Reunion Day

The third floor briefing room smelled of old upholstery, plastic and stale coffee. First Lieutenant Jared Lewis lingered for a time after his peers had filed out and the ancient holographic projector had flickered off, hum fading. It was made to keep on serving. Just like everything else in the 67th North Horizon Corps. Just like him.

Outside the hazy reinforced windows, Lewis watched a returning patrol of Fennec and Corso HE-Vs trundle through the monolithic gate and across the marshalling yard. Across the complex, the nearby hangars stood open to receive them, maintenance drones and robotic gantries prepped to service the giant fighting machines. The boxy HE-Vs had been refurbished dozens of times over the decades. All of them had outlived their original pilots. Each was treated with reverence.

The 67th had been completely isolated since the Rift, that great catastrophe that had utterly broken mankind’s mastery of Earth and the solar system at large. Cut off, alone, and plunged into a new world of lack and paranoia, they'd maintained discipline through thick and thin. Upheld their traditions and their faith.

This was all Lewis had ever known. Born 2359 in the hospital complex on the same base, the son of a logistics officer and a combat medic. He was a professional soldier, but the 67th wasn't merely his unit: it was his culture, his people, his world. To Lewis, the 67th was civilization in micro, all of it situated on one mostly self-sufficient military installation in southern Michigan.

Throughout the region where they projected force, the 67th stabilized an otherwise wild and lawless northern hemisphere. Their martial prowess, technology and professionalism had proved one hell of a ‘thou shalt not’ for many a raider and two-bit warlord. Lately, though, the natives were growing bolder. Word had reached the 67th that the long-enforced Solar Republic blockade of Earth’s skies was crumbling. And no one really knew why; seemingly the last remnants of their forces just gave up their posts.

Lewis briefly wondered over this before the iron discipline instilled in him since childhood reasserted itself, shaking him out of his reverie. His thoughts returned to duty and he left the briefing room. Descending three flights of stairs, Lewis was just beyond the stairwell door when raised voices drifted down the corridor leading to the command center. Was that a tinge of anxiety he heard? Probably another insurgent attack on a nearby hamlet, most likely. He changed course and headed toward the command center.

Then two officers sprinted out of an adjacent corridor and piled into the C3; the command, control, and communications center. Lewis knew then something was definitely amiss. Disregarding protocol, he jogged to the still-open door and let himself in. It was packed. Lieutenant General Perez stood at the main bank of consoles, an earpiece pressed to his head with one hand. Other personnel frantically worked keyboards amid a dozen hushed, huddled conversations in the room.

"Quiet! Lock it up!" Perez barked, and the C3 fell quiet. Another officer flipped a switch on one of the control boards and a speaker came to life, static pouring out. 

Through the static, a voice: "—say again, this is the Peregrine to Dusk Base. Authentication follows. Dancer July Silver, seven-seven-niner-one-five-five-one. Repeat, Dancer July Silver, seven-seven-niner-one-five-five-one. Requesting immediate approach clearance for planetfall and landing at your coordinates. How copy?"

Save for the hissing static, the room really was silent then. Lewis recognized the sequence, and his pulse quickened. The string of words and numbers were an authenticator, a code from before the Rift. A code, one of many, that identified friendly forces. Not many members of the 67th held out hope those codes would ever be needed after so long.

Perez's hands trembled slightly as he briskly thumbed through a book. A book, ancient and precious, that usually resided in a locked safe. Finally his finger traced a line, then again, slower. Around him, his senior officers barely breathed.

Perez looked up, expression stoic as ever, and cleared his throat softly. "The code is legitimate," he announced. "It's the 42nd. Our sister corps."

Stillness for one heartbeat, then the room erupted. Shoulders were slapped, some laughed, others gawked in disbelief. Lewis was numbed, overcome by the same sensation of unreality felt in the aftermath of a bomb explosion. A century of isolation, of wondering if they were the last, left totally alone. Wondering if their commitment counted for anything.

“Attention!” Perez's mild reprimand snapped all assembled back to order. Military bearing or no, Lewis saw no dimming of the excitement in his fellows’ eyes. 

Perez addressed his staff. "To work. Major Koenig, respond to that transmission. Clear them for approach and direct as needed. I want verification protocols running continuously. Everyone else, on alert. I want the quick-reaction force ready to roll with 30 seconds notice, as of right now."

"Sir?" Major Koenig looked concerned. "Could this be a deception ploy?"

"I don’t think so," Perez said carefully, "But we will be ready for that eventuality.” He turned to address the rest of the C3. “Let’s go, people!"

