Airborne soldiers are a breed apart! Why? Because they are the first thing you drop on your enemy to demoralize and destroy them. To that end the airborne soldier needs to know that the people on their left and right are not going to bug out in a firefight and our Squad was no different. Like most we had what appeared to be silly, but meaningful nicknames like: Knuckles, our boxing champ, Doc, our medic, Thug, well he just like to fight, Benji, short for Benjamin, Bonehead, who did stupid things and yours truly, Trigger, because I was fast on the draw. Not everyone had a nick name, but you seemed to remember the ones who did. Fourteen of us all gathered in our equipment room aboard Troop Transport Ship 441 the “Brady Portman”.
We began our day with a weapons check, then on to our suits, the CF16-ABA, then we checked each other's kit. Ceram-Flex was our current augmented battle armour with full life-support and ammo feeds built into the backpack. The Micro-reactor gave us 10 full days of life-support and 30 days of reduced function for unexpected events, such as waiting for a taxi ride home. We always checked and rechecked everything before a drop.
After we ate a hearty breakfast, we dropped onto the planet Tangaro VI at oh dark hundred hours. TTS 441 Brady Portman had shed her 16 troop carriers, with us aboard them, like water coming off a wet dog. We jumped from the troop carrier at 20 klicks above the surface and were in freefall for five and a half minutes engulfed by an awe-inspiring fireball, which got damned hot before our jets automatically kicked in at three klicks to set us down with a solid thump.
Right away my HUD (Heads Up Display) flashed the icons and coordinates of the rest the team, the Boss (Lt. Dennis Powers) was in green, the rest of us in yellow. Red was always reserved for the bad guys. I lifted my 35mm, AK-87 assault rifle and lit up the scope, I saw nothing in my immediate vicinity - unlucky me. Most of us want to hit the ground hot, get right into it without any emotional build up, but today it was a hit-and-run, so here we were still 10 klicks out and either undetected or ignored, for the moment.
Our suits can cover that distance in about 5 minutes, we (Airborne soldiers) could cover 10 kilometers in just over an hour or so, without our suits. The augmented Ceram-Flex armour helped our strength and stride so we could zip along at a maximum 100 kph for about six hours, after that the cooling system and bearings start to react poorly to friction and heat build up. Ceram-Flex was a versatile product, but it could not be used for bearings because the ceramic was too soft and brittle. Good old-fashioned steel bearings generated quite a bit of heat when stressed, so we had our limitations.
The Boss called for us to move out at 80 kph, off we went in a skirmish line while maintaining constant vigilance. Our armour resisted heat, water, chemical and radiation, but a 20 mm HV (hyper-velocity) round could mess up your day completely. I kept an eye out for potential hides or sniper perches. Good thing we had excellent sensors and were all at our adrenaline enhanced best, because they popped up out of nowhere and as quick as my hyped-up muscle memory allowed, I squeezed off 2 AP (Armour Piercing) rounds, down went the bad guy in front of me. Mad Margaret took an HV round and was cursing a blue streak that would have made a soldier, in any army, smile with pride. Patsy's yellow marker turned non-functional blue, crap, that left a hole that I had to cover now. Instead of half a klick on each side I had 3/4 of a klick on each side and sure enough the bad guys noticed. I felt several rounds glance off my helmet, thank you Mr. Davius Howe. My thumb selected GR (guided rounds) and I blinked in the coordinates then squeezed off six rounds, I barely saw the flash results as I kept my heading and forward pace. At three metres tall Kahhrkaarians made an easier target than we did. They do have armour but not as good as ours - tough luck for them.
Approximately 7 minutes later we arrived at their facility under a hail of small rounds coming from several guard posts and bunkers. Lovely, select he (High Explosive) and AP (Anti-Personnel) rounds, no thought, it was all muscle memory. Flash, bang, boom down came the towers and up went bunkers. The target was just behind this fixed defence of towers and bunkers. A huge brown coloured sausage roughly 4 or 5 km long. It was an egg storage for the Kahhrkaarians, supposedly a sanctuary for them, lightly defended and probably set up in a hurry. We had another 15 Airborne units deployed over this rock taking out similar facilities.
I selected HE rounds, and the whir of my auto-feed vibrated on my back and I began to lace the sausage with some special HE sauce. On my left and right I saw the others putting their rounds on target and soon the sausage was sizzling and popping - sizzling from the fabric of the facility burning and popping from the eggs inside.
More rounds bounced off my armour and I staggered a little and as I regained my balance, readjusted my sights and scope. There they were, regular Kahhrkaarian ground pounders trying to take us down with their peashooter weapons. Quick reset and I let go with grenades and AP rounds until my sector got quiet. Abby on my left was good, Tony to my right needed a few more grenades and anti-personnel rounds to quell his sector, no worries…pop, pop, pow, bang, all quiet on our immediate front.
And then, just like that, the Boss was on the horn giving our taxi the pickup code, so we grabbed our casualties fired our jets and rendez-voused with our personnel carrier at 3 km, lined up then we were snatched inside for a comfy ride home.
We were done for the day. I sat back, closed my eyes, and enjoyed the extra G's the carrier pulled as we boosted into orbit. Soon I would be soaking away the adrenaline perspiration in a nice hot shower while the Kahhrkaarians mourned the loss of a few million eggs. Did I care? Not for a single second, because every one of those eggs would have grown into three-metre-tall lizards that ate people, like you and me.
