The Long War - Chapter 22 (Patreon)

A/N: Hey, everyone. So here are the ship's names of Kilimanjaro Carrier Battlegroup:  

SSV Kilimanjaro. (Olympus-class heavy carrier - Flagship) 

SSV Into The Fray, SSV Against All Odds (Audacious-class battlecruiser) 

SSV Seoul, SSV Cairo, SSV Rome, SSV Shanghai, SSV São Paulo (Sydney-class cruiser) 

SSV Vancouver, SSV Barcelona, SSV Moscow, SSV Alexandria, SSV Brussels, SSV New Orleans (Warsaw-class cruiser) 

SSV Austerlitz, SSV Gaugamela, SSV Khe Sanh, SSV Salamis, SSV Vaslui, SSV Gallipoli, SSV Arsūf, SSV Sekigahara, SSV Leningrad, SSV Culloden, SSV Bennington, SSV Sevastopol, SSV Morat, SSV Kursk, SSV Verdun, SSV Blood River, SSV El-Alamein, SSV Tours, SSV Saratoga, SSV Vitoria, SSV Celaya. (Agincourt-class Frigates) 

SSV Chosin Reservoir, SSV Yorktown, SSV Iwo Jima, SSV Sedan, SSV Alesia, SSV Lugdunum, SSV Red Cliffs (Inchon-class Frigates) 

SSV Jutland (Midway-class Frigate) 

SSV Darius, SSV Minamoto no Yoritomo, SSV Joan of Arc, SSV Ulysses S. Grant, SSV Georgy Zhukov, SSV William the Conqueror, SSV Francis Drake, SSV Manfred von Richthofen, SSV Joshua, SSV Amanirenas, SSV Bismarck, SSV Charlemagne. (Leonidas-class destroyers) 

Manswell Corporation Headquarters, Victory, Alpha Centauri 

2125CE—Systems Alliance Calendar  

“Victor, for the last time, StarCraft is not a valid business strategy!”  

“It wasn't the strategy, dear. It was inspiration!”  

“You have spent billions of credits making a transformer.”  

“I spent credits from my own pocket.”   

Alexandra Fedorov raised one eyebrow. Her husband caught the look and, with the instincts of a man who had survived this particular mistake before, corrected himself.  

“Our pocket. I meant our pocket.”  

“Better.”  

He folded his arms as the hologram above the table shifted through another simulated sequence. Wings folded inward, the central frame split, and armored plating rotated around a cockpit highlighted in engineering blue.  

“Look, the underlying concept is sound,” Victor insisted, sounding personally insulted on behalf of the physics involved. “The first-gen mass-variable architecture works perfectly in simulation. Structural loads stay within tolerance, the localized mass fields compensate for the moving parts, and the math checks out. Every single time.”  

Alex felt her irritation rising all over again.  

Her husband had said variations of ‘the math checks out’ through two years of redesigns, shredded components, ruined test prototypes, and enough engineering expenditure to launch a respectable aerospace company from scratch.  

Then she caught the look in his eyes.  

That bright, almost boyish glint always appeared the exact moment a problem stopped being sensible and became interesting.  

Her irritation dissolved into a familiar, weary exasperation. Of course it had.  

She had married a man who had helped revolutionize entire human stellar civilization and had somehow emerged from the achievement with an even worse obsession with things other people dismissed as science fiction. The knowledge in Victor's head had not cured him of that tendency. It had merely convinced him that the impossible could be made real—if he was just stubborn enough to build it.  

“The last prototype nearly killed its pilot.”  

“That was an inertial-compensation problem.”  

“That is not the reassuring distinction you think it is.”  

He expanded the holographic cockpit assembly. “Which is why Kawamori is here. He already thinks we're approaching the transformation geometry all wrong.”  

Alex stared at him. “Yoshiyuki Kawamori joined the company yesterday.”  

“And he’s already flagged three systemic flaws in Model Five.”  

His pure, unadulterated enthusiasm was precisely what worried her.  

She leaned back, studying the shifting wireframe. “You still haven't answered the fundamental question. Is this supposed to be an interceptor, a boarding platform, or a mech?”  

“Yes, to all three.”  

Alex closed her eyes for a moment. “Victor…”  

“It's multi-role, dear. That's the whole point. A conventional fighter will always beat it at interception. A dedicated strike craft will always be better at bombing runs. This is meant to fluidly shift between environments and tactical doctrines without requiring an entire carrier wing of separate platforms.”  

“And W&D?”  

Victor frowned, eyes still on the data. “What about them?”  

“Are you planning to cut into their market share?”  

“No. Roland will be fine. This isn't competing with the Falcon.”  

Alex shook her head. “That is not how Roland is going to see it. Especially when Naval High Command is already asking whether your transforming vanity project can replace half the birds on a carrier—or if the whole thing is just the most expensive boondoggle in the Alliance procurement history.”  

“Of course the Navy is interested.”  

“Only the ones in your little club.”  

“They are senior naval officers, Alex.”  

“They are senior naval officers who use your private lounge to watch one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old holos with terrible plots about space wizards swinging glowing sticks at each other!”  

“Hey, those are classics!”  

Alex exhaled slowly through her nose. “Ahh, Men…”  

Victor wisely let that one slide.  

She slid the expenditure report across the glass table, tapping a manicured nail against the bottom line.  