His soldiers leapt to obey. Alert notifications sounded across the entire complex. His brothers and sisters filed out and more came in. Lewis was swept along with those heading out. He led a Viper power suit squad, and his squad plus another were part of the quick-reaction force. The mission clock was already ticking. Following a winding series of corridors to the power suit bays, he sensed the posture of the base transform as troops double-timed to their posts, the shrill whine of fusion reactors cycled hot, and LAS wing engines spun up, baking tarmac.

He made it to the bay in three minutes, finding his squad — Heller, Roberts and Svensson — already assembled and quickly suiting up, each attended by two technicians. Heller, keen to any change in the status quo, looked at him with a questioning, cocked eyebrow.

"It’s go-time," Lewis told them. "We might have friendlies inbound. Or we might have hostiles jerking our chain. Either way, we're heading out."

“Friendlies!? Like who?” Roberts, his tone incredulous, was in half-dress. He had stepped into the leg assemblies of his Viper suit, and techs were hastily joining and securing the first pieces of the upper half around his undersuit-clad torso. 

Lewis had already hopped up on the metal stepladder and dropped into the waiting legs of his own suit with the ease of an acrobat. The techs set to work with tools buzzing, and the familiar second skin of the power suit clamped shut around him: chestplate, backplate, bracers, and gauntlets. Two full tons of radiation-hardened composite armor, sensors and target designators. He'd been training in these suits since he was sixteen. 

“The 42nd.” Lewis replied, and Roberts’ eyes went bright and wide against his olive skin. Then a grim-visored helmet and cowl was lowered over Lewis’ head and he was in darkness. Connections were made and after a moment the visor depolarized, the HUD flickered on, and speakers came to life.

“Ain’t no way, el tee!” Roberts continued, his voice now tinny over the suit radio.

“Looks like.” Lewis said, tasting the dry, coppery air now circulating over his face. 

Svensson was listening in and let out a low whistle and the squad chattered speculatively as Lewis ran through his standup checklist, completed pre-op diagnostics, and then confirmed pending data links using a combination of the suit’s jaw switch and facial gestures. His own suit and the others, all in the green. Clearing the HUD’s subdisplays he regarded his squad. The men stood fully eight feet tall in the bulky suits, and had lined up to retrieve their heavy 25mm rifles from a nearby rack. 

"All personnel, be advised." A voice crackled over the command net. "Incoming ship has completed atmospheric entry. ETA is twenty-one mikes."

Twenty-one minutes. Lewis felt strangely nervous. He’d seen combat, had fought the scum that prowled Michigan’s badlands and elsewhere. But in little more than a quarter of an hour the 67th would have its answer to a century-old question. Collecting his rifle and spare drum magazines, he marched out with his brothers to the pair of Orca LAS wing transporters, waiting to carry them to where they were needed.

—

Back in the C3, fresh drama unfolded. "Sir, new contacts! Multiple launches detected from Old Detroit metrozone." A sensor officer said urgently. "Signatures are supersonic now, resolving… SLASSMs! We’ve got six snakes in the air! Vector coincides with the 42nd ship!"

Perez’s blood chilled. SLASSMs, anti-starship missiles. Was it the Solar Republic firing on blockade runners? No, they had no ground forces present in Detroit, or elsewhere in Michigan. The Sable Cadre, then? That council heading up the coalition of local bandits, brigands, and renegade military units plaguing Michigan. They had been stealing, salvaging and trading war toys for years. But the 67th’s own intelligence had never once suggested they’d obtained any weapon that could threaten large, spacegoing craft.

"Broadcast on all frequencies!" Perez shouted. He leaned over the comms officer’s shoulder and spoke directly into the mic. "Peregrine, Dusk Base, you have missiles inbound, mark six snakes inbound! Deploy countermeasures."

The sensor display revealed the brutal calculus of the situation as acidic yellow icons. The 42nd's gargantuan transport ship, ponderous and ungainly in atmo. The missiles, relentless and accelerating. Seconds to intercept, two missile contacts winked out, shot down by the ship’s point-defense arrays. Two more veered off course, decoyed. But two struck the Peregrine. Perez watched its icon fragment.

Another sensor technician spoke up. "Peregrine is hit! Breaking up, no, wait, she's holding together but going down. Trajectory puts her in the Ann Arbor metrozone."

Catastrophe. The remains of Ann Arbor were a Sable Cadre stronghold. Lieutenant General Perez knew from bitter experience that its bowels were studded with cleverly hidden armories and HE-V workshops. A worst-case scenario. He straightened, expression grim, and turned to the warboard. "QRF, immediate deployment!" Voice booming with implicit command. "Direct all combat elements currently in the field toward the crash site.” 

