Chapter 4

Sergeant Sandy was a professional career soldier. She was a no-nonsense woman that deployed to fight when she first became a citizen and never came home. She hadn’t stepped foot in Order space in over twenty years, moving from one deployment to the next, wreaking havoc on any enemy force the military fought.

Sandy was one of the finest warriors Command ever trained. She didn’t know why she was so jittery all of a sudden. Something was not right with this deployment. But she just couldn’t put her finger on it.

As the dropships descended, Sandy gripped her sniper rifle tighter.

Spirits carried into battle combat gear that allowed them to wield pretty much any kind of small arms weapon with lethal precision. Some weapons that normally were squad oriented, or at least required field set up, could be carried by a single Spirit and used as if it was a small pistol. Many Spirits used grenadier weapons, sniper rifles, or light machine guns that would have been awkward for a regular army grunt or civilian to use but were wielded with finesse on a Spirit.

Sandy used a semiautomatic sniper rifle as her primary weapon. She had a silenced automatic handgun for her secondary and a magnetic grenade launcher for attacking enemy armor.

She did one last check of her other two weapons before the dropship doors opened and the battle officially began. She heard the words of the others.

“Stick together!” Hannah called back.

Sandy wasn’t exactly a ‘stick together’ type but she would work with her fellow soldiers as best as she could. Hannah and the new guy were much more comrades in arms. Amad was the strong stoic leader. And Sandy was the solo assassin.

The doors opened and she was off.

Sandy dropped to the ground like the others. Sandy did not go into the facility with them, though. She activated her grappling hook and launched herself into the sky. She aimed for a crane and hurtled herself up and around the crane’s boom. At the apex of her trajectory, Sandy let go of the grapple. She timed her launch to neatly land her on the crane’s boom.

She surveyed the battlefield beneath her. Marines were already engaged at the center of the entrance where the main facility building was located. A formation of robotic soldiers were attempting to push them back. A Spirit rushed out of the lower roofed building in front of her beyond the base of the crane.

Sandy took aim with her sniper rifle. She aimed for the robotic soldiers in the back. Sandy went to aim down sights mode on her heads-up display. Her Spirit gear allowed her to instantly connect to the scope of her weapon. Armaments without a scope would go to the iron sights level. She put the crosshairs on one robot and fired.

At the pull of the trigger, the rifle’s hammer struck the primer on the back of the cartridge and sent the bullet flying out of the barrel. The muzzle brake at the end of the barrel caught the majority of the escaping gases and helped keep the rifle stable.

The bullet punched a hole into the target robot’s head and its electronics showered across the pavement.

Sandy kept up the bombardment, aiming at the next robot. Sandy hit its shoulder. It staggered and missed whatever it was trying to shoot at. The third round clipped its other shoulder and it was defeated.

Her fourth shot caused a robot’s head to explode. The fifth punched a hole through another robot’s face.

She finished emptying the magazine into the formation. Sandy reloaded, chambering the first of five bullets from the new magazine. She did not continue to attack the formation. The marines and the Spirit with them were mopping up the robots nicely. He looked to be wielding a Compact Assault Rifle, meaning this was most likely Yeshua. Noobs tended to pick up the CAR or other easy-to-use primary weapons like the Rmalite-301 automatic rifle and G-R-8 marksman rifle. Hannah was a veteran but she carried the Rmalite into battle.

Amad was a more advanced soldier and carried the Baseball, a drum-based heavy grenade launcher for his ‘primary’ weapon. Sandy used the VR-130, manufactured by Procyon Manufacturing Forge, a large orbital factory situated in the Procyon system.

The marines were going to be safe with Yeshua. Regular army grunts and their synthetic equivalents like the robots below her were no match for a Spirit. Spirits could take down a hundred soldiers without breaking a sweat, and over an extended battle, a thousand enemies could be dispatched. Even more taking into account respawns. A Spirit was a Category-5 Hurricane over an ocean of warm water. They were an unstoppable force of nature and once unleashed onto the battlefield, sowed a path of destruction.

Sandy holstered her rifle. She stood up and ran to the end of the crane and leapt off it, engaging her grappling hook to hit the main entrance building to her left. The hook grasped something solid and pulled the cable taut, her momentum carrying her to the left in a wide arc. Sandy landed on another crane boom, this one overlooking a shack on stilts and connected by a bridge.

She pulled out her rifle and crouched. She was looking down range at the far end of the facility’s entrance. A series of doors opened in the fall wall and a squad of robots jumped to the ground. Sandy wasted no time in getting a bead on them.

She pulled the trigger. One robot’s head exploded. The other four robots dived into low cover. They popped their heads out one by one attempting to engage whatever was shooting at them. Sandy blew their heads off as they tried to discern her presence. Within the space of ten seconds, all five were down.

Sandy adjusted her position on top of the crane’s boom. She rotated from facing the facility entrance’s back wall to the front of the facility. A squad of marines, different from the ones she and Yeshua helped earlier, was attempting to dislodge a force of robotic soldiers. Sandy estimated thirty robots. She got to work popping heads and taking names.

Like the first formation, Sandy’s job was to dispatch the backline. With their backs to her, Sandy took aim at the first robot, the one in the very rear of the formation, and the closest one to her. She aimed and popped its head off.

Some of the robots turned to face her. This took heat off the marines. Not as much as she would have liked, but every bit helped. Four robots engaged her crouching on top of the crane’s boom. Their return fire was inaccurate at best although a stray shot clipped her in the shoulder. She finished off the remaining robots with the rest of her magazine, even scoring a double kill with the last bullet.

Sandy pulled back from the edge of the boom and reloaded. She pulled the whole magazine from the rifle and tossed it away, pulling a fresh magazine from the ether. Sandy stuck the new magazine into the gaping opening underneath the rifle until she heard the audile click. She then reached over to the charging handle on the left side of the gun and grasped it with her left hand, pulling it back and chambering the top round. She was ready when she heard the clang.

While she was reloading, Sandy shifted her position from the end of the boom to the base of the boom. She peered out from this position and continued the onslaught.

The marines at the far end of the clearing were trying their best to deal with the robots advancing on their position. Sandy adjusted her aim to support them directly instead of try taking heat off them by attacking the rear portion of the formation. She targeted the robot furthest away and took its head clean off. Then she adjusted again and hit the body of another robot. The marines cleaned that kill up for her.

Sandy went through the magazine, taking another two robots to the dirt. She reloaded.