“Miss Chans!” Major Brinks yelled over the tactical sub channel. “Please stop struggling! I have to give this my entire attention.”

Her struggles instantly died down, the young woman going limp in her suit as the fear of what might happen overrode the fear of what was happening.

The major thanked whatever god watched over lunatics as he examined the HUD system overlaying his visor. He could see the landing zone (LZ) lit up in green with colored concentric circles surrounding it. Yellow for a close drop, orange for a long walk. Red indicated a distance that would prevent him from being a factor in the coming battle and was a position to be avoided since his team would be relying on every combat hand they could get. He was fairly confident that he could hit the inner green dot.

The gravity of the planet had quickly caught them in an irrevocable tug as Brinks adjusted his trajectory with slight puffs from the manned maneuvering unit, or MMU system, he had attached to his backpack.

An observer on the planet’s surface would have had a very interesting sight on that chilly predawn morning. Earlier, great glowing orbs had sliced through the cold atmosphere, heating up the earth where they passed close on their approach to the great city. An attentive observer would have been able to hear the explosions and screams that marked the passage of those first orbs of blazing light.

But now there were new players in the predawn sky. Twenty-one separate points of light appeared, moving against the dimming starscape, organized into seven groups of three. Lights that quickly brightened to a nova-like intensity as they plummeted to earth, friction and heat buildup bleeding off of them in a trail of flame that stretched to the heavens.

The ablative outer three layers of their armored suits bled off first, leaving fiery trails of light behind each of the soldiers as they drifted together.

When that was gone, the inner armor began to heat up and glow as the heat friction continued to build, but the material held and the heat merely fed the thermocouples that shunted the extra juice to the suit’s capacitors.

As the old Earth saying, and new Earth motto, went…

“Waste not, want not.”

In the Mons Systema command and control center, the local activity had jumped up a hundredfold as men and women rushed around, tracking the incoming objects and trying to rally support to their landing zones.

“There’s a Drasin lander coming in over the city center!”

“Satellite defenses ineffective!”

“Admiral! The unidentified ship has launched a shuttle.”

Tanner spun in his chair, glaring at the last speaker. “Where?”

“Entering polar orbit now, sir,” the bewildered tech said, looking up. “Four of the landers have been destroyed, along with their fighter complements.”

“Congratulate the gunners…”

“It wasn’t us,” the tech said, shaking his head.