“How did we get the one group with no Colonial servicemembers in it?” Cannon compalined.

Freya nodded absently as she zoomed out once more on her map to show the entire mission area. The people they had found were one of eight groups scattered across the valley, hiding in underwater caves that had been used to store terraforming equipment. The equipment had been used to create and release gasses in the lower atmosphere. Prior to taking over the caves they had been instructed to remove the machines, and toss the parts into the pond so that they had a hiding spot. The problem was that these people were corporate idiots.

“Let’s go over this one more time.” Cannon told them, as Freya raised her tablet and showed the map to them again. “Where can we find the rest of your people?”

“Just point out what ponds they are hiding in.” Freya told them gently, hoping beyond hope they would get it right this time.

“I don’t know.” The leader of the white collar office workers replied, looking at the map. “I know one is by where that callvow broke down two months ago.”

“Oh, and one is that pond Dave drove his T-com into, way back in the day.” A very unhelpful minion of the leader said with a big smile. “Took them ages to get it out, and they lost something like seven hours of productivity. Poor guy, I don’t think he made it out.”

“Yes, that’s very helpful….” Cannon replied, “But can you point out where he did that on the map?”

“Sorry, I’m in human resources.” The corporate leader shrugged. “I deal with productivity accounting, and equipment losses. I did have to provide feedback to he-who-should-not-be-named-because-of-privacy-laws, for the loss of the seven hours.” The corporate head honcho said, looking at his minion before he turned back to Cannon. “He’s lucky, though, that we were able to recover the T-com. That thing is worth twenty-two thousand credits. A big loss like that would have set our goals back a year. Maybe more.”

“How about you?” Cannon asked the minion.

“Oh no, I have no idea where it was.” He replied with a helpless smile.

“Was it by the mountains? Maybe south of them? East?” Cannon said in a pleading voice.

“It was east, I think.” One of the other officer workers said out of the blue.

“How east?” Cannon said, walking over to the short, chubby guy. Freya quickly followed her, and showed the guy the map.

“I’m not sure, but the guys who I talked to said it was close to the horseshoe dry patch. Also, I'm pretty sure the pond has to be pretty deep, because the T-com is something like twelve feet tall. They said it sank all the way down. The air intake in that thing is above the cab, so the water had to be above the cab otherwise they could have just driven it out.” The new guy told them.

“Horseshoe dry patch?” Freya asked looking at all of the green patches on her map.

“That’s what we call the algae patches that don’t have a pond under them.” The Minion said helpfully.

“This one?” Freya asked pointing to a green patch that sort of looked like a horseshoe. There were a few, but the one she was pointing to had a larger patch about a hundred feet wide next to it.

“I think so, but I’m not sure.” The new guy replied, looking very uncertain to Freya.

“Lurch, get one of your drones to capture this then send it to command.” Cannon said, pointing to Freya’s tablet.

“Already on it.” Lurch said from the front of the cave. He and Monkeyman were guarding the entrance.

Freya waited until Lurch said it was done before zooming out again, as Cannon tried to interrogate the corporate workers to see if they had any more insights on where their fellows were hiding. After five minutes of questioning them, hoping to draw out anything that they might not realize could help them, Lurch spoke.

“I got an encrypted coms from Fred. He wants us to make sure these people are safe and secure. We are to guard them here until we get further orders. He also says he wants Magic to despawn to move the ship.” Lurch said, turning away from the cave opening to look back at them.

“He say anything about the constructs?” Cannon asked.

“He didn’t say.” Lurch replied.

“Ok. Monkey, see about making sure this doesn’t collapse on us if the enemy decides to bomb us. Lurch, with me. Magic, off you go. See you when you return.” Cannon said, moving towards the front of the cave.

Freya looked around for a second, but didn’t see anything that she could help with. Mentally shrugging, she spoke softly over her armor’s speakers. “Take what you want from my backpack. See you when I get back.” She told them then, as she set her respawn to the cockpit of her ship. She set her suicide mod off, the world went black and…

...Found herself standing behind her chair on her ship. She quickly spun the chair around and sat in it. Even as she was in the process of sitting down, her Personal AI was telling her that her ship was fine, and that there was no damage to it so far. She looked at her sensors in case they were under attack, but they reported no enemies anywhere near her ship. They did show that the squad that had been left behind was taking down the perimeter defenses. She quickly found Drake among the fireteam picking up the mines that she and her team had placed when she first landed.

