Locks' lips curved into a friendly smirk as he took the smoke from the Frenchman. A nod of thanks came after as he placed it above his ear. He knew he'd need it a bit later.

Ben turned his gaze to the newcomer, Staff Sergeant McKnight. He returned Sterling's greeting with a nod, meeting his eyes. The two had seen some shit in the few tours they'd served together a while back. Despite the horrors that waited for them below, Ben appreciated a familiar face. He knew he could trust the Sergeant with his life, if it came down to it.

Captain Knight took no time beginning the briefing. Short and sweet, just how Locks liked it. Ben's jaw clenched at the younger man's request. That must be Nicholson. Kind of a pessimist, huh. He'd heard some things - primarily good things - about the boy. However, Locks wasn't much for rumors. He'll see soon enough what he's capable of.

"I think that's all we'd need to know, Captain. I'm sure if someone has questions they can ask you personally, thank you for the briefing. I need to suit up, I'll see you later, boys."

He gave a quick nod and smile to the other Captain, signalling his leave. Ben paced down to the armory, to where his suit was kept. She was quite the beauty. Pretty much everything he'd want in assisting him on the field. The suit fit him perfectly, as if it were part of his own body. It never ceased to amaze how mobile it kept him. He threw a few punches and raised his leg a bit, demonstrating the suit's flexibility. When he activated the cloaking device, the darkness of the suit flickered for a moment and disappeared. A grin spread across his face and he turned it off, collapsing his helmet while he did so.

Locks walked over to his weapons locker, eyeing all of his toys. Gotta clear the town. With the thought, he reached for his Mossberg, a beautiful shotgun able to hold 8 shots - one in the chamber, 7 in the magazine. He loaded it to capacity and filled the 6-shot saddle on both sides. He looked down the sights, imagining hostiles eating the gun's lead. 8 more shells clung to his left leg while 2 flashbangs hang at his right. His knives were secure and Sheila stayed loyally at his hip with his kukri on the other. He shot a glance at the push knives on his wrist and moved for his room.

The cig from DuBois hung from his lips, now. Locks lit it and puffed gently.

Let's go, boys.

Apollosarcher said
"Kid relax, your gonna come back just fine." Knight said taking the tag just to settle him down, he had seemed nervous about his first combat mission "Most pilots aren't killed first day on the job, beside your a natural at this, so when you do get back tell her about it kid. If you don't wait to long." Knight sighed lifting the two chain around his neck, where he kept his dog-tag and a necklace of his fallen comrades tags, you can all see nine other tags on the necklace, on his dog-tags chain it he places Dylan's tag right beside his own. "Drop time is unknown, we are to go on standby until the General gives us the green light. The moment we know is the moment we go. Any more questions?"

Jack lit his cigarette and took a long puff, letting the smoke fill his lungs completely before letting it all back out again. "What are we up against here, Captain?" he asked. "Pro-Russian Poles, or have the boys from Moscow hit the ground already?" It may have seemed like a useless question. What difference did it make, exactly who was shooting at them? In Jacks mind, it made all the difference in the world. The Poles themselves would be under equipped and poorly trained. Fish in the proverbial barrel. If they were reinforced by Russian regulars already? Why, that was a whole other animal altogether. One that would require a much bigger gun to hunt.

"While I can't exactly say, reports of Russian Mechs and weapons in the area have me thinking it's Russian troops, however command says we can't confirm that as they might be Poles with Russian tech." Knight sighed as donned his helmet. "I suggest you all move to prep for insertion, I need to go monitor comms for the green light." With that the tall man ducked back down the hallway that lead to the Pattons cockpit.

Amy did whatever the polish recon squad asked, riding bitch seat on a quad was not fun especially when it floated "Put some wheels below me and I'll be a happy camper." She muttered, as they hit their AO she again followed the squads advice and took up a position on a ridge watching a Russian outpost. The order came and everyone started firing she started firing herself. She silently thanked god that these Russians were wearing masks and helmets she didn't want to look them in the eyes as she killed them. She sent her helmet cam feed up to Space Station Independence "We have weapons free Inde." She said the sound of her rifle filling her ears the clink of shells hitting rock and dirt. She reckoned if she had her helmet off the smell of cordite would burn her nostrils. She didn't miss this but she was doing it for good "Or at least i think we are the good guys." She thought as she took out another Russian.

