Combat Drop

Combat Drop

Drop sleds are nothing more than standard Mark V drones, bodies stretched to three meters wide, with all the warhead and half the fuel ripped out. A modified Avenger can carry four sleds - a total of two teams of Special Ops troops.

After the irregularities with the robot troopers - the film buff moron that named that effort 'Project Terminator' should have figured it would end badly - somebody realized that two Avengers could carry enough sleds to drop a platoon of Marines.

Now somewhere up in High Command, the 'Nuke 'em From Orbit' people lost out to the 'Let's Question Some Prisoners' people, and we got orders to capture the Easterner enclave at Honshu.

It's a pretty world, with the rings and the moons and all. We came in under the rings and crossed the terminator. Ringlight lit the ocean. We were still five hundred klicks up when we separated for the hard dive through the atmosphere. We hit air and decelerated at over fifteen gees. The sleds could take a lot more, but it was tough on us grunts, even with equipment, meds and training. My world collapsed into a gray tunnel and I lost consciousness for a few seconds.

The Navy designation for the sleds was Combat Strike Sled - CSS - but in the Corps, we knew that it really stood for: Coffin, Seats Six.

-Excerpt from "The Dead Need No Graves"
Major Wesley Roberts, Confederation Marines