The room was cold, an erie silence willed the briefing room, 32 soldiers in full E.F combat gear, the delta squadren, first ones in and last ones out, the assualt troopers, the doughboys - the ones who hold point "A" at zero hour and dare the enemy to come out and die. Cold steel reflected light onto cold steel of helmets, dim green over-lay screens, assault rifles, body armour, grenades, PDA system's and other equiptment i couldn't remember - after all i was just a guest for this op.

They had identified our drop zone, a recently discovered Earth-like planet dubbed "Draken", a veritble paradice world almost the size of Earth that was.

Ever since the Earth was lost 3 months ago . . . i still couldnt wrap my head around it, almost all of our space-born forces, nearly 500 ships, thousands of navy men and women, and then the Earth itself, the cradle of our civilization - our homeworld was irradiated down to glass, dust and magma, completely hostile to all forms of life for at least 4 million years. We had all seen the pictures, many of us had seen the distruction first hand, empty hulks of ships, pieces of diust, dirt and debris strewn corpses of ships and people around a dead rock - the so-called "Wrath of the Controllers" 31 billion people dead . . . . almost 2/3 of the human race lost in one battle, and then the rebellion a month ago, we where being pushed to our limits, so Earth Force took over, solving food and housing problems by pushing outwards and colonising any and every world that could barely sustain human life, which is why we where here today, me and my crew would drop down with delta squad would discern if the Draken was suitable for human life, Tag it, and then check for remnants.

Thats another thing, the E.F bigwigs have been trying to cover up, on at least a half dozen worlds now there have been vauge rumours, reports that have been shortly covered up and people disappearing, apparently there have been discoverys on "Edge" worlds, those near the outer-most edge of "human" space, destroyed buildings, bodies, salvage of vehicles, cities, and in one case - an entire space-craft of niether human or Controller origins, and now the last report of two dead-rock worlds, exactly the same as Earth is now, the higher-ups are trying to keep things covered up, but the rumours are spreading, perhaps humanity isnt the first race to reach the stars in our small corner of the galaxy, and perhaps we're not the first ones to face this kind of genocide . . . i dont know, and right now isnt the time to think about it either.

The holographic panels at the far end of the room shot into life with an amazing green glow, the planet Draken lit up in its center with small data tags listing atmosphere, density, gravity and other trivial facts, and the ship's luitenant strolled slowly into the room, he must have been a pre battle of the line luitenant, he had the "space walk", a slightly eloping stride from being in an E.F ship's inferior gravity for too long.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Draken" He began, and then cleared his throat with a resounding cough "And this is our grail for today - you know the drill, standard drop, stop and roll for the terra-crews to collect thier data and tag this rock so we can get a move onto the next system" he said with a growl in his tone, the ship we where posted to was the E.F.S Coventry, a Knight Class cruiser - one of only 12 left after the battle of the line, she was an old ship, the 2nd oldest surviving Knight, almost 2 kilometers long and armed with 12 88mm dual turreted autocannons, 12 missle tubes with too many missles for me to possibly remember, although it carried three "shiva" class nuclear warheads, which mad me sleep a little easier at nights, and last but not least - the "Harpoon" a Magnectically Acellerated Cannon almost a kilometer long, which fired shells about the size of a travel-coach, although i can't remember the specifics - something about a tungsteon/carbon/phospherous core capable of ripping through a controller ships shield in only 8 shots, something of a novelty in the now vastly retreating Earth force fleet.

"Delta squad, you'll drop in flights of 6, wide drop formation, into this area - don't worry, we'll cover the way down" he pointed to the hologram, which then zoomed into a much colser view of our drop-point, as GPS mapping filled in the ground area, a thick, lush rainforest canopy almost twice as high as the ones we had almost 2 centurys ago on Earth.

"All scans show this planet as being a rainforest world with 4 continents and no sentient life of any kind, although scans are showing no technology, we're still sending you in the safe way, your rendevous point is here." he said as he pointed to a mountain ridge almost a kilometer and a half north. "you know the drill, drop is in 30 minutes and counting."

The next half hour passed by un-eventfully, mandatory drop-ship tests, soldiers checking thier kit, loading of equiptment, the sergent told me i needed to shape up like the rest of the men, but i wasnt one of his men, i was simply the civilian element they hired to fill the count-less spaces they had aboard these ships now, and so i was busy being hoarded like some sort of food animal, what did they call those things at school, oh yeah - cow's.

The dropships are strange looking things to say the least, thier ideally supposed to be full-flight craft capable of long range flight both in snd out of atmosphere, but these things where just steel boxes about the size of a minibus with an engine on a VTOL mount on each side and a cock-pit at the front, barely able to hold 8 people, and while they did indeed follow thier name-sake and "drop" thats about all they did - as when they reached atmosphere, they usually didnt have the power to go much further above a thousand feet, let alone reach orbit again.

