by Lee Guo
Immediately, his view of the enemy ground units flashed brilliantly as the tactical nukes hit their mark outside the city. Giant mushroom clouds appeared in his helmet view. It took a while but once those mushroom clouds disappeared, Kubersly gasped. The enemy wasn’t invincible! Their ground units had been decimated. Everything outside the dropships had been turned to black debris. Only the dropships survived.
It certainly looked as if the humans finally scored one.
Then, the dropships opened their top hatches. Suddenly, aircraft exited out of the massive dropships and began moving in the direction of the city. Miniature troop deployment vehicles, much like helicopters from ages past. Probably carrying assault troopers.
Suddenly, Kubersly could hear enemy artillery shells landing throughout the city. The big dropships countered with their own version of artillery and small missiles, but thank god, they weren’t nuclear armed.
“We’re being hit!” came the cries. “Our positions are being bombarded!”
So, the enemy had recon probes after all—or something similar.
Kubersly wondered what was inside those aircraft and concluded that they were no doubt carrying alien infantrymen of their own.
“Hold on, guys,” Captain Bewcock stated over the command net. “Their assault fliers are coming! Prepare to fire! Fire!”
“Fire at will!” Kubersly relayed the order to his platoon.
Immediately, the battlefield in and around the city thundered with rounds of missiles and shells going in every direction. The alien dropships threw their artillery and missile fire at human positions in the city. The alien aircraft did the same. Alien ground vehicles no doubt carrying troops headed inward towards the city, surrounded by alien tanks roaring with their massive guns. Human artillery, tanks, and aircraft outside and inside the city countered with their own version of hell.
It seemed, to Kubersly in that moment of intense excitement, that alien ground-based technology was not much superior than humans. He was glad. At least in this regard, they were equal. The alien’s small scale ground units did not have any of the superior gravity-enhanced technology that made their atmospheric dropships and the much larger kilometer wide troop transports invulnerable. But what the enemy did have was quantity. The enemy outnumbered the city defenders ten to one.
Kubersly gazed as alien aircraft passed by overhead. Things dropped away from the alien aircraft.
Alien foot soldiers!
Kubersly, still standing on top of the hospital complex, aimed his magnetic rifle at one of the free-falling enemy soldiers and—suddenly, everything around him exploded as enemy shells rained down on his position. Debris flew everywhere. His vision became clouded. Things ricocheted onto his armor and thankfully, none of it penetrated. He quickly activated his rockets and leapt using his chemical-propelled thrusters and now he was skyborn, away from the mess. Now he was an easy target just like the enemy soldiers falling from above!
He fired directional thrusters while he was in the sky, allowing him to fall onto another building. He continued firing his magnetic rifle at the targets. A hit! One of the aliens above exploded in a dazzling fireball.
“I’m hit!” someone’s voice cried out over the platoon’s channel. It was Private Falk.
Kubersly attention suddenly came back to his own platoon. His platoon display section inside his helmet was blinking. His platoon members died off one by one. Their unit statuses changed color when they were hit. Three gone. Now four. “Keep firing!” Kubersly ordered all his platoon members positioned several hundred meters around him. “Don’t let up!”
“There’s JUST too many of them!” another one blinked away. Private Rogers.
“Keep firing!”
Now, the alien infantrymen landed all around him. It was no longer an up versus down battle. His helmet map display read over eight hundred new enemy dots in every direction within a kilometer radius. On top of rooftops, on the city streets, around buildings.
“Oh shit,” Kubersly muttered. He dove for cover just as an armor-piercing hypervelocity round swooshed past his shoulder. He brought his rifle onto the nearest target that he could see—he could see them everywhere. He fired…And fired….And fired.
Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
Operation Room…
There were just too many of them.
Colonel Streit eyed all the enemy positions on the planetary holomap and knew they outnumbered human numbers by as much as twenty to one. Fighting enemy positions outside the cities was easy. Since all human forces had withdrawn to the cities, all he had to do was nuke enemy positions outside the cities. But once those alien troopers got inside, it was impossible to take them out except through street fighting, and there, his numbers disadvantage truly manifested itself.
It was a good thing that enemy ground-based technology wasn’t much superior than humans. Their infantry armor was just as vulnerable to armor penetration rounds. Their tanks and aircraft were just as limited in speed and durability due to technological restraints as the human variants. But their numbers made all the difference.
It became obvious the aliens could distinguish between military and civilian targets. They left the civilians alone. But what did they want with the civilians? Until he knew what they intended to do with them, he had to do everything in his power to protect them. Even then, Streit sighed, there was only so much he could do to accomplish that. His ground forces were being whittled down by the onslaught. He estimated that within days, he’d be down to the last man, both in terms of military units and civilian police forces.
All around the planet, battles waged on city streets, around street corners, and inside buildings.
The truth was his men were dying.
The mood inside the command room was desperate. All around him, regional leaders sitting in front of computer interfaces were shouting orders to those who were actually in the battlefield. In the past hour, over 6000 military and policemen died. That was over 1/12th of his entire planetary force in the first hour alone.
