Warp to Darkness











The pod rattled, jolting me around as it fell through the atmosphere. I was dropping into a planet, hostile of course, for about the millionth time this deployment. Well, deployment was a bit of a misnomer, as I was attached to the UNESV Valkyr for as long as I was able to serve. The Valkyr was a Special Forces Support Ship (SFSS), a Jotunn-class Support ship.
The Jotunn-class has been around for a long time, and the Valkyr had to be retrofitted about a hundred years ago just so it was fit for habitation. My girlfriend was on the Valkyr just before it was retrofitted, and she says it was pretty bad, that you could see the inner, slightly more inhabitable, hull space through the holes that asteroids and enemy fire had punched through the cargo and hangar bays. But the repair crews on the UNESVC Yggdrasil had fixed her up just fine, and now she was one of several ships assigned to our Special forces group, most of them refitted transports, with dropbays and more engines and thrusters as opposed to the gyms, pools, and many other recreation centers of normal transports.
Each of the five ships assigned to our battalion carried about 25 troops, roughly 5 drop-squads. The majority of the ship space was taken up by engines, but it also had plenty of reactors, as well as several dropbays, the specialized launch bays from which our HSARVs, or “Harveys”, were flung down into the atmosphere. HSARV stood for High Speed Atmospheric Reentry Vehicle, but when you were falling through what felt like an ocean of smoke and steel, it was like time was moving at a crawl, each minute course adjustment taking hours to take effect, the high speed kinetic projectiles whizzing past your Harvey like you were experiencing bullet time.
It was an amazing feeling that you would get, falling through the atmosphere like that. Not that it wasn’t scary. My first deployment, I nearly crapped myself, but as you gain more and more experience, you begin to learn that at the speed you’re moving, nothing can hit you, at least not on the majority of the worlds you’re going to be dropped on to. If it can, it’ll probably be destroyed by your support crew, up there in your support vessel, watching you fall towards the planet at more than twice the speed of sound, with dozens of hostiles just sitting on the ground. All of them waiting like the proverbial lion licking his chops as you fall neatly into his jaws, except we want to be eaten by the lion, so that our job is that much easier.
It has always been easier to take things apart then to put them together, and our job is about taking apart the infrastructure of a world, a job that any politician will attest to being done much easier from the inside. That’s our job, to get on an enemy planet, then to destroy it, tearing apart the infrastructure, setting bombs, sabotaging ships, and hacking their computers.
The voice of my AI cut through my thoughts, interrupting me “It is time for you to check in with Captain Svärddottir.” I sighed, pressing the transmit button on the side of my helmet.

“This is Demolitions Officer First Class Kirillov, Nothing to report.” Gunny’s voice came back, laced with just a hint of amusement at the annoyed tone that I took at having to carry out this routine check-in.

“Very well officer, carry on.”

I continued to fall, glancing at the timer to see that I still had a minute before I had to open my flaps, and a further five till impact after that. I pulled out my knife, looked up and down the blade, and nodded approvingly at the edge that I saw before putting it back into its sheath, hung at my side next to my pistol holster. The timer beeped, and I hit the button to open flaps, confirming the order the computer had already sent. I sighed reaching up to switch the channel over to “Teamspeak”. I always put off doing this for as long as I could, since the banter between the three members of the team beside myself and Gunny was always unbearably light-hearted. It wasn’t that I didn’t think we would make it, or any of that sort of stuff, it was just that I thought that the situation deserved a little more respect. We were about to be the first humans to land on this planet, and these guys were over there making racist jokes about the aliens we were coexisting with. I didn’t like it, possibly because it was a group of those aliens, the Clazroid to be exact, who brought me up after my parents were killed in a raid on the farming colony that I grew up on. Some of the other guys insulted them for the way they stood idly by and let us do all the work of bringing about the peace that they so frequently spoke of in the Council, but I knew that they did plenty of their own accord. They had educated me in their ways as they brought me up, so I had a great respect for them. As I switched over to the channel, the first thing I heard was the tail end of an explosion, then silence.

I tried calling them up by name. “Arny? Svard? Star?... Anyone?” But I was met with nothing but silence.

