“Watch it, Red 3; you’ve got an enemy on your tail!”
“Left wing’s hit, I’m going down!”
Eva looked at the video files that were fed to her. The first time she saw it, everything looked like an incomprehensible blur. The second time she was explained what happened, and everything became clear.
The video was made during a dogfight above a dense forest, taped from the nose of one of the planes. It ended with the camera suddenly turning to a green surface and then stopping with recording.
“And we are sure the pilot is still alive?”
“No, that is why we are hired. Simply put, we need to find the pilot, determine if he’s still alive and evac him if he is.”
“Assistance?”
“A small armed force. Unfortunately your squad lead is already on an escort mission. You will need to do this one without him.”
“Understood…”
Eva wasn’t too happy with this. It just didn’t feel right to make your first mission separated.
“Hostile forces?”
“Relatively little. The pilot was able to eject, but if there are scavenger parties, it will be for the plane itself.”
“Just curious: payment?”
“$5000 if we can bring him back alive. This translates in 100 credits to your personal account.”
Eva nodded. It was a nice amount, but not much, seeing how 10 credits roughly translated to 1 dollar. The credits, however, were really only used in the officer’s shop for luxury goods, for everything that was needed to stay alive was arranged for them.
Eva saluted and went off. That pilot couldn’t stay alive for ever. She had to get to him ASAP.

“Squad lead, this is G-1, over?”
“G-1, this is squad lead, what is it, over?”
“Any signs of live?”
“Nothing on the warmth sensors. Too much wildlife. This will have to be done the old-fashioned way. Over.”
“I was afraid so… I’m coming down, over and out.”
Eva had been flying over the dense forest in the hopes of having a better vantage point from there. Unfortunately, the big canopy blocked any serious sight into the forest, which only allowed short glances of the ground. She had trouble seeing the search team on the ground, and she knew where they were. Let alone someone she didn’t know the location of.
In the beginning there was hope that they could find the crash site through smoke or trees being whacked away, but bad luck struck.
There was no smoke, signalling the pilot was alive, for he had extinguished the fires.
The trees were still on their place. All of them. The pilot must have been incredibly lucky with the fact that he went right between most trees. This did make the search much harder.

Eva descended down on the moving heath signatures of her comrades. Right before she hit the canopy she turned her Jetpack off and went the last metres on her leftover upward speed and gravity. If she didn’t do it like this, chances were that the excess heath of her Jetpack would burn down some trees. There was no fun in that.
“Nice of you to come down…”
“No comments.”
Eva was armed to the teeth and experienced; it would be advisable not to argue with her. The squad leader knew this fully well.
“Anyhow, let’s continue. We won’t find that guy by standing around…”

It didn’t take them much longer to find their first hostile encounter. It was nothing special and they were more surprised to meet Eva and her gang, but they were armed.
“Watch it, incoming humans…”
“I read them, take cover…”
Eva’s group quickly hid behind the trees and bushes provided by the surroundings, forming a semicircle. The enemy patrol walked perfectly in it and was quickly spread out over the ground and against trees.
“Dang, they’re searching, too…” Eva muttered
“More for the plane, I guess…”
“Probably, we might want to destroy the wreckage when we find it…”
“Agreed…”

It took the group almost three hours to find the wreckage. It was nested in a couple of bushes, with the pilot nowhere to be found. They simply wired the plane to explode, and then made sure they got away. Five minutes later an explosion shook the area.
“G-1 to base, we’ve cleared the wreckage…” Eva reported
“Roger that, G-1. Any signs of the pilot?”
“Nothing yet. We’re continuing the search… G-1 out…”
“Out.”

Another two hours and three patrols later, they still hadn’t found the pilot, and were getting quite desperate. Night was about to fall in, and searching in the dark was going to be a futile attempt.
“All right people, last round for the day before we quit… That bastard might hope we find him…”
The squad lead was getting impatient, and every two or three steps they had to hear about ‘that bastard’ or ‘the moron’. Eva had to admit she was getting tired of the forest, but was the calmness herself.
“Human, singular!”
Eva her head rose
“Whoops, multiples. Forgive me.”
Eva checked on her infrared vision. There was indeed a single human sitting slumped against a tree, with a small patrol headed towards it.
“If that’s our man, we might want to hurry…” she said. On the same time, she activated her Jetpack and grabbed her rifle. This was going to get fun…
The hostile forces were alerted by the sudden sound of Eva’s Jetpack. Several of them turned around to face her as she fired a couple of rounds in their general direction. None really hit, but they showed the forces she was aware of their existence. Fearless they continued, until they got hit hard by Eva’s friends. From that moment, it was only a short time until they had the area secured and the pilot identified. He was alive, though weak. He had spent almost twelve hours with a broken leg and no food while he tried to get out on his own strength.
“Don’t worry pilot, we’ll get you out of here… G-1 to base, we’ve got him. Please send a gunship to the following coordinates for extraction…”