Rider

Prologue-Chopper Crash

The oceanic planet of Midkiff is sparsely settled, only about two hundred fifty thousand people live on seven islands in a cluster around the planet's space port. Their remote location and spares population did not spare them an invasion by the Insurrectionists during the First Great War, however the invasion forces Midkiff faces are far smaller given their remote location and low population.

The blackness faded into light grey, fading into another hue I can't describe. Gunfire, explosions, screaming, cursing, wails of angry creatures, it seemed to come from everywhere, yet nowhere. It took me a minute to realize that I still had all my limbs, although a cool feeling in spots underneath my uniform told me I had a few extra holes in me. It took some time for the feeling to start to come back, my vision returning first. Looking up, a dim orange glow seemed to fill the cab of the chopper, and the longer I laid there, the clearer it was to me that we had been shot down. It took me a second to manage to roll over, doing so put my eyes on seven people dressed in burnt, dirty multicam taking cover behind several thick trees. The dirt around the chopper was smoldering, and when I tried to push off the ground to sit up, a surge of pain through my arm dropped me back onto my back. Glancing at the offending appendage, I could see the bone where the flesh had been ripped away, the wound filled with dirt. I rolled onto my stomach, using my free arm to push myself up. My left hand rolled under my weight, revealing that something had ripped up the palm of my glove, both of them, in fact. The skin on both my palms was lacerated and burned, I figured I must have been trying to push a piece of hot steel off me at some point. Upon getting to my feet, I noticed someone's tail laying in the back of the chopper in a short camo sleeve. I was admittedly someone who was too scared despite my years of military service to look to see if a severed appendage belonged to her. One of the guys, Wade I think his name was, yelled at me when he realized I was awake, picked up the M16 laying by another one of our guy's dead body and handed it to me through the smashed door of our Super Hind.

"Martinez! We got dozens of Insurrectionists closing in! Take it and stay dow..." he yelled, being cut off halfway through the final word when a bullet ripped through the side of his helmet, his body fell to the wayside.

"Man down! Man down!" I couldn't manage much more than a bit of a raised voice, since my throat seemed to be filled with dirt and ash from the chopper crash. I checked the chamber of the M16, making sure there was one in the can, beginning to look for targets. In the foggy mist that blanketed the woods beyond the muzzle of my firearm, I could only see flashes of muzzles, but not the operators of the weapons producing the flashes. So, with no clear targets to fire at, I began sending bursts towards the flashes.

"God! We're so fucking outnumbered!"

"Stay in the fight! We've faced worse!"

The bolt of the M16 stopped in my shoulder, acting on muscle memory, my trigger finger found the mag release, dropping the spent mag free of the receiver. Reaching down to my belt, I grabbed a fresh mag and shoved it in, sending the bolt home with a click of the bolt release, the reticle of the ACOG never once leaving my vision. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man clad entirely in OCP bolt out from behind a tree and make haste for another one. I shifted my point of aim.

"Enemy infantry in the open! Left! Left! 25 meters!"

I fired a burst, at least two of the three rounds hit their mark, one striking his upper thigh and the second was a dead hit on the pelvic bowl, dropping him like a sack of wet concrete.

"Target down!"

"Bagh! There's dozens more of these fucking ants out there!" Dunn hissed, dropping the magazine from his M16, ducking back down behind the felled tree he was using as cover, "Martinez! Spare a magazine!"