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Time minus five minutes 'til drop," the voice of the flight chief echoes over the loud speaker as the flight crews herd us like cattle into the drop ships. I cling to my rifle as they bring the restraints down over my shoulders, waist and chest. No matter how many times we do this, no matter how often we drop and I manage to come back with my skin intact it never gets any easier. Sure, the brass will lean back in their comfy office chairs far from the fighting, far from the fear and uncertainty of the Iron Casket and feed the media a line. They say it becomes routine to us, second nature like swimming or riding a bike. There's nothing natural about free falling into a planet's atmosphere like a manned comet, listening to the ship moan and creak and all the while wondering if she'll hold together until landing or if she'll explode in the ionosphere.

The restraints clamp tight against my legs and ankles. Even through the armor and the padding they still manage to sting when they lock you in place. The flight crew makes a final, half-assed assessment of their work, offers an equally indifferent salute and scramble of the ship and out of the launch bay before they're sealed in with us. So what if they made a mistake, missed something important that we needed to survive? You think they care? After all, dead men tell no tales.

"Time minus four minutes," the chief announces as the airlock outside hisses shut. We still have the launch lights and the overhead glow but that will change when the door seals. The blast shield snaps up suddenly with a loud and thunderous clang; first nail in the coffin. Despite what the best researchers and recruiters tell you, this thing is nothing but a pressure propelled body box. Thirteen men strapped into a led case and shot like ammo at some godforsaken world and if five of us survive the landing they call it a "success." I'll be damned but what the thing doesn't resemble a cross between bullet and box.

Round tipped nose and slightly curved fins to help with the aerodynamics and sharp contures to aide the drag and stop the airflow make it about the ugliest, meanest looking way to travel. Some guys call her the Crew Coffin or the Iron Casket and they seem to be about right. The ship and her contents are completely disposable, so much so that if you bite the dust on landing they strip your gear and leave you walled up in that tomb forever. Sure, there might be a higher survivability if they used VTOL's or thruster controlled hoppers to takes us back and forth but then they have to price fuel, crew training and repairs when it's so much cheaper to just pop us like the cork out of a champagne bottle and let nature take it's course. They pressurize the launch bay to a certain PSI (what it is I'm terrified to know) then they slam back the launch door and eject us into the void. It works the same way as explosive decompression only it's safer because it's "planned."

"Time minus three minutes," says the A.I. in her semi-sweet, seductress voice as the screw tightens the door and seals us in our tomb. They use her when the darkness comes to keep the new recruits calm. A lot of guys go space happy when the lights go out if they don't hear something soothing. She sounds like a mother or a wife or that special lady they met on shore leave except for the fact that she's only code and circuit instead of flesh and bone. She gives the greener boys a sense of hope, that maybe they've got someone waiting up here for them when they come back. To the rest of us she's a Siren, distracting us as the rocks rise fast off our bow. The air pressure's building now, you can hear it whistling all around the hull. Galloway is sitting across from me; I can see him using the thermal cam in my helmet. Nice enough kid but he's antsy, nervous; if he doesn't let that cybernetic hussy calm him down he'll never make it through this alive. Even through the armor you can tell when a man's shaking.

BANG! and in goes the second nail as the pressure in the ship's cabin is purged and the clamps locked down on the outer hatch. It makes you jump to hear that sound, to watch the light dwindle away and shadow envelope you. I normally don't leave the thermal lenses on but I had to check on Galloway. I punch the control at my hip and the darkness, sweet and cold washes it all away. Now I drift in that perfect limbo, the half-life between true consciousness and the end of all existence.

"Time minus two minutes," she says as the gases outside the casket grow thicker and heavier. Pressure's gone up, a few more seconds and they'll be ready to launch. That's how they've managed to keep these blasted things in service all these years; so much cheaper to use pressure and a sniper's aim to deposit troops on some forsaken planet in the backwaters of nowhere than to waste fuel and training on anything else. Why piss away funding when a led box and a blast door are just as efficient? With all the same effect's as rupturing the hull we go flying at three gravities from the belly of the ship and into orbit. By the time we start our entry we're pushing five G's and you can hear the guy next to you screaming his head off as he has a brain hemorrhage from the speed and force.

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