___________________________

  LANDING

  Jackson had finally been able to leave the darkness of the tunnels behind him, when he had found an emergency exit along one of the walls.

  As he climbed up a ladder towards the surface, he couldn’t help but wonder…

  Despite the months of preparation, it was hard to tell what awaited him. It wasn’t like he was a rookie or anything.

  It had not been so long ago in 2197 that he had partaken in the liberation of Lumen, when the moon had revolted against Sol’s rule. An upstart Dynasty replacing the democratically elected representatives of the Coalition.

  Naturally, Earth couldn’t let that stand.

  Lumen had never been quite as important as one of the five core colonies, but the moon had still been deemed a priority, no less due to its location and habitability. Not to mention that the Solaris Coalition intended to send a message against such kinds of upstarts.

  And thus, the then freshly created Skycorps was given its first opportunity to prove itself. All six regiments had been sent in. A chance to test their mettle and justify their existence to the SCN and the politicians back in Sol.

  And nine months of gruelling fighting…

  Jackson shook his head, burying errand thoughts that tried to make their way up into his mind. The things he had seen there were of no importance.

  But the things they had achieved there, were of a far different calibre.

  It had been the campaign on Lumen that had earned the 1st Regiment of the Skycorps – and by extension him - its unofficial nickname: The Wingless Demons. Earned for their fierce fighting and unrelenting discipline against overwhelming odds.

  And yet, even as a veteran of Lumen… as a member of those revered ‘Wingless Demons’ of the first… he couldn’t shake the pit in his stomach.

  Fighting humans was one thing. It had practically become part of their collective DNA.

  Millennia of warfare had shaped man into the warrior he was today.

  But this was new. Fresh.

  He thought to himself, that the last time humanity must’ve felt this vulnerable, was when his ancestors were fighting predators out in the wilds of Earth.

  Before they had become the masters of their home.

  Once again, man was staring down the maw of the beast. And despite his armour, his tech and weapons, Jackson felt as naked as if he was back to only wielding a spear, shielding himself against the darkness, with stick, stone and torch.

  Though thankfully the top of the ladder came to rip the corporal away from these thoughts, the soldier carefully pushing against the trapdoor that was standing between him and freedom.

  It had some weight and heft to it, but it didn’t take too much to lift.

  As it clanked against the concrete, Jackson clambered up the ladder and took a knee, carefully examining his surroundings.

  He could hear the faint sounds of battle in the distance, as well as the cracking of an approaching thunderstorm, lightning whipping against the distant horizon.

  But nothing close by.

  No screams, no explosions… not even any air-raid sirens were screeching in the dark. The entire city surrounding him was one giant ghost-town. The errant crack of gunfire, joined by the howling of plasma, bounced off the empty walls, but it was all too far away.

  Shouldering his rifle, Jackson slowly stood up again and made for one of the nearby buildings, hoping to find one that would allow him passage inside.

  No such luck.

  This one had been barricaded from the inside, much like the next one. He came up on another one, though this one’s entrance had been turned into slag by a rather substantial plasma impact.

  Though as Jackson made his way down the street to another one, he could see that this one had been blockaded by something else entirely; some kind of dark blue alloy had eaten into the walls of the skyscraper, growing like a tumour from the ground level up to the third story.

  As the corporal got closer, he carefully examined the material.

  From up close, it didn’t look to different from some kind of steel, though he could see faint veins in it, occasionally glowing in a turquoise hue, before darkening again, following a steady rhythm.

  Like a heartbeat.

  The alloy itself didn’t look organic, far from it, it had spread out in a hexagonal pattern, reminding Jackson of the Giant’s Causeway back on earth.

  Though here the individual hexagons were far more uniform in size and shape.

  As he took as step back though, the corporal began to realize that his comparison to basalt pillars hadn’t been far off. From further back into the street, it really looked like a piece of that coast from Northern Ireland had forced itself into the walls of this skyscraper, growing and claiming it like a barnacle clinging to the underside of a boat… or a cancer growing on skin.

  The dark of the growth and its harsh edges clashed with the brighter colours of the skyscraper and its rounded edges.

  Jackson had observed the style of buildings here to be those of the stereotypical colony metropolis: Brightened steel, lots of glass, smoothed edges and modern slants on the buildings. A few domes were visible in the distance. Some of them just your typical hydroponics farms, but others were apparently simply part of some cultural heritage, at least if their designs were anything to go by.

  Much of it was quite a far cry from the more boxy and utilitarian designs back in Sol.

  But it also meant that this foreign growth, with its darkened steel, stuck out like a sore thumb against the downright optimistic architectural language of the colony.

