Paige loved combat drops as much as she hated them. Of course they were better (and worse) in a proper landing craft, but in all her years in the guards she'd been in only five drops that had gone that way. seven of them she'd done in those cheesy little cocoons that the Mobile Infantry used, and all the rest had been in some cobbled together piece of shit like this.<br/><br/>Zero gravity gave way to the real tyhing, slightly heavier than erarth Normal, but it didn't bother her. What did was the grunt in the next seat heaving his guts out as the ship went back into freefall then pulled up hard, slamming the troops into their seats. "WOOOHOOO!" She screamed, in excitement. You lived most when you knew you could die at any moment. Her thought was underlined by the sudden opening up of a hole right through the body of the ship. Blood sprayed everywhere as whatever had breached the floor and roof had also ripped the legs and front two inches of the body and head off one of her men.<br/><br/>Someone else threw up, but Paige just wiped the gore off her face. That was a quick way to go....  Two minutes later the flying coffin hit the ground, totally out of control, killing the pilot outright, The copilot died of his wounds later, but Paige didn't care about that. The moment the order to brace came down, she was braced rigid in her seat. The flying deathtrap stopped, and the damn door didn't open. Paige fixed that by putting an explosive round into the locking mechanism, and with a scream she and her men poured out...<br/><br/><hr/><br/>Being the Company Swat Team was exhausting, but Paige was actually having fun for a change. The square was holding, miraculously. The major had sent her to reinforce a gully where the orcs were trying too build a bridge of their own bodies, and she and her squad lobbed a handful of plasma grenades into it while the remnants of 6 platoon's A-Squad gave them covering fire. The orc bodies (and live orcs) burned with a disgusting brown flame and a hideous stench that swept across the battlefield. She was disengaging her men when the call came over the radio.<br/><br/>"Roger that, LT. You awake, Choirboy?" The nickname came naturally to her and from Paige, it was a mark of respect. "Coming up on your six in about one-twenty." She crossed the road, keeping low, in the middle of her squad, weaving between the artillery peices that stood silent and forlorn. "Rikhard, Mortesen, left flank. Graham, Pinosi, right flank. Ganto, rear guard, the rest of you, fan out. Deerwalker, point". The young man from New Lakota sighed. He was stereotyped into his role but the problem was he was good at it.<br/><br/>One minute seventeen seconds later, Deerwalker signalled them to stop. He crept forward through the gathering darkness and tapped Church's rear-guard on the helmet, making the man jump in fright and almost shoot the New Lakotan. Deerwalker signalled Paige to come ahead and she signalled the rest of the squad to move forward. She dropped into the foxhole beside Church. "Hey Choirboy. How's it going?" A flair drifted gently over the killing ground in front of them and something moved. tracer arced red towards the motion, to be answered with a streak of fire, that went high and wide as a loud crack from the rise behind her indicated the snipers doing their jobs. "Good shot, whoever got that one", she sent over open comm.<br/><br/>Church briefed her quickly on the position and then pulled his men out. "Covering fire!" Paige ordered, to keep the orcs pinned as the new trouble-shooter squad made their withdrawl. She heaved a sigh. It was good to be off her feet for once. Let Church deal with that over-zealous lieutenant from 8 Platoon. The arse was going to get himself a bullet in the back of the head before the day was through, Paige knew. She took her comms off the Company and Battalion circuits for now, leaving just squad and platoon. Company was full of panicked requests for reinforcements and Battalion was frighteningly quiet. She'd rather not know.<br/><br/>The flair faded and Paige found the box and the flair gun. She waited, an old trick. "Wait for it guys, ready....." PUMPH! The flair gun pumped the shell high into the sky, where it ignited, bathing the ground with light and revealing the Orcs out in the open ground. "FIRE!" She opened up too, cutting the bastards down as they trundled across the blood slick field that was littered with their own bodies.