Chapter 59 – Resistentia

May 23rd, 2526 - (08:45 Hours - Military Calendar)

Epsilon Indi System, Harvest

Edda, In orbit over planetary capital of Utgard

Aboard Valiant-class Super-Heavy Cruiser UNSC Everest

(26 Years Ago)

:********:

Don didn't believe in monsters, not made-up ones at least, the kind with long spikes, tall horns and red eyes. All the same, he remembered how his father used to read him stories as a kid whenever he had time away from fieldwork, tales about the kind of beasts that hid under children's beds.

Even then, they never scared him like they did his two little sisters.

He didn't believe that something so ferocious would waste its time hiding under the bed of some kid, not when it could be off hunting one of the many dear or elks that frequented the forests around the family farm.

For him, he'd grown to learn that there were few things more horrifying than the imagination that had birthed those monsters onto the page. He'd learned to fear man's imagination, the kind that could not only think of something awful but also figure out a way to put it together in real life. Manmade horrors were always his experience. There was no need for belief there, only cold, steely, high velocity logic.

Now, however, there was also no need to believe in monsters.

A fairy tale that can shoot back no longer counts as a fiction.

There was no way left to disprove a thing like this, not when said thing could disprove his own existence with the push of a button.

They were creatures that were worse than anything that could come from a book. That was because they didn't come from a book, not one authored by a person at least. They were instead from a tale somebody else had written who then apparently decided to hurl humanity into its latest chapter as the lone child on the bed, listening to the sounds of breathing and wondering why he could hear two instead of one.

In a few minutes, he would be facing them, a kind that didn't need to bother with hiding under the bed or observing from the closet, not when it could simply burn down the whole house and everyone in it.

He had thought of the Covenant as a natural disaster before but was reconsidering whether that was accurate either. Hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis didn't choose to kill people. They just did so as a consequence of natural weather phenomena. The Covenant were the opposite. They chose to do this, and it was that aspect that made them a little more than a monster and a little more than a phenomenon. It made them human and at the same time inhuman. They were a living embodiment of humanity's most violent tendencies given form, manifesting as a personification of the monstrosity that lay in the heart of every man and woman who had ever pursued bloodshed in the name of a higher power. They were that self-righteous fury, that noble malice that had inked its legacy across so many pages of history. But now it was multiplied, foreign, alien. Now it seemed poised to extend its reach across the whole of the Milky Way in order to bring an end to that history.

Worse yet, not unlike those stories he never used to listen to, these monstrosities of faith were right below him. They were here for him, and in a short while he would have their full attention, him along with the rest of the 7th Battalion.

O Deck was a beehive of activity. The deck was, in reality, three floors, each of which could have counted as a deck by itself were it not for their combined purpose. Comprised of a long, singular compartment that ran the full length of the ship, it was divided in half by the assemblage of special equipment that contributed to its role as a drop bay. The three floors at the center of the deck were lined with row upon row of alcoves. The hundreds of spaces were all uniformly the size of a small garage so that everything resembled a massive mechanic shop. Each alcove was separated from one another by a pair of ring supports covered in the black and yellow stripes of hazard markings. Between each of the supports, a matching pair of clawed gimbals had been mounted to the ceiling where they hung like iron stalactites. Both held onto a duo of single occupant exoatmospheric insertion vehicles, the acorn-shaped drop pods that would serve as the battalion's ride to Harvest.

There was one for every ODST on either side of O Deck with a few more to be held in reserve, placing their number at well over 1,000.

It wasn't anything close to normal to have so many pods on one ship. Everest and others like her in the Valiant sisterhood were obviously designed to be the quintessential warhorses of the UNSC Navy. It was a shame that there were only so many of them in service. The engineers of the 2490s must have seen the truth that HIGHCOM wouldn't be aware of for another decade, the scale of force that the impending Insurrection would require. Even then, they couldn't possibly have foreseen what their ships were being used for now.

Bravo and Delta Company had been given the portside deck while Alpha and Echo were just out of sight on the starboard side. Don doubted that the portside of the drop bay was any less busy than things on starboard.

The main floor here was covered in a sprawl of minor service and communications terminals, informational databanks and tactical planners displaying all manner of projections of the surface below. The two companies had found a temporary roost for themselves either in the collection of displays down in the main area or at the status readouts of the screens beside the pods. Much like it had been in the mess hall, the air was full of conversation. The voices were much lower, however, and far more speculative.

Foxtrot had taken a spot close to the lowest line of pods. One of the many pre-mission seating areas had given them plenty of room to sit and think. For whatever time they had left, Don took the opportunity to enjoy the peace. There probably wouldn't be very much of it from hereon.

