“Transport lead to escort lead, do you read me?”
“Escort lead, I read you loud and clear. What is your status?”
“All systems green, we are ready to go!”
Rikko was slightly nervous. This would be his first real mission with combat risk. Of course, he was trained for the real deal, but it was still quite a rush.
“Understood transport lead, commence the operation.”
We are talking about an escort mission. The vehicles contain water, food and ammunition for the soldiers desperately trying to contain a small army employing guerrilla tactics. So far, they weren’t lucky and in the need of supplies. Rikko was supposed to make sure the convoy arrived safely. He would fly with the convoy on low altitude using a Jetpack.
“Affirmative…”

And with that simple word, a small convoy of five trucks with armed drivers started their engines. Rikko activated his Jetpack and went airborne. They would first drive a long way through desert tundra, but about halfway was a forest they would need to cut through. The forest was the most likely place for an ambush. The drive through the tundra was long and boring, with Rikko mostly concentrating on the surroundings.
“Escort lead to convoy lead, we are nearing the forest area. Are your weapons ready?”
“Gunners are ready, armed and loaded!”
The convoy trucks themselves were, of course, lightly armed. Turrets on the roofs of the cabins were operated from within, while there was also a secondary gunner sitting next to the driver, carrying an L6B1 assault rifle. “There is little room to maneuver, I’m increasing my altitude…”
An armed group had, several weeks before, created a path through the forest. This way they would only have to follow the ‘road’, or whatever looked like it. The opening was marked on Rikko’s visor, enabling him to guide the convoy towards it.

And indeed, they were ambushed. A few metres before the first truck, a wood giant dropped. The trucks would usually be able to get through any obstacles of this kind, but this giant was almost as high as the trucks themselves, so there was little chance they came through that.
When the trucks came to a screeching halt, a second tree dropped behind the convoy.
“Ambush, ambush! Ready your weapons!”
Rikko increased altitude as he readied his rifle. It was really just a matter of issuing some voice commands to set his rifle to the right settings.
“Short range, lethal, power efficient.”
Rikko knew full well that ‘power efficient’ was craptalk. If there was any mode to actually spill power, it would never be used. But he had to work to the book and thus had to state it.

The offensive commenced simple with a couple of grenades being thrown between the trucks. On first sight it might seem like an effective start, but the trucks were heavily armoured and could easily take the small fragmentation explosives. Then the attackers came in view, wearing nothing but small arms and a couple of submachine guns. The secondary gunners didn’t even bother to come out as the primary gunners targeted their turrets at the targets. They obviously expected that the sudden surprise would stun them long enough to easily take them. Unfortunately, they were fully able to return fire and thus it didn’t take too long to take out every living soul in the forest.

As Rikko decreased his altitude, he looked around with his thermal scanner activated on his visor. If there was anything alive in the forest, it would be shown with a bright red colour. There wasn’t any challenge tied to it this way, but it was safer.
“Coast is clear, let’s clean away those trees and move on…”
And this short fighting sequence, in which Rikko fired exactly 37 rounds, was Rikko’s very first combat experience. He didn’t bother to tell any strong stories about it, but it prepared him for his later missions.