After the briefing concluded the company commanders all hurried to the hangars to assemble their teams and board their respective cruisers.  When Bazel and Mouse made it to their ship’s bay they discovered the inevitable; having only just returned from the front lines their cruiser was hardly airworthy.  Armored panels were strewn everywhere and several crews were still trying to reinstall their weapon batteries. In front of the ship his company was assembled watching Bazel’s second in command shouting at a currently extremely pissed off maintenance technician.

Not expecting a good reply with the present evidence in front of him Bazel had to ask anyways, “Nova what’s the Valkyrie’s status?”

Call sign Nova: lion beastman: gold red fur and blue eyes: second in command and company linguistics expert.

“Sir, to put it succinctly, she is fucked.  Go on Argus and give our sergeant the great news.”

“Frankly Sergeant Bazel the Valkyrie would double quite excellently as a coffin right now if you enjoy your coffins in the exploding variety.  Your engine has a massive crack in the magi drive, over half of your lift discs are inoperative, and the whole damn cooling system is pissing enough fluid to start an ice age.  The fact you actually rode her back to headquarters in this condition has required us to re-examine the feasible heights of stupidity.”

“Well whatever it is we are heading in against the fact is they downed an Eagle class cruiser and I highly doubt our little Sparrow would fare much better.  Forget the armor, I want the guns mounted and do what you can to patch up the other problems because in 30 mikes we are going airborne.”

Argus stared at Bazel in disbelief for several seconds before sighing, “Fine sir it is your funeral.”

Bazel watched him walk off and start yelling at the other technicians to begin emergency repairs before turning his attention back to Mouse and Nova.  

Nova spoke up first, “Sir, why the hell are we awake right now and why the hell are we being called up when we haven’t had a chance to recover from our loss of squad 3?”

“Well it seems some important bookworms are stuck in the shit and it’s all hands on deck since whatever shit they are stuck in managed to take out that Eagle class escort.  There should of been at least 4 companies on board and an ascended mage commanding that ship yet headquarters hasn’t been able to contact them since the initial distress call went out.”

“Well what in the goddess’ name do they expect us to do, you heard Argus, our ship is a sneeze away from turning us all into an extremely pretty light show…”

“Oh please,” Bazel said slapping him on the shoulder with one hand and waving toward their ship with the other, “you know those maintenance types are always so dramatic.  I mean have you ever heard one not bitching?  Valkyrie has been through worse.  It’ll be fine…..probably.  Did you guys have any trouble getting our gear out of the armory?”

Motioning toward the company, Bazel, Mouse, and Nova started walking over to join the rest of them in arming up.  Their company specialized in rapid covert operations and his assigned mages along with their far from standard equipment were a testament to that fact.  Optical camouflage, silence enchantments, and some of the most lethal illusionists the nation could train gave Bazel a huge sense of pride to lead such a group.  The nation of Cel was one of the most diverse on the continent and the full advantages of that diversity were actualized in companies like Iota.

“The armory guard was the same one as yesterday sir.  Poor bastard looked like he was suffering deja vu but to be fair I felt the same way.  Honestly I think our equipment needs just as much love as the Valkyrie right now and I’m just hoping it’ll hold out.”

Their issued equipment was being passed out from the back of the transport used to haul it over from the armory.  Military policy looked down upon or outright restricted personal equipment but every member of his company had outfitted themselves in some manner or another with items looted through their operations.  Nearly every member had a spatial storage device on them for their non-issued gear.

Up in the truck Princess and Fog were passing down the gear to the assembled company members.

Call sign Princess; avian beastwoman; gold tipped black feathers and golden eyes; illusionist mage

Call sign Fog; jaguar beastman; black fur and green eyes; illusionist mage

Standard issued special ops loadouts included the venerable Ecea Arms Compact Magitech Carbine, Sori Foundry anti-magic ballistic vest with light weight enchantment, and Sori Foundry anti-magic ballistic helmet with integrated encrypted short range communication capability.  

The Ecea Arms Magitech Carbines became standard when it was discovered how effective magic rounds were against many demon and monster types along with the breakthrough discovery of a cheap manufacture method for the rounds themselves.  