"How much longer?" Ray groaned; his new battle rifle saddled over his lap. "I'm getting bored here."

"Boredom is good." Izzy hit back. "It means you're still alive to be bored."

Ray shook his head. "I never asked to live a long life, Iz, just a fun one. This right here, this long wait time, this ain't it."

Staring down at the floor, Don allowed himself the luxury of a smirk. That sentiment wasn't lost on anyone who'd chosen the ODSTs as their line of work.

"It's only been 10 minutes." Gad replied as he continued to fidget in his seat, trying to find the most comfortable position with the rocket launcher on his harness.

Ray pointed to it. "Brought any extra ammo for that? Sure, it's going to put a real hurtin' on somebody, but you'll be done after two shots."

Gad jabbed a thumb over at Chris who in turn pointed to the suitcase-sized ammunition case on his back.

"Oh."

"Pays to be prepared." Chris said. "Not sure how much I like being an ammo gofer again though."

"Can't be helped." Gad said, patting him on the shoulder. "Thanks for volunteering."

"I don't know man; I feel like I gained 30 pounds."

"You did."

"You callin' me fat?"

"Well, I'm not callin' you skinny." Gad stopped, catching sight of something behind Don. "Now what do you think they're talking about?"

Don and the others turned to look.

Next to the closest set of pods were four individuals, all of whom were from Bravo Company: the Sarge, Captain Teague and two more, though the last two were just as familiar as the first. Separated only by the authoritative semi-formality that his rank demanded was Major Bowman. Just like the colonel, his graying hair and wrinkled yet hardened features marked him out as part of the old breed, the original generation of troopers who had answered the UNSC's call when the Insurrection was just beginning to spread. As Bravo's company commander, he shared the same dark shadows under his eyes that spoke to years spent on the front. He was better known to the men he commanded, though behind his back of course, as 'Old Bowie Knife'. It was a name he'd more than earned thanks to the nigh impossible number of close quarter encounters he had survived at the expense of desperately handsy rebels barely half his age.

Beside him stood Sergeant Major Eversman, the 1st's platoon sergeant and Captain Teague's second in command. There were no grays to be found on his head but also far less hair overall, having had the battalion's resident barbers shear away the sides so that all that remained was a low lying mohawk. He looked almost as weathered as the major though with a sharper chin, a younger disposition and a hollowness in his eyes that always drifted away from whatever was in front of him. Eversman was the kind of old salt that didn't show his experience in his appearance but in the way he carried himself, the way he seemed to look at the nearest wall and consider whether or not this would be the day that he finally drove his head through it. Knowing the sergeant major, he would probably break the wall before he broke a bone.

The conversation unfolding between the four was clearly an important one judging by the intensity with which the other three paid attention to what the major had to say. Don tried to lean in closer but could hardly catch more than a few words here and there: "hot", "push", "left flank", "hostile air".

"What're they saying?" Izzy asked.

Don shrugged. "Hell if I know."

"Hell if they know." Foss sighed. "This is shaping up to be one wild ride. I doubt even they know how high the first drop is going to be once we reach it."

"Or how many loops it's gonna have." Ray added.

Foss shot him a look, but Foxtrot's sharpshooter answered back with a toothy smile, prompting another long sigh out of the squad's medic.

"There's a first for everything I guess." Foss admitted. "I mean, we've got to find out what we're up against here. If we don't, who will?"

"Who says they haven't already?" Gad asked, the question drawing everyone's eye back to him.

Foss' glare sharpened into one of pointed suspicion. "What do you mean by that?"

"What I mean is who's to say Harvest is the only planet they've hit so far? If you think about it for longer than a minute, it starts making sense."

"We probably only got a minute." Chris cut in. "So start making sense."

Gad stopped fidgeting in his chair. Having finally given up on trying to make himself comfortable, he took the launcher off his back and secured it between his legs. "It's May. The Covenant found this place back in February of '25. That's more than a year."

"So?"

"You're not listening. That's more than a year that they could've spent moving on, looking for other colonies." He paused so that his next words hit even harder. "Who's to say they haven't found them?"

The quiet that followed was unexpected, as was the realization that should have been obvious. To Don, it made a painful amount of sense, so much sense that he wasn't sure how he hadn't honestly thought about it before. Not that it was an idea he really wanted on his mind.

"Think, really think about it. They hated us enough to get rid of a whole world. Why wouldn't they go poking around? If you want to make sure you've cleared out an infestation in your house, you don't just stop at the front door."