“I don't care how enthusiastic your fan club is, and I don't care how many transformation modes Kawamori claims he can stabilize. The next prototype completes a full combat transition under realistic G-loads without putting a pilot in the ICU. If it fails, I shut the program down. No auxiliary funding, no creative accounting, and no hiding it in another R&D division because you think I won't audit the books.”  

Victor looked back at the hologram.  

There was no pout, no wounded indignation, none of the theatrical offense he usually deployed when she interfered with his hobbies.  

There was only absolute, quiet confidence.  

“It will work, Alex! I know it will!”  

He was already moving, his hands blurring as he tore one of Kawamori's transformation modules apart, rewriting equations directly into the light. Variables shifted beneath his fingers as he recalibrated the mass-field geometry around the cockpit.  

Alex watched him for a long, silent moment. That specific brand of confidence had preceded some of Victor's greatest, civilization-altering successes. Unfortunately, it had also preceded several profoundly expensive explosions.  

A heavy resignation settled over her as she stood up. She knew, with weary familiarity, that once that particular fire was lit in her husband's eyes, arguing him out of an idea was harder than prying open the bridge bulkhead of an Athens-class cruiser.   

“That does not make me feel any better,” she muttered.  

Victor was already too deep in the mathematics to hear her.  

Behind her, the holographic prototype completed a flawless, simulated transition, folding its armored limbs back into a sleek, lethal aerodynamic silhouette.  

A crisp, military designation rotated slowly beneath the nose cone.  

VF1 - VIKING  

  Iota Persei System.   

September 14th, 2149CE – Systems Alliance Calendar   

First Lieutenant Adrian Dermott — Raven 4-09  

A Turian frigate broke apart as twelve mass-accelerator torpedoes hit its stern.  

Adrian watched the first seven cross its failing barrier and disappear into the aft hull. The next five arrived less than a second later, punching through the incandescent wound, and finishing what the first salvo had started. The frigate's stern section expanded in a flash of metal vapor and escaping atmosphere before the entire stern folded away from the ship.  

4-08’s voice crackled over the wing net. “Good shack! Target's transitioned to debris mode.”  

“Looked rough,” 4-15 cut in. “Guess they skipped the conversion checklist.”  

“Probably a cherry,” 4-06 added, his voice perfectly level. “Unlikely the crew makes the debrief.”  

Adrian grinned despite himself.  

Then, Major Cadwell's voice from Raven 4-01 cut across the net before the joke started to spread.  

“Raven Four, clear comms! We have a new tasking. Boarding operations.”  

A brief pause followed before Four-Seven came back over the channel.  

“4-01, 4-05. Confirm target package.”  

Cadwell answered immediately.  

“Center of the enemy formation. Most of their surviving cruisers are bunching up there.” A tactical marker flashed across the squadron net, enclosing the battered knot of Turian warships. “Wolfpack Tempest is going in ahead of us. Their job is to cripple drives and shut down weapons. Our job is to make sure the Turians aboard those ships get the message loud and clear.”  

“Understood, 4-01.”  

“Board, secure the hangars, and watch for local resistance. These aliens have already lost the battle. They just don't know it yet.”  

More than twenty Vikings broke formation almost as one, banking hard toward the surviving concentration of Turian cruisers.  

Adrian settled Four-Nine into formation and let training take over.  

Boarding procedure had been drilled into him until it felt less like something learned and more something engraved into his bones.: Approach geometry, suppression checks, relative velocity, hull-match, configuration transition, breach assignment, confirm the target was disable...  

Even so, he felt the familiar spike beneath his ribs—nervousness tangled tightly with anticipation.  

They had trained for this for years: fleet interception, anti-ship strikes, orbital attack, boarding, atmospheric combat, mechanized assault. Transition drills under acceleration until pilots could diagnose an actuator fault while pulling a combat maneuver and still tell the VI which mass zone to unload first.  

But none of them had done it in a real fleet battle before today.   

Falcon pilots flew fighters. Apollo crews flew bombers. Viking pilots, however, were expected to know what configuration they would need three seconds from now.  

As Raven Four accelerated in tight formation toward the crippled remains of the Turian fleet, fresh targets populated Adrian’s visor.  

Disabled hulls with intermittent drive signatures. Weapons hot-spots blinking out across the grid.  

Cadwell’s voice cut through the data feed as he pushed the assignments.  

“Boarding groups, targets transmitted. Stick to your assignments and don't get cocky!”  

4-09, 4-11,4-12, 4-15: Cruiser Seven. Dermott leads. Secure and hold an entry point until Marine relief.  

Adrian checked the icons around him.  

Lev, 4-11.  

Peter, 4-12.  

Zuri, 4-15.  

“4-09 copies, out!”  

The wing began to split.  

Pairs peeled away from Cadwell’s formation and drove toward separate Turian hulls. Adrian rolled toward Cruiser Seven, and the other three tucked into a diamond around him.  

The enemy cruiser was still moving.  

Its main batteries had gone cold, but residual thrust thermal blooms pulsed across Adrian’s tactical display. A drifting, half-disabled ship could easily crush an entire boarding element against its own hull if someone on the enemy bridge panicked and fired the maneuvering thrusters.  

His VI highlighted the aft engines—two still operating at full output, while the other two barely hung on. Adrian scanned the grid, wondering where those Leos were. He was just about to order a preemptive torpedo run to knock out the ship's drives when his sensors flooded with Čerenkov radiation.  

A dark-blue rupture tore open the void directly behind the cruiser.  

