"I will not allow this to stand! you are going to pay for disrespect that you have shown me this day. " the man that I am knocked on to the ground said as he rose from the floor in a fit of rage.
"Conor!! you will take your seat now, and that is not a request!" I heard a female with short blond hair that was wearing matching armor to him say in a demanding voice.
As soon as she spoke, he took a seat and looked away from me without making another threat of any kind. That told that he feared her more than me.
It did not take long for everyone else in the room to finally take a seat in their appropriate chairs for the meeting to begin.
I sat down around the rest of my squad members and made sure that Nova was also in the seat beside me so that she would feel safe from that man during this meeting.
After she spoke and everyone sat down, I noticed that one tall and elderly man rose from his chair and made his way to the area where she was standing. I also noticed that Trent had finally made his way up there as well, which told me that this was a gathering of all the different leaders that were heading the mission briefing.
"Can someone please dim the lights so that I can show our objective for this mission?" Trent asked as he stood up in front of everyone.
When he asked this, the lights in the rooms began to dim out until they were at their lowest setting, and I could only see clearly about what was one foot in front of me.
Then I saw a galaxy map that was made of blue energy showed up throughout the entire room. Trent began to rotate the Galaxy, followed by some zooming in until it stopped at the same planet as it did in the transport ship when Trent showed everyone where his tracker was.
"The world that we will be attacking is a volcanic world, so we need to be prepared for intense heat flares as well as the possibility of lava eruptions." the female leader in armor said when she took over by stepping in front of Trent before zooming deeper within the map, giving us a view of only the planets interior.
Even though this invasion was originally Trent's idea, he did not say anything to interrupt her because he did everything by the book no matter how inconvenient it was for him. That would end up being his weakness.
"Yes, and when we get to this world, we do not need any kind of heroes trying to risk everything to earn glory and honor for themselves. We will be at a disadvantage unless we get a good start on our campaign to conquer this vampire stronghold of this world. You need to remember that we are only here to achieve one main objective. That objective is to reclaim the container that was recently lost before the UDC gains access to its secrets." the elderly gentleman said as he stood up which unlike everyone else that had spoken, he had a much more commanding voice that made everyone listen to every word that came out of his mouth as if it was words of a god.
"We will be using a smaller transport vessel first when we leave this world in order to meet up with a fleet of Titan class battle cruisers for our confrontation with The UDC fleet so that we can get to the ground while suffering the minimum possible casualties." The elderly gentleman said before he sat back down.
"That brings our general information meeting to a close. I want all of you to make your way to the spaceport, and we will be on our way to the vampire stronghold. just remember that we will be putting those disgusting undead beings back to the hell from which they came. In the end, it is either us or them. " Trent said as he waved his fists in the air to tell all of us that we were on the right side during this invasion.
Then, after Trent finished speaking, everyone began to rise from their chairs and cheer in unison. Then I saw everyone around me started to leave the meeting room.
"So, Nova, I did not expect to meet up with you for a mission anytime soon. This is going to be an interesting objective since I get to do it with the woman that I love. " I said to her as I looked deeply into her eyes when everyone else left the room.
"Well, I can say that I am at least satisfied that we were going to be working together today because of the fact that that man has been harassing me in between missions. so, thank you very much for the backup baby. " Nova said to me with a small grin across her face.
"I thought that I would tell you that I broke one of my scythes on my last mission, so I ordered a custom job before I came here to meet up for the mission." I said to her as I opened the door that led out of the building and let her walk in front of me.
"Thank you for telling me about that. By doing this, you are letting me know that you trust me since communication is one of the main keys to having a healthy long-term marriage." she told me when I close the door behind me.
Nova and I made our way to the spaceport and continued to discuss the different family plans that we had for the future while we were on our short journey since we did not know when we would be able to be in the same place at the same time for quite some time.
When we made it to the spaceport instead of going through the special forces door like I had done in the past. I saw Trent standing near a massive ship that was being loaded with crates of supplies, and I made my way over to him.
"I hope that you you're not expecting special treatment from me on this mission since your wife will be involved in this conquest of the undead stronghold as well." Trent said as he set on a supplies box when I made my way to where he was.