Soon the sound of gunfire stopped and the quicker Polish exos were on the move towards the base, Amy had to struggle to keep up and she didn't even have the same gear as them "Note to self." She said into her comm "Get exo tethers so i can move around like you ass holes." She let out a slight chuckle, she was about to celebrate their victory with a whoop when a flare went up and her heart seemed to sink into her gut. "Here we go again." She thought.

(Short Post, but I feel I couldn't channel a lot of creativity. Kinda the end of the reconnaissance part- I set up quite a badass moment.)

Pushing forwards, the whole team engaged the rest of the VDV, Jan leaping down and into a smashed greenhouse, the sight of a flare going up.
"Whatever we do we do quickly now, that is not good." Jan added, taking out a VDV soldier that barely managed to get a round into his shoulder, knocking him back a little but his Exo taking the shot, the Dragonskin/Composite material of the exoskeleton's armor package taking the round. It gave him and his team surviability- but he had wasted almost third a magazine of accurate, near enough point black rounds to the VDV soldier to take him down, which really did show how much it took. The team had moved fast and quick enough to cut them up, as they moved up, Jan lobbing a grenade towards an emplaced HMG of sorts that barked loudly. The grenade found it's track in front, and the men ran, going off and dazing them with shrapnel, as he doubled tapped with clean shots, aimed accurately as he had a combination of the exoskeleton's stable platform and his marksmanship, the magnified holographic quickly taking the men down.
"Forwards!" He added, moving along the street, scanning his sectors, looking to the launchers that were now in view.

"Right there! Team, set up a perimeter. Majakowska, you have the charges, so you deal with the launchers. Alec, Amy, on me. Let's find out what the hell this is inside." Jan simply said, as they moved up, the body count of the 1st squad and the two Aegis dropped soldiers significant, as they moved through the village, eliminating a last packet of resistance in a house with a volley of 40mm grenades that sent a man blown out of the second floor window. The command post was small, but the launchers were on a significant tripod, overlooking the wider area and ready to decimate what they saw. Moving slowly, as Alec and Amy caught up, Jan approached the door, sealed shut with a lock.
"We breach in here." He coldly and calmly said, a new magazine ready as he approached the metal cargo pod, perhaps another Russian piece of equipment airdropped in to provide a command centre of this local area. Kicking it hard, the exoskeleton's sheer strength blew it off it's hinges, at an expense to Jan's energy, hitting a man inside who pointed his weapon, as Jan pushed in, scanning the room, and looking around, seeing nothing else.
"Clea.." He began to yell, as a kick threw him into the side of the command post room, inside the metal tin can, the sight of one man that had emerged from the shadows that a momentary lapse in concentration had not picked up, and Amy's and Alec's movement inside had not been quick enough for, but was following up in. He held a GSH-18 Pistol, and wore a Russian exoskeleton of sorts, wearing a VDV uniform and a Captain badge on his shoulder, looking older than Jan did. He shot twice in Jan's chestplate, then three times again within the space of a second, pinning Jan, as he walked forwards, aiming it at his head, his finger curling as it enroached on the trigger...

Alec hated having to leave his tree. It was his vantage point and it worked for him. He hated moving during a mission but the drones were showing that he should be moving and fast. Unfortunately he did not have anything for close firefights so he was going to improvise should it come to that. He hoped it would not though. Alec watched as Jan led the way for the breach. This was completely out of his range but he kept going anyway. He had to right? No need to be a coward. He was looking the other way when the Captain attacked Jan. he watched before a plan only a crazy man would think of came to him. He had only one thing to stop the Russian and get their quickly. His trusty grappling hooks. He quickly fired them into the wall next to the Russian who did not have a chance to turn before being tackled into the way knocking the air out of him. Alec quickly drew his kermabit and slammed it into the Russian throat. It had cut through similar suits earlier and it worked on this man. With a few twitches the Captain bleed out and died.

Alec pulled his knife out and looked at Jan. "You alright?" He asked offering his arm to help him up.

