Unit 37: Rescue at Kilter Field

Chapter 4

In a few days, the pain was completely gone. Everyone in the unit had chosen (or been assigned) a weapon. Bri had already spent over twenty hours with both the Jen and the Api. She rated excellent with the pistol and the both versions of the medium range rifles. But it was like she couldn't miss with the Jenny and Anderson had mentioned that all of the weapons would be enhanced once they had their exo's.

With breakfast finished, everyone was suiting up for another day on the ranges, but Andrews' voice came across the comm instead. "Unit 37 to shuttle Romeo 2 Delta 2. Full excursion gear." His voice sounded in each of their ears. A shiver of fear ran through the room. Every time something changed in their routine, things got hard, harder than they had been. Naturally, everyone looked over at Pauly to see if he had found anything.

Pauly looked at Cooper and then at Arles and over the rest of the unit. "I'm working on it." He chuckled.

Bri looked around at the rest of the team. "Remember the first time he put us on a shuttle?"

"Go get 'em!" Kat gave the unit her best Anderson impression while she dug gear out of her footlocker, "Seems like a million years ago."

"Got it," Pauly's eyes moved back and forth across the overlay. "That shuttle filed an excursion plan an hour ago." You could see he was reading the information as fast it displayed across his overlay. "Two other shuttles filed the same flight log. We're leaving after them."

"Looks like a field trip, kids!" Biloxi locked his pack in place and holstered his pistol. Over the past weeks, he had surprised everyone. He may have been from some backwater planet in the god only knows system, but he had been the last man standing more than once over the past weeks. He had scored well on the Broadrail class of weapons, capable of carrying the massive thing and the tripod required to fire it. Everyone had thought it was going to be Cooper (he was an inch taller than Biloxi and Arles) but they gave him a sweeper and more two drones, which Pauly loved to play with.

But Bri didn't care. While the unit gathered all of the things that kept them alive for days in the wild, she ignored the banter. All Bri wanted was her exo. It seemed like it had been a months since the connection ports had been installed. And it was torture watching and working with soldiers that already had theirs.

But you were bound to secrecy, forbidden to discuss the installation of the exo. It wasn't some military or state secret, it was tradition. So all of the questions Bri had peppered across the base for the past weeks had gone unanswered. No one would discuss it. Of course, this did nothing but fan the flame of her fixation.

She had talked about it, dreamed about it, even asked if she could touch one, but there was no doing. Everyone just grinned, a wry, meaningful grin. Some raised their eyebrows.

A captain, not Andrews but one Bri had seen around the base before, showed up in the doorway. "Unit 37?"

"You found us," Biloxi slipped a red headband on before grabbing his helmet and tucking it under his arm.

"Your exo's are on board the shuttle," he glanced to his left. "I'm here to link you to them." A young, female soldier appeared along with a small, hovering med bot.

Everyone looked around. It was finally happening and a shiver of excitement ran through the room. Bri glanced at Kat who gave her a wink and a big, toothy grin. (Everyone knew Kat was almost as excited as Bri.). Pauly glanced around the room. "Finally! I thought I saw a shipping manifest arrive on the mainframe last night." He waggled his eyebrows and laughed like an old-time comic from the black and white feeds, the really old stuff.

"Boy, you better stop!" Biloxi laughed out loud. "One of these days, these people are gonna find you snooping around," Biloxi rolled his eyes like he was already as frustrated as a cat recently arrived to a bathtub under less than perfect pretenses. "I'm telling you, they gonna have questions for you."