"No sir, I do not expect any kind of special treatment from you because of that fact." I said as I lightly bowed to him as a sign of respect.
"That is good to hear." he said to me before he rose to his feet and made his way onto the ship.
I looked around and noticed that there were four different ships that were being loaded almost side by side with boxes of the different types of items that we would be able to use in this invasion. This told me that they were going to be taking this very seriously.
"Can I have the attention of everyone that is not involved with the moving of our supplies?". the same elderly gentleman that was at the meeting spoke in the same tone of voice that he used before. As he spoke, he stood up on a stool so that everyone could see him before he continued to speak.
"My name is Jackson. I am the general that has been put in charge of commanding our main invasion force on this mission.
So that everything stays organized, we will be dividing our forces into three main armies, and each army type will be boarding a separate transport ship for the journey to the rendezvous with the fleet." Jackson said he pointed to the three ships where the commanders were standing inside of the doorway of their respected ship.
After he finished talking, Jackson got off the stool that he was standing on and went to the only ship that was vacant of a squad leader to await the arrival of their men.
"Come on, Danny; the speech is over. You need to make your way over here now. Your love life can wait until we make it back home." William said as he made a smooching face at me as if he was trying to mock me.
I kissed Nova before walking to my ship, where I saw all the members of my team who were waiting for me to board the first ship.
"I hope that you know that one day I will get you back for all of this disrespect that you constantly keep throwing my way William". I said to him as I stared with a large amount of frustration behind every word.
"You can try." William said to me as he turned away from me and walked deeper into the transport ship with his hands crossed behind his back.
"All right, you two calm down. Remember we have a mission to accomplish. in this squad, we always put mission objectives before our personal feelings. Remember that or I will have to reassign you to a different squad. " Trent said as he looked at William and then back at me.
I bet that he said that because he had been interrupted quite a few times during the original briefing by the other Terran officers and that he is taking his frustration out on us by tightening up his already "by the book" rules.
The door quickly shut after the last person put the final crate of supplies within the ship. it did not take long for the pilot to start the engines and take off into the skies.
A short while after we left the ground, I noticed that we had made it into the planet's atmosphere because of the intensity of the ship shaking as we were leaving the world.
Then, shortly after, I heard a second engine that began to hum quietly and grew louder every passing moment over the span of about ten seconds. That was the sound of the warp drive kicking in, which meant we were safe to move around until we made it to the rendezvous point.
"Now I need to tell you that we have been instructed to board the TCS Davis. I thought you would want to know that the captain of this specific ship does things by the book even more than I do." Trent said, and soon as I could see that there were engineers moving around the ship that meant that we had made it to the battleship that we were to meet for the invasion.
The door began to open, and light started to shoot into the dark transport, which caused me to repeatedly blink so that I could see clearly as soon as the door became completely open.
When I adjusted my site to the bright lights that were coming in, I was able to notice that there was an entire column of soldiers awaiting our arrival.
At the end of the line of soldiers, I noticed a bald male human that looked to be at least in his late 40s. He had a curly mustache that was brown, but the rest of his face was completely shaved. Then I noticed his clothing looked a lot nicer than the other soldiers that were waiting for us, and he also had a large variety of different kinds of metals and stripes on his vest.
"Wait right here in a single row." Trent said in a demanding tone to all of us as soon as we got out of the ship.
As soon as we all stood still, I saw that Trent took in a deep breath before marching towards Captain James. he then bowed to him and stayed that way until Captain James responded.
"You know Trent. you have not changed at all since the day that I took you under my wing and showed you what it was like to be a true soldier for your people. " James said as he offered his hand for Trent to shake it.
Trent then stopped bowing and shook his hand; and as soon as he did, I could tell that there was no more tension in the room as if Trent was in paradise.
I honestly thought that he was going to be more serious just as Trent had warned us before. just in case if Trent was telling the truth, I chose to keep my guard up so that I did not bring any kind of embarrassment to Trent at all.
This began the next step in our plan to invade the vampire stronghold. Even though the plan was going smoothly so far, I still had a very uneasy feeling about the mission as if something bad was happening or was bound to happen by the end of it.