After captain Knight took his tag Dylan smiled and thanked him. He had nothing but respect for captain Knight. Ever since he had arrived in the platoon captain Knight had been a mentor for him. He had heard about the man's exploits through his superiors and was utterly amazed that he was invited to join the platoon. Out of the 100 people who entered the pilot program that he was in only ten graduated. He was top of his class and was immediately invited to join the Hard Knocks platoon, and he took it with enthusiasm. Dylan didn't attempt to emulate the man, but he does try to learn from him.

The other men asked questions and he noted the responses. Captain Knight told them that they should get prepped. "Yes sir! ill be getting Rose prepped for her big outing later. We got a lot to prove sir ill try not to let you down!" Dylan said before saluting captain Knight. Ending the salute Dylan turned and walked out of the Patton. He entered the corridor and set off for engineering.

[10 minutes later]

Dylan entered Engineering with a decisive look on his face. Quickly he climbed up and then dropped into his mech through the hatch. "Allright LETS GET IT ON!" Dylan said powering his mech up. He started moving the flight sticks and flipping switches running diagnostics. "God it feels good to be back in the pilots seat." Dylan said. This was where he was in his element. Nothing felt more natural for him than piloting a mech, it was like an extension of himself. Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a white headband that said samurai on it in large red letters. Tying it on his head he gripped the sticks and made his mech pick up its 25mm assault rifle. The reticle appeared and he tracked it,moving it around as the mech did the gun. Next he set the fire arm down and threw a couple of punch combinations with the mech. Next he fired the joint mounted wires and reeled them back in. Finally he tested the thrusters a couple times by firing them but not lifting the mech. Nodding to himself inside the mech Dylan said to himself "Everything checks out." Looking at a photo of Rosalie in the cockpit he smiled "Well Rose looks like its time to dance".

Amy fell in behind Jan, the fighting had been intense, but nothing she wasn't used to the base was quite simplistic and quite undermanned for something that held enough arty to destroy most of TF aegis's mechanized force and drop ships. "Why is this place so undermanned?" She asked Jan as he walked inside the command center. If he was going to give Amy an answer he didn't get a chance too, some bastard came out from nowhere and delivered two rounds which didn't damage anything vital to the Pole except maybe his pride, next the Ivan came charging for Jan and had him pinned before Amy didn't even have time to react before Alec had the Ivan down and out.

Amy cut in after Alec, she was in doctor mode giving him the once over and looking him over. "Are you alright, do you need a medic? Or is your ego just bruised?" She asked making light of a possibly very grim situation. She couldn't see anything but she would let the patient describe if anything was going on. "Did the rounds make it through?" She asked again she was playing twenty questions and expecting answers.

Jan looked from the floor, coughing as he smirked.
Those were 5.7mm rounds, modernized Russian from that GSH...and I am still breathing. Shattered the outer composite, but I'm okay." He said, looking at the piece of carbon fibre coating that covered a small metallic-looking piece of plate, which underneath sat the main dragonskin layer. The Wilk had saved his life- it was right over his heart, and while there was still a good layer of Dragonskin left, he had stared death in the eye, had he pulled the trigger. Looking over at the VDV officer, Jan got back up, taking Alec's assistance, as he looked around.

"This place couldn't wipe out our task force. But it could do damage. Something tells me that this place was too low profile for a reason, and why VDV was here will be explained. We need to look for intel." He added, as the radio crisply crackled.
"Charges set, Warrant Officer. " He heard, as he chuckled, walking out of the container, looking over at the two launchers, and Majakowska, around 5"7 and significantly berated from here and there for it. She was short, but made up for it with a good charisma, and as the team's explosives specialist, herself armed with an MSBS Marksman variant, with an extended barrel and a bipod, still firing the same 6.5mm cartridge like most of the team, then looking inside.
"Detonate it." He added, aware that this could be quite a bang. As the others bundled inside, Majakowska called it out.
"Firing in three, two, one!" She added, as the launchers were detonated, the warheads inside also adding to the boom, as it shook dirt and dust all over, the position inside the command post a little safer and out of the direct shockwave of the blast.