  Making a recording with his helmet, Jackson decided that he might as well chronicle his findings. Part of a skydiver’s job was reconnaissance, just as much as it was shock and awe.

  Military intelligence would want to know what their adversaries were up to, even with something as mundane as what they’d done with humanity’s structures.

  As Jackson got the last angle he perceived as appropriate, the soldier turned back to the street and proceeded further into the blotchy darkness. None of the streetlamps were on and all the buildings had succumbed to the shadows, striking upwards like black monoliths.

  A complete failure of the power-grid seemed unlikely, so either their enemy had hit the singularity cores outside of the city, or leadership had decided to deliberately shut down power to the metropolis.

  Considering auxiliaries would’ve activated in the case of a complete loss of power, the truth remained rather elusive.

  For now, Jackson left it at these speculations. If anything, the darkness should make his job only easier.

  Though he kept a steady pace, and his watchful eyes darted between the windows, he still found himself trapped in proverbial emptiness. Like he’d woken up to a nightmare of a deserted world, with himself as the last man on earth.

  A nearby cracking of thunder caught his attention, quickly followed by the street and buildings being lit up by lightning.

  Then, a few moments later, he saw a drop of rain hit his visor.

  Before long the heavens began to pour down their sorrows in earnest, the scarce droplets increasing in numbers, until a steady flood was coming down on New Poltava. Quickening his pace, as well as using his Skycorps mantle like a raincoat, pulling its hood over his helmet, Jackson hurried down the street, when a commotion not too far reached his ears.

  The cracking of a silenced MIX, followed by hail of plasma.

  But this time, it was barely a hundred meters away from his position.

  Without a doubt, another Skydiver. And they were in trouble.

  Increasing his pace into a full-on sprint, Jackson bolted down the street, following the sound to a nearby highway. It had been built into a recess in the ground, similar to the one he had landed in. From atop street level, the recess went down five meters deep, to the multi-road highway.

  Above it he could see a walkway that led from one side of the alcove to the other, providing a perfect overlook of the street.

  Running up the steps, the subtle popping of the subsonic rounds was unmistakable. The plasma that flew in retaliation was more alien but featured the unmistakable tinge of burning heat.

  Even at a distance, he could hear how deadly the enemy’s weapons were.

  Yet, besides all that, was something far more alien to him.

  Like someone had run a voice to through a cavalcade of flanger and phaser effects, warbly voices of completely foreign inflections bouncing off the nearby walls.

  As Jackson made his way into the middle of the walkway, he took position, kneeling down and using the barrier on the sides of the walkway as cover. The concrete was too thin to properly protect him from plasma or ballistics, but it would at least keep him hidden for now.

  The corporal carefully looked over the barrier and finally got a picture of what was causing the commotion. It was Langstrom. At this distance even his visor had picked up on the trooper, tracking him as he ran across the street.

  The kid had been a replacement to his fireteam after Ihimaera had lost his legs on Lumen. Though far from green, this was Langstrom’s first combat drop.

  And right now, he was being boxed in by alien troops.

  The kid had somehow managed to piss off an entire enemy platoon. Only plausible explanation was that Langstrom must’ve run into an alien combat patrol.

  From his heightened position, Jackson could see just about every opponent they’d been briefed on. First were the leaders of the ground troops – or at least everybody had assumed that they were the leaders – moving with a shocking swiftness despite their size.

  They were bipedal and about two-and-a-half meters tall, standing on thin digitigrade legs that reminded him of those of a bird.

  Its ‘thighs’, ‘upper arms’ and ‘torso’ were all covered in what looked to be thick, yet flexible armour.

  The creature didn’t have a distinct head, but simply a large, rounded torso, a bit like an oversized egg laying on its side, that was bereft of any identifiable features. Neither face, eyes nor anything else that could’ve made it look remotely familiar to his anthropocentric senses.

  It was still unknown if it was entirely organic, or perhaps some weird kind of mix. The way its muscles seemed to flex hinted at a biological origin, yet the unnatural, swift and mechanical movements reminded him more so of something artificial or even robotic.

  As if every move that they made had been calculated to be as efficient as possible.

  There were no small hiccups in their gait, no deviations in speed or pattern.

  As if the faceless nature of it wasn’t enough, the more he saw these things in movement, the more he could feel them trigger some primal fear in his spine. Even his animal brain could tell that the uncanniness of these monsters hailed nothing but death.

  Its armour was similarly featureless and unnatural, a drab and beige, only broken up by either the occasional camouflage or blue-ish steel, reminding him of that same alloy that he had seen creeping up the wall of a building.

