All is Fair. Ch. 01

"Sabre wing, preparing for launch in T-minus thirty seconds, give go or no go," the voice of the flight controller crackled through Almark's radio.

"Roger and received, flight. I have green across the board. Go for thirty."

"Confirmed Sabre one."

"Hey half-pint," A voice came over the radio; Sabre four, her wingman, using her callsign to get her attention. She wasn't overly fond of the name, but she was short, and it was certainly better than some of the other ones she'd heard in her time. A pilot callsign was never their choice, it was bestowed upon them by their comrades and, once earned, were completely immune to even the most reasoned pleas for reconsideration. "Any intel on what we're facing down there?"

"That's a negative, Lurch," She replied. His name had come from the fact that the man was a massive 6'9" and towered over everyone else in the squadron. "We are going up against rebs, so intelligence thinks it could be anywhere between one and three whole combat wings."

Lurch scoffed. "Military intelligence, now there is a contradiction in terms. Alright, on your lead, boss lady."

"Sabre wing, prepare for launch in five... four... three..."

There were often moments when Emily was forced to consider the marvels that technology allowed. The catapult that propelled her XF-18 Broadsword down the Goliath's launch tube managed to accelerate an eight-ton piece of military hardware from zero to 300 miles per hour in less than two seconds. A brief glance down at her HUD highlighted the fact that the burst of speed equated to about twenty-seven Gs. If it wasn't for the inertial dampeners integrated into the fighter's airframe, her body would have been crushed under its own weight, and her ribs would now be touching her spine with the remains of her pulped lungs mushed around them.

The running lights that capped the launch tunnel blurred into a single line of light, and the slight vibrations of her engines merged with the dull rumble of the fuselage as the fighter rocketed down the frictionless rails - the vibrations coming from the thinning residual air in the launch tube rather than from contact with the catapult. Then, only a few seconds after the "go" was given, the vibrations and the lights suddenly vanished, and her broadsword was fired into the inky blackness of space. Shoving the throttle forward and banking to the right, she circled wide of the carrier's starboard hull to allow the rest of the squadron to deploy and give the rest of Sabre flight a chance to form up on her wing. The almost glowing blue and green ball of Vallen, the rebel planet, loomed large out of her portside canopy.

"Alright, Sabres, sound off," she called calmly into her radio as the shadows of the five other strike craft pulled into formation around her.

"Sabre 2, in position."

"Sabre 3, on station."

"Sabre 4, on your wing."

"Sabre 5, present Miss Half-Pint," She could almost hear Joker's grin through the radio.

"Sabre 6, reporting in"

She rolled her eyes but kept talking, allowing the smallest of smiles to pull at her lips. Joker was a nice guy, easy on the eyes, and one hell of a flirt. She'd have wiped that smirk off his face and blown his mind several times over by now if it wasn't for the whole inter-rank fraternization rules. "Alright, children, we are assigned to the first wave. We escort in the heavies and then provide top cover for our boys on the ground. We are in for the duration, so I hope you all visited the little pilot's room before we left."

"Don't make me turn this flight around!" Joker chuckled over the comm link.

"Watch for AA fire," Emily went on, ignoring the teasing comment, "and keep your eyes peeled for hostile interceptors. The whole combat wing has launched for this one, so identify targets before you engage. I don't want any friendly fire complaints when we get back. Those things are a fucking nightmare, and you all know how I feel about paperwork! We all copy?"

A ripple of affirmatives all echoed through the radio.

"Alright, form up on the dropships."

********

Stevo. 2

The dropship rattled as it broke through the upper stratosphere, buffeted by the high winds and thin air as the craft made the transition from the void of space to atmospheric flight. 500 dropships had left the Goliath, 125 craft per infantry wave - thirty marines of the 381st division in each dropship - the third and forth waves had their payload of Monitor IV battle tanks slung underneath them, the men of the armored detachment already inside them. They would land just like the rest of the Marines, ready to fight. As much as Stevo's nerves were rattled by being in the crew compartment of the Condor, he couldn't help but feel that the tank crews had it worse. Entering orbit in a tin can was never a comfortable experience, but at least his tin can had wings.

