"We have marines; we do not need nuclear weapons.

"

-Prefect Winston Freeman

Above the alien city, the dark winter sky lit up as explosively as it was sudden and raining down
from it were a thousand shooting stars. Furiously they burned through the heavens fizzling out the
snow clouds as they pierced them and even though their flames flickered occasionally, they lit up
the night as far as the eye could see.

Inside each of these projectiles was a dangerous weapon, the very 'most dangerous weapon that the
humans could boast to offer'. An armored marine outfitted with a rifle. Not just any marine, a hail
trooper, a specialized soldier trained thoroughly in all forms of unconventional warfare, including
infiltration, guerilla and reconnaissance. And this was an army of them.

As the pods rapidly fired towards the ground, their retro thrusters deployed.

Taking a few calming breaths of the artificial atmosphere in his suit Private Sam Emerson gripped
the control sticks on his left and right, guiding his pod along the path displayed on his HUD.
Through the view screen on his pod door, he could see the last of the clouds clear out and the
ground rapidly coming up to meet him. He didn't even need to look though, this was his fifth
drop, he knew what he was hurtling into.

One good thing about a drop mission was that it was as simple straightforward as it was dangerous
and deadly. And this mission was good as any. They'd been fired like bullets down from various
cruisers high up in orbit. Once they landed, about two thirds of the surviving force were to form a
perimeter and hold down any significant landmarks they could in the surrounding area of the target
building, the enemy's second to last remaining planetary shield generator. Then the rest of the
grounded force would swoop in and disable the building as loudly as possible. The whole thing
would take an hour max. That's the thing about being a shock trooper, things were just like the drill
sergeant always said they'd be, quick and easy. By the time they were done the much slower
dropboats that had deployed, shortly after they had, would be waiting to take them home, quick and
easy.

T: 30; 29; 28...

As his pod and HUD both started a synchronized countdown until landfall, a bright, sizzling, flash of
light zipped past Emerson's view screen. Then another. Then another. And then the pod opposite
his exploded violently. And then he started to hear the deep powerful rapid rumbling of the deadly
anti-aircraft plasma engines on the ground. They were in range.

T: 17; 16; 15; 14...

Emerson's grip on his control sticks tightened and each successive breath of his came shorter and
faster. This was his fifth drop and he knew what this was because it always happened. He dreaded
this part. As the drop pods neared the ground, falling in perfectly predictable straight lines, the
enemy would start to fire back at them. And in that period, there was nothing any marine could do,
except get shot at. Thirty whole seconds of being heavily armed, well trained, brave and fearless,
young sitting ducks.

T: 10; 9; 8; 7...

Another pod exploded and then another. At least they weren't in the slow lumbering dropboats,
else these thirty seconds would have been enough to decimate them, a few dozen soldiers at a time.
Another close call from a plasma bolt.

T:5; 4; 3; 2; 1.

Landfall! The pod impacted the snow covered ground with bone crunching force, while a deafening
explosion blew his pod hatch open. "GO! GO! GO!" His radio screamed at him in Commander
Skyfeld's gravelly overtasked voice. And he went.

Pods continued to make thunderous impact after impact around him followed by their hatches
blowing open. The sounds from these mixing with the anti-air weapons to form one terrifying
disorienting din. Emerson hit the ground running alongside his fellows. They'd landed just out of
bounds of the city and as fast as they could, they began to make it towards the city's giant walls and
men fell, while the snowy white ground about them was being ripped apart by enemy counter fire.

Over the radio, he could already hear a marine Sergeant call for orbital assistance against the city's
walls and even as rapid plasma machine gun fire rang out around him, he couldn't help smiling a
bit. Marines weren't really the most powerful weapon man could offer, that was just propaganda,
they weren't even close. The spaceships above them, the ones they had dropped from, those were
the most powerful weapons in the universe as far as Emerson knew. A marine was just glad to be
part of that.

The world flared brightly as, ahead of him, a huge chunk of the massive city walls vaporized as the
sky cracked open once more and hurtling down from it was a rapid, incredible pinpoint blast of
pure unadulterated, blindingly bright, superheated plasma. The impact knocked a huge cloud of dirt
and steam into the air and a wave of heat blasted towards them. With proper spotting from the
ground, those ships were the literal definition of deus ex machina. They were their untouchable
guardians in the sky.

As they continued to run, Emerson and the marines began their invasion of the alien city, amidst the
eardrum shattering noises of war.

Following a waypoint on his HUD, he converged on his platoon in an alleyway. They had closed in
on the wall of one of the nearest building to the now decimated wall.

One of them fired his weapon into the door and it collapsed as the marines made their way into the
building, they would hold here as the whole force gradually tightened around the city in a lethal
chokehold.

Emerson pressed his back to the wall as the rest of the platoon made its way into the building, he
was covering the rear at the street end of the alley they were in. Bright light and rumbling noise
erupted just around the corner. As a soldier, the thing that surprised him the most at first was how
loud everything was in battle. This was his fifth drop and he'd gotten used to it by now, yet this drop
was louder than others, noticeably so. Especially now that most of the pods had dropped. This was
his fifth drop, so he knew that by now the anti-air guns should have ceased firing.

Searching for the source of the persistent rumbling he peeked around the corner. And then he saw
it at the centre of the city. From the target building a continuous, bright stream of blue light much
like the plasma blast, he had seen fired down at the wall from above, was being shot at the nearly
empty sky. As he trailed the sky, tracing its destination, his radio came alive, all of a sudden, in
frantic chorus of surprised and alarmed voices and screaming and confusion.

And suddenly it seized. Nothing but static which was just as loud. Then even that stopped,
disappearing like his HUD.

This was his fifth drop and he had seen nothing like this on any drop before, at any point in his life
for that matter. Because as he stared back at the sky through his empty visor, each successive
breath coming in quicker and shorter and harder to draw, the sky erupted again, and like a
thousand shooting stars, the untouchable spaceships above them began to fall to the ground.