What i was told was true though, these things are just as ugly inside as they are on the outisde.

8 "seats" of sorts jutted out from the walls with small slots on the right hand side to hold a marines combat rifle, fold-down saftey bars which closely resembled somehting that would be on a primitive rollercoaster, a medical pack bolted to one wall and a fire extuinguisher to the other, and the roof was a series of container slots and combat-netting which held up a series of rather heavy looking boxes and crates. I was shoved in the second seat on the rigt hand side, in between two marines, i think they could smell my fear, this was my first drop - and i wished to god himself that it would be my last.

Outside the ships crews sealed the doors as the six ships where loaded into thier flight area's, and all we heard inside was something similar to air being sucked through a straw as the bay decompessed and the main bay door opened.

"Bay is green, repeat, bay is green - Dropships one and two prepare for launch, missle bays 1 through 6 - prepare for launch" a female ensigns voice said calmly through the intercomn system as outside, the six tubes opened to space, and the first volley fired with the two ships.

Standard E.F planetary drop procedure dictated that for every dropship launched, at least 3 missles had to join it on the way down, first of all to confuse ground forces and ballistic computers by -

1 - filling the sky with multiple targets on inbound vectors to increase the chances of survival on a drop, and -

2 - To clear out the "ground floor" when the missles hit at thier maximum velocity, creating one hell of a boom and spreading napalm over at least a 250 meter radius per missle.

Even though this place wasnt inhabited, the drop still made me scared as hell, and the two marines beside me along with one other in the corner pulled out crosses, and the third had a rabits foot and kissed them, not exactly the best sign for humanity's fighting force . . . and then it reached us.

"Dropships three and four, prepare for launch, Missle bays 1 through 6 reload and prepare for launch"

Shit.

The feeling of sudden movement, followed by nothing. Thats the funny thing about those 30 seconds before you hit atmo - you'r moving about 50 meters per second, yet you feel nothing, there's no air, no resistance, your dont feel anything at all - then its like running naked, face-first into a brick wall.

I closed my eyes so shut i could have sworn they had re-emerged at the back of my head as the sheer noise, the shaking, the heat, the only sound i heard as we broke high atmo was the marine next to me yelling out "YEEEEEHAAAAAW FEET FIRST INTO HELL!"

I wish i could have shared the thought.

We levelled out after a minute or so, and my innards reformed roughly into the same shape they where before, although i swear i lost three foot of my colon in that drop to the mysticalitys of gravity.

I turned my head and looked through the pilots window, vast mountains lay in the distance as we drew closer to our drop zone, and there - almost a mile in front of us was a perfectly circular area of forest burned clean away just for us to land, Dropships one and two where up ahead of us, and number four was pulling up closer to our right, and with 6 huge "BOOOMS!" the missles riding in with five and six hit the ground, meaning they where'nt far behind us.

We slowed down and landed in the center of the drop-zone, we could hear doors opening, feet hittig charred dirt and machine gun's being loaded, cocked and brought to bear as the back of our own dropped fell down and the harnesses lifted, and the marines ran out in combat formations, covering each others backs as they found cover and scanned the local area for whatever hostiles there may be, and eventually a perimeter was established and we where brought out.

For the next three-quarters of an hour (which i don't even know still aplies considering that with Earth gone, should we still be following Earth standard time?) we reached our Rendevous point, the stony edge of a vast mountain ridge, in the distance we could see the canopy stretching out almost as far as the eye could see, up until our right hand side, where a huge, dark-blue ocean broke the canopy line.

There we set up our pre-fab base, three polymer tents complete with floor, and a barracks of sorts, and a plastic tower for our communications equiptment and a portable generator, for the next four days this would be our home.

When i say day's, i mean Earth days, as by Earth timeline's, a day here would be about 86 hours on Earth, the changes in time is something you never quite get used to, especially when you almost live on a star-ship, a place when time and space, meaning day and night have almost no meaning when the sun doesnt go up or down.

But, we continued to set up our equiptment - the first "night" was a bitch - its hard to sleep when you know its going to be light outside for the next 23 hours, but we made do with it - the bed was comfier than usual, the slighly higher gravity made me feel like i was sinking into the matress, nothing like being well and truly comfortable.

7:30 hours, standard wake up for the marines apparently, i could argue th point that Earth time doesnt apply anymore, but for what point? they'll only wake me up an hour or two earlier out of spite for it, and the worst part is what im waking up too - pre-cooked Earth Force nutrien packs.

