The buffeting was instantaneous and punishing. He heard the grunts from Sam and Casey. Alex had done this many times, and he was well aware of what the high velocity turbulence could do to muscle and bone. The suits would insulate them from most traumas, but still, it was like being beaten with a hundred baseball bats.

“Still coming in too hot, boss.” Sam’s voice was tight as he probably gritted his teeth through the beating he was taking.

Time to throw out the anchors, Alex thought, and then: please work. A lot of the HAWC kit was experimental, and they got to field test some cool stuff. Most of the time it worked just fine.

“Fire ’em up.” They each started their thruster packs. One after the other, the turbines began whining to life, and Alex breathed a sigh of relief. Vents opened, front and rear, and air was grabbed, compressed, and then blasted out. The packs were not strong enough for actual flight, but could hold a single passenger’s weight just long enough to give them a soft landing – or at least that was the plan. Sam wasn’t exactly your usual passenger’s weight, though.

At a thousand feet from the ground, the human missiles spun in the air and spread their arms out, their feet directed at the ground. The thruster’s bulb engines sitting over each shoulder started to get hot as they furiously vented the air behind and below them.

They slowed, and then the only problem became keeping upright for a perfect landing. Still, it would feel like jumping off a two-story building, so rocks were best avoided.

Alex and the team headed for a patch of hard-packed sand, just a mile away from the oasis town of Jurn. Alex came in first, landing hard with an audible thump and sinking to his ankles in the sand. He went down on one knee with one fist striking the ground like he’d been taught. He immediately straightened.

Two more thumps and then grunts around him told of his team landing close by. He turned in time to see the huge form of Sam Reid sunk in to his knees, and then dragging his trunk-like legs free to stand tall. If anyone were watching, they would have just seen three huge figures fly in and land.

The thruster engines whined down to nothing as they powered out, their batteries exhausted. Each of them then quickly shrugged off the winged machines that now glowed red from the heat. The dust swirled around them and then settled. On the eastern horizon, a hint of orange told of an approaching dawn. Alex clicked on his throat mic.

“All down; proceeding.”

He knew there would be no response. The information would be compressed, and then bounced off numerous satellites to Hammerson back home. The granite-faced man would read it, his face impassive, knowing the hard work was yet to come.