Fire, unrelenting fire consumed his surroundings. Troy saw that he was in his combat pilot uniform with a V-47 flat-line in hand, a small amount of smoke escaping the barrel. His EVA helmet illuminated what was in front of him, a deep-sea blue lit up around the edges while leaving a blackened void where his face would be. Suddenly, he heard screams off in the distance followed by rapid gunfire, two spectres  ran from behind him, sprinting towards the sounds giving a loud metallic screech. both didn't seem to have their on them so they most likely hunting for targets, dealing with their enemies face to face but who were hunting for? "Captain we have taken over the city, the inhabitants here were no match for us." A titan walked up in front of him, it was one of the scorch variants that uses fire as a means of fighting, it was in full tactical black with leather pouches resting on his torso area and legs, it held the termite launcher in one hand while possessing a incendiary round in the other hand.

" what city? Where are we? Who are we attacking?!" Troy barked. The scorch tilted its small head to the side as if it was confused by his questions. " The planet sir, we are invading it by your orders: set up a beach head and kill anyone who poses a threat to you. Their military was no match against our forces, we have them by the throat sir just look for yourself." He saw a wall of fire suddenly clear up behind the titan revealing group of individuals huddled together, he couldn't see their exact features due to the flames planting dark shadows om them. Some were sobbing, begging for their lives to be spared while others growled at him with hatred far greater that even he could comprehend. “we must maintain order and peace within the frontier captain, you said it yourself, these…..things are in the way of our goal and they must be dealt with." The titan turned around and slowly raised both of his arms up in the air, two red orbs formed in his palms generating huge amounts of heat in the process. “ Activating flame core," the titan slammed both of its hands to the ground creating a thunderous explosion , a wall of hot magma moved with great speed vaporizing anything in its path. Troy covered his ears and shut his eyes but he could still hear them screaming, flesh sizzling, bones cracking from the intense heat, the screaming still remained, it was in his head thst was getting worse by the second. "No no no please stop, stop it for fucks sake!" Troy felt someone grabbed on to his shoulder.

****

Troy jolted awake and quickly reached for his data knife, his blade was already pressing against the neck of his assailant only for him to realize that it was Valkyrie. She held her hands up in surrender, "whoa there cowboy sorry to wake ya but we have arrived at the coordinates." He slowly place the weapon back on his side and looked around, with the exception of spark everyone else ignored the commotion that took place in the captains chair. " Val what the hell! You need to stop startling me like that when im sleeping." She shrugged her shoulders, completely ignoring his outburst and went back to her station to give the status report of the ship. "the jump was a success, no signs of damage towards the ships hull although our hyperspace drives are in need of a cooldown due to us traveling for so damn long." She continued. " proximity scans indicates that we are near an asteroid belt with a beacon coming from said belt. it could be our probe we were told about in the briefing, the little basterds actually found what we were looking for." This was easier than troy thought, he could contact spyglass and have a much larger fleet come and extract the rare metals without putting much effort into the mission.

"Captain i have something that you may want to take a look at." Spark interrupted his thoughts, "what is it, better be something good." The stalker quickly typed something on his terminal and stood to walk towards the captain. A holographic projector poped up in front of troy's chair revealing a map of the solar system his ship was in, spark pointed towards a small red dot that wasn't that far from a much larger dot (most likely the sun). "See that there? It's emitting a small burst of radio frequencies in all directions, i tried to to decode it but turns out that it doesn't fit any milita, IMC or any apex predators communication networks." Unknown in origin, it was odd that something like that was coming from deep within uncharted parts of the frontier. "Im guessing you want us to go and investigate it hmm?"

"We are not far from it sir, worst case scenario is that we are ambushed and die horrible deaths" spark said with a chuckle. Troy should have worked more his sense of humor in the past.

Troy looked towards the other stalker who was also looking at the star map. " val what do you think? Should we go for it?" He asked.

He could tell by her outburst that she was excited, " hell yeah we should go for it! We may find a ancient ship or a portal to another dimension!" She wasn't wrong, some adventure could do a world of good.