The worst part was—there was nothing Streit could do except—surrender. As things were, he estimated that his losses were actually low compared to what they could have been. With so much unknown about the enemy initially, his losses could have been far more devastating. In a way, his subordinates down the chain of command were doing a good job, given what they knew about the enemy. Now, everything was up to the lieutenant colonels and majors who commanded entire battalions. They would be the ones in charge of how the battles were fought in the streets.
Bajor City, Southern Continent, Meerlat
Main Hospital Complex
Inside Building 4A…
Sargent Kubersly was mad. Downright crazy mad. So many good men had died one by one, as the street battles roared through the night. As a soldier, he’d been taught to accept losses and to concentrate, despite the constant roar of explosions and gun blasts around him, but this wasn’t acceptable casualties—it was decimation. Over the past four hours alone, he had lost five platoon members.
His platoon...his platoon was now down to three men...from eighteen.
Kuberly lay cowering inside a hospital building. Rubble and debris scattered everywhere. The building burned from the thermal impact of explosions that had blown holes throughout the premises. The corridor he was in smelled of death. Dead alien bodies littered the neoplastic floor.
Worse, they were still in here.
He didn’t know how many of them had entered the building because he couldn’t see them in his helmet display as the all the human recon probes inside the building had been taken out. The aliens had recon probes of their own and theirs had won. Those little flying mites, so crucial to telling where the opponent was, were now working in their favor.
For all he knew, the enemy could be encircling him and about to attack from both sides of the corridor.
He had messaged the lieutenant to send more recon probes into his building, but the answer he had received had been to
wait. Who knew those tiny nanomachines would be so pivotal in a battle like this.
He breathed deeply and stood upright. His feet moved past the dead alien corpses with their bulky black armor that had been pierced by his hypervelocity magnetic rounds. Their friends were still here. He could sense it. At times like this, he relied on intuition.
He neared the end of the passageway. He took out a tiny camera that operated on his fingertips and fingered it around the corner.
His helmet display saw through the camera. There was nothing around the bend.
He turned the corner and kept walking through the new narrow corridor.
A clicking sound echoed, very faint and very alien compared to the cracking sound of neoplastic burning.
Kuberly stopped moving and aimed his rifle at the end of the corridor. His helmet display scanned through the dust and could see everything within a hundred meters clearly in all spectrums, including infrared. He saw the sudden movement of a bipedal as it ran into opening of his corridor from the opposite end. He saw it limp with its hands clutching its elbow. He saw the fear in its eyes, as it looked straight at the black armored monster that was Kubersly. It was about to turn and run, when Kubersly waved in a friendly gesture.
The woman stopped cowering and her blood soaked face brightened. She waved back, looking relieved. “Oh, thank god for marines!” She looked about thirty, obviously a member of the hospital staff. She smiled, a weak ash-filled smile when a hypervelocity slammed into the back of her head, which exploded like a firecracker. A sudden red mist of blood and gore expanded where her neck was. Before her body could fall to the ground, another hypervelocity round penetrated her torso. Pieces of skin, organ, blood, and clothing exploded in a well-blended fleshy fireball.
Explosive rounds. The enemy had a variant of the human incendiary armor-piercing round.
Kubersly’s first reaction was to be silent, but he knew the enemy probably saw the woman wave at him. Thus, the enemy that was out of sight had to know he was right there in the same corridor as the woman. As soon as the enemy entered that corridor, it would have angle of fire on him as well. His first idea was to wait, since he knew they were coming and could see them the moment they entered the corridor whereas, it would take a slight moment for them to see where he was. Then, he realized that the enemy probably had around-the-corner cams or worse—bite sized recon probes which could tell them where he was before they entered line of sight.
Suddenly, Kubersly found himself back peddling, so that he entered another T into the first corridor prior to this one. He was now out of line of sight from the enemy if they chose to enter the corridor where the woman was. Then, he positioned his finger around the turn, so that he could see the woman’s scattered carcass and anything that entered her corridor.
He waited and waited, then he saw movement. A large piece of metal, a foot, entered the corridor from the opposite T and then the entire body of a large exoskeleton came into view. It had its gun aimed right at where Kubersly’s finger was, but it didn’t shoot.
The alien knew he was there.
It waited and waited. For the longest moment, there was a cold silence, only interrupted by the burning of plasticrete. What was the alien waiting for? Then, Kubersly realized it. The alien was waiting for him to dive around the corner and start shooting at it. Both opponents, him and the alien, knew the whereabouts of the other, but were just waiting for either to make move.
Too bad, his chassis wasn’t equipped with a XG-103 Doorman rifle, which could bend around a corner and use a camera as sight. Then again, those types of rifles didn’t have the acceleration chamber that could push a round fast enough to pierce armor.
He was left with only two choices. Wait for the alien to come to him, or come to the alien by diving around the corner.
Well, this is it. I’m not a person to wait. I’m gonna make the first move.
