Chapter Text
“Transmitting final briefing.”
The operator’s voice ran throughout the drop pod.
“As of now, Airborne Squad 7 will exterminate the Alpha Naytibas occupying District 3.”
Helia wasn’t nervous. This is what she was born to do.
“Their objective is the capture or dispatchment of the Elder Naytiba.”
All she had to do was make it to the ground and regroup with her squad. There’s no way Eve or Tachy could get killed by any Naytiba. Ever since they had all started training, they’d been almost untouchable. It was even hard for Helia to keep up with them.
“Pods entering atmosphere.”
The dropships opened their rear flaps as they descended, in order to slow their descent. Helia's thoughts drifted to Tachy and Eve again, a flicker of worry passing through her mind before being snuffed out.
“One minute until threshold is reached.”
Okay, maybe she was a bit nervous, it was a big deal going down to earth. They’re leaving the Colony NETWORK, they’d be on their own; in addition to the fact that none of the other Airborne Squadrons had succeeded yet which probably meant they all died, as much as she didn’t want to believe it. May their memories live on... forever.
“The threshold has been surpassed. Activating shield.”
That meant they were going lower into the atmosphere. They should be fine for a little while, Helia doubts Naytibas could reach them this high in the atmosphere. Unbeknownst to her, they were very much in range.
Racing towards the dropships are several blasts from the surface, breaking apart into a shower of spiraling blasts once they get close enough. The shield protects the frontal blasts, but since the blasts spiral, they avoid the shield, hitting the first dropship in the rear flaps, making it lose its steering capabilities and turn on its side. The other blasts split off into spirals, hitting the other ships. In less than a minute, all five dropships are under fire and taking critical damage.
“Code red. Code red.”
The operator’s voice blares across all dropships, the landing mission already going terribly and they haven’t even landed yet. Helia braced inside Dropship 4, just as another blast tore through their flank. In less than a second, the dropship plunges into a nose dive, losing altitude rapidly. The dropship that had been turned on its side takes on another swarm of blasts, ripping it in half. Another dropship pushes straight through the two pieces, getting scraped on the side as it goes.
“All available droppods will be ejected according to Protocol B32”
All of the four remaining dropships opened their sides, beginning to eject all of their droppods. The dropship that pushed through the two halves barely gets all of them before it takes a direct blast, blowing up in a massive explosion. Helia’s droppod gets ejected just before the explosion, the explosion disorienting and messing up the trajectory, causing it to slam into the side of one of the dropship’s halves.
“Alert: steering systems have taken critical damage. Alert: navigation systems have taken critical damage.”
Inside the pod, Helia starts to panic. She isn’t even going to make it to the ground, she’s going to die before she even steps foot on earth. She looks over to the projected squad list and her heart drops. Her squad’s icons blinked out, the number of droppods plummeting by the second. Helia’s pod bucked hard. Propulsion failed, navigation fried. A controlled descent was no longer on the table.
“Alert: network systems have been destroyed.”
Outside the pod, a chunk is smashed from its crash into the dropship. Inside, the list of droppods disappears entirely.
“No!” Helia cried, slamming her fist into the side of the pod. The screen went dark. No squad. No NETWORK. No mission, only the sky and the crash waiting below.
They had all trained for years, going through hundreds upon hundreds of simulations and training exercises. Helia herself probably did well over a thousand training simulations herself in order to keep up with Tachy and Eve, but none of them had prepared her for this. None of them had ended with her squad being erased before they could even touch dirt. Her hands start to shake against her will, panic setting in with full force.
Helia’s pod continues to go off in a random direction, whereas the rest of the squadron continue on to their preplanned landing point. As she plummeted wildly, her mind trails off, back to the Colony, back to when it was just her, Eve, and Tachy, how simpler it was back then. In an instant, she’s pulled back to reality, to the fact that she’s never going to see them again.
“Alert: landing mechanism damaged. Alert: brace for impact.”
The mechanism that would slow the pod’s impact was partly destroyed, so the crash landing wouldn’t be gentle. The fan blades spun as fast as they could, but it wasn’t enough to slow it to a manageable speed.
The droppod bucked violently, slamming Helia into her restraints, biting into her shoulders. Outside, the wind was howling like a wild beast, shrieking against the fractured hull. Inside, sparks began to burst from the overhead wiring as each of the pod’s systems failed.
One of Helia’s hands gripped her restraints, while the other desperately tried to get the console to work again. The console flashed red a few times before ultimately going dark. She meant to try again, but it was then that it happened.
Impact.
The pod landed like a meteor, slamming into the ground. Everything lurched. The hull of the droppod crumpled in, a deafening crunch being the last thing Helia heard before her vision went white. The metal folded under the force of the impact. The pod bounced after impact, then skidding against the landscape, leaving a trail of fire and wreckage. At the same time, Helia’s harness breaks, her body slamming against the side of the pod before everything goes dark for her. The pod spun twice before finally grinding to a halt, the hole in the hull skyward, allowing dirt, sand, and ash to blow in freely. Helia lay blacked out on the floor of the droppod, battered badly, but not broken. She was still alive, against all odds.