“Drake, I’m on the ship.” Freya told him, as she started warming up her engines.

“Good.” Drake replied. Freya noted that he didn’t stop picking up the mines while he spoke. “Give us about a minute to get the last of these guys, then you can fly us to that pond your civilians said was a possible hide.”

“Roger.” Freya said, as she waited for the engines to warm up.

“Hey, how good are your scanners?” Drake asked. “Can they pick up the civilians if you fly over the ponds?”

“Sorry boss, this is a dropship not an assault ship.” Freya returned.

“That’s fine. It was worth a try.” He told her, as he kept on picking up the mines.

It took them about another minute or so before they were done with picking up all the mines. Meanwhile Freya’s engines were warmed up and ready to go way before they were done. She spent the entire time watching her sensors in case of an attack from the constructs. Nothing happened and Drake and the team he had guarding her ship finally boarded. She closed the ramp and lifted off.

As she passed a few green dry patches, as the corporate guys called them, she did try to scan them. Her sensors were passive sensors designed to see where enemy anti-ship weapons were being fired from and track them back. She didn’t have any sensors that could see living things underground. Those required active sensors. Not a good idea for a ship designed to stay off enemies’ radar. She did note that she could tell which dry patches were in fact ponds and which ones weren’t. She created a map and added the ones that were in range of her sensors. She made sure the command staff had access to her map, hoping it would help in case the corporate guys were wrong, and they had to do a wide-range search for civilians.

It took her ten minutes to find the horseshoe dry patch. It wasn’t dry though. According to her sensors it was a very shallow pond that was about a foot or so deep at its deepest part. The green patch that she thought might be a pond was one, and it was pretty deep. The problem was that the deepest part near the edge of the east side was only ten feet. It wasn’t deep enough to flood the T-com if the corporate guy was right about how tall it was. She sent her findings to Drake as she came in for landing next to the deep end.

“You want me to keep my engines hot?” She asked Drake. She did not have enough confidence that this was the right place.

“Yeah, but deploy if you can.” He replied. “See if you can extend your active camo over the pond.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” She told him, as she touched down. She knew he wanted his people to be able to enter and exit the pond while still under the active cover of her camo. It would hide the fact that all his people would have stained armor.

She landed four feet from the deep end of the pond. She kept her ship running as she lowered the ramp in the back. She watched as the fire team left her ship, but she noted that Drake himself stayed on board. She knew that the fireteam had a separate fireteam leader, but expected that Drake would stay in command of it. Instead he stayed behind with her.

They didn’t speak while they waited, and Freya made sure to keep an eye on her scanners in case of an attack. Her console told her that there were two drones flying in the air keeping a much better eye on things than she could. Still, she rationalized that it wouldn't hurt to have at least two sets of eyes on the area. Nothing came of it as the fireteam reported that they had found a cave and were headed inside. Less than a minute later they reported contact with a mixed crew of colonial servicemembers and corporates.

“Keep your ship hot, Magic. Let’s hope they have some idea where the others are.” Drake said, speaking for the first time since the fireteam had left her ship.

“Roger that.” Freya replied, leaning back in her seat.

A few minutes later, the fireteam came through with a set of coordinates where the others were hiding. She turned her eyes towards the camera in the back when the information came through. She saw that Drake was facing the camera, but wasn’t looking at it. He appeared to be speaking to someone. She guessed he was reporting what he found to Fred. She really wished she could read lips as she watched him. Not that he seemed to be agitated or anything like that. She was just bored and nosy.

“Looks like I’m staying here.” Drake said suddenly, spooking Freya a bit. “Fred wants you to head to these coordinates and pick up Dess’s people, and drop them off at the coordinates where the civilians are hiding. From there you get to play taxi, and get the rest of the platoon to where they need to be. One fireteam per pond. That’ll leave four teams free to be reactionary backup.”

“Not sure I can fit sixteen people in her, Drake.” Freya replied, a little concerned, as she watched Drake walk off her ship. Each team had four people in it. Each squad had three fireteams. Which she could carry if they were very close to each other. She didn’t think that she could carry more than twelve people at once. Then she changed her mind as she thought of putting some of them in the pods. Not killing them, just having them hang out there. The problem she saw was that if she had to maneuver at speed, then they would be in for a rough time. There was a reason why she wasn’t supposed to clone people while she was moving. Granted, she did all the time, but it was really frowned upon.

