Battle of Credence Airfield First Night

Sergeant Havaū Keve'ienn sneezed violently but her holding onto the assault rifle with both hands prevented her from doing it into a bend of an arm or something that would be considered good manners. She looked up to see if she had hit someone in the back of the helicopter. The man next to her pointed at her magazine. There it was. The incident helped lighten the otherwise tense mood a bit. Her platoon had arrived only one day earlier as part of the reinforcements in anticipation of the coming battle, and today they would see their first real fight. Her deputy squad leader had thrown up his dinner on the dashboard from a burst of anxiety.

Despite this she felt focused and alert, she realised. She went through the colonel's plan in her head. According to fresh intelligence they faced over 200 heavy towed artillery pieces and infantry of up to division size. It was likely the RIM goal was to take out the airfield and throw the Sedunners out of Reizen. And the airbase was indeed vulnerable. It was a fixed and well known object, offering no protection against artillery. Once in place, there would be no stopping the artillery.

The colonel planned for a battle in three phases. In the first phase, which had begun now, the Sedunners would delay and harass the deployment of the artillery and also destroy as many pieces as possible using their superior mobility provided by the helicopters while still possible. They would later likely be forced to disperse the helicopters to protect them and their ground crews from the artillery and have very limited use for them. The second phase would have the Sedunners detach independent patrols that would mainly serve as forward observers to asses the effect of the Sedunnic indirect fire such as cruise missiles from the navy and artillery from the mechanised battlegroup that had landed due west, while the bulk would constitute the defence of the arifield perimeters against the RIM hordes of infantry. The grand finale, as it seemed, would be an envelope manoeuvre in some kind of sinister deception.

This night, Keve'ienn's squad would carry out an assault against the RIM towed artillery from a small ridge near one of the roads they were using, then fall back to a point further up-road and repeat. Not too technical and with few manoeuvres. But she was glad she had been given this commando they called Hip-hop. He had been fighting in Reizen for almost a year and knew the RIM and the terrain well.

She remembered seeing him in the mess. As typical for these commandos, he had seemed to somehow dominate the entire room without speaking a single word, standing in a shadowy corner, just observing. But she had seen more in his seemingly sturdy gaze. It was pain, and not physical pain. He had probably seeing too much of mankind's worst sides. Yes, he was a broken soul, but he hadn't realised himself, or allowed himself to feel anything at all.

No, it was time for some jokes.

"Hey", she yelled over the noise from the turbine, "I have a few jokes about unemployed people, but none of them work..."

"Oh, speaking of the devil, what did Grandmaster Soormann say when he entered the restaurant?" she waited for someone to respond, but the helicopter started descending rapidly. They were almost there.

"Bettu Squad! Kill! Kill!" she yelled. The others joined her chanting.

Hip-hop looked at her with a curious face.

"That's what he said in the restaurant?"

"No, we are landing! It's time to get the testosterone pumping! Join us!"

Kill! Kill! Death! Kill!

Bettu Squad repeated those words while stamping their feet on the hollow floor.