Contact Alpha

Tango Hit

Local hour 0547, location unknown.

We are here.

On the ground of an unknown alien world.

You can say that we made it, just barely.

" Deman, couldn't you have made the landing any softer than that?" Mont's complaint is heard on the comm, followed by a slight uncomfortable growl.

" Negative, dampener snapped halfway through. Restoration impossible." Deman replied with his usual short and straight sentences while checking his gear.

" So we free fall like 100 meters from the ground?" Doc asked. His full name is Johan Tiedemann, sergeant first class. He takes the role of a combat medic as well as a biologist. And being a member of a Delta Six squad, he is equipped with some of the latest medical technology. Such as stem cells technology and organic fabricating technology. Although most of the high tech ones are still in their experimental prototype phase.

" 67 meters to be exact, but our chance of surviving that drop was high." Deman provides the exact height where the landing pod's gravity dampener broke down. He has a very realistic personality. The kind of personality you would expect in a professional scientist who is way to serious about their job. Truth be told, he really is a scientist. And a good one at that, with 3 PhDs hanging on his wall back home. He trust numbers, calculations, mathematics and logic. In fact, he worships them, like some sort of religion. And his other secret religion is of course, anything that explode."We are Deltas, that much wouldn't have even scratched us."

" He is right, Mont. It's just your size and weight that made you suffer some extra minor buttock injuries." Doc remarks as he unlocks himself out of his seat's lock, a slight chuckle can be heard coming from him.

Well, Doc is not wrong. Mont is from the Juggernaut corp after all. The men and women in there are pretty much giants. Their average height is around 2 meters. Combined with the special armor suit they are equipped with and you get what is essentially the equivalent of an IFV but walks on foot. So with Mont's weight of almost 128 kg without gear. Plus he carries the heaviest load out of all of us. That impact would have easily done something on his rear end.

I do the same as my comrades. Pulling two small levers on the lock on both sides of my shoulder. With a familiar mechanical clank, the bolts from behind the back of my seat fall off and the lock springs up away from my chest. We are all used to these procedures. Because we have repeated it so many times. Almost every one of our deployments start with us being inserted by specialized assault pods. Whether that mission include us assaulting a ship or doing covert planetary insertions. But none of us has had any experience doing it in a standard emergency escape pod. I can not remember what was the last time I actually got onto one of these. Aside from training and simulations, I believe I have never use them for extraction or escape, ever. Since we never need them to begin with anyway, every one of our missions so far have always been successfully completed. But nevertheless me and my men still remember how these pods operate. We have got the memory modification implants to thanks for that.

After unlocking myself out of the seat. I check my gear, my pack and my weapons. Making sure that nothing got damaged during our reentry. As always, I do the usual load out check up that was imprinted into my everyday life thanks to rigorous training from decades ago. When I was still a freshman. First is my weapons, one primary and one secondary, the usual load. But there are special load outs that allow one to bring two or even three primary in some cases. Next is my pack, which includes ammunition, nutrients bars, filters, med kits, fusion batteries and other miscellaneous supplies. Finally my suit, I check it's integrity, built-in systems, energy, life support and many of its special functions.

Once done, I then open the emergency storage underneath my seat to take the pod's own emergency supplies, every seats has one of these.We each takes from our own seat and share the other 4 because the pod has 10 seats, arranged in a circular shape around a main control panel in the center. There are also the emergency suits among the supplies but since we are already donned in our combat suit, we will be leaving them behind.

" Talon 4 what is the condition outside?" I asked Deman through the comm. Concerning about the environment outside. For all we know, we could be on a planet with atmosphere unsuitable for normal human.

" Statistics from atmospheric measurements suggest the environment is within human habitable condition. No abnormalities," After reading through the result showed in the monitor, Deman speaks up. That means we can breath and live normally even without our life support systems, or LSS. But caution is still advised. So we will still keep our LSS up.

Glancing through the pods external cams, it seems like we have landed in some sort of forest. The flora looks surprisingly similar to that of Earth's. The pod is currently residing in a rather clear part of the forest, with few trees and plants in our vicinity. And of course, there are pieces of debris all around us as well.

Seeing that my squadmates has completed their gear check and is readied, I turn my head behind me to them and receive everybody's nod. Signaling that it's time.

" Alright, team. Here we go."

I pull a red lever at the bottom of the pod's pressurised hatch and unlock it. The air from outside immediately seeps in, making a sound similar to spraying a paint can. Now that the pressure is stabilized, sound of mini explosions can be heard coming from the rim of the hatch. Within seconds, the hatch got busted open and flies off away from the pod. Light from the system's suns immediately shines into the hatch hole. It looks rather bright and warm, but we can't feel that because of our helmet's visor and full body suit.