“Nevermind. I can put some of them in the pods during the ride.” Freya told him, before he could answer.

“Roger. Get it done, Marine.” Drake said as he walked towards the pond. Freya closed her ship up and waited until he disappeared under the green algae that was floating on the surface. She noted that, while he wasn’t the most stealthy getting in, there was no sign of movement with the algae that was floating above the ammonia mixture. She reasoned that there should have been, but nothing moved even as he waded in. There were no ripples like a normal person would cause when they entered a pond like this. She wondered if it was the algae deadening the ripples or if the mixture was a lot denser than water. She made a mental note to look it up in the future, when she wasn’t so busy.

For the next six hours she spent her time flying to various fireteams and picking them up before dropping them off at one of the ponds that had civilians hiding in it. It was the most boring job she had had in awhile. The job was made complicated because whoever picked out the ponds knew what they were doing. They were spread out all over the valley.

The good news was that they found the civilians before the enemy could. Two hours in, a report from Unicorn came in of enemies spotted in the open. They were at the base of the mountain, and not very close to any of the ponds where the civilians were hiding. The bad news was that they were moving very fast. Fred, who she picked up close to an hour before, had the enemy tracked with drones. They avoided the algae patches like the Marines had done, before she had thrown a rock into one of them and found the civilians. She watched the feed through her ship.

Six hours in, her ship full of people, she was still watching the feed. The constructs had bypassed several ponds where Marines and civilians were hiding. Fred, who was on her ship, had ordered her to keep her ship hidden about a thousand feet above the surface. That meant she could only fly slowly in circles roughly in the middle of the valley while the enemy searched it. It was nerve racking, but the enemy didn’t appear to be able to track her. She wondered if he would keep them in the air the entire three and half days they had left on the mission. While she knew her ship could fly for that long, she suspected the people in the back wouldn’t be entirely okay with it. For herself, she knew she could put the dropship in autopilot and get some sleep when she needed it. She was not stupid enough to try and stay awake for that long.

She was right. Ten hours after the enemy had been spotted, Fred had her land her ship behind enemy lines and deploy. Not that there was anyone who needed to be respawn, but it did let the marines in the back of her ship out to stretch their legs. She remained where she was, in her cockpit, waiting on orders.

The next two days passed extremely slowly for Freya. She caught some naps here and there, but had to be awake as the enemy horde had backtracked several times. She had lost count of all the times she had to move to a different spot or just fly in circles to avoid the attention of the constructs. She kept on thinking that one of their spy constructs would stumble onto them, but they never did.

In fact, they remained hidden for those two days until one of the warriors accidentally stepped too close to the side of a pond where the marines were hiding, and fell in. At first Freya thought they were good as the warrior climbed back out, but she watched on her feed as, after a minute or so, a spy construct covered in the green algae flew out. The closest horde immediately turned towards the pond.

“Contact.” Fred called out over the command channel. “Magic, get us there as fast as you can. Dess, get the civilians at the exposed pond ready to evacuate.”

“How fast do you want me to go?” Freya asked him as she rose up into the air. “I can’t go above forty percent power unless you’re okay with the possibility of them being able to spot me.”

“How long will it take you to get there without exposing us?” He asked in turn.

Freya absently did the math in her head as she flew low to the ground towards the pond. “Eighty-two seconds from... Now.” Freya told him as she quickly checked the clock on her HUD.

She heard him curse. “They’ll just have to stay alive until we get there. Stay hidden.” He told her.

“Roger that.” She replied, as she focused on getting there as fast as possible. She tried to shave as much time as possible by turning as little as possible while staying on the fastest flight track towards the pond.

“Buck, I want your team to hot-drop right behind them. Jasper, I want you to drop your team on the other side of the pond. Magic will count you off, so no lagging behind when she tells you to drop. You ok with that, Magic?” Fred asked, looking right into her camera.

“Yes, sir.” Freya replied. “Fifty-two seconds until first drop. Second drop four seconds later. I’ll slow down, so you don’t break your necks, but don’t delay or you will overshoot. I’ll give you a two second window for the drops.”

