[h3]September 24, 2190
Polaris System
Shuttle LV-426, Main Troop Bay

[u]Major Kashvi Sikander Sadek - Mongoose Actual[/u]
[/h3]

A momentary ripple went through the marines. It wasn’t noticeable through their armor but Kashvi saw it on the SBR in her HUD. They had hesitated because she had ordered them to keep weapons safe, but if the XO had other ideas… well worse things happened in wartime.
“You heard the XO,”  she called, flicking her carbine live. There was a hum as the coils energized, a hum that redoubled as every marine on board followed suit. 

SBR or squad bio readout allowed her to monitor heart rate, blood pressure and a half dozen other bio markers for every member of her squad. The information available to a commander who knew how to use her armors integrated systems was immense. With the blink of her eyelid she could learn anything about any of her people, see what they saw, hear what they heard, even judge their emotional states.  It conveyed huge advantages if you could manage all that data but it posed similarly large risks. Some officers became lost in the miniature and forgot that their primary role was to lead, others developed an unhealthy detachment, as though war was a simulation that could be managed if you just monitored enough variables, and that their men were just digital tokens they could move around. Kashvi tended to the second school but suppressed the habit as much as she could. As far as she was concerned war was a game, but the secret to winning wasn’t  moving electrons around.

“Remember what I said, anyone pops off without my say so, will spend the rest of the tour in the brig!”

LIDAR images began to play across her visor painting the inside of the bay in golden wireframe. The feed glitched several times, as though the LIDAR was confused or suffering from reflections. That happend alot with irregular spaces, like asteroid caverns or industrial spaces. Micro twitches of Kashvi’s eyes began assigning waypoints to her men, each one turning from gold to green as she received acknowledgement from each soldier. Figures sprang to life, estimating gas use and oxygen consumption for each soldier. She shrank it away with a blink. Vacuum commandos they were not, but this mission would need to go very wrong before air consumption variances mattered. 
Kashvi was surprised to find herself keyed up. For most of her troops this would be their first drop whereas their commander had been on scores. There was a thrill she had rarely felt when bullets weren’t flying. This was something genuinely new, something neither she, nor anyone else had ever done. This would be one for the history books so she better not fuck it up.

“Thirty seconds!” she called, rather unnecessarily as every marine had the countdown running on their HUD. Tuna time. The last few seconds of a drop, when any hidden defences could open up and scratch them all like meat in a tin. For a second Kashvi saw fire spreading through the bay as burning aluminum spalled off the inner hull in gorgeous flashes of color, cutting down half her squad in a few seconds, Kandi’s grenade launcher magazine cooked off and… the flashback passed and she was back in the game, her skin hot and her nerves on the razors edge.

“You ok Skipper?” Sergeant Charming asked. He was in the other shuttle and using the command push they shared. 

“Got some anomalous sensor readings on your SBR.” Apparently she wasn’t the only one who risked the information glut. Kali help her, Kandi had been dead three years now.. four?

“Four-A Top, maybe sensor shadow from the alien vessel,” she replied in a calm that one only learned under shellfire. “Is your team ready to deploy.”

“Aye Major, prepped and popped,” he replied, the boyish enthusiasm in his voice evident even under the side band compression of the comms circuit. He was a good non-com and she was glad he was leading the second team, even if it was unwise to have both senior marines on the same mission. 

“Ten seconds! Brace for the turn!” Kashvi snapped, focusing herself on the task at hand. She slowed her breathing, manually checked her weapon, and waggled her back to make sure her webbing and gear hadn’t caught on anything. The other marines were doing the same, looking like a pack of dogs shaking off fleas.

“Brace for the turn aye!” a chorus of responses came from her men. Each marine locked themselves in place, both boots and one gauntlet secured to form a three point hold, their free arms keeping their rifles at the vertical. Kashvi assumed the civilians were doing something similar but there was no more time to worry about that. The shuttle bucked violently as the retros kicked in, spinning it 180 degrees so it was aft on but still rushing towards the bay. A second later the thrusters lit and everyone rocked under the force of the decel. Kashvi pursed her lips in silent reproof. This should be faster, the pilot was unnecessarily prolonging the approach, leaving the vulnerable to enemy… but there were no enemy. Maybe there were no enemy. This time. 


As the timer hit zero Kashvi pulled down on the release lever and the rear door of they shuttle crashed open, revealing the bay of the alien vessel. It was a disturbing scene. The architecture of the ship seemed warped, as though the designers had despised right angles and parallel surfaces. The walls were dark and might have had a subtle green cast, though it was difficult to tell with the only source of illumination the thruster wash and running lights. Long tapering pillars extended upwards from the deck and downwards from the ceiling like stalactites. They seemed to be etched with something, crystal or some kind of synthetic that reminded Kashvi of circuit diagrams. The time for observation ended as her timer hit zero.

“Execute, Execute, Jump, Jump, Jump!” Kashvi ordered, then suited action to words, leaping  from the back of the decelerating shuttle under the power of her jump pack. The sensation of free fall was glorious and her lips curled back in a feral grin as she flew across the bay, following the ballistic line to her assigned point, midway up one of the stalactite things. She flared at the last second and burned, hitting it at the speed of a brisk jog. She slapped a magnetic gauntlet down and twisted herself onto it, with a flex of her torso muscles. People thought training in zero G wasted the muscles. Those people had never been to jump school. She horsed the barrel of her rifle around to cover her assigned target, one of the three cave-like exits which seemed to lead deeper into the ship. She didn’t look around, excess motion was the enemy in zero-g, but the assignment tabs began to toggle green informing her that the rest of the squad was in position. An eyeblink summoned the squads gun cam footage, then just as quickly dismissed it. Everyone had made their jump, even if Bashisville was a fraction slow.

“XO this is Mongoose Actual, LZ is secure,” she reported. A moment later the dropship settled to the deck, the jolt audible as shock transmitted through the deck. Kashvi let out an exhilarated breath, then blinked her HUD away, enjoying the simple pleasure of looking down range through her holographic sights.