missile batteries and anti-aircraft gun positions were also included on the target list.
But with Headmaster Lionheart getting most of Mistral's veteran huntsmen killed and the Mistrali Army getting badly mauled in Kuchinashi, the Mistral government at this point would barely have enough capable troops to protect their own borders from the Grimm. Considering that retaliating against the Aerial Drop Troopers would most likely include the Kingdom of Mistral having to attack the ADT base in Vacuo, Whitley and Colonel Haze were both not too concerned.
Whitley remembered Colonel Haze's reply when some of the other ADT leadership voiced their concerns about a possible counterstrike from Mistral:
"With what?"
A calculated risk, they had decided.
Especially since some of the allegations of war crimes in Kuchinashi included the Mistrali Army, the government of Mistral was already receiving the side eye from the Kingdom of Vacuo.
"I am still shocked at how easy it was to get Vacuo to stamp their approval for this mission," the Schnee thought as he sidestepped the last of the support personnel leaving the embarkation deck.
"Needle Two, Vampire! Vampire!" a male voice announced on the intercom this time, letting everyone know that another dropship in the fleet was firing off their own cruise missiles.
Whitley easily picked out the bright red hair of Crimson Rhodes, the leader of Frost Stack appearing to share a joke with his team.
They all collectively turned to Whitley as he reached them, offering fist bumps and eager smiles with the Schnee.
"You ready to go?" Rhodes asked, slinging his backpack over his back.
"I am," Whitley answered with a nervous smirk.
Crimson clicked his tongue.
"Don't worry so much Commander, we're basically going to be your honor guard down there. You'll see once this mission starts rolling. Frost puts in work," he reassured with a wide grin, patting Whitley on the back.
"Needle Three, Vampire! Vampire!" the intercom clicked again.
Whitley scanned the other ADTs in Frost Stack, each of them giving reassuring nods or smiles.
"Besides Commander Whit, I've got this sick as hell railgun!" a female member of Frost Stack declared happily.
Charlotte Cerise was the shortest member of the stack, and she was displaying the prototype railgun in her grasp like an excited puppy. She blew a purple bang out of her green eyes, waving her experimental sniper rifle proudly for Whitley to see.
From her file, he also knew that she was the best sharpshooter in Frost Stack.
"Needle Four, Vampire! Vampire!"
One of the larger male ADTs picked Charlotte up, lifting her from under her armpits. Whitley swore that she looked like a pet being dragged away, especially with how her arms were flopped over.
"C'mon Cherry, give our commander his space," the male ADT said, carrying her a few steps away from Whitley before setting the tiny girl back down.
Steven Ivory glanced back at Whitley apologetically.
"Sorry about that. Little Cerise here may be a human, but she behaves like she constantly has the zoomies," the large bear Faunus said with a chuckle.
"Little?!"
"Shut up."
A look of realization dawned on Rhodes's face as he quickly threw his backpack off his back and opened up one of the smaller pockets. He dug around for a few seconds before pulling out a small item.
"Commander Whit. I almost forgot to give you this," the team leader said, handing it out to Whitley.
Curiously, the Schnee politely grabbed it and inspected it. He turned it over in his hands so that he could see both sides of it.
It was a patch.
The back side was nothing but black velcro, but the front was a white snowflake stylized as a scope's reticle against a sky-blue background.
The emblem of Frost Stack.
"Needle Five, Vampire! Vampire!"
Whitley eyed the armor of the Frost ADTs and saw that all of them had this unit patch placed on the velcro fuzz on their right sleeve. Knowing that his own sleeve was empty, he lined up the patch as perfectly as he could before pressing it onto his armor.
The stack leader nodded in approval.
"There ya go. Now you're one of us," Rhodes said, throwing his backpack on once more.
Whitley listened to the intercom cut in as he sat inside his drop pod, his carbine slotted into a weapon rack next to his seat.
"All maintenance and support personnel are advised to clear the embarkation deck at this time. All Aerial Drop Troopers must enter their pods and shut their canopies. We are opening all drop bay doors, and the embarkation deck will now become a hazard area."
After this announcement, an alarm blared as a distinct thud sounded from the bottom bay doors of the Here We Go Again.