"Clear." She said, the two launchers out of commission, as Jan looked back inside, and at the officer's cold dead body, The Karambit had gone right through him, whatever armor he wore on his exoskeleton couldn't stop the sharpened blade ending his life. He looked on him, for identification.
"He's from the 1065th VDV Independent Battalion, part of the overall 92nd VDV Guards Division. Service history, Eastern Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, all in the last thirty years. He's probably served in the latter two, seems a little older than I do, perhaps they decided he needed an interesting posting. And sent him here, with this section." He said, looking over, then at a table nearby, with a holographic display. He lifted the screen up, looking over it, as he read the Cyrillic. This was unencrypted. Holy shit. This was an easy tap in, with what Jan knew of Cyberwarfare, a new drill that any reconnaissance or special forces operator would know. Cyberwarfare in itself had been decades old- but now, more than ever, frontline troops knew how to utilize it. It was no longer script kiddies that had to find backdoors and how to break security systems. Reconnaissance sometimes meant the virtual frontier, not the back lines. Maybe he wasn't as good. But you had aggressive data entry, where perhaps a hacker thousands of miles away wouldn't be able to probe your problem in your hands. And this was a simple job, as he checked his comms.
"Aegis, do you copy? This is 1st Squad, Blyskawica Detachment, we've got a HQ command terminal here. Data looks incredibly like this VDV force was a first repsonder unit for an assault of sorts, I'm sending what we have here. It is appears to be a weak link into a command structure in the area, it's pinging up enemy concentrations and force sizes over the wider Masovia Area. I'm seeing a network of VDV squads, and un-named units, no actual CSTO forces apart from that...though it seems they're massing on the border. No doubt they're ready to move in once they take key installations...but now we know their next moves, and where they have no cover. We can pick our landing sites for Aegis where they have their shadows, and fight back. Haha, these fuckers really left it open." Jan said, looking through, somehow feeling good aware that they now had a widesweeping intel in the area, about enemy forces and what to do with the landings. Now, they could get the show on the road- and Aegis could now easily tap local intel that Jan couldn't crack, finding out even more specifics than he found. It was a way in. And this terminal had been the doorway in, a stupid mistake that had been made in the cock-sure nature of the VDV team here. They were so certain that all Polish forces were routing, that this one Captain had left the system open. Now, it was that mistake which would perhaps free his country faster. Vacate the CSTO soldiers and militants, bring about peace and end this conflict, once and for all. Defectors and cowards would run, back into CSTO, and those bastards would not return, not in this state of affairs, he thought to himself.
"Well, well. Ivan just made a big mistake."

Since their initial deployment, General Rinehart's recon and intelligence assets had been relaying him small tidbits of information, but it wasn't until Warrant Officer Jan Adamczyk and his team sent him the data from the terminal they had secured that he finally was able to grasp the full scale of the other side's plans. Not only would they be invading Poland, but additional forces were also being relocated to launch major offensives all across the European theater. In due time, shortly after taking Poland, everywhere from Norway to Turkey would soon be faced with either bending to CSTO's will or risk fighting the combined forces of Eastern Europe. All of this hinged on the fact NATO had failed to effectively step in during the Polish rebellion and that a sort of domino effect would occur throughout the continent. This, of course, was something General Rinehart was not going to let happen.

Looking over a map detailing enemy troop positions and movement, Rinehart ordered for the insertion of five reinforced line companies of the Task Force. Two of these companies, Alpha and Bravo, would be deploying straight into the city of Bialystok. It was there that the bulk of a primarily Russian army was gathering to push towards Warsaw and crush the now scattered Polish military, who were either preoccupied responding to rebel attacks in other regions of Poland or taking heavy casualties fighting mech-augmented rebels. If Alpha and Bravo company could hit the army fast and hard enough, they could buy the Poles precious time to regroup. The other three companies, Charlie, Delta and Echo, would be landing around the capital itself. This was to halt the assault that was already taking place and to establish a line of defense in the event that Alpha and Bravo company failed to complete their objective. The rest of Task Force Aegis would remain on standby on the station in reserve.

"Scramble some dropships and start relocating our recon teams to the frontlines as well." The General added to his last order.

