I woke up the next morning ready to start the day. We had the morning scout shift so I went to the mess hall to get some breakfast before leaving. I ate some of the bland tasting, sludge looking oatmeal for breakfast, as we didn't have much else. It tasted like a cheap hotel breakfast bar. I then went to get my armor. We do have our own personal armories in our rooms, but it is still easier to use the main ones. I found my armory locker and opened the door. there is a person-shaped hole in the wall to step into and get your armor put on. I stepped back into the hole and the door closed. I heard the clicking of my armor snapping on, then the door opened and I stepped out. Having been the first time I used this, I was excited to see what Yalson thought of this. I also made a mental note to thank Buvin for making the new armory system. I checked to make sure there were no malfunctions, and when I was sure there weren't any, I stepped out and walked to the Land Deployment Pod (LDP) section. We had land deployment pods since - unlike the other surges - we had no access to standard teleporters. I met up with Narchean and Buvin at the launch bay. Buvin was wearing grey dirt and sand weathered armor under a grey cloak. For his face, he had a tan armored mask over his mouth and chin with heads-up display (HUD) glasses, like a curved piece of glass that was also a screen. He also had a brown scarf which held great value to him, as it was the only thing he has left from his childhood. Narchean, as usual, was wearing his exosuit, it's sleek black armor with just a hint of shine. He was very proud of it. When I first met Narchean he had no armor besides a helmet. He has built it up over the years since then, from various parts he found. His helmet is a sort of pointy raindrop shape with an oval purple visor. We had never seen his face, even when he ate he just made the visor not solid. It was basically a part of his body by this point. I assume he wore it so people couldn't tell what he was thinking or his emotions. Besides his purple visor, the only colors of his armor are black for his body armor and two gold forearm armor pieces. Most of this armor was hidden under a grey cloak. With us all here - Yalson wasn't coming this time - we began to talk battle strategies.
We currently just needed to get an idea of where invading troops were so each of us would lead a scouting party of three and meet back at the extraction point after twenty minutes. We had heard stories before of the Armored Angles, a nomadic group with high activity centered around the area where we would be scouting. Buvin had met them before and was confident in our abilities to deal with them if necessary.
When Buvin met the Armored Angels he had been running from the destruction of the Green colony. He was part of the third generation to be born on Vastitus. The original colonists of Vastitus had all come down in colony ships, Red, Green, and blue. This was because RGB things can make any color, and made it easy to communicate with other nearby planets using color codes. But eventually the society started to fall apart, first there would be communication outages between colonies, then fighting, people couldn't get access to resources and started going crazy. We still aren't quite sure who started the fighting, maybe everyone, but once it started there was no stopping it. Then the day came when a new leader rose to power within the red surge, rather than just small skirmishes and threats he decided to take the land and lives from another surge. That is when green surge's fate was sealed, the most peaceful, and weakest of the original colonies. It only took one night for the defenses to be brought down, and by morning, there was nothing left except for smoke, rubble and bodies. Only the toughest and luckiest survived. Buvin was definitely both: he had sat completely silent, trapped under a collapsed building with a steel beam through his leg all night until the destruction was over. When he uncovered himself, he was the only one inside the main city, so he built himself a leg brace to be able to walk. And then we met him, much later but still with a limp, when he came in the middle of a sandstorm knocking on the bunker door. Although he may argue or want it to be true Buvin depends much on us and his tools, or maybe we are tools to him (but I would like to think that is not true). But to Buvin's relief, the dependency on each other is mutual.
So we stood in silence for a moment, all thinking of what to say, I could hear the soft and rhythmic thrumming of the ship's engines, as well as the loud and slightly concerning creaking of the metal. From the sounds, it seemed that we might just be in a garbage can that had been flung across the sky.
Then, since we couldn't think of much to say, as if nothing had happened, we started moving again. We then got in our pods and secured ourselves.
"Ready?" Narchean asked. I clicked my confirmation switch to green, and Buvin's light clicked on as well. "All right then," Narchean said, "let's go."
There was a click and suddenly we dropped.
We were falling rapidly. At the 30 second mark, I flipped on the power for the comms and radar. I looked at the map, realizing that I forgot to turn it on. I flipped the switch on and took a quick look at the barren landscape.
"Probably nothing down there" I muttered, mostly to myself.
I don't know how Narchean heard it, but of course, he did.
"Never hurts to be careful, but Jaku this is just an equipment test."
The LDPs where not actually pods but in reality just a chair with a forcefield on the bottom and a display screen. You could make small adjustments to your course with thrusters on the side. The LDPs were also designed to fold up into backpacks on the ground, providing a shield for your back and quick movement with the thrusters. I would also be testing my new pistols in real combat if I got the chance.
As I hit the atmosphere I could see the flames moving around the shield, and it started to get uncomfortably hot. Luckily it started to cool down as we entered the stratosphere. At that point we decided to have some fun, disabling the shield and going into a freedive mode which meant controlling our fall with only the thrusters. It was an equipment test, so we had to put the shield back and test out the landing mechanisms. We landed and folded up the LDPs and got ready for anything we might find here.