As the bay doors opened the floor underneath the rows of drop pods, Whitley watched the orange glow of the evening sky leak into the embarkation deck from below. He saw that all of the ADTs had boarded their drop pods through the bulletproof window of his own.
Thankfully, all support personnel had heeded the warning over the intercom and were cleared out of the embarkation deck completely, taking all tools and potential FOD with them.
"Needle Six, Vampire! Vampire!"
Whitley read from the mission details that they would be dropping from thirty thousand feet. This altitude was chosen to keep the ADT dropships out of the range of Mistrali air defenses.
The problem was that Mistrali radars could still detect them at this altitude, so anyone who was manning them was certainly aware of their presence by now. Also, the ADT drop pods would still be slipping into air defense range on their way down. Even though the pods were small and fast, Whitley knew from the testing trials that they bloomed on most track radar systems, and that a missile lock could very much still be achieved on them.
It was something Doctor Polendina and his team were still working on.
"I really wish that upgrade for the drop pods he showed me was ready. I would feel much better," Whitley sighed while leaning back into his seat.
"Needle Seven, Vampire! Vampire!"
He gazed down at the open sky below him becoming more visible as the bottom bay doors continued their slow bisection of the embarkation deck. He could not see the ground due to the many clouds that now swallowed up the sky below the ship.
The ADT leadership had chosen to drop on the outset of a thunderstorm at six in the evening. This was to give the Aerial Drop Troopers the advantage of their night vison and thermal optics that their helmets provided them. Any Faunus enemies or Grimm would still be an issue, but they knew from what intel they could gather that most of the rebels and government forces where not equipped with such capabilities.
"Needle Eight, Vampire! Vampire!"
Whitley suddenly felt a jolt inside of his drop pod.
The entire embarkation deck was covered by the waning light of the sunset. He could hear the howl of wind rushing through the opening of the bottom of the ship, thankful that his drop pod kept him completely insulated from it.
The bottom bay doors were now completely open.
Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself, the youngest Schnee activated his visor's camera to begin recording.
"Inferno Stack! Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!" the voice of Colonel Acacia Haze ordered over the intercom.
Whitley's eyes were locked onto the drop pods at the furthest row from him, the sight of the ten pods of Inferno Stack falling away causing his breath to hitch in anticipation. After Inferno was gone, he shifted his attention to the next row.
"Venom Stack! Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!"
After he watched all of Venom's pods detach from their chambers and fall to Kuchinashi below, the teenaged boy closed his eyes.
For reasons even he didn't understand, his thoughts turned to his sisters. He wondered if Weiss or Winter have ever had to make combat drops like this. One was a Huntress that had accomplished and been through much more than he could ever fathom with her team from Beacon, and the other was both a Huntress and a former Special Operative in the Atlesian military.
"Of course they have," he mentally scoffed to himself.
"Thunder Stack! Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!"
"Two years and no trace. Where have you gone?" Whitley wondered, his thoughts turning to Weiss specifically.
A beeping tone from within his drop pod broke him away from his thoughts, bringing him back to reality.
He closed his eyes, steeling himself for what he knew was coming.
The final tone was a much higher pitch than the others, and the second he heard it, he felt his drop pod detach itself from the metal chamber that held it.
"Frost Stack! Dismount! Dismount! Dismount!"
It was at this moment that Whitley Schnee was grateful that Pietro had designed the drop pods to dampen the effects of both positive and negative g-forces.
Through the bulletproof glass, the view of the embarkation deck disappeared and was replaced by the orange sunset.
He only had a brief moment to enjoy the silent beauty of the evening sky before the adolescent supercell below him quickly grew in his field of vision.
The second his pod hit the clouds Whitley's heart immediately jumped into his throat as his drop pod began to shake violently. With how he was being jostled around his pod, he could only silently pray that the safety harnesses that were strapping him down would hold. His mind was assaulted by the terrifying possibility of being ejected from a dismantling drop pod.
The rookie ADT could see nothing through the clouds, his canopy now covered with a constant stream of rushing water droplets. He was told that dropping into the clouds would be safe due to the fact that the thunderstorm would not be mature for another hour or so.
"I hope they were not lying to me!" he wanted to yell to himself out loud, but he was so shocked by the sensation of falling that his open mouth was unable to even scream, let alone form any words.