“Slipspace rupture!”  

The words had barely left his mouth when a Leonidas-class destroyer burst through the tear. Adrian’s visor flared with radiation warnings, but he ignored them—the Viking, like almost all Alliance strike craft, was lined with an internal lead foil layer specifically to absorb radiation wash that accompanied tactical slipspace transit.  

SSV Darius.  

The destroyer had translated almost on top of the Turian stern by naval standards, its long, wedge-shaped hull already perfectly aligned with the target. Its massive dorsal Hyperion turret was tracking before the last blue distortion of the slipspace wake even collapsed.  

Suddenly, Adrian’s VI painted a massive, flashing exclusion cone across his display.  

“Ravens, clear the Leo’s firing lane!”  

The four Vikings broke outward just as the Hyperion fired.  

In the X-ray spectrum, the beam was completely invisible in the vacuum of space, and the cruiser’s kinetic barriers showed absolutely no reaction.   

Its thrusters simply came apart.  

Armor and machinery flashed white along a narrow path, molten fragments expanding outward before the emitter shifted a few degrees and fired again. The second drive vanished in another violent burst of incandescent metal. A third pulse cut through the barely functional thrusters without touching the reactor compartment.  

The Turian cruiser stopped accelerating entirely and started drifting.  

The Darius was already turning away before the wreckage finished spreading.  

Adrian rolled back toward the cruiser. The tactical display updated instantly, marking the target ‘Disabled’.  

‘Now to find an entrance.’  

The VI painted a vector: Turian hangar bay. Ventral quarter. Open.  

Adrian enlarged the visual feed.  

The bay mouth was broad enough for several alien fighters abreast, its atmospheric retention field still active. Interior lights remained on. Shapes were moving beyond the threshold.  

Adrian had no idea why the hangar was still open, and frankly, he didn't care. It gave them a way in, and he was about to make full use of it.  

“Two by two,” Adrian ordered over the net. “Lev on my wing. Peter, Zuri, you’re the second element. Shock and awe before the threshold.”  

Acknowledgments came back immediately. Adrian and Lev moved ahead with Peter and Zuri staggering behind them.  

The open cargo bay expanded until it filled Adrian’s forward view. Alien vehicles and equipment were visible inside now, along with Turian personnel moving around. Their movements shifted from orderly deployment to pure panic when they finally recognized the profiles of the incoming human strike craft.  

Too late.  

“Missiles away.”  

Four pods snaped open.  

The Vikings fired a fraction of a second before crossing the energy field.  

A salvo of guided missiles streaked through the shimmering atmosphere barrier and instantly split toward separate aim points designated by their Combat VIs: defensive positions, weapon emplacements, cargo machinery being pulled into barricades.   

Adrian’s primary missile detonated exactly a meter above the deck, showering the forming Turian line with high-velocity fragments and a crushing overpressure wave. Lev’s warhead struck directly behind an automatic gun position. Deep in the bay, Zuri’s and Peter’s payloads impacted almost simultaneously.  

A wall of fire, localized shockwaves, and shattered metal rolled through the enclosed compartment.  

Adrian’s Viking punched through the threshold and cleared the smoke.  

“Assault Mode,” Adrian ordered, hitting the landing cycle. “Drop 'em now.”  

The transformation clock appeared across his visor.  

3.0  

The Variable-Mass Architecture engaged.  

The Viking’s Combat VI divided the airframe into independently managed mass zones and flooded power to the eezo core. Effective mass collapsed across the sections that needed to move while the pilot-protection system locked around Adrian’s cockpit.  

2.4  

The wings folded.  

Their structural roots rotated rearward as the aft fuselage split along armored seams. Engine assemblies unlocked from Flight Mode alignment and began their controlled swing downward.  

Adrian felt the cockpit move, but the Pilot Protection system kept his body inside its own managed inertial envelope while the rest of the machine changed around him. The seat shifted through only a fraction of the violent rotational loads passing through the airframe.  

1.8  

The forward structure contracted.  

Armored sections separated from the fuselage and rotated outward. Weapon assemblies changed orientation with them, the twin-linked mass-driver Gatlings moving from fixed aerospace alignment toward articulated Assault Mode mounts.  

The VI continuously rewrote the mass map as joints moved.  

Twenty-five tons of machine did not fight every hinge at once. Components being rotated were made effectively lighter; load shifted into locked sections, then moved again as each new structural connection engaged.  

1.1  

Leg assemblies extended. Knees snapped into alignment. Heavy mechanical feet deployed. The cockpit settled deep within the armored forward torso.  

Through his main feed, Adrian saw Lev transforming perfectly beside him, his Viking unfolding in a predatory silhouette against the fire-lit bay as Peter and Zuri crossed the threshold behind them.  

0.4  

Maneuvering thrusters fired in a singular, stabilizing burst. Adrian rotated upright.  

ASSAULT MODE — STRUCTURAL LOCK  

The mass fields inverted. Effective mass spiked back to full tonnage. 4-09 slammed into the Turian deck feet-first.  

The impact buckled the deck plating beneath his heavy metal feet, driving Adrian down hard into his restraints despite the inertial dampers. Lev touched down right beside him, heavy enough to scatter burning cargo containers like toys.  

Peter and Zuri came down behind them in a heavy, echoing cadence.  

Through the smoke, Adrian caught the expression of several surviving Turians. It was impossible to read alien faces perfectly, but with their facial mandibles splayed open as wide as they could physically stretch, Adrian wagered the word was dumbfounded. He grinned savagely despite himself.  