"Weren't you the same one who said about an hour ago or so that this might be one big misunderstanding?" Foss pointed out. "I'm pretty sure I remember you saying that this might just be some splinter faction we're dealing with, you know, an isolated incident, a one-time massacre by a few bad apples."

"Yeah, well, that was before the colonel said this wouldn't be our last time fighting them. It's not like him to just make general statements like that without having the receipts. He probably knows something we don't, and it's looking more and more like I was wrong."

"Oh, I know. I just wanted to hear you admit it."

"But wouldn't word have gotten out by now if they went hunting for more?" Chris considered. "You couldn't hide something like that, could you?"

Gad turned to him. "It took us months to find out about what was happening here in Epsilon Indi. Even if this world is the furthest from Sol, it's not by much. There's still a good chance Harvest might not be the only planet they've hit. It might just be the only one we've noticed...or that they've allowed us to notice."

"Who's them?" Ray asked.

"You know, them, ONI, DCS, the CMA, the CAA, the UEG, the UNSC, all of them, the powers that be. Would they really tell us everything that's going on or would they drip-feed us bits of information, test our reaction before they pass on the news to the populace?"

There was a second round of silence as the squad took a few moments to take in the gravity of what he was saying, of what the wider situation might actually look like.

"You're starting to sound like a conspiracy theorist, corporal." Chris chided, a half-hearted grin on his lips.

"No." Foss said grimly. "He's right."

"Oh come on, it's just like when he said the CMA might have Innie sympathizers or something."

Don held back a bitter laugh that sprung up from one of the darker places in his soul.

Foss didn't. "He was right about that one too."

"Yeah, I know" Chris laughed as well, a dry, mirthless laugh that quickly drowned in its own sarcasm, leaving only a muted sullenness where a grin once stood. "I know..."

With that, the last of the conversation died down as well as any appetite for it.

"Best not to think about it, I guess." Don concluded as he picked his helmet from where he'd left it on a nearby seat and held it out in front of him. He looked at his visor, inspecting the minute cracks in the glass, each of which told its own story. Behind it all, though much fainter, he saw his own reflection. If he could go back in time and meet the version of himself that had survived selection, he would have told him to try to get as much sun as possible. He was pale. Though not as vampiric as Chris, he knew he could use a tan. Despite the marring left by a few scars, he could at least say the Insurrection hadn't taken his looks. His shallow dimples were still there as well as the brown depths of his eyes. The top of his head, once covered in clean blond hair, had seen just as much combat as him and had turned to a dirty blonde hue. He kept it in a straight fauxhawk, faded on the sides while thicker and straighter at the top than Eversman's signature style.

For a split second he found himself wondering how he would look with third degree burns.

Another reflection appeared beside his, that of the Sarge walking towards him. He put his helmet down and turned to see for himself. The four-man conversation had ended. While Major Bowman walked off, the other three were coming over.

"What is the word from the Lord o' mighty men of God?" Ray snarked.

The Sarge smiled back as they came to a stop in front of the squad. "First off, shut up. Secondly, don't worry, it's nothing too serious."

"The major just finished talking to the other platoons, so he wanted to wrap things up with us." Teague announced. "Make sure we're all on the same page."

"The first shall be last." Chris huffed.

"Here's the rundown. Neptune-Actual wants us to prioritize the south wing of the parliament building. Cracking the defense there is going to fall to us. Once we land, we'll hook up on the streetside and do what we can to break through their lines until we force our way in. As for everyone else, 2nd and 3rd Platoon will be pushing straight up the center. The guys from 4th will be doing the same thing as us on the north wing."

"A pincer?" Don posited.

"More like a four-pronged fork."

"So, 2nd and 3rd handle the main show while we break in with the 4th and squeeze the Covenant from there?" Gad questioned.

Teague nodded. "Like popping a pimple. We're applying pressure from above and from the sides."

"Doesn't mean we won't have to fight like hell to get there." Eversman said, his voice betraying a raspy quality. "It just means we're splitting up their attention. Can't have them concentrating on any single point or we'll be risking some serious casualties. We'll hit'em hard and we'll hit'em fast."

"Yup." The Sarge agreed. "Getting bogged down simply isn't an option. Not here."

Teague gestured to Gad's launcher. "Keep that in operation for as long as you can."

"I've got four good ones for her, sir." Gad replied.

"Copy...let's hope that's enough. I'll have you, Ferret-6 and Frost-7 working anti-armor and anti-air duty for this one. I'll leave your sergeant to talk it over with you guys in case you need anything else cleared up. I've got to go update the others on what's going on. I'll see you on the ground, Foxtrot."

The Sarge stepped aside to allow Teague and Eversman to pass him as they split off to where squads Frost and Ferret were sitting.