Heavily armored and possessing multilayered shields, these dropships were designed to survive landings under sustained fire, but they were large, slow, and difficult to maneuver. The fact that they were carrying thirty of the imperium's finest meant that they could accurately be called "bullet magnets" by the men inside. The smell of sweat, gun oil, and fear permeated the cabin as thirty sets of hands gripped tightly onto their weapons, and thirty pairs of eyes glanced nervously around at the other men of the platoon; there were no windows in the cabin, they could only look at each other or at the deck. Four squads were packed in tight along the hull-mounted seats, all tucked into harnesses. Twenty-eight marines were ready for combat. The Platoon commander, Captain Santiago, Stevo's commanding officer, paced up and down the center gangway; he and his radio operator made up the other two spots in the thirty-man complement. Beyond them, Stevo could make out the pilots in the cockpit, one of them manning the flight controls while the other stared intently at the holographic targeting displays for the chin-mounted chain gun and the underwing rocket pods that made up the dropship's defensive arsenal. Through the cockpit window, he watched as the inky blackness of space gave way to the dazzling azure of the atmosphere.

The sun was low in the sky, just starting its ascent into the heavens. Stevo was a sergeant, hardly one of the master tacticians who had put this op together, but there was something disconcerting about making a combat drop during daylight. The era when nighttime insertions were riskier or even more difficult was long gone; the entire division could have been dropped in during the darkness of night, making it much safer for the men being landed. The whole division could have been on the ground and ready to advance at first light, or, even better, they could have attacked before dawn. There were so many tactical and strategic advantages to a nighttime assault, even down to the fact that small arms fire being used against them was significantly less accurate at range unless the enemy had decent low-light optics. According to intelligence, they didn't, so why not take advantage of that? Instead, they were being tasked with mounting a frontal assault against a fortified position in broad daylight.

There was no doubt that they would be successful. Even if those defenses were being manned by Imperial Army regulars; they would be swept aside, let alone a rag-tag group of rebels. But still, he had a sneaking suspicion that this deployment was being used as a "proof of concept" to the military brass, a showcase of what this division and its augmented soldiers were capable of. In reality, the whole rebel position could have been vaporized from orbit with the marines sent in to secure the rubble; there was no need for this assault to happen at all. Men were going to die today for no other reason than someone up the chain of command wanted to show off to their boss. He just hoped that none of his men would be among them.

"The rebels have set up base on an Island in the Northern Hemisphere's largest ocean," The Captain called out, snapping Stevo's attention back to the moment. "We are to land on a large section of beach on the southern part of the island and advance on the main command structure in the center. Able company is landing on the extreme left of the line! Our orders are to clear out any bunkers and firing positions on our left flank to prevent the main assault force from being caught in a crossfire. Anti-air and anti-armor hardpoints are our priority, but this is a simple sweep-and-clear mission. We will be taking point with 8th platoon and 12th platoon, and we've got close air support from the gunships. I don't want any bullshit glory hunting today, Marines. Identify enemy strong points and weapon positions, call them back to me, and I will order an artillery mission to clear them out. I want a slow and steady advance with full unit cohesion; this is not a race to the finish, do you get me?"

"We get you, Sir!" The men of 2nd Platoon called back in one voice.

"Out-fucking-standing! We will be touching down in..." He turned and looked toward the cockpit, the pilot holding three fingers in the air. "...three minutes; check your weapons and armor now."

Stevo took a deep breath and looked down at his rifle, grateful to be able to think of something more productive than the intricacies of mission planning. The power pack was fully seated in the grip, charged and secure, the optics were activated, and the scope-link reticle flashed green in the eye-piece of his helmet, along with the shield status icon and ammo count. The X-44 standard-issue infantry battle rifle didn't have an ammunition capacity, per se. The powerpack could keep the weapon firing indefinitely, providing fire discipline was maintained, but using the weapon on full auto or even rapidly using the burst fire mode would heat up the powerpack and vent the excess energy through the heat sinks. If that was done too often or for too long, the power pack would run out and would need to be changed. Luckily, he was carrying a few spares. Firing on full auto was a rarity, though; the squad already had a support gunner, and burst fire was overkill against unarmored targets, so Stevo made sure his weapon was in single-fire mode, then checked the safety. That would be flicked off after leaving the bird. He checked the chin strap on his helmet, then noticing that barely thirty seconds had passed since the order was given; he checked them all again.

