Trig gripped the bars of his shoulder restraints tightly as his dropship, Banshee Gold-1, the First Away Team’s dropship, plummeted through Oodalla-4’s atmosphere at supersonic speeds. As when visiting the Bone Wracker, this was his first time being in the lead dropship, and in fact, one of the few times he’d actually been in a dropship outside of training.

Under normal circumstances, only the First Shaman went planetside in combat situations. The rest of the shamans were required to stay on board to monitor the local ӕther and be available for emergency communications. During shore leaves, he took a transport shuttle; for some reason, Trig grinned to himself, it was considered bad form to use invasion craft to deliver crew to vacation resorts. Friendly natives generally did not like being terrorized by a screaming banshee.

Speaking of a screaming banshee, they were now low enough in the atmosphere that the dropship’s air foils were creating the shrieking banshee wail that this class of dropship was named for. In ancient, ancient mythology, a banshee was a dark spirit that would attend those soon to die.

The mythological banshee would stand outside a fortress or camp and wail a terrifying shriek; those within who heard the horrifying sound would know that death was imminent. The same was true for the OCSS Banshee Class dropships; this class of dropship had air foils that generated a truly spine wrenching, teeth gritting, wail as the ship descended through the air towards its destination. It was a clear and unmistakable warning to the enemies of the Oak Clan that their death was imminent, immutable and inescapable.

Of course, in this particular instance, Trig had no idea if there was anyone to be terrified of their arrival. They had been unsuccessful in locating where the Bone Crusher’s dropships had landed. There had been no heat signature from the ships’ engines, nor radiation from their power source, and no heat signatures on land that were consistent with a few hundred orks wandering around a camp. They had attempted both radio and shamanic communications with the surface, but with no success.

“Captain!” Chim Heinzchen, the dropship navigator, shouted looking back into the drop hanger. “I’ve spotted the Bone Wracker’s dropships! They are at the mining colony!”

“Hah!” Grishnakh shouted. “Can you see the crew?”

Chim turned back to his long range vidscreen directly below the main windshield. The kobold was, naturally, sitting in the navigator’s chair to the right of Haeltha, the pilot. “We are still a ways out, but I’m not seeing any motion.”

The navigator and pilot presented quite the contrast up at the front of the dropship. Haeltha was a very good-sized woman, nearly ogre size, and Chim was a typical kobold, which meant that Haeltha was about four times the size of Chim. Side by side, the two of them tested the opposing ergonomic limits of a dropship’s pilot seats. Of course, the visual asymmetry when looking to the front of the ship, was rather minor compared to the imagined asymmetry of the two in Trig’s head. It was well known that the two were lovers, how that worked was the topic of endless speculation among the rest of the crew.