A headquarters sponsored inquiry had identified most mages on the battlefield spent their limited magic energy for shield purposes as a reflexive defensive mechanism leaving them drained of any offensive power.  The magitech carbines filled the offensive gap superbly.

Everyone began to circle around Bazel after finishing their equipment buddy checks.  All eyes fell on him as they waited for an explanation of why they were all here at the asscrack of dawn.  Several of his company looked a bit rough for wear still from the teams wild pub crawl from the prior evening.  Bazel couldn’t help but sigh before beginning.

“Alright listen up, company comms for this operation are going to be on channel 9.  Mouse the comm channels for coordination with Overlord are the same as usual.  Our objectives are to locate and extract a high value research team, the catch is that we have no clue who saw fit to put the research team in this position but we know they are packing.”

A sudden ringing struck Bazel at this moment and his vision seemed to slant and narrow before a feminine voice could be heard pleading in his head

They are coming, you must find the feather!

The ringing stopped and vision snapped back to looks of concern from all the faces around him.

“Bazel are you with us man?  You just sort of froze there for a minute,” Nova asked.

“Think that artillery round scrambled me a bit.  Just a bit of ringing is all. I'll ask the doctors to take a second look when we get back.”

Cherry was the next to reply, “Sir I think you should let me do a quick scan to check for any potential after effects of that head impact you took.”

Call sign Cherry; dryad, white bark skin; brown hair and green eyes; company medic and tracking expert.

“I’m good Cherry.  Save your energy for the operation, it was just a small bit of ringing.”

“Copy sir, but when we get back you’ll get it double checked or by the goddess I’ll drag you to the hospital personally.”

All the looks of concern faded into chuckling at Cherry’s threat and it was at this moment Bazel noticed they were missing someone.

“That son of a….has anyone seen Bunny?”

Call sign Bunny; elf; black hair and purple eyes; company demolitions specialist

“He arrived with the rest of us but I lost sight of him when Argus came over to brief me on the Valk’s status…,” Nova informed him.

“I’m here,” Bunny shouted running from behind several storage containers while straightening his disheveled fatigues, “just needed to requisition a few things from supply.”

Coming out from the same section of storage containers but heading the opposite direction was an equally disheveled looking raccoon beastman.  Bunny waved and blew a kiss towards him causing the company to start whistling and catcalling.  This prompted the embarrassed beastman to rush off even faster.

“Bunny if one more sergeant comes to me complaining about your supposed supply requisitions by the goddess I swear we are going to get you neutered.  Get geared up and Nova make sure we don’t lose him again.  Everyone else get over to the Valk and see if we can’t help them maintenance folks make her less of a coffin moonlighting as a bomb.”

Everyone grumbled as they walked off toward the Valk leaving Bazel and Mouse behind.  Glancing down the arranged bays he saw Showers and Blizzard walking their way.  Tapping Mouse on the shoulder they headed over to intercept them.  As Showers and Blizzard finally caught sight of Iota Company’s Ship their previous smiling faces turned to frowns.

“Bazel,” Showers deadpanned, “are you guys seriously riding that thing into combat?”

“We ain’t got a choice here.  Drinks on you guys when we get back, I feel like we’re gonna need enough to put us into a coma.”

Mouse and Blizzard gave a quick hug before separating and bumping their fists.

Thinking back to the warning the strange voice passed him shortly ago Bazel suddenly frowned.

“Hey Showers promise me you’ll be careful out there.  I’m worried about this operation.  An enemy attack this deep into Cel territory with no warning it just doesn’t make sense.  Why set up an ambush in a ruined city?”

“Chatter around the companies is it was most likely the Triacanth’s sneaking in slowly and setting up a base of operations in our own borders, but I think you should worry more for your ship than for our hides.  We’ll do the gentlemanly thing and offer you guys a ride for free when we’re on our way back.”

Showers reached out his hand prompting Bazel to grasp it and bump their chests in a hug while slapping each other’s backs with their free hands.

Breaking away from one another nothing else needed to be said.  They both nodded before walking back to their respective ships.  As they neared the Valk the ringing and vision warping hit Bazel once again.

Time is short my champion, you must find the feather if you want to live.