Whitley's eyes grew in apprehension as he tried to peer down into the clouds, wishing for this to end as swiftly as possible. As he watched nothing but gray and more gray, he wondered if the dread he felt was similar to diving into the depths of the deep ocean.
After what seemed to be an eternity for him, the darkening clouds below him finally began to break.
The sight of the city of Kuchinashi below flooded into his view, the buildings and roads of the urban landscape seeming to invite him with their neon lights. If he ignored the occasional tracers from anti-aircraft fire erupting into sky, Whitley might have been able to admit that Kuchinashi had its own eerie sense of allure to it.
"At least they are not shooting at us yet."
This was the first time in his life that seeing crime-ridden alleyways brought him respite.
"I remember seeing that rec center from the briefing. The Mistrali Army is using it as a supply base."
Despite his discomfort from being constantly bounced around inside his pod, he was still able to point out certain landmarks within the city that were points of interest for the mission. This focus was his main method of regaining his composure and now he could also take solace in the fact that he would be reaching his landing zone soon.
If there was anything the youngest Schnee heir excelled at, it was analysis.
He had made it a mental exercise to absorb every scrap of information about Kuchinashi's layout and the situation in each sector of the city as meticulously as he could. Even though the maps downloaded into his helmet would help him, Whitley much preferred to recognize sites on the ground with his own memory.
"I recognize that church by that intersection. Apparently, it has changed hands between the White Fang and some human supremacist militia several times now. We should stay clear of that area."
Just as he was beginning to acclimate himself to the drop and was on the verge of calming down, he heard a blaring warning tone emit from his pod's radar receiver.
Today fate had a vendetta against Whitley Schnee.
"Radar energy? Gods, please no! I'm being spiked!"
He thrashed his head to and fro, trying to find the incoming threat through his canopy. His eyes scanned the sky frantically for the orange flare of an engine, or perhaps a contrail, anything that could give him a clue. Panicked breathing was all he could hear now, adrenaline driving him to search with even more fervor.
"Where is it!? Where!?" he mentally screamed in frustration, still unable to speak.
It was then that a SAM flew past his canopy at eye level.
It couldn't have been more than a few hundred feet away from him when it flashed by his drop pod for a single second. The missile was massive in size, and it was so close that Whitley could clearly hear the brutal punch of its rocket motor breaking the sound barrier.
He watched the flaming engine of the missile streak away from him in silent shock.
No amount of ADT training could have prepared Whitley for that.
Even as the outdated air defense weapon disappeared over the horizon, he refused to peel his eyes away from it. A deep primal sense within him told him that if he let his guard down, the missile would come back. He knew that the feeling was illogical, but he also did not wish to tempt fate.
"I need to land! Now!"
Even though he had only left the Here We Go Again just over a minute ago, Whitley felt that this drop was overdue to end already. He had enough of being helpless in the sky, trapped in his own self-provided coffin. At least on the ground, he could shoot back and actually have a chance for survival.
"I have the worst luck today," he lamented to himself, still at the height of his shock.
He failed to notice a second missile burst into a cloud of shrapnel not far from his pod.
There was no time to register what had just happened as dozens of shards of metal slammed into the hull of his drop pod. Pieces of shrapnel carved spiderweb cracks into his canopy, the bulletproof glass just barely saving his life. The drop pod banked violently to his right, the safety harnesses that secured him tested to their limit.
He could feel both himself and his drop pod losing orientation as the g-forces that the pod would normally protect him from were finally too much.
As the corners of his vision darkened, he faintly felt his drop pod lose its course.
Author's Note:
And just like that, the opening chapters are done!
References:
"Now the same boy was properly trained, kitted out for combat, and about to jump feet first into hell." - Halo 3 ODST
"The embarkation deck…" – From The Horus Heresy novels/Warhammer 40K. The area where the Astartes would deploy from their ships is called this.
"Needle One," - Halo needle weapons
"Vampire! Vampire!" - NATO brevity code for a hostile anti-ship missile
"Besides Commander Whit, I've got this sick as hell railgun!" - Uzi from the YouTube animated show: Murder Drones by GLITCH Productions
"The final tone was a much higher pitch than the others, and the second he heard it, he felt his drop pod detach itself from the metal chamber that held it." - Halo 3 ODST