For many months, the mercs had little to do but train and occasionally rattle their sabers, as it were, to ward off scavengers and would-be smugglers. It was a waste of their talents and their time, though the promise of Augur tech made from re-furbished and re-purposed Gedra tech had kept Womack and Marius amenable enough to maintain the arrangement.
Jada, like the other mercs, was glad to be back in the field, for idle time was torture to a Dire Sword, both literally and figuratively. She was no different from the rest of them, as the mission clock showed one minute to contact, they all sought solace in the pure insanity of active war. There was always a war that needed fighting somewhere in the universe and within that truism lay the blessing of being a mercenary and not a corporate citizen. Today’s war was with Helion, and soon enough, the campaign of disruption that the mercs had been sent to execute would be underway.
The dropship was flying dangerously low to the ground in order to baffle whatever on-board scanners the train might have active. As the dropship crested a low hill, the train was quite suddenly in view and Jada realized just how confusing the seemingly flat and desolate landscape of this alien world could be.
It appeared to be flat from an aerial view, but from the ground perspective, it was filled with peaks and valleys. Combined with the blinding glare of the shale in the dusk-like light of the dying sun, it became exceptionally difficult to judge distances and obstacles. As it was, the dropship and the train were nearly on top of each other before any line of sight was established. Jada knew that the split second that happened, the fight would be on.
Above them, dirty clouds hung low in the sky, only they weren’t so much clouds as whirlwinds of shale dust that were perpetually caught in a cycle of updrafts and downdrafts as the wind whipped across the surface of the planet.
Much like the other dead planets in this part of the universe, it had been ripped apart by whatever industry and warfare had come along and caused the end the civilization that had given birth to the Gedra machine race and their tombs. Also, like the others, this planet had been stripped of the most common raw materials, though a number of the more rare commodities that fueled the corporate civilization remained in abundance.
According to recon data, this planet had yielded what appeared to be a healthy crop of urium crystals, which, when ground into a fine powder and refined for use, was the primary component in starship fuel. While alternative fuel sources existed, such as cold fusion hydro-turbines and solar power cells, the vast majority of ships in the universe still contained urium engines.
As with all things in the corporate world, there would be little incentive to modify the technology until those who profited from the old tech could find a way to maintain their wealth on the other side of such a transition.
“Incredible, look at the size of that thing!” shouted Berg as the ship cut across a low valley so that they could remain out of sight for just a few more crucial moments while they closed distance with the head of the train.
Jada nodded in silent agreement with the merc’s assessment, as it was indeed one of the largest mechanized vehicles she had ever seen, outside of starships in drydock. As she looked upon the train she began to understand the real scale of their mission and saw precisely why Grotto had chosen to send a small band of elites instead of a larger force.
The train was a hover-rail, capable of moving at magnificent speeds over land. According to the mission brief, the bizarre gravitational properties of the planet combined with its irregular orbital path made it inefficient for the construction of a starport close to the urium mines. While urium was volatile indeed and a certain safe distance was obviously a concern, the starport had been built on the literal other side of the world. This allowed the cargo haulers to break atmosphere and set a trajectory for Helion space without expending an amount of fuel equal to what they were hauling out, while making the hard burn necessary to escape the gravitational pull of both the planet and the dying sun at the same time.
The sun was already beginning to exert pressure on the planet. Though it would still be many thousands of years before the planet was consumed by the embryonic black hole, the invisible physical forces were already making industry difficult for the humans attempting to plunder the planet’s remaining riches.
The train was forty cars long, and every fourth car was topped with a crew-serviced weapon. The dropship pulled out ahead of the train and the pilot pushed the thrusters to their maximum capacity, outpacing the train.
The hostiles instantly began to train their weapons on the interloper. The head of the train was a wickedly armored engine car that bristled with mounted plasma-lances and an auto-cannon turret, all of which opened up, though the pilot weaved side to side and avoided most of the incoming fire.
As the tail gunner inside the dropship exchanged fire with the train’s head, the dropship hit the pre-approved drop point on the track. The pilot pulled up hard on the controls and banked at a ninety-degree angle, testing the very limits of the machine’s structural integrity and the capacity of the thrusters. The hostile gun crews tracked the bird as it screamed upwards, but their bullets and plasma bursts fell just behind it as the ship disappeared into the clouds. The train plowed onwards as the ship rose out of sight, though keeping pace with the train had never been the full scope of the plan.
The mission clock hit zero, the drop siren sounded, and it was time for Jada to make her first non-simulated combat drop.
“We fight as though dead!” shouted Jada, adding her voice to the nine others in the belly of the ship as the safety harnesses de-coupled and the mercs flung themselves from the ship in pairs.
The ship was moving at such a tremendous speed and they were already high enough that a trooper without a chute would have splattered against the shale surface of the planet. The Dire Swords were masters of assault drops and their armor was expressly designed for just such a purpose. An assault drop required great precision to be effective and it was something at which the Dire Swords excelled. While other mercs, such as the Folken, used more blunt tactics like combat pods and heavy armor, the Swords preferred a sharper approach.
Jada found the sensation of being in freefall particularly exhilarating, and she could not help but grin as she saw the cloud bank looming beneath her. The micro-shards of shale dust scraped against her armor as she and the rest of the mercs descended through the clouds and her vision was temporarily blurred by it. Her helmet’s HUD tracked the train, which had continued along its path, though given the length of it, her systems estimated that she could land somewhere upon the final quarter of the cars.
The mercs broke through the other side of the clouds and immediately saw the train rushing to meet them. The gunners had been tracking the dropship and were still doing their best to aim upwards, but moving at such speeds had dramatically reduced their vertical accuracy. Some of them spotted the ten bodies falling from the sky, and of those, a handful had the reaction time in which to fire.
A jet of plasma burned nearby her, and Jada held a begrudging respect for whoever had been quick-witted enough to realize the merc’s ploy. Jada’s HUD lit up red and she knew it was time to activate her dropshield.
The mercs trained for hundreds of hours to ensure that they could stick such precarious landings, and though Jada had done so many times, this one was under fire and outside the controlled conditions of the simulator. Hard rounds whizzed past her as more gunners desperately brought their weapons to bear. The merc crossed her arms and ignited her shield.