" fine we will go, Valkyrie i want a harvester escorted by squad of our fughters to head to the asteroid belt. Once they gather what we need, send them to the coordinates of our destination." She nodded and left the bridge to head to the hanger, " spark keep our radar and scanners on full power at all cost, we may get ourselves into a trap and i rather not have our shiny asses handed to us. "Will do sir," spark sat back down in his station. "Helmsman you have the location, forward thrust 100 percent get this ship moving and try not to hit anything while you are at it!" The golden MRVE assistant responded in a series of high pitch chirps and squeaks followed by their typical salute before pushing the throttle forward. The ship roared to life and crawled forward, gaining speed by the minute.

****

Troy glanced through a monitor that was overlooking the titan hangers, most of them were hanging by the shoulders being inspected by the MRVE while others stood in place with weapons at the ready. each one had their own variantions and modifications for any type of situation that was needed in the battlefield. What interest him the most was the prototype titan that was alien in nature. instead of having a bucky frame like the others, this one was smooth around the edges. No wires or hydraulic cylinders were exposed to the outside world but  were replaced by synthetic muscles that covered most of the titan. He wanted to head into the hanger to get a better look at it, probably test it out on one of the barren worlds in the system but his bodyguard called out to him. " Troy we arrived at the source but.....it's not what we expected, you gotta come down here and see for yourself!" Valkyrie stammered.

He got up from his seat and followed val down a flight of stairs which lead to the observation deck. He stopped dead in his tracks from what he saw below him, it wasn't a ship nor was it a portal all, what he was seeing was a planet! spark was already in the room before troy came down, he was at a computer typing in something while his counterpart was simply gazing at the world below. " this can't be it, we must have went off course or something. Val did you fuck with the coordinates again?" Troy looked at both of them, lost at words. " no this is the spot sir, i guess the source was a planet but that's not why we called you down here, take a closer look." He did as spark said and looked downward, the planet had earth-like characteristics with oceans covering most of the planet while he did noticed some mountians here and there, he could even see massive plains of green taking up a good portion as well." Yeah it's like earth, we see these eve-." What  got his attention was a tall rectangle shaped object sticking up through the clouds followed by others that were the same shape and color but alittle smaller than the main one. "They are skyscrapers captain, we are above what seem to be a city of some sort." Valkyrie spoke softly. "impossible! There shouldn't be any colonies within the dark zone, let alone a fucking city this has to be one of th--" he was cut off by spark. " from the looks of it sir, who ever is down there, they are not human to begin with." The stalker typed in a few keys on the terminal and a large monitor slowly emerged from the ceiling of the observation room. It flickered to life, showing a much closer view of the city. 

Troy was only able to stare at the screen with a expression of pure shock and disbelief, they looked somewhat like him but at the same time they weren't. The screen quickly zoomed towards a canine who was casually sitting down with a cat creature. The dogs black fur was covering the top half while leaving a sizable amount of white to its front, its muzzle on the other hand was white with a pink snout to top it off, he could tell that the animal was a male due to seeing fine tune muscles being exposed through his red T-shirt and cargo shorts. The feline he was with had  golden orange fur with dark brown dots covering her entire being "From what the archives are reading, it appears to have taken the form of the Siberian husky from earth sir While the cat is the african cheetah, fascinating." Spark said gleefully. It wasn't just the dog and cat, troy saw more animals varying in size and species walking amongst their day without a care in the world, " a modern society exist beyond humanity's light , troy we have to get down there and introduce ourselves. I have always wanted to say we come in peace!" Valkyrie giggled.

"You can't be serious, they may turn hostile and try to kill us and take this ship, we cannot risk going down there just so you could say hi!" Spark growled. "For all we know, they have already detected us and are now planning to assault the ship as we speak!" Spark shot up from his seat and made his way towards Valkyrie, mere inches from her face plate. "This is the first time in history that found intelligent life out in space, we have no playbook, no articles, anything that will introduce humans to this young world."