"I want to squeeze a pimple too, Sarge." Don said, drawing his squad leader's inquisitive attention.

"Would you now? Well, I hope for your sake it's that simple." He turned to the rest of the squad. "So, what do you think?"

"Ferret-6 and Frost-7 are pretty good when it comes to the heavier stuff." Gad said. "In terms of dealing with armor or airborne assets, we should be good to go."

Foss held out his hands admittingly. "Whatever makes them shoot at us less is a good plan in my eyes, sir. Keeps me out of a job outside of pulling the trigger."

"Je don't mind a petit side action." Ray said.

Chris gave a thumbs up. "Sits just fine with me."

"Good." The Sarge put his hands to his hips. "So, what were you guys talking about while I was gone?"

"How Command probably isn't telling us the whole truth." Izzy replied. "Gad says the Covenant have probably attacked other worlds by now."

"It's just a theory." Gad corrected. "But..."

The Sarge thought about it for himself. "...Makes sense."

"Sir?"

"It's been a year. Who's to say they haven't found one or two of the other outer colonies since then?"

Chris sat up. "You agree with us, Sarge?"

"I don't think I can disagree. DCS is shady, we found that out firsthand, but ONI more so. They could either be covering it up or it could just be taking that long for the info to trickle in. Whatever the case, it doesn't matter. We're here for the time being. What happens in Epsilon Indi is our business, and whatever happens outside of it is either somebody else's or ours for the future. Let's deal with what we know for a fact, you copy?"

"Copy." Gad relented.

"How much would you wager, sir?" Chris chimed. "Think Delta will actually come in clutch again? What's the odds of them pulling something like that off twice?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"If the other guys haven't already blown it up." Foss commented, running a nervous hand though his hair. "I don't know if-"

The ship's alarm from before came back with a vengeance, blaring across the whole of the deck with a single resonating note. The overhead lights switched in tandem, changing from a stable white to a deep red luminescence that pulsated in rhythm with the alarm.

Colonel Heath's voice passed through the PA system. "Alright, Helljumpers, we're dropping in T-minus three minutes. Saddle up, get in your pods and get ready to get some. Let's move."

Once again, O Deck came alive with movement. Troopers from both Bravo and Delta companies got up from their seats, grabbing their rifles as they either waited for or signaled others to do the same.

"You heard him boys and girls." The Sarge said, nodding towards the drop bay. "Get up. It's time for school."

Don snatched his rifle from between his legs and slapped it onto his back harness as he got to his feet with everyone else. The Sarge led from the front, joining the squad to the outgoing procession that began navigating the paths through the waiting areas. Captain Teague and Sergeant Major Eversman were right on their heels, bringing Squads Frost and Ferret with them.

Clearing the last of the furnishings and displays, somewhere over a hundred ODSTs dispersed among the individual pods lining the main floor. 1st Platoon kept going, heading up one of the many flights of stairs that led to the rest of the deck. They came off at the second floor and headed for a section of SOEIVs that had already been designated for them.

Foxtrot found theirs near the middle of the grouping and Don found his at the very end of the squad lineup. His own pod had been paired with Chris'. The way that the insertion vehicles were currently being held up by the rotational clamps gave off the impression of floating metal coffins. It wasn't that far from the truth either.

The hatches on the pods were all open. Don commenced the seconds-long process many in the 105th referred to as 'housewarming', simply planting his rifle into the weapon rack beside the main seat. He sucked in a deep breath of the new pod smell, the faintly pleasant aroma of the many different chemical mixtures and compounds involved in the manufacturing process.

Chris strolled over to him to size up his ride. "Hm, well, at least she looks like she can handle Mach 2 without issue. May the best man win."

"I didn't know it was a race."

Chris shot a look over at Ray who was already making himself comfortable in his pod. "Isn't it always?"

Don slapped him on the arm. "Good luck."

"No luck." Chris said as he walked off. "Just skill."

Don nodded in mock agreement. He hopped into his pod and sat himself down, shifting a little to make himself more comfortable as, with a hiss, the hatch began to close.

:********:

The Single Occupant Exoatmospheric Insertion Vehicle or SOEIV offered a variety of functionalities and services encapsulated in its plethora of interfaces and displays meant for interunit communications. Unlike the standard HEV, it came with a more reinforced prow, armored windows and better controls for maneuverability. It was the best that money could buy in terms of single man orbital insertion technology. The good admiral had probably procured so many of them in order to guarantee the success of Operation THUNDERBOLT.

