Asteroid Blues

The troop transport ship shook as it started its landing protocol. Inside the belly of the large Ariadnan ship, the 7th Ranger Battalion known as the Deadwood Rangers tried to make themselves comfortable in their crammed quarters. They had been pulled from the outskirts of Deadwood. Extremely efficient with the wild Antipode packs on Dawn, they had been tasked to join the battle on the asteroid. Most of them slept in the large transport bay. Few of the troops played cards, handheld video games and even a few of them watched video screens. Some watched maya, some watched movie, and even one was reading a book.

Their commander, Captain Lowell Bullock was reviewing the orders and mission packets on his video screen. A small red message popped up on the lower left hand part of the screen but he quickly acknowledged it and replied. He took a second to look at his troops. Slowly scanning his troops a nice mix of rangers, he took a deep breath before releasing his harness to stand up in the confined area.

"Ladies and gents," he said in his normal voice. He was not a yelling leader and his troops knew even when he spoke quietly he spoke with intent. "We are preparing to enter a large scale skirmish that will decide the fate of the human sphere. This is no antipode mission in the wild that we are all way too familiar, but instead we will face the best of the best of the human sphere. Different faction, armies and maybe even some of the combined army," he stated. All of his troops had come to and listened to each word.

A young Marauder took a moment to speak, "We ain't scared of them aliens! We have all seen worse on Dawn!" The rest of his young troops agreed and began to murmur with a sense of arrogance and pride. Lowell took a moment to think to himself this is what he was afraid of, big shots in the frontier and overly cocky with the rest of the human sphere.

"RANGERS!" Lowell's voice raised with a level of concern. He was not yelling but needed to raise the volume of his voice to make sure he silenced each and every ranger in the compartment. "From the moment you walk off this transport, you need to be ready for anything and everything," he said sharply.

The speaker in the compartment came to life, "Captain, please be seated we are entering Novvy Bangkok."

The landing was smooth. Once unloaded, he took a small number of troops to start heading the Xaraks Battery. When they got to the Liberty Cargo Spaceport, the first shot rang out.

The battle was over and the USARF troops were in rough shape. Captain Bullock, cleared himself of the glue the Yuan Yaun had used to cover him up. His troops watched as he approached the leader of the Ikari force, shake hands and hand him a large chunk of tessium. "Many thanks, my team knows how to handle the enemies on Dawn, but we haven't seen the horrors of the human sphere. It is double the payment, because we need to do it again to make sure we are ready for the evil of the combined army," Bullock said. The leaders nodded and turned to each of their own forces.

"Rangers, regroup, we do it again!"

Many thanks to my opponent for the awesome game. Check out his awesome youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgcI8DV2XABZdd4RJaiYPxQ