The Turians had been bracing to shoot at fast-moving aerospace fighters. Instead, four heavily armored, walking combat mechs now stood directly in their living room.  

Adrian’s targeting display filled.  

“Contacts front!”  

His Gatlings fired.  

The mass drivers hammered the nearest defensive position apart in controlled, concussive bursts. Adrian shifted his heavy chassis to the right as blue sparks of return fire splashed across his kinetic barrier. The Turians recovered from their shock fast, he had to give them that.  

Lev advanced on his left flank, a moving wall of armor plating.  

Behind them, Peter and Zuri widened their spacing, creating lethal, overlapping crossing fields without blocking the vital bay entrance needed by the follow-on marine force.  

Two alien squads scrambled along an elevated gantry to the right, while another group desperately tried to swing a heavier anti-armor weapon around from behind a parked strike craft. Adrian tagged the threat instantly on the shared network.  

“High right!”  

Peter snapped his weapons toward the gantry, while Lev opened up on the heavy emplacement before it could finish traversing. 4-11 pushed his Gatling into a full-speed, deafening rotation instead of controlled bursts, chewing the weapon and the bulkhead behind it into scrap metal.  

Adrian pressed forward through the billowing smoke, each mechanical step carrying the deliberate, ground-shaking weight of an armored vehicle rather than an aircraft. Zuri pushed up alongside him. Adrian’s Viking barrier flared blue under another concentrated burst of enemy fire, and he answered with a brutal Gatling volley that tore clean through a metal barricade and the two alien soldiers behind it.  

The Turian line finally gave ground.   

They had trained this exact interior geometry until it was pure muscle memory: four massive war machines operating inside a tight compartment designed for aircraft. They were constantly exchanging firing lanes, shifting mass settings, and acknowledging automated clearance warnings while their Combat VIs seamlessly prevented one pilot’s aggressive push from becoming another’s collision.  

The Turian defenders pulled back toward the internal doors.  

Adrian did not pursue.  

Their mission was to take the bay—and they already owned it.  

Suddenly, a translated text transmission flashed across his HUD. Then another.  

Beyond the settling smoke, the Turians in the far back began throwing their hands up and signaling. A second later, Adrian's translation matrix caught up with the gestures, flooding his visor with automated surrender markers. The distinct, metallic clatter of weapons hitting the deck echoed through the hangar.  

Adrian held his fire.  

“Cease fire! Repeat, cease fire and hold positions.”  

The four Viking weapon systems spun down into a tense, heavy silence. The surviving Turians remained exactly where they were, hands raised, eyes locked on the human mechs.  

A crackling, shipwide audio transmission followed moments later. It was a formal, unconditional surrender from the bridge.  

Adrian lowered his weapons slightly to signal compliance, but kept the massive Gatling barrels spun up and tracking, ready to shred anything that moved.  

“Four-Nine to control. Cruiser Seven secure. Bay held. Awaiting relief. Over.”  

Tactical flight control answered without delay.  

“Copy that, Four-Nine. Relief inbound. Prepare to reassemble. New tasking follows.”  

Three Alliance transponders blinked onto Adrian's HUD, closing fast from the void outside. Pegasus dropships—the heavy armored buses of the Alliance Marines.  

Adrian watched them line up on the bay's approach vector before switching his section back to Flight Mode.  

“Ravens, cycle configurations. Let's get out of their way.”  

The reverse transformation felt almost routine after the raw violence of their entry. The Variable-Mass Architecture engaged, and Adrian's maneuvering thrusters fired in a series of sharp, rapid bursts to lift his twenty-five-ton frame off the deck plating. Hanging suspended in midair, his Viking began to fold back into itself.  

Effective mass plummeted. Assault Mode structural locks snapped open. Leg assemblies retracted into the ventral housing, weapon mounts reseated into aerodynamic seams, and the sweeping wings extended as the cockpit smoothly rotated back into absolute flight orientation.  

Three seconds later, Four-Nine was a high-performance aerospace craft once again.  

The first Pegasus thundered past him just outside the threshold, its massive ventral thrusters braking hard toward the opening. Two more followed in a tight trail, their open troop bays packed with Alliance Marines waiting behind shimmering retention fields to take custody of the prize.  

His four Vikings punched their main engines, accelerating clear of the debris field.  

Several hundred kilometers out, Raven Four-One and his group were holding a steady cruiser speed. Other Vikings were already converging on Major Cadwell from various captured and disabled Turian hulls, individual elements seamlessly merging back into the wing until the formation began to resemble the massive, unified arrowhead that had entered the battle.   

Adrian brought his section in on a closing intercept vector.  

“4-09, section of four. All combat-capable.”  

“4-01 copies,” Cadwell's voice crackled back. “Form starboard.”  

Adrian slotted his section flawlessly into position beside the Major’s right wing. A moment later, Cadwell transmitted their next data packet across the entire wing net.  

“Raven Four, orders from the fleet! ODSTs elements require armored support. We proceed directly planetside!”  

Peter came over the section channel.  

Peter’s voice immediately drifted over their private channel. “Fleet interception, anti-ship strike, a CQB boarding action, and now a planetary drop. Pretty sure the recruiter told me I'd just be turning knobs at twenty-thousand feet.”  

“You're getting combat pay for all four, Pete,” Zuri countered. “Technically.”  

