Difference between revisions of "Reaper's First Drop: Chapter 4"

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"Gently! Gently!" I stressed from the copilot's seat. Matt deftly, if a little shakily, maneuvered the three-legged NF aircraft onto the landing pad. We touched down with a hard bump, but nothing looked damaged.

"Well," Matt said brightly. "Who's up for dinner?"

After a standard debrief, we were told we had three day's rest before we went out on the next mission.

Me and the crew were relaxing in the 'Reaper's Lounge.' All of us Reapers had access to an exclusive section of the military base. It was afforded equal and sometimes superior luxuries as the officer's quarters in the main part of the base. We were all officers. There were separate landing pads, quarters, armory, triage, mess, lounge, and workshops specifically for Reapers.

I figured the after-action report had gone well. Now we had 72 hours of de-stressing before we dove right back in.

Forrest, our head equipment techie, strode down to the lounge, our battle-damaged equipment in tow. He'd nearly had a fit when he'd seen what we'd done to our armor. He also wasn't happy that we hadn't pulled Trigger's holotags when we left. Not that it mattered. He was, to put it nicely, cremated. One with the Earth.

"So, any suggestions on the armoring?" Forrest asked, looking like he'd just sucked on a lemon.

Matt winced in sympathy, grinning at the same time.

"The joint plating seems to give first under high stress," I said, doing my best to look official in the steaming hot tub, dressed only in a bathing suit, with a bunch of similarly-clad Reaper men and women scattered about the building and an ice-cold Coke in my hand. "I recommend a higher density and larger shoulder, elbow, knee, and waist guards. And a neck plate." Our Scythe armor was a new thing, and there was always room for improvement.

We sat in the barracks that the General Harrison had given us. Echo squad had our own lading pad, barracks, armory the works. The report had gone well and we had put in a request for our Head Tech Forrest, a replacement for Trigger and a temp for Jess to be shipped over. I looked at my newly fixed up armor. Forrest had had a fit when he had seen my beat up helmet and Jess's crumpled left shoulder pad. He had replaced them and started fixing the ship we had brought in. While he was at it I asked if he could upgrade some of the systems and plating. You can never be to protected when you have Matt flying.

We had three days left of our rest before we had to head out again. I was still contemplating how we were going to blow up two battle ships and cripple and aircraft carrier all while capturing a North Korean Captain in charge of heading up the fleet off the Japanese coast. I looked out at the ocean and then the ship. It was then that I had a stroke of genius.

I walked out to the pad and looked at Forrest under the belly of the penguin. He had painted the white parts red and put the Reapers insignia on the doors and the front. It was a skull and cross bones but instead of bones it had scythes. I grabbed his leg and pulled him out.

"Can you make this thing 'water friendly' " I asked

"yeah I would have to (Hey Brandito can you put some of what you told me about here.) and then......."

"No idea what that means but I take that as a yes" I said as Matt walked up beside me.

"Why do I not like the way this sounds." He said

"Because nothing I do is safe" I said

"Oh no those two are cooking up a plan" I heard Holly our temp yell across the yard.

"We are all dead" Erick, Triggers replacement said.

"Yeah, Yeah, Now litsen up this is how its going to go" I said

We sat in the newly christened "Apocalypse". Holly sat next to me. She had pierceing icey blue eyes and Snow white hair. Her name "Ice queen" was dead on.