"All Hard Knocks Personal to the hangar, Ground troops board the Patton and wait until touch down to disembark, I repeat all troops to Patton" Knight spoke from his helmet. As the walker was moved into the hangar. They would be joining Alpha Company, as the infantry troops from the 8th sat aboard waiting for the Hard Knocks team themselves to arrive Knight decided to wait in the cockpit. He walked past the troops and into his nerve center of the Patton engaging his frontal screen he yawned, then engaged the coffee marker he jury-rigged into the dashboard of the Patton. He still worried the techs would find out and yell at him for it's installment but he didn't care, he was gonna need to be awake for this.

Alexander Hercules Jaegers jogged down the hallways and through the passageways of the space station Independence. He made his way to the armory where his gear was stored, along with the gear of the rest of his squad. He was running a few minutes behind from the rest of them due to his slow pace he set earlier. Now that they had a significant head start, Jaegers decided to pick up the pace so as to not be too late to the hangar. He was always the last one into the hanger; it was a sort of tradition that Jaegers make sure that everyone was prepared before he was. The First Lieutenant rounded the corner to the hallway where the armory was located. Sure enough, there it was: a large metal door, currently propped open to allow for easier entry. On any normal day, one would have to use the hand scanner on the left of the door’s frame to open the armory. But during the time between a combat drop being announced and the actual drop, they left it open. Inside, a number of commissioned officers serving as mech pilots were putting on their individual sets of gear given to them by their respective countries’ militaries. Alexander found his specific locker, halfway between the door and the back wall, on the left most side of the room. He put his hand against the locker’s print scanner. The device beeped after a few moments, and the locker opened. Alexander quickly stripped out of his flight simulator gear and into his TAP suit. Slipping his helmet on last, Jaegers synced up the helmet’s HUD with the rest of the armor. He then reached his hand inside the locker and removed his primary firearm, an MP series Personal Defense Weapon. Alex flipped a switch under the sights on the weapon, and they retracted into a position where they wouldn’t get in the way. After that, he clicked on the wireless connector between his helmet and his gun. Once that was finished, Alexander did the same for his silenced fully automatic pistol.

Finally, after attaching his knife to his belt, First Lieutenant Jaeger was ready to get a move on. He left the armory with haste, moving toward the mech bay to meet up with the rest of his platoon. It was maybe a ten to twenty minute jog towards the hangar his team was operating out of. Alex entered the hangar, the large double doors leading inside retracting out of the way to allow Alexander entry. Other people who had been traveling down the same hall into the same hangar as Alex began to split off towards their various platoon clusters. Upon reaching his team, Alexander shouted: “Attention!” The five pilots snapped into an attention position, arms at their sides and feet together.”We’ve been assigned to Bravo company. We will be providing danger close support for infantry, while also working with other mechanized units to engage the enemy. Reports say that we’ll be combating a mostly Russian force, so you’ll need to all be on top of your game; these aren’t amateurs we’ll be fighting. The Russian paratroopers won’t hesitate, so neither should you. We’ll be hitting ‘em hard and fast, to allow Polish troops time to regroup at Warsaw. That’s all I know, currently. Get into your mechs and start ‘em up, boys. We’ve got work to do. Dismissed!” The ethnically diverse group split off and headed for their various mechanized combat vehicles. Alexander made his way to the Liberator, which was currently equipped with digital urban camo, as were the rest of the platoon’s mechs. The Canadian pilot climbed up the ladder to the platform his mech was attached to, and from there stooped into the mech’s cockpit from the heavily reinforced door on the back of the mech. From there he initiated the startup. As the suit powered up, Alexander prepared himself for combat the way he always did.

“I've got the reach and the teeth of a killin’ machine, with a need to bleed you when the light goes green..” Jaegers began to mumble as he did his pre-drop exercises. He tested his weapons, systems, and hydraulics. Once he was sure that his Liberator was in working order, Jaegers stepped away from his platform and into the center of the hangar. The rest of his platoon soon followed. The six mechs began to move in formation at marching pace towards the end of the hangar. The mechs entered a large depressurized area, walled off from the rest of the hangar, meant specifically for air dropping mechanized armored units into combat zones. The room’s airlock opened up, and the mechs began to run out of it one by one. Jaegers was the first one out.”Banzi!” He cried with a laugh as he found himself hurtling out of the space station and being shot down towards the planet, the Mattis’ Temporary Entry Pack allowing it to leave the vacuum of space and enter the atmosphere of the planet.

