Landing Battle

"Boom!" The crashing dropship shattered into pieces upon impact, crushing another dropship that hadn't managed to take off in time—no telling if the marines inside had escaped.

"Whoosh… whoosh…""Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The battlefield was filled with the whistling sound of artillery shells cutting through the air and the deafening roar of explosions. Dropships descended one after another, deploying waves of mobile infantry onto the battlefield. However, some were destroyed mid-air before they could even land.

The carnage wasn't one-sided. The massive plasma-spewing bugs in the distance were taking heavy losses as well. Federation aircraft streaked across the sky, their energy cannons unleashing relentless barrages that tore the monstrous insects apart, sending green plasma-like blood and severed limbs flying in all directions.

"Follow me! Find cover!" Ryan waved his mechanical arm. As a battle-hardened veteran, he had a duty to guide the green recruits through their first taste of war. And the first step to surviving a battlefield was—well, staying alive.

"Thud!" Ryan leaped into a crater left by a plasma explosion. It wasn't exactly safe, but it was a hell of a lot better than being exposed in the open.

"Sh*t!" Ryan cursed under his breath as he instinctively reached for his back. Where his electromagnetic rifle should have been, he instead found a heavy load of rations.

D*mn it. Food was important, sure. But in a battlefield like this? A weapon was the only thing that could bring peace of mind.

"S-Squad leader… what do we do now?" The ones sticking closest to Ryan were, unsurprisingly, the kitchen crew. They were soft, round, and definitely not ideal warriors, but somehow, by sheer dumb luck, all of them had survived the landing and followed Ryan into the crater.

Aside from the cooks, Ryan counted four or five fresh recruits—real combat troops—but their pale, panic-stricken faces told him everything he needed to know. This was their first battle, and they were completely lost. Had they not stuck with Ryan, they'd probably already be bug food.

"We wait." Ryan remained calm. The initial phase of a landing operation was always chaos. Everything was a mess until the air support had sufficiently weakened the enemy, allowing the infantry to regroup and receive proper orders.

For now, staying alive was the only priority.

"But… but our orders were to secure the beachhead! If we just hide here, aren't we completely useless—"

"Boom!"

Before the young soldier could finish, a friendly airstrike obliterated an area not far from their crater. The explosion sent debris flying, burying the recruit under a layer of dirt and rocks.

Ryan smirked but said nothing. The kid would learn soon enough—charging ahead blindly would only get them killed.

At this stage, the Federation bombers were still pounding the battlefield. The pilots were too busy annihilating the bugs to worry about a few scattered infantrymen on the ground. Charging now? That was just asking to be caught in friendly fire.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!" The deafening explosions continued, and dirt rained down on them. But Ryan remained unfazed, peering over the edge of the crater, carefully assessing the battlefield.

"All mobile infantry, regroup at Z3 Hill immediately!"

The command flashed across their battlefield HUDs. Though Ryan was technically a cook, he was still part of the combat unit, so the order applied to him as well.

"Move out!"

In an instant, Ryan transformed. He had been crouched like a frightened rat, but now, with a surge of mechanical strength, he leaped from the crater, landing on solid ground. Keeping his profile low, he sprinted toward Z3 Hill.

"Stay close! Keep moving!"

The others followed suit.

Z3 Hill was about 1.5 kilometers away. Under normal training conditions, a fully equipped mobile infantry soldier should be able to cover the distance in under ten minutes. Thanks to their powered exoskeletons, even the cooks weren't entirely useless in a march.

But training was one thing. A real battlefield was another.

Their squad was small—barely ten people, most of them cooks, the rest green recruits with minimal firepower.

Engaging the enemy head-on was not an option. They had to avoid fights and make it to the rally point.

"SCREECH!"

A massive armored bug suddenly burst out of a nearby crater, its razor-sharp forelimb skewering one of the cooks, lifting him into the air.

"AHHH!" The man screamed. Ryan recognized him—he was the one who had cooked that beef stew when Ryan first joined the kitchen crew.

"Give me your gun!"

Without hesitation, Ryan grabbed an electromagnetic rifle from a stunned recruit.

"Click!" Safety off.

"RATATATATATATA!"

Ryan fired in controlled bursts, his shots forming a precise metal storm. Every round struck the bug's forelimb, weakening it.

"CRACK!"

After dozens of shots, the armored limb snapped. The impaled cook dropped to the ground.

"Get him out of there!" Ryan barked.

"Yes, sir!" Two recruits dashed forward, dragging the wounded man away as Ryan kept firing, keeping the bug pinned down.

This was only the beginning.