“Get into positions. My team up front!” The one who Fred called Buck said, waving towards the ramp.

Seeing them get ready, Freya started dropping the ramp. She slowed her ship down a bit because she knew that, with the ramp down, it might expose the ship even though she had the active camouflage on. It wasn’t as good as the one when she deployed, as it didn’t go past the skin of her ship. Her training had emphasized that you never lowered the ramp to a dropship until you were right on target because of that. But with two drops so close to each other, Freya didn’t want any mistakes to happen.

“Ten seconds.” She called out, as she turned the light in the pod bay red.

She watched as the four-person team grabbed each other and walked towards the edge of the ramp. She gave them a countdown starting at five seconds. As soon as she hit one they jumped as one unit. It was the best hot-drop she had ever seen, but she didn’t dwell on it as she had already started the second countdown. The second team got in place, and jumped together exactly at the right time. That left two teams and Fred, the platoon leader, on board. The six that had been staying in the pods came out as soon as the second team had jumped.

Freya closed the ramp, and turned west towards the middle of the mission area, slowly ascending in altitude. She didn’t boost her speed, but kept an eye on her sensors in case the enemy had spotted her when the marines hot-dropped from her ship. If they knew where she was, and she was sure they knew she was in the area if not exactly where, they didn’t do anything that she could see. She kept rising over the area, watching for retaliation. Her screens remained clear as she slowly moved away from the firefight that erupted below.

At twenty miles, she slowly turned her ship so she would circle the battle waiting on the order to retrieve the civilians. She wondered where Fred was going to put them. She had no idea how many civilians there were, but in the one cave her team had found there were thirty of them. There was no way that thirty people would fit in the back of her ship. She hoped Fred had a plan for them because she had no idea what to do with all of them.

Once she was in a stable orbit around the battle, she turned her attention towards the firefight. The battle was going very well for the marines. The hot drop completely surprised the constructs. The teams on the ground pincered the enemy between them perfectly, killing all the constructs outside the water. Once the last construct was dead, she watched as they dove into the pond and disappeared from her sensors. She adjusted her flight so that she would slowly spiral towards the pond, getting closer with each orbit.

While she had no clue how the battle was going under the water, she did notice that the rest of the horde was turning towards the pond. The truly frightening part about that was this time they weren’t avoiding the algae anymore. Looking at their projected path, she noticed that the horde would stumble on to at least two of their hiding spots if they didn’t change paths.

“Fred.” Freya said, sending him the info.

“I see it.” He said, soon after he got her message. “Change direction. Head towards the nearest one. We will drop one team on each in their path.”

“Moving now.” Freya said, as she turned her ship towards the closest pond.

They left the battle site and moved on towards the first pond that was in the path of the closing horde. The drops were much less exciting, as they had plenty of time until they came in contact with the enemy. Once she had both teams on their respective targets she turned her ship in a long circle that came close to the mountains. She didn’t have any reason to, just that she wanted to give Fred some time to think and plan to extract the civilians who were or would be exposed. So far, if he had a plan, he hadn't told her.

“Command, this is Jasper. All constructs are dead. We have two civilians dead, and one marine. We have nine wounded, two of them being ours.” Jasper, the team leader of one of the teams on the ground at the first pond, reported.

“Copy that.” Fred replied. “Get the civilians together. We need them to move as soon as possible. Ask them if there is another cave they can hide in.”

“Copy that.” Jasper replied over the command channel.

Freya started to turn towards the pond, as she assumed that Fred would want to pick up the wounded, when she spotted yet another horde of constructs. The horde was at the foot of the mountain and they were just as large as the one that was already in the valley. She mentally cursed as she realized that the mission was doomed. She checked the time and noted that they still had to hide the civilians for another day and half. Looking at the second horde’s speed, she didn’t think they would last that long.

“If we’re smart about it, maybe one group will live. Let's hope that will be enough to win this mission.” Freya thought to herself as she sent what she found to the command staff.

“All platoon members, I repeat, all platoon members, be warned that we have another sizable horde of constructs inbound. If you are in the way of one of the hordes, you are to move the civilians to another pond. I repeat, if you are in the way of any horde you are to move to another pond ASAP. Team leaders, send me your new coordinates as soon as you figure them out.” Fred said over the command channel.