It wasn't difficult for Don to grasp that the entire 7th were about to be the Guinea pigs of what was likely a first-in-history experiment, a battalion-sized shock operation against an alien invasion. The UNSC wanted to give them the best odds by granting them the best tech. He appreciated that. Against the hostile unknowns they were soon to face, they would need every advantage they could get.

He sat still, watching through the central viewport as the pod made a counterclockwise rotation. The movement of the gimbal above combined with the overall weight distribution caused the whole thing to sway like an apple on a branch.

He caught a glimpse of Chris' pod rotating off to his right, and then several more further down. By the time his vehicle came to a stop, he was facing the rounded wall of his individual drop tube.

The two primary displays on either side of his viewport switched on. The Sarge appeared on his left and Captain Teague on his right.

With a groan of mechanics, a ray of natural light came from below and rapidly grew in intensity. He waited as he was gradually lowered through the drop doors.

Emerging into the final staging area, his visor had to automatically raise its polarization factor to allow him to see. The primary drop bay itself caught him by surprise. Despite having an idea of how large the Everest was, it was another thing entirely to see how that size lent itself to its facilities, especially this one. The underbelly of the heavy cruiser was an iron chasm. A small maintenance bridge hung below it, a railed catwalk that represented the last solid surface between them and the planet. The light of Epsilon Indi bounced off Harvest's surface and cast the metal of the railing in an otherworldly shimmer. As countless more drop doors opened, it likewise bounced off the emerging prows and viewports of over 1,000 pods. Each one was loaded into place in a series of ascending rows that ran hundreds long, spanning from the midship of the cruiser to the farthest extent of the bay down near the stern.

With robotic precision, the fleet of atmospheric reentry vehicles stopped and held in place, poised above the void like bats in a cave.

"Here we go, people." Teague said over the platoon comms. "Freefall in five...four...three...two..."

On cue, a multitude of small explosions flickered and flashed throughout the bay, the sound muffled by the hard vacuum as rocket systems engaged in quick succession. All at once, hundreds of pods began shooting down out of the bay on cones of blue propulsion. Out the corner of his eye, Don saw Chris' pod jettison out of their shared tube. Suddenly his head jolted back as his world became a blur of movement.

Above him, the open bay rapidly fell away.

His head briefly pinned by the momentum; a newfound weightlessness shot through his body, travelling from his hips all the way up to his skull. He saw the massive, key-shaped girth of the Everest swiftly shrinking into the distance, quickly becoming little more than a silhouetted dot against the backdrop of the stars.

He mentally knocked himself for not bracing properly. Looking back at the main view, he got an eyeful of a spectacle that he didn't get to see every day, even as an ODST.

It was the closest he had ever come to experiencing what it was like being part of a missile barrage. Some 1,000 pods were jetting down through the exosphere, leaving a forest of exhaust trails that tangled together or drifted apart as individual vehicles corrected their courses. The battalion was a rainfall of metal against the blackness of space above and the bright glow of the upper atmosphere below. The azure fire of their rockets made it so that they appeared as a collection of extraterrestrial fireflies mounting a solar incursion.

The planet's horizon curved about them in every direction and only seemed to expand more and more with their descent.

Looking up again, Don could just make out the shapes of the carriers that had taken up positions around the Everest. The rest of the Third Fleet, however, were too far off for him to spot their defensive ring which was still hanging somewhere out there in the dark.

Looking down, he could see the face of the planet they'd come to fight for.

It was one thing to see it on a vid-capture.

It was another to see it from the porthole of a cruiser.

But as the battalion drew closer, Don got to truly see it for what it was, without the added flattery of distance.

The clouds were brackish masses of white and bronze vapor that coasted along at a near unmoving pace. Their general flow appeared chaotic and unguided, almost stagnant. There was no indication of the typical weather displacement patterns that he'd learned to associate with a healthy jet stream. There were, however, extreme dispersions of clouds closer to the world's respective poles which stood in sharp contrast to the lack of movement over the rest of Harvest. It was the next clear sign that the planet's naturally occurring temperatures, and by proxy, its climate had been invariably altered.

The most indisputable detail about the surface was how brown it was. The landmass of Edda, with its vast expanses as well as the puzzle-like dimensions of its southern coasts, or what he thought were its coasts, presented a dearth of the grassy features that the CAA had observed years ago. It resembled something closer to a dust bowl, a desert posing as a continent. Just like he'd seen on the leaked video, there was virtually no lack of the octagonal rings that dotted the face of the planet in their concentric patterns. Even the smallest of the rings looked large enough to encompass a major municipality in the inner colonies, and there were dozens of them, some so large that they could have served as the borders of whole provinces. Even then he wasn't sure if he was properly gauging the magnitude of the scenery.