Lev keyed his mic. “I am still waiting on my voucher for the last deployment.”  

Adrian smiled inside his helmet.   

Around Raven 4-01, the surviving Vikings turned in unison toward the burning blue curve of Shanxi and accelerated.   

ODST Drop Bay, SSV Yorktown - Inchon-Class Assault Frigate, Shanxi Orbit  

September 14th, 2149 CE — Systems Alliance Calendar  

Corporal Romeo “Bender” Gomez  

“Listen up, you beautiful lunatics!”  

The platoon lieutenant’s voice crashed across the drop bay and through Bender’s helmet speakers at the same instant, warring with the heavy hydraulic whine of launch cradles cycling around them.  

Bender finished locking his M12 Piranha into the weapon rack beside his seat, giving the retention clamp a violent, reassuring yank. The fully automatic shotgun had survived worse handling than most soldiers and nearly as many questionable decisions as its owner. It was a brutal, ugly piece of hardware, which was precisely why Bender loved it.  

Across the cavernous bay, black-armored Helljumpers were disappearing into their SOEIVs one by one. Deck technicians moved between the metal coffins like ghosts in the crimson glare, slapping hull panels, double-checking seal lines, and ripping out final diagnostic leads before sprinting clear of the launch tracks.  

“Fleet Command says the sky belongs to us,” the lieutenant continued, his voice filtering through the comms with a harsh, metallic bite. “And Vanguard confirms it, so for once in your miserable lives, the phrase air superiority might not be a load of bureaucratic horseshit!”  

A wave of dry, mocking chuckles rippled through the platoon channel.  

The lieutenant stalked between the waiting pods, striking an armored fist against the reinforced plating of each one as he passed.  

“Our chute puts us west of Firebase Vanguard, right into the teeth of a Turian rear logistics and command interchange. Vehicle staging, supply traffic, local C2—it's the main artery feeding their siege line. We hit it hard, we clear it out, and we sit on the rubble until General Williams comes out to shake our hands.”  

“Think the general will roll out the red carpet for us, lieutenant?” Somebody called out.  

“He’d better drive out with an entire tanker of beer.”   

The laughter cracked open louder this time, and Bender’s barked roar was the loudest of the bunch. If you asked Bender to list the reasons he kept drawing breath, the inventory began and ended with two things: the terrifying, bone-crushing thrill of an orbital drop, and the kind of cheap, industrial-grade booze that could dissolve a standard-issue military boot. The fact that he was currently strapped into a sub-orbital bullet while entirely sober felt like a personal insult from the universe.  

The laughter died instantly when the lieutenant stopped dead in the center of the bay.  

“And in case any of you forgot what day it is... those are aliens down there.”  

That word hit the deck plates differently. The humor evaporated, replaced by a sudden, heavy silence that smelled of ozone and cold sweat.  

Bender’s eyes shifted toward the tactical display suspended above the launch deck. Shanxi turned slowly beneath them on the screen, a pale blue marble scarred by jagged red operational markings and blinking friendly coordinates.  

Aliens.  

He had been force-fed intelligence updates about the Turians since Shanxi went under siege and their battlegroup got tagged for the relief effort. Their weapons, armor, and known tactical behavior—every bit of it had been shoved into their briefing packages until his head spun.  

“No aggressor battalion wearing a different IFF tag,” the lieutenant said, his voice dropping an octave, turning cold and dangerous. “No small-time pirate holdout or terrorist bastards. And no computer-generated targets programmed to die politely. This is the first alien army Humanity has ever gone to war with, and we get to drop right on the sons of bitches from orbit!”  

Someone hammered a gauntleted fist against the interior of their pod, the sound echoing over the comms.  

“About goddamn time!”  

“Oorah!”  

The lieutenant kept moving, his boots clicking against the steel deck.  

“The regular Marines are sitting their pretty asses up here waiting for their armored buses to ferry them down. That’s fine. Somebody has to arrive after the neighborhood improves.”  

That drew a chorus of loud, vicious jeers from the squad.  

“But we don’t wait for the legs,” the lieutenant barked. “We go first! We land in their rear and sweep their feet out from under them! Shelter corridor is close, so watch your exclusion marks! Anything tagged civilian stays standing! Everything else is fair game!”  

The overhead warning lights shifted from a cautionary amber to a bleeding, aggressive red. The automated mechanical arms engaged the first line of SOEIVs, the locks disengaging with a series of heavy pneumatic clangs as they fed the pods toward the dark maws of the launch rails.  

“The ride down is still going to beat the absolute shit out of you! If you puke in your helmet, you swallow it or you drown quietly. If your coffin hits the dirt crooked, thank the engineer who designed your neck brace. If the hatch jams after impact, you blow the explosive bolts and you make yourself another door.”  

The hangar klaxon screamed—a long, deafening, rhythmic wail that vibrated right through the soles of their boots.  

The lieutenant pointed up at the tactical display. “Keep your eyes outside on the way down. Raven Four is joining our insertion. We’ve got a whole wing of Valkyries dropping parallel with our chute.”  

A low, appreciative whistle crossed the platoon channel. Then someone yelled, “Oh, fuck yes!”  

Bender felt his grin widen until his jaw ached, the adrenaline finally hitting his bloodstream like a shot of pure lightning. Beside him, the lieutenant let out a rough, short laugh.  

