After a few minutes, Freya concluded that flying in space for real felt no different than flying in a sim. Sure, she felt more pressure to succeed, but other than that it was just as annoying to fly behind slow dropships as it was when she was in a sim. She was currently flying behind a smaller dropship than hers to the rendezvous point, where they would split up into their wings and then into their formations.

She checked her sensor console, looking at the planet, but for some reason she got nothing back. It was like the planet was missing. Looking forward, she could see the tiny version getting bigger all the time, but according to her sensors there was nothing there. She started to feel like something was very wrong. She rebooted her sensor screens and waited for them to do a diagnostic on themselves. The tests came back all greens across the board. Frowning, she checked for physical damage to the ship. Her damage control came back with all normal across the board. According to her instruments everything was working normally.

“Monarch to all ships.” Monarch’s voice startled her as it came from the radio. “The target planet is suspected of being covered in alien tech that seems to be interfering with any and all sensor readings of the planet. We will be delaying assault and dropships until the OTIDS have passed the field. If there are no respawns, then you are ordered to continue to your assigned landing zones. That is all.”

“Mayflower to all ships. Continue to rendezvous point. From there you will get into your assigned wing and form up. We will continue towards the planet at half speed until all OTIDS have passed through whatever is jamming us.” Mayflower, the flight leader, ordered everyone over the radio.

Freya waited her turn then acknowledged the order. The smaller dropship slowed down to half speed much to Freya’s annoyance. “He said to keep going to the rendezvous point then slow down.” She yelled inside her cockpit in a bout of road rage. Halfway through her road rage she stopped and looked down at her radio and sighed with relief, seeing it was still indicating that it was off. The last thing she needed was a fine for inappropriate coms traffic.

Settling down, Freya slowly moved towards the rendezvous point. In space there is no up and down unless a pilot picks a reference point. If she was alone, Freya’s reference point would be her ship. The problems popped up when multiple ships were trying to coordinate with each other. A reference point must be picked so that everyone was on the same page. In ages past, before FTL flight, the reference point was Earth, along with the continents on her, because everyone knew Earth.

Nowadays, reference points were space stations if possible, otherwise those in charge of a planet would give a standard reference point to every ship that came into its sphere of influence. Planets could and often did change reference points periodically depending on various different influences like politics and religion. You had to inform the planet you were approaching under Federation law anyway, so it was a good way for the planets to assert their authority and inform inbound ships which way was up.

Since Freya was a Federation pilot and they were approaching a hostile planet, they couldn’t just ask. So her reference point was now the main battleship in her group. Since there was really only one battleship, the Monarch, everything revolved around her. Using that data, Freya pulled her ship into formation and waited. To her disgust, the slower ship she had followed to the formation ended up in the lead position.

“This is not going to end well.” Freya muttered to herself, feeling fatalistic for some reason.

“B127, stay off coms unless you have something constructive to say.” A voice said suddenly over the radio, making her jump.

She looked down and noticed that this time her radio was on voice activation and not push-to-talk. Horrified, she quickly switched it back to the appropriate setting. She thought about apologizing, but knew that it would only make things worse. She was glad that it was B121, another respawn dropship according to her sensors, and not Mayflower himself who chastised her.

“And that will hit my mission points right in the gut.” She muttered to herself as she watched the slower dropships find their place in the formation. She was not really sure if inappropriate comments over the radio were grounds for point reductions, but she hoped that the Monarch would be lenient.

“OTIDS are away.” Mayflower reported and Freya looked at her scanner to watch.

She watched thousands of one time infantry dropships explode outwards all at once from the Monarch in an amazing display that left her speechless. There were no flashes of light or smoke trails behind the OTIDS. In fact, if she wasn’t tapped into the Monarch’s defensive grid then she would have never seen the tiny ships leave the Monarch. As it was, the Monarch color-coded the OTIDS based on their company. She looked and found her company’s OTIDS, which were dark green and right in the middle of the pack of tiny ships. She even spotted the number which let her find her platoon and tell who was who once she queried her computer.

She tracked Sergeant Torres, who was in the very back. Then she looked and found Toast, who was also towards the back with Sergeant Torres. He was followed by the rest of her squad as they raced past her. First and Second Squads led the pack, followed by Third and Fourth Squads. She picked out Mon’s larger, vehicle OTIDS among the pack and smiled. He was leading the entire platoon along with Done. She did note that her platoon was behind the others in her company.

It made her realise that it was the first time she had ever watched the OTIDS launch from the Monarch. She knew it was because normally she would be already heading towards the planet and would be too focused on what she was doing to watch the display. That made her realise that this was probably one of the few times, if not the only time, she would ever see the sight of the OTIDS launching. It made her smile as she watched them organize themselves into an irregular line and race towards the planet, moving much faster than even her ship could go.

“Move out, but be ready to abort at my order.” Mayflower ordered over the radio, as the OTIDS raced under rendezvous point. She checked her flight path and winced at the speed her flight lead ordered her wing to fly at. With a frustrated sigh she set the speed and moved out with her wingmates. It took exactly forty-two seconds for the OTIDS to enter the atmosphere and disappear from her sensors. She zoomed in on her video and saw them continue on unmolested. She kept watch until they spilt up and started heading towards their various landing zones.

“It’s just a jamming screen. All ships increase speed.” Mayflower ordered.

Immediately Freya felt something was off. “Why didn’t they come under anti-ship fire?” she asked herself.

“Unknown. Stay frosty, everyone. Expect something more from the planet.” Mayflower replied, making Freya look down and silently curse as she changed her radio settings back to push-to-talk once more. Freya took a deep breath and told herself that she was not going to say anything else until she was planet-side. Her emotions were all over the place at the thought that she had made a second mistake already, before they had even reached the mission planet’s atmosphere.