He retracted his finger that held the camera so both hands held his magno-gun. He readied himself for the charge by taking deep breaths. This was it. The moment of action was about to come. 1…2...3. Here I come!
He intended to leap around the corner, then his helmet sensor alarm triggered like a siren. Then, before he could turn around the bend to fire at the first alien, a second alien approached in the same corridor behind him. The sensors at the back of his helmet had detected the intrusion. Kubersly swiveled around and aimed his magnetic rifle at the new intruder from behind. He saw the sudden emergence of a black alien exoskeleton and fired. The round sped through open air at 2000 meters per second, penetrating the second alien’s body, which exploded in a gigantic armored fireball. The wall behind Kubersly also exploded as alien incendiary rounds smacked into it.
Hard neoplastic debris flew everywhere, much of it bouncing off his carbon armor, throwing Kubersly forward. He almost lost his footing but then managed to stay upright. His helmet sensors could hear things besides the crackling of burning plasticrete or the bouncing of alien flesh and gore on the walls. He heard the loud footsteps of the first alien who was running through the corridor behind him towards the T, probably way past the dead woman. It was about to charge around the bend to fire at Kubersly at the earliest opportunity the moment it gained line of sight, now that the surprise ambush from its friend had failed.
Kubersly rushed towards the T and dove out into the open. He fired his rifle the moment he saw the alien, still running towards him.
The alien wasn’t more than ten meters away, its body massive in Kubersly’s scopes. He could not miss, nor could the alien, but it was Kubersly who fired first—his bullet traveling at a speed faster than the alien could press the trigger on its rifle. The armor piercing bullet entered the alien’s armored head and Kubersly saw everything that happened afterwards in slow motion, even before he fell onto the floor from his dive.
The alien’s head bubbled as shockwaves expanded from inside from the penetration of the round, not its incendiary explosion. These shockwaves broke every tissue in the alien’s torso before the miniature deuterium chamber inside the armor piercing round detonated. The plasmaball blew the alien’s head into a thousand pieces, as well as opened up the neck and upper torso. Fire, armor, yellow blood and flesh expanded in every direction, some of it hitting the walls and others bouncing off Kubersly’s armor.
How had he seen all of that in slow motion?
By the time he finally hit the floor due to his corner bending dive, he realized that he must have once again experienced what most war veterans and sportsmen called the Zone, where all the senses become extremely alert and everything is experienced in miliseconds.
Was it a purely a human ability? Or did the aliens have it as well?
He knew one thing. As long as he had it, it would take an army to stop him.
He got up, his breathing hard, and knew he would live to fight another hour. The hospital was crackling with fired-up aftereffects of explosive rounds, but he was still alive— and as long as he was, the aliens had one more member of the human race to resist whatever they intended to do.
CHAPTER THREE
Fourteen hours later
December 14th 3986 AD
Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
Operation Room…
It had been fourteen hours since the ground invasion began. The sun had fallen on one hemisphere of Meerlat and had risen on the other half. Over forty thousand military, paramilitary, and civilian police members had died resisting the alien ground forces. Most of them had perished in the cities. God knew how many civilians had perished. The alien footsoldiers were numerous, in the millions, while their tanks and air assault vehicles dominated the streets and the skies.
Every building that Streit’s battalions had put a resistance in had been contended by the aliens. Many were still in contention.
By the tens of thousands, they had died, but by the tens of thousands, they had also destroyed the enemy. Streit estimated that his infantry troops had killed over 50,000 alien troops through the streets a
nd building battles. Was it all for nothing if the eventual result was the same? He estimated that in less than a day, Streit’s remaining 20,000 or so troops would be dead, their bodies having found forever martyrdom in the buildings and streets of Meerlat’s colonial cities.
The moment he saw the exoskeleton armor and infantry technology of the aliens, he had known this was one battle he could not win. Had thousands really perished for a lost cause? What would the aliens have done to his troops had he chose not to fight? What did they intend to do with the planet after they had conquered the population?
Streit sat at his interface console, thousands of images pouring through the holographic displays that surrounded him. The clear odor of well-ventilated oxygen kept the theater-like command room smelling fresh despite the anxiety and adrenaline that poured through the bodies of the men and women who occupied it. Men and women who were ranked too high to be in the street fights, or had administrative and technical skills that were more suited for the task of maintaining the command center. What would happen to these men and women when those outside dying in the streets were all dead?
The articles of war that existed between human nations prior to the unification of humanity had always ensured that captured enemy personnel be treated in humane manner. Prisoner of war camps, reintegration, labor extraction. These were the humane ways to treat enemy soldiers. However, theses aliens were a complete mystery. Did they have a policy towards treating enemy soldiers? It seemed they must have had a policy towards treating enemy civilians, or they would have bombed the living hell out of the cities long ago. These new aliens were not like the old aliens—the flat-headed Orions nor the chlorophyll-skinned Draconians. There had been no agreement or past precedence that Streit could draw upon to determine the fate of his army if he chose not to fight.