“When those Scrap-Heaps come screaming down beside you, don’t stand around staring at them. You find a walking tank, you stack up behind its ankles, and you let the big bastard attract the expensive ammunition.”  

He stepped backward into his own pod, grabbing the overhead restraints as the mechanical arm slid his hatch into place.  

“We hit the dirt, we take the junction, and we hold until Vanguard reaches us. No chasing heroic shit, no sightseeing, and try not to embarrass Humanity during our first war with aliens!”  

The massive steel hatch slammed shut, sealing him inside the dark, claustrophobic coffin. The launch cradle closed around the exterior with a final, violent thud.  

“Feet first, Helljumpers!” the lieutenant’s voice echoed one last time over the tight-beam radio.  

The answer rolled back across the platoon channel, a deafening, unified roar of men and women who had looked into the abyss and laughed:  

“INTO HEEELLLLLL!”  

The world became very small in his coffin.  

Metal surrounded him on every side, barely wide enough for his armored shoulders. The Piranha rested snug beside his right arm. Demolition charges were secured tightly against his harness and thigh. Recycled air hissed through the pod’s life-support system with that distinct, dry mechanical smell of charcoal filters, stale lubricant, and hot electronics.  

His HUD populated in crisp, lime-green lines across his visor.  

Pod Integrity: Green.  

Guidance: Green.  

Retros: Green.  

Suit Seal: Green.  

Inside his chest, his heart was trying to punch its way through his body armor.  

Somebody on the squad channel was breathing too fast, their respirations coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Bender glanced at the digital identifier blinking on his HUD.  

A greenhorn.  

“Hey, Rookie,” Bender drawled, his voice a calm, gravelly contrast to the static.  

The panicked breathing hitched, stopping for a fraction of a second. “Yeah?”  

“Chin down when the retros hit,” Bender advised smoothly. “And keep your teeth together unless you fancy biting your own tongue off.”  

A brief, tense pause over the comms. “Is that all?”  

“If the coffin lands upside down, just pretend you meant to do it.”  

Someone further up the line let out a sharp, mocking bark of laughter over the channel. The rookie let out a shaky chuckle too.  

‘Better’, Bender thought. ‘Keep 'em loose.’  

A sharp, synthetic tone chimed in his ears.  

DROP RELEASE — FIVE SECONDS  

Bender wrapped both gauntlets around the overhead restraints, locking his elbows.  

Four.  

He could feel the massive, grinding vibrations of the frigate’s internal launch machinery vibrating right through the pod's skin.  

Three.  

The tactical map vanished from his visor, replaced by flashing descent symbology and altimeter readouts.  

Two.  

He stopped smiling. His jaw set.  

One.  

The electromagnetic clamps released.  

For a terrifying, weightless fraction of a second, Bender had no mass at all. He floated in the dark. Then the SOEIV catapult kicked him away from the frigate's belly, and his stomach violently tried to remain in orbit.  

Stars rolled wildly through the narrow, reinforced viewport. Shanxi swung into view beneath him—an impossibly huge, blue-white marble curving against the blackness of space—until the pod’s attitude thrusters snapped him around with a bone-jarring pop, locking the heavy bottom heat shield toward the atmosphere.  

Dozens of green SOEIV markers bloomed across his HUD.  

The chute. His people.  

Other metal coffins occasionally flashed into sight through the tiny, thick glass window—brutal black shapes falling parallel to him, their tiny maneuvering jets blinking like angry fireflies against the planet.  

Bender breathed once, deep through his nose. “Come on, baby. Do your thing.”  

The first touch of atmosphere began as a low, deep-seated vibration beneath the soles of his mag-boots.  

It grew. Fast.  

The coffin started rattling. Then shaking. Then trying to convince every single bolt and weld in its construction to seek an independent career.  

Orange light began to crawl around the edges of the viewport. The hull temperature monitors spiked into the red. Within seconds, the view of Shanxi vanished behind a blinding, roaring sheet of friction plasma.  

Bender’s teeth pressed hard together as a pocket of turbulence buffeted the pod sideways. The automated guidance thrusters fired in rapid, violent corrections, each punch delivering a brutal shove through his restraint harness. The heat outside intensified until the narrow window looked directly into the throat of a blast furnace.  

His heartbeat climbed right along with the temperature.  

This was the part that the legs—the regular infantry—never understood. They thought Helljumpers had to be fearless. They thought you had to be a psychopath to climb into a tin can and throw yourself at a planet. Bender had always found that hilarious.  

Fear was half the damn point. Fear sharpened everything. It made every vibration distinct, every warning tone louder, every breath more valuable. It told you exactly how many hundreds of things could go wrong between orbit and the dirt.  

And then you dropped anyway. That was the other half.  

“Platoon, we’re crossing EI!” someone called out through the static, their voice strained against the G-force.  

“Copy. Chute stable.”  

The coffin kicked violently again, dropping into a thicker layer of cloud. Bender’s wicked grin returned. “Stable,” he muttered into his helmet. “Sure it is.”  

Suddenly, a new set of digital contacts materialized on the display directly above the descending SOEIV formation.  

Fast. Large. Unmistakably Alliance.  

The telemetry tag on Bender’s HUD flashed, updating instantly as the system parsed the heavy encrypted data stream.  

TAG: RAVEN FOUR  SQUADRON LEAD: CADWELL, M.  

Major Cadwell’s voice cut through the roaring atmospheric static, booming over the combined assault network. “Raven Four-One to Second platoon. We have your chute. Coming down with you.”  