Then Gunny’s voice cut through the silence “ All remaining units, please stay your course. The Valkyr has been destroyed. We will have to make our way to the pre-arranged rendezvous. We will meet up there before commencing operations. Our plan remains unchanged. Privates Arnheim and Alastair have been killed in action, and Sergeant Svard’s communication’s gear has been damaged.” Her voice sounded distant and cold, and I knew why. As Captain, this operation had been her responsibility, we had been her responsibility, the Valkyr had been her responsibility, and now it had all been FUBAR. We were facing a deep cover op, probably lasting at least a few years until the blockade had been smashed and they could spare a ship to come pick us up. True, that was the way it had always been, but this was the first deployment that this squad had lost a member in, and suddenly we were at nearly half strength, with our support ship completely out of business, and stranded on the planet for who knows how long.

“One minute until Impact” announced the AI, and for a moment I hated it, A cruel, robotic voice dragging me out of my safe perch in the Valkyr, dragging me down into the depths of hell, through storms of fire and steel, to a planet where everything was out to kill me. I began my pre-landing checks, reloading my gun, making sure my backpack was securely fastened, and checking that the environmental seals on my armor were functioning.

“Thirty seconds” it announced

“Ten”, a bit later

Then “5, 4, 3, 2...1”

And I’m out, jumping out of my pod, my assault rifle up, my gear fastened, ready to take whatever Hell decides to throw at me. I sprint from my pod, knowing that any second now, a ship will come swooping out of the air, all guns blazing. But no ship materializes. I activate my transmitter.

“OFC Kirillov, reporting landing. I am unharmed, and my pod is initiating camouflage protocol. I am making my way to the rendezvous point now. Kirillov out” I began to walk at a more sedate pace, moving out from the relatively open space my pod had landed into the darker, denser, woods lining the field.
XXX

Thirty minutes of walking later, I began to approach the rendezvous clearing. Dropping to a prone position, I began to army-crawl forward, dragging the rest of my body forward with my elbows, my assault rifle in a firing position the entire time. Once I got within about 25 Meters of the clearing, a voice rang out

“Who goes there?” It was phrased less like a question than a demand, a sure sign that Gunny was under stress.

“It’s me, Nik” I said as I stood, bringing my assault rifle to a position across my chest.

“Very well” the voice said, as a figure walked out from behind a tree. Gunny cut an imposing figure in her armor, nearly seven feet tall, with a large medieval broadsword slung across her back. The one time I had the nerve to ask about it, all she had told me was that her Mother had insisted she take it. When I asked why, all she said is that it was a family tradition. I asked Svard, and he said that her last name was Old Norse for “Sword-Daughter” the name of a group of female warriors in Norse legend, comparable to the Amazons of Greek myth.
“We need to go” was all she said before she turned, walking back to the clearing. “Svard is running 20 minutes late, and we can’t risk staying here any longer. We need to go.”

“Alright” was all I said. Svard had been one of my best friends in the unit, and we owed each other our lives.

“I know that you were close to him, but we can’t wait any longer. For the good of the mission.” She said as she turned back to her pod, grabbing up a few supplies and shoving the haphazardly into the storage compartments on her armor. This wasn’t like her. Normally she place the team above everything else, jeopardizing missions for the sake of one of us. It was obvious that the destruction of the Valkyr had massively shaken up her faith in herself.
Deciding that that topic was best discussed later, I tried to turn the conversation. “Have you heard from any other team leaders?”

“Yes, Baxter has two men with him. We’re going to meet up with him ASAP” Just then, Svard burst into the clearing.
“They’re coming.” Was all he got out before we heard it; a low rumbling, growl, like a panther with it’s purr hooked up to an amp.
“Well, Let’s go.” I said, as I sprinted off into the trees on the other side of the clearing. “The Valkyr’s not going to avenge itself.” As I sprinted I was confident that we would avenge it. I will conquer this planet. Because I can take it, I can handle it, and I will defeat it. I have the steel in my hand, and the fire in my belly. I have trained for this for years. I am a member of the 5th Drop specialist platoon. I am a HArDTrooper, and I will make the enemy pay a price in blood for what they have done.