"When Bricking Vertol offered us the Hummingbird before it came on the market, we jumped at the chance. Most of us had used the Hummingbird in the armed forces, and it always came through. Even when we were three hundred k's deep in XXXXX, during that raid on XXXX, the Hummingbirds came through, aaah, forget I said that. Anyhow, we were ready for the Hummingbird."
"We are a small company that has a mining concession on planet X. It was still early in the concession agreement, so we were mostly interested in scouting our concession to see what resources we could pull out. A typical plan was to find an interesting area, set up a field camp, scout for resources, and then pull out after a few weeks work."
"Satellites has shown a likely place about an hour away by Hummingbird (three by helicopter) south of our base, and an initial flyby had shown a good hummock for a base camp. We came in early one day, and rappeled down into the jungle on top of the hummock. It was almost like stepping out of a bus."
"We had a little over two hours before the Hummingbird returned with commo gear, so we got to work with our machetes and saws making a landing zone. It's a lot easier to do without incoming shells, let me tell you. We were dragging the last pieces of brush and trees away when radio told me the Hummingbird was coming in, so we got the landing wands out an waved him in."
"This load was full of satellite communication gear and field repeating gear. We did a quick unload, and started to prepare for more loads, we were going to make a base camp here. Tents, hot meals, entertainment, beds, a shower, the whole deal, about as comfortable as you could get on planet X."
"The hummock was high enough to give us good radio coverage with the repeater, and easy enough to defend if there was any trouble from native wildlife. All in all, a good choice."
"Of course, things were going too smoothly. Somehow, all of our cutting and stuff had riled up a big old green lizard or something that ran right at us, and got a big hunk of Schmidt. Of course, a few exploding pistol rounds took care of it, but that still left Schmidt in a bad way. I got on the horn and told the base we needed a medevac and medic as soon as possible."
"The base said they would outfit the Hummingbird as a medevac unit as soon as it touched down, and it should be there in a little more than an hour. We stabilized Schmidt, made him comfortable, and tried to keep him alive until the medevac came. Needless to say, losing a team member really hurts your year end bonus, and Schmidt was an okay guy, too."
"Soon enough, we heard the Hummingbird come in!."
"The pilot was in such a hurry, he left the turbojet rotated down, but he did turn off the heating array, so the downblast was hot, but not enough to burn. The medic checked on Schmidt, pumped him full of various stuff, and we loaded him into the Hummingbird. The medic checked a few more things, and then got behind the pilot and they took off for the hospital."
"They were able to land right outside the emergency room, saving valuable minutes, and probably saving Schmidt's life. With luck, he'll be able to pay off that rescue bill to the company in three or four more tours!"
"Now, the company was sceptical when we added the counter-insurgency package to the Hummingbird. While it had limited use in labor negotations, our concession didn't mention any indigenous natives, so we figured it would have little yse. Boy, was I wrong!"
"We loaded the profile of the green lizard into the onboard computers, and were then able to overfly our concession area with the sensors hunting them monsters. Soon enough, we had a lizard free concession! Boy, will our insurance rates drop!"