For perhaps half a second, an entire platoon of supposedly disciplined, cold-blooded ODSTs completely forgot radio protocol.  

“VALKYRIES!”  

“Fuck yeah!”  

“Raven Four’s in the chute with us!”  

“Look alive, boys!”  

The platoon lieutenant's voice crashed through the cheers like a sledgehammer. “Clear the fucking net!”  

Silence returned. Mostly.  

Bender twisted his neck as far as the restrictive harness allowed, pressing his visor right up against the thick, vibrating viewport.  

At first, he saw absolutely nothing but a raging torrent of orange-and-white plasma fire tearing off his hull.  

Then, the fire parted. And something absolutely enormous slid into view.  

A Viking.  

It was dropping perhaps thirty meters away, close enough that Bender could make out the individual, interlocking armor panels through the blinding friction glare. Its hull had gone cherry red along the leading surfaces. Violet mass effect energy and superheated plasma peeled around the swept wings in luminous sheets, while maneuvering thrusters fired sharp blue-white bursts to hold the beast inside the rigid descent corridor.  

It should not have looked graceful.  

Twenty-five tons of armored machinery falling out of orbit had absolutely no business looking graceful.  

Yet it rode the chute beside his metal coffin as though this had always been the natural way for a war machine to enter battle.  

Another Viking descended farther beyond it. Then another.  

Bender felt a sudden, fierce heat climb through his chest that had absolutely nothing to do with reentry. It was pure, dark, delighted exhilaration—the raw, primitive thrill of witnessing a spectacle of mass-produced mechanical violence that he was about to fight alongside.  

The ground resolved beneath them as the cloud layer tore open to reveal the jagged terrain below. Roads. Buildings. Burning defensive positions. The Turian interchange crystallized on his HUD as a cluster of hard geometric shapes west of Firebase Vanguard, its heavily trafficked supply routes feeding directly east toward the human siege line.  

The altimeter warnings began stepping down in rapid succession as the ground rushed toward them. 

Nine hundred meters. 

“Brace for the squeeze, Helljumpers!” the platoon lieutenant barked over the comms. “Drag chutes deploying! And don't let your heart swallow your tongue!”  

A heavy metallic report sounded somewhere above Bender's head as the SOEIV's upper armor panels split apart and swung outward, forming a broad, petal-shaped drag chute around the pod's crown. 

The rushing atmosphere caught the deployed panels with tremendous force. 

Bender slammed against his restraints as the sudden deceleration drove him deep into the survival couch. The crash web tightened across his chest and shoulders, pressing the air from his lungs. For several seconds, the entire pod shuddered under the aerodynamic load. 

His vision narrowed at the edges before the pressure finally eased. 

The altimeter continued falling, though considerably slower now. Beyond the armored viewport, Shanxi's surface had resolved into individual buildings, roads, and patches of cultivated ground. Smoke rose from several points around their intended landing zone. 

Bender swallowed and forced himself to breathe. 

He had made drops before. Plenty of them. But there was something about watching the ground approach through that little viewport that always made the final few seconds feel longer than they were. 

A familiar silhouette appeared off his right side. 

One of Raven Flight's Vikings was descending alongside the ODST formation, its maneuvering thrusters holding the aircraft in position as the pods slowed beneath their deployed drag panels. 

Then Cadwell's voice broke across the tactical net. 

“Raven! Grease your gears! Assault Mode, now!” 

One hundred meters. 

Bender had practiced drops beside Vikings during staging drills before, and he’d even witnessed them clear the deck once during a hot raid on a pirate stronghold. But none of that compared to the sheer artistry of what he saw now. Immersed in that slow-motion, adrenaline-soaked state, he watched the Valkyrie crack open in midair and unfold into a falling war machine—a symphony of fire, steel, and utter contempt for gravity.  

It was a beautiful, terrifying transition from sleek interceptor to walking tank, occurring entirely in the dead space between life and the dirt.  

By the time the machine had completed its transformation, the ground was almost upon them. 

Twenty meters. 

The Viking's feet extended beneath it, and its downward thrusters flared to arrest the last of its descent. Bender barely had time to appreciate the sight before another warning sounded inside his pod. 

TERMINAL BRAKING — ENGAGED. 

The SOEIV's braking rockets fired. 

The renewed deceleration slammed Bender into his survival couch, forcing a grunt from his lungs as the pod's remaining velocity dropped sharply. The drag panels rattled overhead while the flight computer made its final corrections. 

Through the viewport, he saw the Viking touch down on its massive feet, knees bending to absorb the landing. Then reality snapped back at full, violent speed. The SOEIV struck Shanxi.  

The impact punched through him from boots to helmet, a white-hot hammer blow of pure kinetic energy. For one disorienting moment there was no up or down, no sky or dirt—only deafening noise, crushing pressure, and the terrifying metallic shriek of the multi-ton pod digging itself a crater into the alien-held earth.  

Then everything stopped. The HUD flashed a beautiful, vibrant green.  

HARNESS RELEASE 

Training took over and Bender released his restraints, seized the Piranha from its rack, and checked the weapon's safety as he brought it against his chest. 

He smashed his palm against the manual hatch release.  

The explosive bolts detonated with a sharp, deafening BANG.  

The heavy armored door vanished outward into the courtyard. Acrid smoke, harsh daylight, and the immediate, chaotic rattle of automatic gunfire rushed into the cramped coffin.  

