Chapter Three – A Raider Launch

“Raider Team: Snowball down!” The cry kicked Talion and his twelve man rapid deployment force into activity. It was early afternoon and the aftermath from the morning’s compound raid was still being cleaned up out on the property perimeter. Camisade’s teams had been seated in the debriefing room, working through the after-action review of the battle, such as it was. Though no rounds had been fired by any of the soldiers, the unit’s response to the alert and the actions between the time of the alert and achieving full “stand to”—defined as one hundred percent readiness—in the compound’s defensive positions were being reviewed for the possibility of improvement. As the “Snowball down” announcement blared, all men were on their feet as one and through the room’s double-door exit without confusion.

The arms room door slammed open as Kurtz indicated he was open for business and the teams pre-selected to deploy for this mission filed rapidly by his issue-window to grab their chosen—or assigned—weapons. First one on the scene, Talion counted them by, giving quick once-over inspections for missing equipment or concealed injury from the morning’s activity. Any injury would preclude a man from making launch. Although the team orders were strict about men reporting any injury, no matter how slight, it was still his leadership responsibility to check for such things. Men who did not drop did not get bonuses for successful Triton recoveries, so it was not unheard of for the occasional man to conceal pain and push himself beyond prudence, even though it might result in increased danger to the team.

Some of the mean were quiet, their visages grim. Others, depending on their personality and feeling about the certain fire fight the next couple hours would bring were loose, alert—even jocular. Heavy weapons specialists shrugged into their flex armor, adding its weight to their already awkward loads before lumbering past the arms room door and then out the back of the compound. Already, the drop ship shuttle was beginning to roll to the launch pad. Camisade followed the last of his team aboard.

Baxter, whose team was taking Jenkin’s team’s place today, acting as Talion’s 2IC, or Second-in-Command on this mission, quieted the men while he oversaw the issue of basic loads of pyro—smoke and grenades—to everyone, and det cord , caps and demo charges to his two specialists. Hopkins passed back boxes of 7.62mm for the M60 machine gunners and distributed 40mm marking and flechette grenades to everyone, who would help carry them for the grenadiers. No one complained about having to carry the additional weight. In a fire fight you could never have too much heavy weapons ammo.

Jenkins and his team were scheduled to sit this drop out. Having rotated off of alert yesterday afternoon, they would get some recharge time, pull the necessary maintenance on their gear and weapons, and work on training and newbie indoctrination. Talion was glad, because that would give him a little time to pursue his issues with Ian Hogg. He also felt an unusual sense of relief that Hogg wasn’t on this drop. He shook away the unfocused thought and returned his mind to the activities at hand.

In the front of the shuttle, Cussman, true to form, cursed at one of his newer men as his inspection revealed a piece of equipment improperly secured, so that it could rattle under vigorous movement. The colorful commentary and admonishment went on for almost fifteen seconds.

The chatter died as Camisade stood. There was never enough time for a decent brief and his men knew that just as well as they knew the battle drills and SOPs that could spell the difference between success and unmarked graves for the lot of them if things really heated up. When a meteorite—a “snowball”—fell, an area of land that might have been previously deserted before the event rapidly became a crowded battleground where conflict could explode tracer quick.

Talion gave his troops what he could: a quick METT-T analysis he deduced from the hurried corporate intel down link he just received, with the gaps filled in by little more than his own experience. METT-T was an acronym standing for the key elements of a hurried intelligence summary. Mission. Enemy Situation. Terrain & Weather. Troops & Teams (special assignments). Time available. He barely finished as the shuttle roared up to the launch pad, then he and the team were off the shuttle, up the ramp and into the delivery rocket. The familiar smell of metal and plastic assaulted Talion’s senses as the team rushed aboard, their boots clattering on the perforated metal decks until everyone found their lift couches—Lazy Daddies, the troops called them. The noise died as the last man snugged himself in. The time for shouted instructions was soon over. No one would be able to focus on a damned thing until they reached orbit, and then the men would be too busy performing final personal equipment checks to listen to anything anyone else had to say. Launch was like being fired from a gun in more ways than one.

G-forces smashed the thoughts from Talion’s head, turning his existence into a fight to breathe as ignition lit the huge Morton-Thiokol SRBs—solid rocket boosters—used to boost the rocket to apogee. The hundred and fifteen seconds or so of acceleration that it took seemed to take a million eternal moments. Then the weight was suddenly absent and Talion fought to ride the transition from crushing weight to the damned zero-G dizziness that, as usual for him, almost had him puking with the newbies, Jones and Grayson. Those two were too busy ignoring the catcalls from the vets who were lucky enough to be no longer tortured by their inner ears to notice that several of those vets, including Camisade suffered from the same ailment but had learned to deal with it without losing their rations. Half an orbit gave Talion barely enough time to verify his gear, run a last comms check with the team, slip into his jump harness, then pull himself through the tunnel and down into his “coffin”—the individual space within the drop tube that he and his men would use for re-entry.

Talion prepared himself mentally. For him, this part of the drop was always the worst and it was never over fast enough. He could never help remembering that the drop tubes were disposable. He knew the bean counters begrudged every dollar spent doing reliability testing and that the manufacturer was constantly under pressure from competitors to keep the cost as impossibly low as they could, and only built each thruster to last a single mission. Talion’s coffin fit his solid musculature tighter than a girdle, so even if he wasn’t on the edge of being too scared to breathe, he couldn’t catch his breath. As always, he failed to keep from thinking that in moments he would be re-entering the atmosphere in nothing more than an alloy tube perched atop of a solid fuel deccel rocket, which was purposefully designed to just get he and his team into the atmosphere without burning up. The tube was anything but a marvel. Four inch fins ostensibly gave the mission computer the ability to guide the little dart from a hundred miles up to about 25,000 feet, at which time the shell would blow clear, leaving them in free fall. After that, the rest was up to them. Camisade had packed his own ‘chute, just like everyone else. At least he could have confidence in that.

Eight klicks of free fall would then land he and his team in the middle of the deadliest game since the Roman coliseum—a race for Triton crystal residues. Unsynthesizable, miraculous as a biological catalyst, and found only in the crystallized remains of meteorites, Triton was glassine wealth. And umpteen other corporate mercenary teams, all locked, loaded, and ready for bear would be after the same thing Camisade’s team was. And willing to shoot them to doll rags in order to get it. Add to that the presence of any local military or law enforcement that may descend on the area any moment, having benefited from having far less distance to travel than most the Raider teams did, and a very combustible recipe was born.

Talion put the understanding that any foul-up that ensnared him or his team would leave them dangling on their own, while the no-load bean-counters and the pencil-pushing legal beagles at corporate ran for the shelter of reinforced concrete deniability. If his team was captured by the indigent government, or if they were shot to doll rags by someone who came to the party dressed a little bit more snappily than them, as had happened yesterday, the bean-counters would never care. Because to them, the Raider teams didn’t really exist as humans anyway. They were simply expensed as consumables, just like office supplies.