The wreckage starts to smoke, the damage igniting a small fire near the booster. When Helia comes to, she has no idea how long it's been. She awoke to silence. A deep, suffocating silence, thick with heat, dust, and pain. Her body was a map of aches and pain. Each breath tasted like scorched copper and plastic fumes. Her eyelids peeled open, revealing the fractured interior of the pod lit dimly by a smoldering circuit panel.
Her ears rang. A shrill, ghostlike whine. She tried to speak, but all that came out was a dry rasp. Her fingers twitched against broken metal. The floor trembled faintly, or maybe it was her nerves. Slowly, she turned her head. Every motion sent a fresh wave of nausea crashing over her. The console was melted slag. The restraints were torn. A section of the pod wall had split wide open like a crushed tin can. She coughed. Tried to move. Failed. It took a long time, seconds that felt like hours, but she finally got to her knees. The pod around her smelled like burnt ozone and dust. Her own blood left a copper tang in her mouth. She gripped the edge of the torn hull and pulled herself up. What waited for her was worse than the pain. Much… much worse.
Desert. Nothing but desert in every direction. She didn’t just miss the landing zone, she wasn’t anywhere near it. And worst of all, she didn’t see any other droppods. She was all alone, stranded in a desert, injured and afraid.
She stayed frozen, half-slumped against the wall of the pod, her breathing uneven, shallow. Her throat burned; not just from the impact, but from the rising realization that no one was coming. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
Her hands clenched into fists, trembling. She squeezed her eyes shut. The pain in her chest tightened, not from injury, but from the grief threatening to burst. The squad was supposed to land together. Rendezvous and Conquer. That was the plan. They had always had a plan, that's why Tachy led the 7th Airborne Squadron. They’d planned on seeing the Earth together.
Now Helia was here, seeing it alone. She didn’t feel like a soldier. She felt like a child who had woken up and realized she’d been left behind. She didn’t cry. Not really. But her eyes stung anyway.
In this moment of panic, Helia tries her comms, trying to contact anybody on the Airborne Squadron channel. Further cementing her panic, nobody answers, which means either she’s out of range… or there’s nobody left to answer.
She lowers herself back down into the pod, taking the moment to calm down. Unfortunately, her mind doesn’t listen to her. As she sits there, unmoving, staring at the floor, a million possibilities fill her mind: Did the others make it? Did Tachy make it? Did Eve? Were they waiting for her? Was she the only one left?
She closes her eyes, tightly.
No. Not now.
Helia reaches over to the first aid compartment, reaching in to grab what came with the pod. A rechargeable tumbler that standardly held 3 charges… 3 charges, that's all she had. Looking over herself, she assessed her injuries as best she could. There were no open wounds, which was good. The only blood on her was from her mouth. On the flipside, that meant her injuries were internal, which was ultimately worse. Weighing her options, she decides to take one of the charges to stabilize herself to a manageable state. Internal injuries couldn’t be overlooked, especially since she was alone.
Forcing herself to stand, she grits through the pain. While her overall condition was improved, it didn’t make the pain any easier. Slowly, she climbs out of the pod, standing on the sand of the desert. Now out of the pod, her body changes, her dark blue, skin tight nanosuit overtaking her skin suit. Her hair, once knocked free, was now fixed in a neat bun. Her hands now donned a pair of dark blue elbow gloves. At her neck, Helia’s sword lays dormant in its necklace state, condensed down into a necklace of technology. She had designed it to be similar to Eve’s sword in the way hers condenses down into a hair clip.
Helia sat at the edge of the pod for a long time, watching the dust blow. The sword around her neck remained dormant. It pulsed faintly every few seconds, akin to a heartbeat. It was a quiet reminder that she was still a soldier. That the mission still mattered. But the soldier part of her was bruised, buried under layers of doubt and grief. She didn’t know if she should cry, she didn’t know if she was allowed. Her thoughts returned to Tachy and Eve. She wanted to believe they were alive. She needed to believe that.
Although with a new appearance, her wounds were still present, so she slowly began to walk away from the pod before pausing, a thought creeping in: what if the others could track her pod? She turned back to the pod, eyes lingering on the open hole. If they were alive, if Eve was alive, wouldn’t she look for Helia’s pod? Maybe she should stay here. Let her squad find her. But… No. The fire still smoldered near the booster. The smoke wouldn’t stay invisible forever. If there were Naytibas in the region, they’d spot it first. And besides, staying put was surrender. She steeled herself and stayed with her decision. That led her to her second problem. She had no idea where to go. Once again, it's nothing but sand everywhere. Doubt creeps into her mind. What if she chooses the wrong direction? What if she gets stuck out here? What if she dies out here?
Helia had to ground herself again, this time using Eve as her anchor. Eve would know what to do, so what would Eve do? She’d use her senses and her intelligence to pick a direction. Doing the same thing, she chooses to go the direction where the drop pod came from. Following the trail of wreckage, she starts her journey, since that's what Eve and Tachy would do. The mission wasn’t over yet, she hadn’t failed yet.
Walking away, her heels sank into the sand with each step. Behind her, the pod slowly vanished behind a rising dune.
Now, she truly was alone.
Or so she believed.