The feeling of dread was getting worse as she got closer to the planet with no anti-ship fire whatsoever. She checked and rechecked her sensors, but everything was working normally. Something felt off. She felt like she was missing something. What made it worse was that there was no defensive fire at all front the planet and they were getting closer and closer to the Karmen line, the imaginary line that marks the very edge of the planet's atmosphere.

All communications with the Monarch went down several miles from the Karmen line. She could and still got readings from her fellow wings in the formation, but everything from the Monarch was down. She could see the Monarch, but not communicate with her. That meant that they were outside most of the Monarch’s defenses.

“And still no anti-ship weapons fire.” She muttered to herself, as she checked to make sure her radio was still push-to-talk so there wouldn’t be any more accidental radio chatter.

She licked her lips and kept scanning, looking for anything that would tell her something. They were just passing the Karmen line and nothing happened. Freya’s feeling that something was very wrong intensified. She could feel sweat dripping down her back from the tension.

Then it hit her. What if that no communications with the Monarch could mean that there would be no respawns from her? That could also mean that if the enemy were somehow jamming her coms then there might not be any respawns from the dropships when they were deployed. That made her think about how the ships got information. She never really thought about it before. This was the real world. How did the respawn pods know when to respawn someone?

She used her Personal AI to log into her computer and asked the question. The answer reassured her. It was a standard wetware mod that all military and civilian personnel who had access to new bodies had installed in them. She found a way to ping the Monarch to make sure that her implant could still be read and she could still be respawned. She sent the ping and got one in return. It made her feel slightly better, but she still felt the dread that something was very wrong running though her body.

That made her think of her list of potential respawns that she got when someone died. She checked her list of people that needed to be respawned in her company, but according to it no one had died yet. She checked her mission clock and frowned. According to that, her company had already been on the ground for over a minute. Normally on sim missions there would already be at least one death. More if there was heavy anti-ship fire. Her sense of wrongness rose sharply.

A memory popped into her head. One that for some reason she hadn’t remembered until then. She was sitting on some stairs and the woman in the odd uniform was standing beside her looking down at her. She was feeling depressed like she had failed at something, but couldn’t remember what she failed at.

“Anyway, if you ever get that feeling again I want you to yell out Zulu Gamma Zulu. It will inform everyone around you that something very bad is about to happen. React as your instincts tell you, but make sure to warn your people as you do so.” Then the memory faded.

Freya blinked out of the really strong memory, finding herself already moving. She found herself disengaging the safeties on her engines and powering them up to well above their safety limits. Even as her hands moved like her body was working on its own, her eyes flickered down to the radio and saw that it was once more on voice activation. Not knowing why, but knowing it was very important, she started to talk in a normal tone of voice.

“ Zulu Gamma Zulu. I repeat, Zulu Gamma Zulu.” She said over the radio, as she passed her wing and raced towards the surface at a dangerous speed.

Immediately, the radio traffic exploded. “What is Zulu Gamma Zulu?” Someone asked.

“Get back in formation!” Someone yelled as Freya’s ship moved past the formation, taking the lead.

“All ships, increase speed to maximum.” Mayflower ordered, blocking out all other radio traffic as his coms took priority. “Get to the planet's surface. now!”

A weird sensation spread through Freya as her ship kept on increasing the distance between her and the rest of the formation. Her mission timer told her that if she kept up her speed she would be on the ground in less than twenty seconds. It gave her very poor odds of her landing without crashing.

She found herself speaking again. “Too late.”

She felt her body jerk the ship to the side and the world exploded in white light.

Then she was back in charge of her body again. She added more speed even as her damage control screamed at her that she was damaging them beyond what was safe. It gave her eleven seconds until burn-out and her main engines seized up on her. If that happened, then she would have nothing but her maneuvering engine and that wouldn’t get her into orbit again. She ignored the warning and forced her ship to go faster.

Her damage control screamed at her, but this time it informed her that her hull was taking damage. A quick glance at the console told her something was eating away at the metal like she was flying in some kind of super acid. It gave her four seconds until structural damage and one second after that until her ship broke up. She noted the warning and forced her ship to go faster.

Time seemed to slow down as Freya fought to get out of the white light. Her sensors were completely blocked. They were reporting nothing. Not the other ships that were dropping with her. Not any atmospheric data. Nothing. The sensor screen was completely blank except for the light that said it was on and working. It was something that she had never seen before.

Her attention was torn from her blank sensors to her damage control as it started screaming at her. She had just enough time to see that her engines seized up far earlier than the damage control alert had expected before her sensors alerted her they were working again. They told her she was falling toward the surface, which she already knew. They also told her she was twelve seconds from the surface.

She panicked and hit all her maneuvering engines to right the ship and slow her descent. The world around her disappeared as she focused on her flight data and tried not to crash. She frantically made course correction after course correction to pull out of the uncontrolled spin. At seven seconds until she hit the surface, she was mostly in control of the ship. She started to slow down even as her sensors told her that a crash was inevitable now. The only thing was how bad the crash was going to be.

“Come on.” She whispered as the ground rose sharply. “Come on!” She shouted as the time to the surface dropped almost too fast.

At four seconds, she extended her landing struts. At three seconds she fired the emergency propellant intended only for extreme emergencies. At two seconds, she activated her emergency beacon, hoping that it would get through the jamming and tell the Monarch where she had crashed. At one second, there was nothing left to do. She watched the ground rise up to meet her far too fast to be healthy for her ship. She held onto the controls as her ship hit the ground, throwing her forward, and then there was nothingness.