  The only other notable feature of the armour was what Jackson could only assume to be some kind of camo-pattern, one he’d never seen before.

  Psychedelic ocean hues, mixed into patterns that felt almost dreamlike.

  But Jackson focused on the armour of those leaders again.

  For as thick as it was, it didn’t hinder their movement at all, reminding Jackson of a Kevlar coat, or the sort of thick protective insulation engine workers would sometimes wear.

  Its lower legs and arms were accented with a deep crimson tone, its slight rust colouration making the trooper think of dried blood.

  As gangly as their arms looked in comparison to the rest of their body, they were still thicker than even his, with one of the creatures easily carrying around a weapon that was similar in size to the cannon of one of humanity’s IFVs.

  Grotesquely, even their weapons had a strange organic tinge to them. They didn’t follow the more angular nature of weaponry that Humanity had decided upon, but were instead more bulbous and rounded, a mass of flesh covered in that same armour, with darkened steel sticking out of it in places.

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  There was a heft to it, but no struggle.

  The alien limbs weren’t twitching or wobbling under the mass of the cannon, it barely needed time to point it around; what might’ve been enough to break the spines of lesser beings, was being carried around by this monster with ridiculous ease.

  Following these creatures were more.

  Though their intel was limited, humanity had at least visually identified quite a few of their adversaries on the ground. Some of it had come at the cost of civilian volunteers throwing themselves into the fire, risking their lives and breaking the invader’s curfew, just so that they could snap a few photos.

  Though he didn’t know how many, if any, had died to get them what little intel hey had, he appreciated it nonetheless. What these photos had shown was quite a diverse cast of different alien creatures making up the infantry ranks of their enemies.

  One of said species seemed to have been somewhat reptilian in nature, though with the closer look that Jackson got, more mammalian features seemed to pop out at him. A quick switch over to thermal optics at least confirmed that they were indeed warm blooded.

  So perhaps avian?

  Jackson had to think of man-sized, bipedal geckos or birds when looking at them. Oversized chickens that had their feathers plucked out, at least when considering the rashes and blemishes on the skin. Though, the lack of wings made that comparison only half-right. And the fact that these things had arms to carry guns around meant the complete avian package wasn’t guaranteed either.

  They were shorter than a human, at least from what he could gleam at a distance, but still tall enough to wield weapons that looked just as dangerous as their bigger counterparts. Though one thing that caught his eye, now that they were side by side, was the similarity between the legs of said featherless-birds and the oversized leaders.

  The dimensions weren’t quite the same, but they still featured the same digitigrade configuration, as well as two-toed talons, with a third hook at the back of the foot, likely for stabilization.

  It made the corporal wonder which had come first and if maybe those birds had acted as a kind of inspiration for the leaders.

  The other aliens that were making up the troops on Odessa, seemed to be more obviously mammalian in nature, though it was hard to gleam anything more than the digitigrade legs and a split tail.

  Same as with the lizard things, any kind of identifying feature was hidden below a featureless mask and skin-tight suit that was broken up by armour. More of that Kevlar-esque material, though obviously thinner than on the hulking leaders.

  In size, they seemed to be slightly taller than the average human.

  The corporal made the subconscious comparison to endurance athletes. Lean and lanky.

  Though these more mammalian ones did have ears sticking out behind the masks. Their form and the little tufts atop them made Jackson think of a Lynx back on earth.

  Perhaps some kind of feline origin?

  Lastly, Jackson had to stop himself from gasping in shock when a third alien species busted out from a nearby wall, breaking through door and concrete with shocking ease.

  Another mammalian by the looks of things, at least considering the configuration.

  Yet where the feline ones had a lean build, similar to an athlete, like a marathon runner or perhaps a rock climber, with defined muscle groups with little to no excess mass, this other one stood in stark contrast.

  Whatever this thing was, it was basically a living wall of flesh and muscle, the undersuit and armour barely concealing the savage nature of its body.

  Disconcertingly, the mask didn’t cover the entire head and left an opening for an elongated snout to poke out from under it, with a viscous snarl painted on it.

  Primal fear bubbled up in Jackson’s insides when he looked at those fangs.

  Like humanity’s worst nightmares of werewolves, hyenas and monstrous bears had come to life.

  What unsettled Jackson the most about the masks though, was the fact that they didn’t even feature eyeholes or any other kind of visors.

  And being as close as he was now, he also noticed how quiet the enemy combatants were. Even the canine berserker, aside from the occasional snarl, didn’t make any other sounds.

  No howling, screaming or barking.