—

The Orca shuddered as it climbed hard over hills, Lewis and Heller locked into the cargo compartment’s deployment rails. Svensson and Roberts would be just off the starboard wing in the second transporter. Streaming an exterior camera feed to his HUD, Lewis watched the Michigan landscape below blur past. Forests had swallowed most of the highways, and up ahead the sprawling corpse of Ann Arbor spread beneath a towering column of oily smoke.

Lewis’ workday had just gone from ‘interesting’ to ‘terrifying’. The old metrozone was a literal concrete jungle: trees burst through rooflines, vines and creepers swallowed whole blocks, and skyscrapers stood draped in tattered cloaks of vegetation. Another carcass of civilization-that-was on Earth.

"Two minutes to insertion," the pilot announced. "Advise LZ is likely hot. Can't get you closer to the crash site than three klicks. Other elements are getting lit up with surface fire."

Through the feed, tracers arced up from the ruins, lasers strobed, and missile contrails lit like angry fireflies. The Orca banked steeply, settled and dropped with a hard bang that jolted Lewis through the suit’s padding. The rear ramp unfolded on an overgrown parking lot. 

“We’re down. Out, out!” The pilot barked. The clamps released both suits and Lewis charged his heavy rifle before stepping down and off the ramp, metal-shod feet crushing the already crumbling pavement. The midday sun was obscured by smoke and ash, casting everything in shadowy relief. Mercifully, the gloom was no impediment whatsoever to the Viper suit’s sensors, and Lewis saw the rest of his squad, outlined in green, deploying a scant hundred yards away through a wall of dust. 

The Orcas departed. Close by, the crash and roar of combat. Overhead, the 67th’s attack LAS wings buzzed and banked, strafing targets, while larger transports settled to deploy more troops. "Form up," Lewis ordered. "Objective is two-point-eight klicks northeast, bearing zero-three-one. Watch your sectors, the enemy knows this place better than we do." Heller took point and the squad moved at a pace no unaugmented human could match, their power suits eating up the intervening distance in long strides. 

The remains of outer downtown were oppressive, every doorway, window and alleyway promising danger. Around them, the background thunder of HE-Vs and their heavy ordnance sounded nearer. Lewis flicked a glance at his tactical display to suss out if they were friendlies or not.

"Contact front!" Heller shouted into the comm.

Concealed Cadre infantry sprang from their hiding places in an old storefront, opening up with rifles, machine guns and portable rocket launchers. Lewis immediately relayed the contact to command as he felt dozens of dull impacts thud harmlessly across his body; a Viper suit’s plating would stop nearly all small arms rounds cold, but not anti-armor warheads or large caliber threats. Simultaneously, the 67th troopers fanned out and poured on immediate counterfire, targeting systems outlining threats in red as they fired from the hip. Heavy 25mm slugs punched through much of the cover the now-shocked Cadre troops sheltered behind. 

The initial ambush proved ill-timed. Several Cadre fighters burst open like rotting fruit under the withering fire from the power suits. Roberts caught three flankers in the open as they left cover, hewing them limb from limb. Svensson worked over a handful still sheltering in the storefront, killing them and suppressing a machine gun team in the same building.

When the incoming fire slackened to almost nothing, Lewis seized the advantage, ordering his squad forward to finish it, capitalizing on the shocking carnage already wrought. Lewis neared a burned-out passenger car by the storefront when a lone Cadre soldier, face inscrutable behind the visor of his haz armor, rose just beyond it, a disposable anti-armor launcher perched on his shoulder and pointing right at him. Lewis reacted on raw instinct. Lunging, he delivered a power-assisted kick to the car’s midsection, sending it rolling over onto his hapless attacker, crushing him. The launcher the man carried pitched upward and discharged, the rocket streaking away into open sky.

Crushed though the infantry were, the fight wasn’t over. Before Lewis could rally his men, a torrent of heavy weapons fire scythed down on his now-exposed squad from an adjacent parking structure. Emplaced autocannons raked the street, dealing Svensson a bad direct hit. He shrieked into the comm as his left arm assembly and the limb inside it shattered. Heedless of the danger, Roberts sprinted to his comrade to drag him out of the kill zone as Lewis and Heller sprayed the concrete face of the structure on full auto in a desperate bid to throw off the aim of the Cadre crews. All around, the street erupted with the impact of explosive shells, and Lewis mentally braced for the one that would cut him down. He prayed silently that he would die like a man.

Deliverance arrived not on wings, but on two legs. Over the radio Lewis heard a calm, almost bored, voice. "Viper team, this is Hotshot 3. I’ve got your back, grab some cover.” Emerging from the gloom behind Lewis’ stricken squad, a heavy Shepherd crunched up the street, pavement heaving and splintering under its feet. The brick-like warmachine was clad in slabs of reactive armor, hardpoints bristling with long-barreled howitzers and rotary cannons. The ugliest angel imaginable.