Bender scrambled out of the smoking crater with the Piranha already shouldered, his boots biting into the shattered concrete of the plaza.  

The Turians were still trying to comprehend the sheer madness of what had just rained down upon them.  

Alliance SOEIVs had punched directly into their main supply roads, vehicle parks, and open assembly areas throughout the interchange. Some had embedded themselves like massive steel lawn darts between rows of parked alien transport vehicles. One pod had slammed straight through the roof of a lightweight, prefabricated Turian command structure, leaving half of the metallic roof folded around the hull like crumpled paper.  

Everywhere Bender looked, black-armored Helljumpers were already emerging from the dust, weapons raised and firing.  

A Turian soldier, his sleek, metallic carapaced armor glinting in the Shanxi sun, spun toward Bender from behind a heavy cargo loader. The alien was fast—seasoned and disciplined—and he had just enough time to raise his distinctive, angular assault rifle.  

Bender fired first.  

The Piranha hammered. The first rounds spread across the Turian’s kinetic barriers, overloading the alien's shields and popping them instantly with a sharp flash of blue energy. The next round caught the alien square, sending it sprawling backward behind the cargo loader in a sudden shower of dark blue blood.  

“Contact! Nine o'clock!”  

Two more Turians were trying to form a position behind an overturned supply carrier. Another ODST to Bender’s left pinned them with a steady stream of suppressive fire. 

Bender crossed behind a smoking pod, came around their flank, and emptied a short burst into the barricade.  

Alien had shields but, at this knife-fighting distance, the shredding velocity of his mass-accelerated shotgun shards made their shields nearly useless against his gun.  

He was already moving again, following his squad with his weapon raised. They pushed past the flipped carrier, covering each other as they advanced toward the next row of buildings.  

A heavy shadow fell over him.  

Bender looked up just as one of the Valkyries dropped through the swirling black smoke.  

The twenty-five-ton Viking hit the road hard enough to crack the pavement beneath both of its massive, mechanical feet. Dust and concrete chips rolled outward around its armored legs. Before it had completely straightened from its crouching impact posture, one articulated weapon arm snapped toward a Turian armored vehicle idling farther down the interchange. The heavy Gatling barrels began a lethal, high-speed rotation.  

The vehicle’s turret began a desperate traverse, its gun swinging around to face the new threat. It never had the chance to finish.  

The Viking opened fire.  

Two continuous streams of mass-driver rounds punched into the vehicle's forward shield before popping it with a violent electrical crackle. The hyper-velocity slugs walked across the alien hull in a brutal, uncompromising line, punching its thick armor with so many holes it looked like shredded tin before tearing something important apart inside. The resulting explosion rocked the vehicle off its wheels and flipped it onto its side, where it struck the ground with a deafening crash and lay motionless, smoke pouring from its shattered hull. 

Bender sprinted past the mechanical giant, slapping the Viking’s armored ankle as he passed.  

“Love you too, scrap heap!”  

He doubted the pilot heard him over the roar of the thrusters, but it felt right anyway.  

His squad was already pushing hard toward the main road junction where a handful of alien troops attempted to organize a final, desperate stand.  

They never got the time.  

Bender’s squad hit them from the west, while another stick of Helljumpers emerged directly from the smoke between their parked vehicles. To seal the trap, a Viking rumbled around the opposite side of the compound, its massive silhouette forcing the entire alien position to turn toward a threat much larger than the infantry already closing from behind.  

They crossed the final thirty meters at a run. He kept his Piranha shouldered, firing twice on the move as a Turian tried to bring his weapon around beside the relay mast. The shotgun bucked against his shoulder, and the Turian went down hard. 

Bender barely slowed as the squad swept past the mast and pushed through the position.  

The Turians had been caught completely flat-footed in their own rear area by human troopers who had fallen out of orbit and armored machines that had turned into infantry on the way down. Their defense came apart fast—so fast, Bender seriously doubted the aliens even understood what the hell had just happened to them.  

Within seconds, friendly green markers dominated the tactical display of the interchange.  

Helljumpers spread through the captured roads, securing the perimeter, while the Valkyries moved ahead through the smoke and shattered vehicles to hunt down stragglers. Gunfire still echoed in a dull rumble toward the distant siege line, but the Turian rear position was already gone, broken wide open before its defenders had even understood what had fallen on them.  

Bender ejected his spent thermal clip and slapped a fresh one home with a sharp, heavy click. This intersection was theirs, but the rest of the planet was still bleeding, and the rhythmic thunder shaking the horizon meant their day was only just starting.   

He caught the gaze of the rookie and delivered a heavy, ringing slap to his armored shoulder that nearly knocked the greenhorn off his feet. He depolarized his visor just long enough to flash him a savage grin, then darkened it again and turned toward the fighting.  

A/N: Bet you didn't see that coming! That’s right—I took the iconic, transforming Viking mechs straight out of Starcraft, slapped some game-changing Mass Effect tech! The idea hit me years ago while replaying the Terran campaign with a Halo Wars 2 trailer playing in the background: What happens when you mix coffee-chugging pilots with orbital-drop shock troopers? Pure, glorious destruction, that’s what. I hope you enjoy this description of the scene. 

Anyway, a shout out for Snypehuntee007 for proofreading this chapter. I grateful for your support.   

Chapter 23 will be posted on October 31st. Thank you all for your supported for this story and myself. Hope you all wonderful people the best.