  The only sounds were coming from the leaders, warbled and flanged sounds emanating from them, which were immediately followed by swift executions of said orders by the other aliens.

  The question of ‘Command and Control’ was one that didn’t need to be asked.

  Whatever these bio-mechanical monstrosities were, they were in charge.

  Meanwhile, Langstrom was being cornered. The rookie had taken cover behind some cars and tried to return fire, but it was to no avail. The berserker busting through the wall had forced him to relocate and the twin-tailed feline troops were quickly pushing up on his flanks.

  Meanwhile the more avian ones had put themselves on top of the ravine, impressively bounding the entire distance in one clean jump.

  Jacksons mind was frantically going through his options, but there was only so much he could do. Even if he could sufficiently distract the enemy and supress them, there was nowhere for Langstrom to go. The rookie had been pushed against a wall, frantically throwing himself behind another car as fire rained down upon him.

  Even just contacting the kid was a no go. They didn’t know if the enemy could access their comms and right now, priority for any skydiver was to forego long engagements and be on the move.

  They weren’t equipped for slugging it out with the enemy.

  Damn it, why had the kid fumbled and made them aware of him?

  Suppressing his urge to berate the FNG, Jackson instead carefully watched the scene.

  The only option for Langstrom now was to surrender. He had to see that, right?

  Even with Jackson’s help, the two of them would be up against over two dozen adversaries. And while the Corporal imagined his bullets could penetrate the armour on most of the aliens, he very much doubted he could do anything against the leaders. Even the few hits Langstrom had hit on the three that were approaching him had done nothing to them.

  No, undoubtedly it had done nothing, as the leaders were simply standing in front of the car that Langstrom was behind, unbothered and unmoving, waiting for the human to make his next move.

  And, after a tense moment of silence, it seemed that Langstrom had reached the same conclusion as Jackson.

  The corporal smiled slightly under his helmet. At least this way, the kid didn’t need to die.

  Even better, if Jackson could maintain his concealment, he could trail the group and see where they took POWs to. Anti-Air guns or not, that kind of intel could be invaluable to their continued operations.

  Throwing his gun over the car, Langstrom slowly emerged from behind his cover, hands above his head. It wasn’t clear how much the aliens would understand human gestures, but hopefully this one would explain itself.

  Stepping forward unto the street, Langstrom waited there, apprehensively eyeing the aliens as they approached him. The underlings still had their weapons pointed at him, though the leaders seemed to quickly relax. Considering how easily they towered over a human it was doubtful they still saw Langstrom as a threat.

  Thusly, the group quietly surrounded Langstrom, the FNG not being able to do much more than glance at his captors apprehensively.

  Preparing himself to move and tail the group, Jackson eyed the scene.

  Langstrom for his part was being stared down by one of the tall leaders, the alien simply standing before the human droptrooper, almost as if it was evaluating him.

  Communication would be a no-go… so what did they want from him?

  The tension was palpable, thick enough to be cut through with a knife.

  Jackson could hear his own breathing in his helmet, fighting with himself to keep it calm, so as to not make too much sound.

  Without warning, the leader’s left arm shot forward, and it grabbed Langstrom by the neck, lifting the human up with terrifying ease.

  Though the kid struggled, kicking his legs and grabbing at the fingers that had so easily wrapped themselves around his throat, there was nothing he could do.

  Jackson watched wearily, hoping that maybe this was just for intimidation.

  Yet his worries paled in comparison to what the alien had in mind for the captured skydiver.

  With one smooth motion, it placed its hand on Langstroms left arm, just below the shoulder… and pulled.

  With the casual attitude that only a monster could be capable of, it had quickly and brutally ripped Langstrom’s left arm off, tearing a chunk of his shoulder with it, blood and bone flying out with the quick motion and painting the street crimson.

  The kid’s screams were immediate, wailing and shrieking against the unimaginable pain, struggling against the grip of his alien tormentor even harder, kicking his feet and trying to get away.

  Meanwhile the leader simply tossed the rookie’s arm down unto the street, torn sinew and muscle crashing against the wet concrete, pooling with the already disturbing mixture of rain, dirt and blood.

  Not impressed by the human’s struggle in the slightest, the alien switched its grip on his throat, using its now freed left hand to roughly grab Langstrom’s right forearm.

  Again, with one cruel motion, it had ripped the appendage out, this time removing the limb from below the elbow.

  Even at a distance, Jackson could see bone and tendons sticking out, blood spurting out in rhythm with the rookie’s panicked heartrate.

  Langstrom could do nothing but scream, wailing against his tormentor and pleading for someone to help.