His hands squeezed tight around his controls the moment he realized that Edda was far too big to be Edda.

The Munin Sea was gone.

The only major body of water on the south side of the planet was missing.

There were no lakes or even smaller traces of liquid to be seen. There was barely any hint that there had ever been a sea there at all save for the curving, long running plateau that showed where Edda's continental shelf sloped down into the depths of the Munin.

The way in which he had deployed made it so that he couldn't see the Hugin Sea in the north, but knowing what had become of its neighbor, he held out little if any hope that it was still there.

"God." Izzy whispered over the comm, her voice a mixture of awe and dread.

Don agreed without a word or comment. There was none needed. His thoughts were now on everything but the mission.

Just one ship...

A tightness welled up in his throat.

"Stay focused, Fox-7." The Sarge advised, though Don could hear a trace of the same awe in his voice.

A low sound dinged from one of the pod's interfaces, a notification of their distance.

"Assembly point reached." Teague declared. "Coordinates are in, start stacking up."

Another interface showed Don where to move. He gently pushed his controls forward and to the left. All the while, outside his windows, a new wave of propulsion flames sparkled across the battalion as the fine spray of pods began to implore their adjustment boosters. Bit by bit, they started changing positions, moving closer to or away from one another until four general clusters began to form, each a respective company.

Don merged with the rest of Bravo in the cluster furthest to the northeast.

As soon as he reached the edge of the formation, the first reentry flames flickered into being on his viewport. Instead of a bright orange, however, they burned a sickly green. The fires quickly spread through the ranks, engulfing the pods around him, turning them into emerald comets before the conflagration consumed his own viewport.

Green flames.

He'd never seen that before.

He couldn't tell what it meant either. Altogether, it was another bad sign added to the heap of omens already piling up over the operation.

"That's new." Chris remarked with a worried note.

"Sarge, got any ideas?" Gad asked.

"My guess is atmospheric pollution caused by a breakdown in the ecology on the surface." The Sarge replied.

"Sir?"

"The planet is messed up, so the sky is messed up."

"Ah...I don't like it."

"...You and me both, trooper."

Stranger still, Don noticed how smooth the ride down was turning out to be. There was little of the usual bumps and rattling that he'd grown accustomed to on previous drops. It seemed that even the natural air resistance had been affected by the doings of the Covenant.

It continued like that for two full minutes before the flames began to subside on their own, though the rising wind pressure continued to make them lick away at his viewport. He saw the wavy sea of white-bronze smog below, much closer than it was before. He braced himself as the battalion headed towards the high-altitude cloud cover. They plunged through a carpet of cirrus clouds that provided Don with the first real bout of air resistance. He felt his pod vibrate, though still not to the level that it would under normal circumstances. He was comforted at least by the sizzling crackle of the reentry flames cooking away at the water vapor on the viewport, creating wriggling tendrils of steam across the glass. That at least was normal.

What he didn't see coming was what was happening to the rest of the company. From what he could observe of the other pods, contact between the flames and the clouds had turned them into fireballs of differing colors and varying hues. Even so, the destructive aurora that was Bravo Company continued to punch through the mesosphere in a rainbow of meteoric ferocity.

His visuals went in and out, coming and going with the clouds, either turning the company into faint shadows or obscuring them from sight altogether.

"90 seconds." Teague said.

The moment he did, the cloud cover thinned and cleared away.

The details of the surface came into sharper definition. The Bifrost Escarpment cut diagonally across Don's view in the same northeast-southwest direction that he had seen on the holo-projection. The landform helped him to better orient himself. Beneath the sprinkling of popcorn-like cirrocumulus clouds in the encroaching stratosphere, he spotted the ground. It was a pastel of browns and blacks, showing no sign of the grassy fields or green hills that were once present in abundance. To the north of the escarpment were the same mountains of the Vigrond Highlands that he had seen during the briefing, except they weren't. The slopes were arid and deprived of all greenery.

Between the two landmarks was the same plot of civilization that he'd seen on the ship, except it wasn't.

The interlocking grids of buildings that comprised the city blocks of the planet's capital were far sparser than was normal for urban sprawls of this size. What he thought were additional structures soon revealed themselves to be extensive debris fields that shrouded Utgard itself in an air of ruin.

"They really did a number on the place." Gad said.

"Numbers more like." Foss replied.

"Drag chutes in 40." Teague declared.

Don made a mental checklist of everything he would need to do before he hit the ground. Muscle memory would come into play for the most part. Still, he wanted to stay sharp from as early on as possible.