While Alex may appear, on the outside, as completely together, he most certainly was not. There was a single thought that resonated through his mind as he fell out of the sky:

I’m going to kill a man today.

Dylan piloted his mech rose into the hangar. He had her 25mm assault rifle slung over her shoulder and he was spinning an oversized combat knife in its hand. He strutted over to stand beside the patton and used his comlink to radio it.

"Patton this is HK mech Rose with your escort for the day. If you look to your left youll see a lean, mean, combat killing machine. If you look to your right youll see a wall. Finally if you look straight ahead youll see the hangar doors opening for an enormous orbital drop. Well everyones gotta die sometimes and I figure this day Is as good as any eh boss?"

Captain Locklear made his way to the hangar after the call. His shotgun clung to his back as he walked into the hangar. The younger pilot was settled in his mech as Ben hopped onto the Patton. He heard the kid's comment and furrowed his eyebrows.

"I don't intend to die any day soon. I hope you don't either."

Locks' heavy voice resonated through the comlink. He took a seat and waited for landing while doing a secondary check of his equipment.

"Aegis Command, how copy? My squad needs an extraction from our specified grid ref, things are getting heated here!" Jan exclaimed over the comms, as he moved back outside, the daylight fully cracking through as the noise of artillery munitions and hell raining down could be heard. He boosted up to a rooftop, barely standing, and engaged his laser designator, as his fireteam held the southern end of the village, looking over.
"Alec, Amy, grab what you can of the Russian supplies and help the defense! Aegis, we need a tungsten strike south of our position, marked with IR laser, hit it danger close! We've got more fucking militants than we can handle!" He added, as Malinka led the others, around a rudimental barricade into the town, around the bus they had used earlier. They weren't armed with Exoskeletons, but they were plenty in number, and one man was already injured in the squad. There was a lot more of them, and they needed an orbital strike, as well as CAS from the transport squadrons, to get them out of there.

Just as the designator completed it's lase, the building Jan was on just collapsed, the reason why it subsided totally unknown to Jan, as he fell with the rubble. A tank round had hit- it was the last thought that Jan had before he crashed down onto the remnants of the first floor, coughing as he looked around. Throwing a piece of rubble of himself, he swore in Polish, before jumping off the building, before it entirely collapsed and subsided.
"I am one lucky motherfucker..." Jan said, as the radio burst open.
"Jan, we've got Mechs moving on our northern perimeter, seem like outdated Russian kit, militant operated. They'll cut us to pieces if they get any closer!" Malinka yelled, as Jan shook his head, aware that they had nothing to deal with it. The AT launchers were dead, and it was better that than them being salvaged again. But now, it wasn't going to do them any good.
"Shit, get Duda to find some man-portable Anti-Mech equipment, guided preferably, and send Amy with him to help. They're going to flood us otherwise." Jan added, moving up to her position, where the rest of the fireteam was. Shooting a pair of movers from the forest they had just been in, he was forced back into cover, as 40mm grenades saturated the air, airburst rounds coming in but not on target, as Jan looked over, firing rounds blindly. They'd last another five minutes, at best, unless they were pulled out or had so much munitions dropped on them it would turn the surrounding area a charred black.

In orbit, Independence Station, 10 minutes beforehand
Two hatches opened along the outer edges of the station, both some distance from the other. Out one came a gunship; out the other, a dropship. Both were matched in speed, while the dropship had better armor, the gunship had better handling and maneuverability. Both were dispatched to go act as support, for evac and strikes. While the twins piloting them both had never seen live combat before, they sure were ready for something, being young and rash.

"This is First Ell-tee Hellingsworth, gunship, callsign Phoenix. Reporting for duty, ladies and gentlemen, a nice buzz-run in about ten minutes, hold on tight and prep all enemy targets for a cut off the top. How you guys doin' down there?"
Right after Alvin finished, his brother Spencer cut in, saying, "And the other one, dropship Hellingsworth! Callsign Wendigo, moving for evac. Sit tight people, Phoenix'll buzz 'em and I'll come on down!"