Stevo had never considered himself a religious man; he was not one of those who said a prayer before combat, but looking around the other twenty-seven seated men, he couldn't help but notice at least a dozen somber bowed heads and silently moving lips. That rambunctious, over-eagerness to get into the fight was reserved almost exclusively for men who hadn't seen enough real combat to know better. The sanest of all men were the ones who avoided the fighting like it was radioactive. It was an odd position for a veteran marine to hold, but people were going to die today. It would only be blind luck that would prevent one of those people from being him or one of his men. He had seen whole squads swallowed up in an artillery hit. He had watched dozens of men fall to a well-placed machine gun nest in previous engagements. Combat was a meat grinder. It was chaos and violence taken to extremes, and as proud as he was to serve in the Marine Corps, he was under no illusions; He and the men around him were little more than fodder.

The vibrations of the dropship suddenly ramped up in intensity as the first of the flak bursts exploded in the air outside the hull, throwing the men against their harnesses and knocking the captain onto the deck. He quickly scrambled to get into his seat as that now-familiar deathly silence filled the cabin. Every single Marine in every single dropship knew that despite the shields and the armored hull, one direct hit by those massive explosions and it would all be over.

********

Almark. 2

"Break formation and take evasive maneuvers!" Almark barked into her radio as she slammed the throttle lever forward and jerked the flight stick to the left. "Break through the flak and get eyes on the firing positions!"

The veteran pilot knew that flak only functioned effectively above a certain altitude; below that, the chances of being hit were minute, but the telltale flashes of the AA Flak batteries should be easy to spot from a lower altitude. She chanced a look over her right shoulder to check if her wingmen had formed up as ordered, but it was just in time to watch a dropship in the rear of the formation take a direct hit. Shields were great at deflecting solid projectiles and could usually only be worn down by energy weapon fire, but the airframes of the drop ship still relied on the fundamental properties of aerodynamics. An explosive direct hit essentially caused an enormous bubble of turbulence. That disrupted airflow smashed into the dropship with the same physical consistency as solid concrete; the shields did nothing to protect against air, no matter how dangerous. The right wing of the impacted dropship buckled wildly before snapping off, the shield emitters attached to it breaking away and destroying the cohesion of the shield bubble. Left unshielded, the shrapnel inside the flak bursts ripped into the hull. The armor deflected some, but not much. Most of the crew and the passengers had already been eviscerated by glowing chunks of super-sonic metal long before the dropship banked against its missing wing, rolled onto its back, and nose-dived toward the ground.

"Fuck!" she spat in frustration. There was nothing that could be done. Just like that, thirty-two men were gone. By the time the wreckage had plummeted out of view, another half dozen dropships were going down. One of them simply disintegrated under the wind shear and the loss of structural integrity. She watched in horror as the bodies of fellow marines were ripped out of the fuselage and dumped into the sky at the full mercy of the planet's gravity. Some of them were kicking and flailing as they fell, still alive as they fell tens of thousands of feet to their deaths.

The target island was tiny in comparison to the ocean around it, but in terms of landmass, it was roughly an equivalent size to the entire Island of Ireland. The landing zone was on the far south of it, but from this altitude - a dozen miles above sea level - it was impossible to make out anything in the way of detail, let alone pinpoint individual gun batteries. They were simply too far away. But Emily was a veteran pilot; she knew the capabilities of the land-based defenses that she normally flew against, and these cannons were no different. Designed to lob shells at targets as they entered the atmosphere, their barrels were enormous, upwards of 100 ft in some cases. It gave them a massive vertical range, but it severely limited the lateral firing angles.