With the pull of gravity increasing the speed of their descent, his pod had spun just enough for him to regain sight of most of the battalion. Delta Company was off to the west, their cluster being the closest to Bravo. Alpha was further off to the southwest while Echo was even further to the southeast. All four companies left a series of long contrails behind them that climbed back up into the atmosphere. Most of their pods were still aflame, but more and more of the fires were beginning to fizzle out.

An alarm chimed through the sound system as a red light glimmered on a part of his interface.

"What's tha-"

Don hadn't gotten the question out before something shot past his viewport, briefly flickering the sunlight. It was large, he'd caught that at least, but he was paying full attention when a second object shot past, hitting him with the instant impression of a purple teardrop.

"Enemy aircraft!" Teague said. "Platoon, stay on course! Repeat, stay on course!"

In the distance, Don saw another pair of the teardrop shaped aircraft zooming into his periphery. Tearing the skies behind them with sapphire exhaust trails, they were swerving towards Delta Company's neighboring cluster.

"Where's our air cover!?" Eversman growled. "They've got us exposed up here!"

"Weren't they supposed to be coming in right behind us!?" The Sarge asked.

"I don't see'em!"

Just then, both craft transformed their tight turns into barrel rolls that angled them down into impossibly steep descents as they dove after Delta. Four flashing columns of blue light streaked into several of the pods at the very edge of the formation. One of them ignited almost immediately into a fireball of disintegrating metal that candled up and away in the throes of its sudden inertia. Another was struck by a long burst that blew out its viewport, sending the pod twirling on its axis in a spiral of twinkling shards. Something the right size to be a hatch flew out from the smoke, followed by something just the right size to be a person.

Other nearby pods dispersed, their thrusters flaring them away along evasive maneuvers. The aircraft continued to dive; banking left towards another group further down. Their downward passage forced others to do the same in haphazard belches of rocket propellant that pushed them out of the way. The craft were practically slicing into the company formation when they began their second assault, laying into a trio of descending pods and promptly turning one of them into a blast of twirling debris.

"They're killing us up here!" Foss yelled.

"Heads up!" Eversman warned. "Two more contacts to the east! Half a klick out!"

Don whipped his head to the left. Somewhere in the eastern skies, framed against the bright face of Epsilon Indi were two dots that were growing larger at an alarming rate. The light made their silhouettes shine with a purple glare that told anyone who saw them everything they needed to know.

They were coming for Bravo.

"1-Actual, we clear to maneuver, over!?" The Sarge called.

"Negative!" The captain replied, his voice nearly strained. "Hold course! Backup is ten seconds out!"

Don doubted that they had that long. The new arrivals, what he assumed were enemy fighters, were closing in at breakneck speed. He could see their sleek shapes becoming more defined the closer they came. They were descending after the company at a few degrees short of a full dive, covering at least a hundred meters per second.

After five seconds he gripped his control sticks, ready to take matters into his own hands when something even faster soared into view. Hissing out a column of exhaust, a ball of violent luminosity streaked down into one of the fighters, engulfing it in a blast of smoke and heat. The fighter broke through the haze almost immediately, covered in a strange encasement of light that crackled like lightning. Though clearly stricken, it was still sufficiently intact to bank off from its attack run along with its wingman, one breaking left, the other right.

Three Longsword fighters arrowed down through the cloud cover directly overhead. Two of them split off from their flight leader to chase after the diverging fighters. The third pulled up out of its dive and roared over the Bravo Company cluster, vibrating Don's pod in a wash of turbulence.

Don tracked its course as it barreled towards the Delta Company cluster. As another pod went up in flames, the two hostile fighters peeled away from their attack, one of them rising back skyward as the other whirled towards the newest challenger.

The two parties opened fire, one of them launching an ASGM missile, the other a green orb that rushed towards its target in an almost zigzagging motion, making it seem as if the munition itself was alive.

Don didn't see what happened next. His descent cut off his visual, as did a brilliant blue flash that exploded in front of his pod, thundering off his viewport and rattling his skull. Miraculously the glass held, though a series of small cracks spiderwebbed across the surface.

"Taking AA fire!" Teague said. "Platoon, spread out! Get some distance!"

Don yanked on his controls, using his propulsion systems to steer off to the right. Around him, a dozen other pods did the same, splitting off from one another as fast as they could.

No sooner than they were further away from each other did three more of the blue explosions detonate the air between them, battering them with percussive shockwaves that lengthened the cracks on his viewport.

Don risked sparing a hand to grab the sole emergency handle. He pulled himself forward just enough to see everything below.

The ground was far closer and so was Utgard.