Without a second wasted, me and my squad immediately rush outside with inhuman speed and coordination, weapon sight point forward. We then quickly form a circle around our drop site, crouch down, making sure all direction are covered, eyes and systems scanning for any movement in our surrounding. Looking through my HUD, I can see that the scenery is not so different from many other habitable planets. Everywhere I look, nature is teeming with life. From the greenery of the trees to the sound of animals echoing all around.

Deman backs up into the middle of the formation then pulls out a white circular donut with propeller in the middle and throws it into the air. That's a drone, a personal medium altitude surveillance drone. It flies high above the tree branches and hover at a height of about 30 meters in the air.

" CSD deployed, scanning." Deman reports. We stay in our current formation for a few minutes as the Combat Surveillance Drone scan immediate region.

While sweeping my vision left and right, I spot a small head of an animal poking through a hole in the ground. It looks like a rather large weasel. More like a meerkat to be exact, but with two antenna on its head. Like those found on insect's head. A quick scan of the animal suggest that it is an entirely new species, along with the plants here as well. There are new species all around. Doc must be having a field day scanning all of these new discoveries, being a biologist and such.

" Scan completed, local alien settlement at your 5 o'clock, designated Site A." Having finished the regional scan, Deman report to me via comm."Updating direct feedback to all Talon's HUD."

On the top left of my screen, a screen showing the image feedback from the CSD's cams pops up. It shows live recording of the top of the forest foliage and shapes of what seems to be houses in the distance. We dropped right next to an alien settlement. Which means there's a chance of the local witnessing our crash landing and might be moving toward us to investigate.

" We'll move near it and observe. Keep your vigilant up. There's no guarantee that the local do not know of our rather majestic entry." I give out an order to my squad and receive their confirmation through comm.

" Move."

Right as the word left my mouth, the whole squad turns around toward the settlement's direction and start moving. The view of our landing pod slowly fade away behind the trees, we will be back to retrieve it one day. But now, we must press on forward.

Everyone move in a unified manner. At any given time, there would always be someone walking backward and two more walking sideways to cover our back and flanks. We switch position every thirty second to ensure that our eyes are scanning at all directions all the time, even from above. We walk among the bushes, through the lower foliage of the forest. For six minutes we kept walking. Nothing out of the norm, no hostiles, yet.

" Talon 4 to Talon 1, two heat sigs approaching. From direction of Site A. Dubbed T1 and T2." Deman reports to the comm. Me and my other squadmates can see it as well, through the display screen on our helmet. " They are approaching a larger signature, that's T3."

" Prep your cloakers and keep your eyes out for movements." I give out an order for my team to prepare their suit's cloak plates. Specialized nano plates that disperse scan rays, radars and can even hinder up to 90% visual imagery.

" Alright, double time." I urge my squad to hurry up. And we start to speed up our approach. We'll be keeping distance and observe these individuals first. And base on the situation we will consider doing first contact.

From the display, it seems that T1 and T2 have come into contact with T3. And then T2 start to move away from T3 with T3 closing in.

The suits audio systems start to buzz. Picking up and distinguishing inaudible noises from very far away into individual audible sounds. All of our suits are equipped with this.

And we hear it.

A sound. No, a vocal voice. An extremely familiar vocal voice at that.

As the system finished processing it. We all realize what it is.

A very feminine scream of a young human female. Followed by a broken and cracking cry.

" T2 heat signature is fading." Doc remarks, "Sir."

My squad waits for my order. So I give them one.

" Battlestation. GMOV on." A word slipped its way out of my mouth. And in response, sounds of weapon's safety switch off is heard and the unmistakable humming of our suit GMOV coming alive. The Graviton Mobility tech is the one tech that made the Delta Six Delta Six. The most advanced piece of technology in our suits. The technology that shaped our signature fighting style.

And now.

" Triple time."

A few seconds later, we leave sound behind.

Dashing, dodging trees and switching direction every millisecond at mach speed we rush our way toward our destination. Visual start to come in from the drone overhead. Our target is clear.

My squad quickly spread around the combat zone while I charge my ER4 Railjack. They all know what to do even without my order. I trace my scope and stabilize my weapon toward the target even while GMOVing. A near impossible feat if you ask me.

My weapon reaches 100% charge.

I pull the trigger and let loose the tungsten alloy slug.

Bullseye

The slug hits its mark and completely decimated the target's arms, making it drops its victim to the ground.

I set the small grenade launcher on my left shoulder to load a 9-bang and shout out loud to get the beast attention.

" TALON 1, TANGO HIT, 9-BANG OUT."

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