Freya, who was distracted by what Fred had said, was nearly too slow when her screens lit up with warning signs. She reacted without thought as balls of blueish-green fire soared towards her. She yanked on the yoke, turning her ship sideways and dipping it downwards to the right. The balls of fire passed extremely close. So close that her damage control screen told her that she had scorched the underside of her ship. There was no damage, but the passive camo had a black streak on it now.

“Sit rep.” Fred yelled at her over the ship's radio.

As if they heard him, another volley of fireballs soared towards her. She yanked on the stick once, dodging the fireballs. She cursed as she realized that she was heading closer towards the mountains. As soon as the fireballs passed her she turned towards the valley, boosting her power to eighty percent.

“Sit rep, dammit!” Fred yelled over the radio.

Once again a volley of fireballs raced towards her. She was forced to turn back towards the mountains. “They are tracking our radio signal!” She yelled back.

As if to confirm her suspicions, a fourth volley of fireballs came racing towards her. This volley was much more accurate and it was all Freya could do not to get shot down. This round of fireballs didn’t end with just one volley. They sent round after round into the air. Some got really close while others exploded harmlessly away from her. She weaved her way as the constructs below her fired round after round, not letting up. She turned her ship even closer towards the mountain hoping to leave the area where they were shooting. To her relief the fireballs didn’t track her, and her flight smoothed out. She decided to stay as close to the mountains as possible until the constructs stopped firing blindly into the air. She slowed her airspeed down, but stayed within two hundred feet of the mountain.

The constructs were persistent though, and they kept shooting the fireballs in the area just in front of the mountain. Their persistence cut her off from the valley and forced her to change her flightpath to circle the three mountains. She could have flown up above where they were firing, but she had stopped the horde in its tracks. If she could keep this new horde of constructs here at the foot of the mountains, it would give the rest of the platoon time to move their people. It would be a race against the clock, but she thought it might be enough for at least one group of civilians to make it to the fourth day. If that happened, then, hopefully, they would not fail the mission.

She was on the back side of the middle mountain when the constructs stopped firing off their fireballs and started moving again. She changed directions and flew up the mountain. In her rush to get closer than two hundred feet, the rocks below her got caught up in her backwash. That caused a small landslide. Her eyes flicked down to the screen as she watched the landslide. In that moment she spotted a weird looking worm thing. One second it wasn’t there, and as the landslide came upon the area it was in, it was suddenly there.

It took her about a second to recognize the weird worm thing. As soon as she did she activated her auto cannon. “Ketica command vehicle in the open!” She cried out over the command channel. She then gave the coordinates as she spun her ship back towards the vehicle. She watched as her six seconds of fire raked the enemy command vehicle. As the auto cannon reloaded, the vehicle fired back with a long stream of what looked like a greenish-yellow stream of liquid. Her damage control started flashing as her ship took some minor damage from bits of the stream dripping on her ship.

She fired her auto cannon as soon as it had reloaded itself. This time she was much closer, nearly on top of the vehicle. It tore into the worm-like thing, stitching a line of very big holes on top of the thing. To her surprise she saw the thing start bleeding a blueish fluid. Then the thing fired again. Freya spun her ship sideways and avoided the shot by only nine feet. It was close enough that the heat from the thing damaged her ship. This time the main systems had to be switched to their backups.

She pulled a tight turn, trying to keep her speed up, as her auto cannon fired once more. It punched holes into the vehicle, but it was still moving. Then the thing fired again. Two of her maneuvering engines went yellow then red. She felt the ship start to struggle as she pulled out of the turn.

“We’re getting wrecked.” She called back to Fred. “I’m punching holes in the damn thing, but it’s still moving. I don’t think I can kill it without crashing into it.”

“Do it.” Came the reply over the command channel. Fred then continued, “All teams, the dropship is going down. We hope to take the Ketica vehicle with us. Be warned, you will be without respawns. Drake, you have command.”

Freya spun the ship and pointed her ship toward the Ketica command vehicle. The thing fired at her once more, but the aim was off. She guessed they hadn’t expected her to turn right at them. She boosted her speed to the maximum. She had about a second to watch as the worm-thing grew huge on her screen and her alarms screamed at her. Her gun started firing again then she opened her eyes to see the door to a respawn pod door. She felt the rush of completing a mission flow through her, calming her down. Looking around she realized she was back on the October. She reached out and pushed the door open.