Both craft gently slid out of their docking ports, which were one-way, and slowly flipped themselves to face their bellies to the planet, and fired a few more RCS jets to get them moving. No sound could be heard, nor made. In the deathly, unearthly silence and stillness, twin brothers watched their descent, breath caught in their throat. So high up, the planet wasn't the horrible, dreadful place it was. There was no poverty, no rich from so high. It was just a great, big, shining planet of unmatched, unparalleled beauty and grace.

Then they entered the atmosphere and everything turned hell-ish red. They dropped like a rock, and both of the brothers had their eyes crammed shut, silently freaking out at the re-entry. In this, they were twins, because they were both terrified of the thought of not even dying on Earth, of burning up in the atmosphere. Once they were through, though, and the friction settled to a less heated ordeal, they re-assumed command, and descended rapidly.

A dropship full of [NPC] infiltrators for intelligence deeper into Russian territory, and a gunship ready to blitz some walkers. The gunship guarded the dropship all the way; the infiltrators were first priority, recon second. They landed some distance out of the city, coming down for a quick stop to let off the seven infiltrators, who sprinted away from the dropship and rapidly disappeared, and then rose again. As they did so, a warning started blaring its speakers, calling for attention to two small streams of white smoke rising towards the two heaven-bound VTOLs. Both began to weave around each other, while firing off flares, to confuse their heat signatures, and as the missiles neared, they broke their small formation and dipped towards the ground in opposite directions. Their formation had worked, for the most part; both of the missiles had instead targeted the gunship. Finding that the gunship was safe, and rapidly circled around and away to complete the next objective, Mr. Alvin Hellingsworth was faced with his first real combat situation. With two missiles rapidly closing, and a city on his right, he decided to, well, blitz it.

Half a minute later
Two Russian unmarked soldiers talked idly while waiting for orders, both sitting in a building's 2nd floor corner, looking over an intersection between two commercial lanes. Neither were very excited- oh yay, invading more people. They drew guard duty. They were sitting there, playing cards, talking about the 9-foot-tall mech of unnamed specifications, when a low thrumming noise rapidly grew in their ears. They had heard and seen the missile launch, just an intersection down, closer to the edge of the city, and didn't really care much: they couldn't see what was happening.

As Russian #2 pulled out his water canteen for a drink, and the thrumming noise grew to a new pitch, Russian #1 called out from the window. The mech in the intersection turned around to see a medium-sized aircraft coming in quite fast. That was because it was made to be more jet-like than other gunships- if it came down from orbit, they wanted it to handle the speed better, while still provide VTOL capabilities. Expensive stuff. Anyways, the mech swung around and stood, stunned for a moment, as a flash of light erupted from the lower nose of the VTOL's body, tearing into the portable AA system [who was still reloading its missiles from a nearby truck]. The rounds from the truck-sized gatling cannons could not individually destroy any armor, but hundreds of them in rapid succession could.

The AA vehicle was torn in half, one of its tires being torn and thrown violently off as the gas tank was hit, resulting in it bursting. Combined with a missile being hit at almost the same time, the middle section was torn apart in a rather dramatic explosion as the other two halves of the AA vehicle were tossed aside. The VTOL swooped overhead, unknowingly getting a scrap of metal stuck in an exhaust vent, which would later come into play, and clipped the top of the slowly-disappating explosion. As it began slowing down, it angled up, much to the mech pilot's surprise, and began firing loads of flares. Three hatches opened and collectively shot out about three dozen flares. Moments later, the two missiles appeared, flipping out because they just got scrambled by flares, explosives, and special systems inside the gunship.

One missile shot up on a twitchy course; the other decided to interrupt #2's session of oh-my-God-I-just-wanted-a-drink -ness. The mech pilot stood there for a bit, a little shocked at the arm to his buddy being draped over one of his cameras.

The gunship to cause all this flew away, lower over the edge of the city, occasionally buzzing any kind of fortified position, eventually leading to a couple holes in his wing and his ambition suitably chastened.

Some distance away, the dropship circled over the general area of the recon units, requesting, "All recon units, this is Wendigo, ready for evac, pop smoke and wait for a buzz run, and I'll drop right in. Phoenix is en route."