  As terror filled Jackson’s heart, he could do little more than watch this gruesome display of unfeeling torture. It was like watching a child casually pull the wings off a butterfly.

  But the worst of it? Was the silence…

  Besides Langstrom’s guttural screams, there was nothing. No jeering from the aliens, no laughter, nothing.

  Just a clinical silence as they seemingly wanted to find out what a disassembled human looked like, with the other leaders crowding around the horrific dismantling of a sapient being and simply looking on. The underlings didn’t do anything to stop it either, content to just stand around and wait for further orders.

  All there was to hear, were Langstrom’s screams and Jacksons own rapid heartbeat in his ears.

  As the kid cried for help, asking any kind of deity to save him, the alien quietly studied him, before moving its hand down to his right leg.

  Yet, with one quick pop of a silenced MIX, Langstrom’s wailing had immediately stopped.

  Echoes of his screams bounced off the walls one last time before returning the abandoned highway to a choking hush.

  Jackson’s body had acted on its own.

  In a fraction of a second, something inside him had decided to shoulder his rifle, aim and fire.

  The calibre had easily punched through Langstrom’s visor, cracking it at the point of impact and ending the kid’s suffering. Blood was slowly pooling at the bottom of the visor, the shape of Langstrom’s face, forever stuck in that contortion of fear, faintly visible behind the concealing veil.

  Recognizing what had happened, the lead alien threw the rookie’s dead body to the wayside and unceremoniously turned towards Jackson, followed by all the other leaders and underlings turning to stare at him.

  He didn’t know how long the silence had lasted, or how long they had simply looked up at his position. It almost felt… human… the way they had taken offense to Jackson ending their ‘fun’ prematurely.

  Fear and rage bubbled in his mind as he was still trying to comprehend what he’d just watched.

  But panic and instinct quickly overtook. They were looking right at him.

  What looked to be hairs, similar to whiskers, on their armour, stood at attention and began subtly quivering, like they’d been caught by a gust of wind.

  They were looking right at him.

  Without another word, Jackson bolted from his position and made a run for it, hoping to lose his adversaries in the nearby maze of alleyways.

  As soon as he had started running, all hell broke loose, plasma and spikes filling the air around him, impacting with the bridge he was on and turning metal into molten slag.

  Foregoing using the stairs, Jackson instead simply jumped down and threw himself against the street, elbows and knees bruising with the ungraceful landing.

  But he didn’t care.

  Animalistic panic had reared its ugly head and compelled him to keep moving. ‘Stop and you’re dead’ kept repeating in his head as he willed his body back unto his legs and continued running.

  _ _ _

  Jackson didn’t know how long he’d been running.

  He did have the advantage of having been on the high ground, quickly breaking sightlines and slinking into the darkness.

  Still, as he slowed down and moved into a darkened alleyway, he caught his breath and then leaned back against the corner, peeking down the street he’d just come from.

  It was empty.

  Rain was splashing against wrecked cars, and the wind was howling through empty streets.

  No yelling or screeching, no burning plasma. Just the quiet of the night as it was occasionally broken up by the sounds of distant battle.

  Still, it was likely the aliens would eventually have to ramp up their presence in the city, knowing now that humanity had sent infantry down into the occupied streets of New Poltava… but for now, the metropolis had returned to its ghost-like demeanour, enhanced by the rainstorm pouring down over it.

  As even his baser instincts came to accept the fact that Jackson was indeed no longer in mortal danger, he finally allowed himself to slump together and breathe.

  Then Langstrom appeared before his inner eye.

  The mutilated rookie, with a broken visor, shot dead by his very own teammate. Though even as Jackson closed his eyes, he could instead hear the sickening cracks of broken bones and the wet ripping of torn sinews.

  Jackon violently shook his head and slammed his fist against his helmet. As quickly as those images and sounds had appeared, as quickly did he bury them as deep as he could.

  He was still in an active combat zone. He still had a job to do. He was still in this fight.

  More importantly, any other skydiver he came across had to know that surrendering to these non-human freaks was not an option. The corporal made himself a mental note – as well as promise – to pull a grenade if one of those oversized monsters managed to corner him.

  A quick death by explosion - and the possibility of dragging something like that down to hell with him - was better than to be made an impromptu plaything for some sadistic bastard.

  As the soldier pushed his rage down again, he returned his focus to the job at hand. First order of business was to find high ground and figure out where his objective was.

  Then, he’d complete the mission he’d come down here for.

  With any luck, he’d get a proper shot at one of their invaders and a possibility of returning the favour.