The scale of the city's destruction was unnervingly self-evident. It was like looking at a nuclear blast site, except there was no crater to be found. What had been left behind however were the skeletons of tall buildings and swaths of lattice-like outlines that showed where entire neighborhoods had been erased down to their very foundations.

Across the length and breadth of the desolation were dozens of sparkling blue lights that flitted in and out of sight. Though their sources were difficult to spot, what they were was abrasively clear. Streams of large bolts that he understood to be plasma columned up from Utgard like searchlights scanning the night sky, only it was day, meaning the anti-air emplacements knew exactly where to aim.

The flocks of ionized energy fountained into the air in long arcs that swept across the insertion vectors of the four companies. Each burst ended in dazzling detonations of electrified smoke that crept closer and closer to the incoming pods.

Some were finding their mark, catching one or two SOEIVs at a time. The luckiest among them plunged through the resulting smog intact as the smoldering pieces of their unluckier comrades spun past.

Further down Bravo's formation, a pod failed to escape an arc of plasma that detonated around it, spitting up pieces of jagged detritus at those coming behind. Don felt something heavy hit the underside of his pod as several loud pings reverberated through the exterior.

"I've got a piece of metal lodged in my viewport!" Shouted a voice Don recognized from Squad Ferret. "I'm losing air pressure here!"

"Switch on your emergency oxygen!" Eversman said. "You just need to make it down-"

A loud explosion blasted through the platoon freq, seconded by a harsh scream.

Don noticed a shadow above and immediately yanked back on his controls, barely dodging another SOEIV that came rocketing past. Its hatch was busted open and flapping violently in the wind, showing signs of an explosive decompression. Pieces of equipment were bleeding out from the gap. Just as quickly, the pod sped off on an uncontrolled fall.

"Cavaco!" Eversman shouted. "Cavaco, come in!"

Captain Teague's voice cut in over his. "Insertion point reached! Drag chutes out! Drag chutes out!"

Throughout the Bravo Company cluster, multiple pods were already beginning to be seemingly yanked out of the formation as their drag chutes shot out from their tops like flowering petals, pulling on the air itself to reduce their speed.

Don shoved his fingers around the release latch beside his weapon rack and pulled hard. His head jerked back as his chute deployed, pulling him out of one part of the formation and into the midst of those who were already trying to slow down. More and more pods released their own, pulling them up and away from the rippling blasts of anti-aircraft fire attempting to range them. Even then, another pod deployed its chute at the exact moment that a plasma burst caught it dead center. Though it still pulled away, its chute snapped free, kicking it into an end over end tumble. Several SOEIVs tried to steer clear as the rogue chute jetted towards them, but one was too slow. The chute speared straight through it, emerging out the other side in a spray of metal fragments and crimson gore. An inner spark quickly flashed into a conflagration that blew the vehicle apart.

The offending pod continued to spiral out of control, its momentum causing it to cannon up towards other survivors that frantically tried to dodge. Another wasn't so fortunate, the dying vehicle scraping theirs as it barreled past, setting off a small fire on the hull.

"Fox-8, you good!?" The Sarge called. "Looks like that one grazed you!"

"I'm not dying today, sir!" Ray replied.

"Can you still put her down!?"

"Can and am!"

Don released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. Despite his training, the Insurrection had rarely ever hurled anti-aircraft fire at them and almost never in these amounts. This was nothing less than a shock to the system. He continued to keep one eye on the wriggling flames dancing atop Ray's pod and the other on the rapidly approaching city.

"Ten seconds!" Teague said.

Don counted them off in his head. All the while, the full scope of Utgard zoomed through his senses in a split-second collection of details, streets and buildings flashing by at high speed. He spotted a serpentine line dividing a larger swath of ruins from a seeming graveyard of black shapes that had once been a forest. On the right side of the line was the I-shaped structure that he was able to identify straight away as Harvest's Parliament Building, their target.

He didn't have time to take in much else.

At the five-second mark, he felt his pod's braking rockets engage, the instant deceleration whipping him back in his seat and pinning him in place.

The shapes of the tallest buildings zipped past him.

At the last second, he shut his eyes.

The final impact hit him like a car crash, jarring his bones from head to toe despite the pod's reinforced shock absorption. He was already used to it, however, and shook it off with little issue. He grabbed his MA5B from its rack as the explosive bolts around the pod released a three-note chime.

Before they had even turned green, a flash of light put stars in his vision. He felt something hot near his head as steam whispered past his visor. There was another hiss of unlocking mechanisms that told him he needed to move. He'd barely noticed the sizable hole simmering in a corner of his viewport before the entire hatch blew off, filling the pod with a wave of natural light...and green light.

Resistentia - Resistance