Even after all of that aggression, Valkyrie still kept a even tone in her voice as if she was enjoying seeing spark blow a fuse. "Calm down, you are making a big deal out of this which is unnecessary at this point. Scans didn't pick up any sudden burst of radiation in a 376.5 million kilometer radius of the world so my best bet is that this civilization doesn't even have ships capable of interstellar combat let alone taking on our ship." She continued." It's not like we are going down there in a flock of ships, just a small group to look around and that's it."

She was right, the dragonova would have been attacked by now but all he saw out there was the black void with a ball of blue covering a good portion of it. "Both of you quit it, you two argue like 5 year old kids!' Troy snapped. They stopped yelling but were still at each other faces. the captain headed towards where spark once sat and pressed a button on the keyboard. The monitor soon change from viewing of the city to a spectre sitting in a chair overlooking the ships hanger, her outer chassis and sides of her face were coated in crimson red only leaving the top of her head shaded in bright yellow. " you contacted me captain?" She spoked in ancient Russian, spyglass didn't care if his individual units had a voice or not as long as they get the job done . it was nice to give some of them a unique way of communication. "prep me for a drop, i want a northstar with cloaking capabilities and a jamming device to minimize the chance of detection. arm her with the XO-16A2 Chaingun instead of the plasma railgun, add noise canlelat As troy was saying this, the hanger was coming to life with activity as spectres and MRVN alike were working together. The quartermaster nodded and continued, " we will have the titan ready for drop in a hour due to us needing to re-equip her armour." 

"Fair enough, keep me posted when she is ready for me." Troy pressed another button to switch back to viewing the alien planet, "im heading down there to explore and get a closer look at the inhabitants. Val you keep on surveillance, you'll be my eyes in sky while im down there." Troy turned to face spark, "since you are so paranoid about all this you'll be keeping our ship in one piece if they actually do have hidden. Force in space. While im gone, the carrier will be in code red defence protocol, all point defences should be online and running and all fighters are ready for any type of conflict."

Troy jogged up the steps before turning to his machines, "im gonna be down there for a few days you two play nice while im gone and if things do go for the worse then you'll know what to do by then." He turned and left from sight, leaving val and spark alone.  This wasn't the first time troy wanted to do this all alone," i hope it doesn't lead that." Valkyrie said while looking back at the planet below, a sense of worry filled her voice. "No matter what happens val, we will protect him to the bitter end. He created us for that purpose and i will fulfill that purpose, even if it means pointing a gun at an alien." Spark followed her gazed in silence.

****

" i haven't been in full gear since that battle on the frozen shit-hole of a planet months ago." Troy said while looking himself in the mirror. Multiple scars lingered his body for the countless times he outwitted death during his career but it did a number on him to not even the regeneration chambers could fix. 78 times he had to undergo pilot regen , 78 times he felt his body being torn apart and put back together just so he could fight for the spyglass. It was tiresome but it was all he knew and the day will come when he will not be able to get up and fight anymore.

Troy placed his hand on the top of his head and softly rubbed it only to feel nothing but a smooth cold surface. A price for the regeneration, his skin complexity also suffered greatly by once having a mixed color full of life to a now dead pale color. He still kept himself in peak physical condition even after all that happened to him, hopefully he'll be able to settle down in the future if he play his cards right. He gave himself a final look over before nodding and proceeded to put on the combat flight suit, it was loose at first but pressing a button at the base of the neck casued the suit to tighten up, hugging the surface of the skin. " sir your titan is prep and ready for drop," he heard the quatermaster said over the ships intercom. He went through the hatch which lead back to the bridge where Valkyrie was stationed at, she looking out through the window. She turned to face troy when he entering the area, " i found a great spot for you to be deployed, it's gonna be in a densed forest 14 kilos from a heavily populated city. However, there is what appears to be a road a few miles from the LZ." she sent troy all the information he needs for drop to the surface to his pad. "Please dont do anything stupid down, well not without me with ya at least." She laughed to herself and went back to staring out to space, troy rolled his eyes and left the bridge and made haste towards the armory.