Coming in over the ocean south of the Island meant that the positions of the gun emplacements could only be in the area around the landing zone. Signaling her crew to follow her in, she pushed the nose of her Broadsword down and dove toward the island. Soaking up the miles at mind-boggling speeds, her wing - along with a few others - rocketed out of the sky to get within visual range of the guns chewing up the dropship formation.

"There, I can see them!" Saddlebag, her number three, called over the radio. "Ridgeline above the beach at our one o'clock."

Emylee snapped her head forward and squinted at the landscape. It only took a few seconds to spot the characteristic muzzle flashes of heavy flak cannons. "Nice work, three!" She flicked a switch on her flight stick to change to communication with the Destroyers. "Fight control; this is Sabre one. Priority fire mission request, over."

She had already adjusted her HUD to display the grid reference overlay by the time control got back to her. "Roger, Sabre one. Ready for fire mission.."

"Grid reference, one-six-eight by zero-nine-nine. Raise twenty-five, right forty. Fire when ready!"

Almark had been flying ground combat missions for long enough to read those reference charts in seconds. Each square was overlaid on her HUD from the perspective of the command ship in orbit, and each represented about one-hundred-square meters, far too big an area to target anything accurately. The number raised, and the number adjusted to the right were her estimations - based on a fraction of a second's worth of a glance - how far above the bottom grid line and how far right of the left grid line her target was. She would need to be much more careful when friendly forces were on the ground, but if she could guide in munitions close enough to the target to even disrupt fire, that would be enough to save Imperial lives.

The sky ripped open a few hundred yards to her right as the MAC rounds shot past. The Magnetically Accelerated Cannon was a monster of weapons engineering, and there were six of them on each of the three destroyers providing support for the landings. Able to launch a shell not much smaller than her fighter at hypersonic speeds, the impact of the shell alone was enough to cause massive amounts of damage, but with its antimatter explosive payload, it was truly devastating. The ridgeline on which the Flak cannons were situated erupted in a colossal ball of fire and sundered earth, the force of the blast gouging an enormous crater out of the land and tossing the debris into the air. The cannons vanished in the explosion, the force of the blast ripping the emplacement - and the rebels manning them - apart in the blink of an eye. Other squadrons must have spotted other emplacements on different parts of the target island because the air seemed to come alive with the racing shells of the naval bombardment. The destroyers fired off their massive batteries as fire requests came in fast. Huge portions of the mountain range overlooking the landing beach were blown out of existence, and scores of enemy guns were systematically destroyed.

Pulling up on the flight stick to slow her angle of descent, she arrested the rapid rate that the planet's surface was racing up at her and leveled out. Checking her scanners quickly; it looked like all of the airborne contacts within range were friendly. The momentary smile of relief was quickly replaced by a frown.

"Really?" She thought to herself. "No fighter defense at all? That can't be right. This is supposed to be the rebel stronghold. There should be interceptors everywhere!"

Her wingman was apparently thinking the same thing. "Err, Half Pint, are you seeing this?" Sabre 2's voice came over the radio, and her face appeared on the holographic display in front of her.

"Yeah, I see it, Buzzkill."

"So I'm not the only one concerned about the clear skies, then."

"What's there to complain about?" Joker's grinning face appeared next to Buzzkill's on the holographic display. "Ronald Reb saw that we were coming, they threw in the towel and legged it. Can't say I'm surprised; my reputation does precede me," He chuckled to himself, but Almark saw through the self-deprecating joke. The entire wing had expected to fly into a shit storm of enemy fighters as soon as they cleared the flak ceiling. Instead, there wasn't a single rebel craft in the air, meaning one of two things; either the rebels didn't have any - an idea so absurd as to dismiss out of hand immediately - or they were being held back for some reason. And that vastly more likely explanation made her nervous.

It made her very nervous.

"All wings, this is Sabre one. No enemy contacts in the air, but keep your eyes peeled. If they are being held back for some reason, we need to be ready when they join the fight. Keep your formations and watch your sixes."