Three "blocks" of food roughly 15 centimeters long, one a brown-ish red (Becon, ham and eggs), another which looked fairly beige (apparently this had cheese in it), and the last which was an almost sickly yellow (which was some sort of desert) all nutritionally balanced to make you feel like crap, all washed down with a mix of fruit and vegetables which tasted like a whole lime wrapped in an un-cooked steak.

The wonders of ground-side cooking eh?

The whole day was an uneventfull foray into the repeditive, testing this, anylysing that - although the short lived trip into the forest for samples was where the real gold was.

Apparently the majority of live on tihs planet evolved from lizards, with almost no insects or mammals to be seen, frogs, snakes, chamelions of every shape, size and colour imaginable, many of which broke standard Earth based Darinistic evolution, although - the strangest part was the fact that the majority of the life here was herbivour based, although it would drive a biologist wild, i was a terra-former - and while a lack of any major carnivour was settling, it was also deeply strange.

The return to camp marked the end of our day at least - our escort went onto gaurd duties while we where treated to dinner (something which apparently had chicken, beef and strawberry ice-cream in it, although in which block i couldnt tell) and about 4 hours of sleep.

When i hit the sack the sun was still up, when i woke up it was down - and gunfire shattered my dreams.

I dont know what happened, i wasnt there - i only heard the stories afterward, one of the marines was reported as missing, the squad of five where sent out searching to his last known position, only three of them came back to us, running backwards giving full suppression fire into the forest edge, and before they could give thier report on what was happening, they came out of the forest, and ripped two marines to shreds.

Horror's of biology, the "Xanthir" planes hunter, almost three meter's tall and covered entirly in green scales, a nightmare of claws and teeth capable of running at 70 mph with an almost insatiable hunger - and they had come for us.

The marines let rip at every target in range, but they kept coming, running, leaping and jumping down from the tree-line into the gap between our camp and the tree-line, one marine was smart enough to activate the flood lights, giving our defenders a clean line of fire, un-fortunatly for us, we didnt realise those things could scale mountains as well - the marine who activate the genny had almost 12 seconds of glory before he was cleaved into 2 pieces and dragged down the cliff edge to be eaten alive.

We ran, the few survirors of our crew fled with a few marines, the dropships still rested a kilometer and a half away in our landing crater, if we could make that - we could get aboard the droppers, get them to the camp, rescue the few marines who where left and request evac from the coventry, it was a good plan, and we where following it to the letter.

I had never fired the pistol i was issued with since my basic fire-arms training 3 years ago . . . a small pistol roughly resmbling a Glock pistol, firing a plastic block which was deliberatly weakened on one side, when the trigger was pulled, a "hammer" would shatter the block at high velocity, firing lethal shard's of plastic into the target as fast and as deadly as its bullet firing cousin.

It lept at me from a bush, i could see its eye gleaming at me with deadly intent, unfortunatly for it - the marine beside me had allready spotted it before it had lunged towards me, and as it lept foward to take me down, he turned, raise his rifle and fired three well placed shots, one in the leg, the other two in the torse of the creature, it fell to the ground beside me, alive, limp, and oozing blue blood - i turned my pistol to its skull and fired 6 times, it was definatly going to be dead after that.

We heard an explotion behind us, the generator must have gone up, as half the cliff face fell down into the forest below, we dont know if there where any human survivors, we still dont know today, but we watched our camp explode into flames and fall into the canopy line below, all the more incentive to keep running.

We could see the dropship clearing up ahead, and could heard the low hum of engines heating up, followed by sprays of machine gun fire . . .

One of them was allready in the air, with those things crawling all over its hulled, it floated there, spinning around, trying to shake them off as it fired onto others from the tree line's around, another two set off ground and flew into the distance as we drew ever closer, we couldnt have been more than 15 meters away from the clearing when another explotion threw us to the ground. The ship in the air had somehow gotten damaged, we didnt see it happen, al we knew was that a moment later it plowed into the ground, directly into the side of drop-ship number two, causing a massive explotion . . and with that we ran.

The last two left where empty, thier pilots must have been allready dead - but we ran inside anyway, lifting the doors behind us and attempting to activate the ship, the marine pulled us aside and acivated the console, it lit up with a bright blue glow as the sip jolted into life, god must have loved us that day - we had a pilot marine.

Out of all of delta squad, only us seven made it out alive - but thats part of our occupation, anyone who survives simply gets thier names put to the top of the list for the next delta squad, another day, another planet, it may be me who kicks the bucket . . . . join now for the glory of humanity?

Ugh, i wish i'd stayed on Alpha Centauri, and to think i used to be James Garret, Electrical engineer . .

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One story out of so many un-named characters in my universe, C&C would be much appreciated.