****

The archangel squadron was well known within the Remnant Fleet back when there were humans still loyal to the faction. 10 pilots were handpicked from all comers of the IMC to do covert operations against the other factions. after the remanent fleet was first established. After some time went by, the archangels numbers dwindled due the lost of Demeter, some were killed during operations while others went missing deep within the frontier. Troy stared at his helmet for awhile, it was the only thing that he had to remind him of his comrades that he fought along side with in the past, it made it harder to let go as the years go by. He finally put on the helmet with a satisfying click followed by a soft hiss to inform him that it hd successfully sealed, he ran a hand along the weapon rack that lingered the wall of the armory until he found what he was looking for. A suppressed P2016 with a add benefit of a reflex sight rested on top, he was gonna go in quiet that way while he was planetside so there wasn't any need to bring anything else. However, it was kinda overkill bringing a titan with him just for recon and exploration but he didn't want to take a chance with the inhabitants.

He left the armory and made his to the hanger where the northstar will be waiting for him. When he arrived, he was greeted by the quatermaster who was ordering around some MRVN units that were carrying a small hellfire rocket. "Captain you can delpoy when you are ready, we will open the bay doors on your order, oh and your titan is right over there." She said while pointing farther up ahead. It didn't take long to find her since she was the only active titan in the hanger, the northstar was in a crouch position with a MRVN working on her main sensors. after he was finished, he give her a loud chirp and a thumbs up before leaving to attend to his duties elsewhere. The northstar variant was designed to ambush other titans with her tether traps and cluster missiles, if she is not laying in wait for her prey then she is engaging her enemies from afar with the plasma railgun. This northstar however was fitted for something completely different from her primary purpose. Her chassis was planted with tiny fome-like substances that was reflecting away light giving her a transparent appearance from a distance, she also was outfitted with thrusters on her back that were much bigger than what typical northstar's would have. "Viper engines? Nice, im practically flying a walking jet at this point."  Troy mused. " pilot all of my systems are green,  awating for you to embark." The northstar stated. Troy activated his jump kit and helmet and proceeded to jog to a all out sprint, he quickly closed the distance and  leaped up in the air. Using his boasters to give him much needed momentum to only  be wrapped around by hands of steel and iron. The titan opened her chassis and gently placed the man inside.

" never gets old doing that." The pilot chuckled as he flick a switch on top of him and typed in a code to a small number pad to his left. "transferring controls to pilot, it is good to be apart of a mission with you sir." She stated. "Likewise and for the duration of this little mission of ours, your callsigh is gonna be stella-1 and I'll be stella-2. Easy to remember love, got that?" Troy said. "Roger that stella-2, ready to drop on your go." As she closed the chassis with troy comfortably seated inside, the hanger bay doors opened up revealing the night sky. He spoked into his helmet while the titan walked to the edge of the ship. " spark maintain high orbit from the planet, keep the ship on high alert while im out and about. Valkyrie if you find any satellites in the area, try to get access into them. If lady luck is on your side then you may stumble on their version of the internet."

Both of them responded with a 'roger' at the same time then spark bluntly said; "Keep in mind captain if you happen to die down there, we will have no choice but invade amd set up a base until reinforcements which i will hate with a passion." Valkyrie said. " that makes me feel so much better val, keep me posted please." With that, the pair leaped from the egde of the ship and quickly decend to the world below.

****

"Mooooom im huuungry, are we finally home yet?" Her kit cried out from the back seat. Just a hour or so and then we'll be home, there's a snack in my suit case if you want it." It was a warm night out but the breeze felt just right against Sarah's fur, she never thought that she will ever see the day when she could finally get some quality time with her daughter for once. The vixen never really did like water but Jessica loved it.

She adjusted her rearview mirror to see her kit happily munching on some chocolate chip cookies from the wrapper, her snow white fur could be seen from miles afar while her deep amber gave off a soft glow. She always thanked the luna goddess for blessing her with such a beautiful child. "Mommy look! The sky looks so pretty tonight." Jessica exclaimed. She wasn't wrong, no cities were nearby so she clearly see the stars lit up the night with a multitude colors. The drive home couldn't get this much better. Her thoughts soon came about her son and his little camping trip with his friends. " i hope he will be ok out there." She softly said to herself. " you said mommy you said something?" Her daughter called out. "Oh no no sweetie it's nothing."