Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) by Jonathan P. Brazee

The squad was moving in good order, each one keeping the proper dispersion. He felt a surge of pride. These were good men.
    Ryck’s squad was designated to enter the complex first. As they approached, Ryck activated one of his dragonflies, sending the small drone up and zooming it through the smoldering doors. He’d already programmed it to scout out the entire interior, and his AI took over control of the drone. Ryck could manually take control, but the AI was pretty good at this function, leaving Ryck with one less thing on his plate.
    It took a lot of training to multitask in a PICS. Ryck had to move forward in a tactical method, monitor his squad, and observe what his dragonfly revealed. Watching the dragonfly’s feed while reacting to what was in front of him as he moved was the most difficult part. It was as if his two eyes were looking in different directions at the same time.
    The Tungsicle had blown through the big doors before penetrating the ferrocrete floor of the warehouse, a four or five meter hole its signature. Despite the crystallized ceramic coating, this had released a huge amount of energy, and the entire deck of the warehouse had cracked and buckled. What looked to be a complete Viceroy-class fighter had been destroyed, as well as a number of ground vehicles. The warehouse had been full of supplies and equipment. Now it was full of junk.
    Ryck wasn’t seeing a real visual. There was too much dust and smoke inside. But the AI was taking the visual, the infrared, and the radar image from the dragonfly and compiling it into one view that made sense.
    There was only one signature of a human body. At least it was half of a body. There could be more hidden in the rubble, but that was the only one evident from the scan.
    The lieutenant was watching the same feed, so Ryck didn’t have to report it up. Ryck tended to rely on speech too much, and it sometimes was difficult for him to step back and let the displays do their job. In many cases, a quick glance at the display could tell someone what they needed to know when trying to explain it would take four or five times as long.
    Still, he couldn’t resist the simple “Go” he passed to Cpl Rey to move into the complex.
    Cpl Rey’s team skirted the glowing edges of the destroyed portion of the door and disappeared into the warehouse. The AI noted the movement and focused the dragonfly on the team as they entered. Now, Ryck’s face shield had Rey’s visuals, the dragonfly’s compiled display, and the actual visuals of what was in front of him. It took a lot of focus to keep things straight in his mind.
    Rey signaled the all clear, and Ryck and the rest of the squad followed inside. He closed Rey’s feed and reduced the dragonfly’s to a small screen on the upper right side of his face shield. This was better.
    Intel had been right. This was a warehouse, a monster one. To Ryck, it looked like the preparation for a major offensive, not just the typical ship pirating for which the gang was known. This looked similar in scale to when a Marine battalion was getting ready to deploy.
    Third Squad pushed to the back of the warehouse, making room for the rest of the platoon as well as First Platoon to enter.
    “I’ve got the main passage here,” Cpl Beady passed.
    Ryck moved to meet him. He and Lips were standing in front of a large passage, five meters wide and three high. Down the middle was the shiny surface of a magnostrip, [12] a sure sign that supplies were floated along it to other parts of the complex.
    Ryck did a quick re-program, and the dragonfly zipped past the three Marines to enter the passage. Ryck followed the feeds as the drone flew in about 30 meters before encountering blast doors. The shock of the Tungsicle had bucked the deck even this far back, but the doors appeared to be solid.
    Ryck could see that the lieutenant was no longer on the feed, so he brought him up on a P2P.
    “Sir, we’ve got a major passage out, but it’s got a blast