"Recon, this is air cav alpha. We're in the pipe. ETA three-zero seconds."

The Prometheus-class drop ship smashed through the cloud cover like a tumbling brick,
streamers of mist thrown into impossible spirals by its turbulent approach vector.

Far below, the scout wiped precipitation from his visor and rezzed his commlink into life.
"Air cav alpha, this is Recon Actual. We have you five by five. LZ is hot, repeat, LZ is hot".

As if to punctuate the statement, a trio of missile swarms rose from an adjacent bay of the contested processing facility,
lazily arcing their way towards the incoming drop ship.

A split second later, the pilot deployed flares, their distinctive pop-pop-pop seemingly muted by the dazzling sunburst as they fell behind the Prometheus on approach. Misdirected by the heat signature, the swarms jacknifed and detoured into the flares, shrouding the drop ship in a wreath of smoke as they exploded harmlessly to each side.

Air Cav Alpha's pilot pulled hard on the yoke, seeming almost to slide into position above the facility like it was stealing second base. A moment later, a dozen grenades peppered the landing zone; a deadly rain punctuated by the high-pitched whine of pre-cooked flux grenadesbaking the LZ in electromagnetic hell.

A second later, the squad of airborne infantry kicked out, their inertial dampeners cutting in just before impact.
Two short bursts of assault rifle fire and the LZ was secure.

Recon One stepped over a still-smoking body and hailed them. "Assault Alpha, glad you could drop in," he commed.
"Now sit tight and let us lead the way to the next objective."

This thought just occurred to me (not sure where else to put it). Should the number of flares launched, and thus swarm missiles neutralised, increase with meta level? So proto flares will neutralise all 6 of a proto swarm's missiles but standard flares will only take out 4?

Or something like that.