Lewis and Heller scrabbled out of the Shepherd’s path as it strode forward imperiously to lay its guns on the parking garage. The Cadre weapons teams showed fight and peppered the monster, but to no avail. Two apocalyptic reports from the howitzers and from the ground floor up the structure vanished in a volcanic geyser of debris. Lewis’ suit rang like a bell, and he watched half-stunned as the Shepherd’s pilot combed the rubble with both rotary cannons, firing wide open. Then, almost as an afterthought, he rotated and walked fire through the length of the nearby buildings, carving through and collapsing them.

Looking back, Lewis saw a pair of speedy Fennecs, the other members of Hotshot, arrive and take up supporting positions, followed closely by a convoy of support vehicles. If any Cadre forces remained alive and near, none risked the wrath of the 67th combat team. The crash site was close, but Svensson was in a bad, bad way. Lewis requested medivac and ordered Roberts to stay with his wounded comrade and administer what aid he could in the meantime. He and Heller would carry on to the objective. Collecting Svensson’s ammo, the pair moved out.

A broad, scoured trail of destruction led to the 42nd's ship, jutting from a sprawling commercial office complex. Smoke poured from rents in the hull and flames licked at the surrounding debris. Lewis watched with dismay as an enemy HE-V closed in from an opposite thoroughfare, toward their own position in a spillway. He cursed to himself and reported its presence. 

The Sable Cadre machine was smaller than the 67th's own Shepherd and seemingly cobbled together from salvage, but that was no consolation; they were spotted, and a Viper suit could not stand against such firepower, not for a moment. Lewis and Heller hunkered as heavy autocannon impacts walked up the street and over their heads, while searing particle bolts darkened their suit visors.

Staying as flat as possible on the incline, Lewis inched upward, just enough for his shoulders to clear the curb. "All 67th elements, this is Viper team leader. Enemy armor at objective, need priority fire mission! Flashing target data now." Lewis lit the enemy machine with his designator, making it known to every friendly smart weapon in range.

Across the surrounding metrozone, howitzer shells, rocket barrages and missiles streaked skyward, converging on the same destination. Lewis received the fire confirmations, counted seven hammering heartbeats, and the world came undone. Guided munitions pulverized the enemy rig into smoldering scrap and cinders. Nothing but a smoking crater remained.

Heller rose and quipped, "Overkill is underrated!"

“Right on, brother. Let’s get a move on.” Lewis checked his heavy rifle before he clambered up to street level. The pair crossed quickly to the ruined office complex and crashed through the maze of rubble and twisted metal. Small arms fire echoed from somewhere deeper inside. 

After barging through a jammed door, they found themselves face to face with a squad of Cadre troopers near the ship’s flank, apparently trying to find or make a way in. After a moment of surprise, a point-blank slaughter immediately ensued. Despite outnumbering the suits five to one, the infantrymen died fast, blown apart by massive slugs or else hideously mangled by suit-augmented blows. 

Lewis and Heller picked their way further into the increasingly jumbled building. They soon encountered a makeshift defensive position manned by different soldiers. Several of them were injured and all rightly terrified of the hulking, blood-soaked titans staring them down. 

One shouted for the others to hold their fire.

These soldiers’ uniforms and armor were familiar to Lewis, but different. Their patches, though: It was their sister unit. The 42nd NHC. Real. Alive. Here. One of them, hair singed and face blistered from fire, lowered the muzzle of his rifle slightly and peered over it at Lewis’ suit. A sergeant judging from his rank insignia, the man’s expression flickered in surprise and he looked into Lewis’ darkened visor, seemingly right through it into Lewis’ eyes.

"67th?" His voice was rough. "You with the 67th?” After a moment, he added “Sir?"

Lewis keyed his external speakers. "Roger that, Sergeant." He said, gauntleted hand wiping blood from the 67th North Horizon Corps logo painted on his chestplate. "I’m Lieutenant Lewis, we're here to get you out."

There was no time for celebration. That would come days later, only after thirty-eight names, Svensson among them, were added to the 67th’s memorial wall. The ruins of Ann Arbor had brewed up into a proper warzone: the Sable Cadre forces were still swarming, regrouping, and fighting, even then closing on the crash site. 

The cost of Reunion Day, as it would become known in the annals of the unit’s history, and to the wider solar system as Earthfall, was terrible. But that day marked the end of the 67th North Horizon Corps’ long and lonely patrol.

Illustration by Eldon Cowgur