Sergeant First Class Park watched the view from his vantage point. He could see the drones dropping in from above, right in front of the Brigade’s avenue of approach. [i]‘The Salvesh are probing us. They want to know who we are, what we are capable of, what our strengths and weaknesses are and more importantly, where they can land troops to fight us.’[/i] He watched the battle begin to unfold in front of him. This was the Recon/counterrecon fight. It would dictate what would happen next.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Colonel Cox addressed Captain Otto, “Kevin, this is simply a movement to contact. Find out where they are and pin them down. Once we have located these Salvesh, General Strafford will push the armor forward to break them up.”

“Roger that, sir,” Captain Otto responded to his task force commander. “First platoon is leading in five mikes. I’ll follow Lieutenant Fischer’s platoon with Second platoon, the armor platoon and Third platoon in trail. Lieutenant Butterfield, second platoon will travel with me. His second squad, lead by Sergeant First Class Park is providing overwatch right now.”

“Sounds good, Captain, I’ll be right behind you until you make contact. I will remain in visual contact until we pass the battle on to one of the armor units.

Captain Otto mounted the Grathik construction Armored Personnel Carrier. The vehicle was constructed of a composite Aluminum hull with materials the Boston-born infantry officer had never seen before. He was assured it would stand up to anything created on earth as well as anything the Salvesh employed including armor main gun rounds or laser blasts. Once his track was loaded, he ordered his driver to elevate to one meter. The driver engaged the anti-gravity feature and the vehicle rose into the air.

The first platoon began slowly moving through the streets of the [i]city[/i]. Lieutenant Fischer scanned the buildings from the second vehicle in the convoy. His was just over fifty meters behind his lead squad and the other two squads were equally spaced out behind his with the Company Commander and Company Executive officer trailing. The Battalion commander or Task Force Commander’s tactical command post followed the company commander’s vehicles. Then the rest of the Bravo Team vehicles.

Brian Park looked back in the direction of the battalion’s line of departure. He could see the first two vehicles, more than three miles away steadily making their way towards his position. Their progress was slow. They did not want to attract to much attention while providing themselves the opportunity to scan the buildings they were passing for a possible ambush. Brian used his binoculars to search the buildings the Team was moving along. He checked the buildings between the Bravo team’s location and his own; occasionally looking back to see how the squad was doing engaging the drones.

“Vogel, Robson, Simmons, the company is on its way. They are dragging their asses. Try to get as many of those things out of our AO as you can, got it!?” Brian was referring to the squad’s Area of Operations (AO) or the area around them, they were responsible for at the moment.