Chapter 19

Location: Helios Prime

Estimated Time of Arrival: Two Minutes

Sergeant Shawn Marshall gritted his teeth as the shuttle craft bobbed and weaved through the upper atmosphere, while trying to avoid enemy fire and defensive positions. Even though the shuttle crafts are cloaked it still couldn't get past motion sensors that all of the enemy installations employed.

'All this goddamn technology available to us and we still trip a fuckin' motion detectors!' Shawn thought with a wryly amusement.

"Alright, twenty seconds till touchdown so lock and load boys and girls." Came from the Yuts piloting the shuttle.

Even though he was nervous, Shawn was pretty excited to just be walking again. Being able to control his own bodily functions again was one of life's pleasures that he missed the most. He was brought back to reality by the jarring motion of the shuttle touching down on the surface. Shawn leaped to his feet as a large Sgt. Major began bellowing for them to move out and take defensive positions. As his entire squad poured out of the shuttle, the weak sunlight gleamed off their combat suit armor but that soon disappeared as each of the troopers activated their stealth camouflage and soon blended in with the landscape. Patches of healthy bluish-green grass dotted the landscape, where other spots were blackened to ash. Soon Shawn realized that the enemy fire had ceased as soon as they had landed.

'Must be under their detection grid then.' He thought.

He scanned the area and saw that the enemy was concentrated near what appeared to be the last standing city. Activating the built in zoom feature of his HUD, he saw they were little more than a kilometer from the city and less then two kilometers from the Dagon force, meaning that they had landed right dab smack in the middle of a shit storm. His squad formed up near an outcropping of rocks, a plan already being constructed in his mind.

"Alright, our options are limited at the moment but their not as bad as they could be. Right now we have the element of surprise on our hands. The Dagons know we're here but not our number nor about our weapon capabilities. Sims, how many are we looking at?" Shawn directed his question to the private to his right.

"Well, my best estimate, Sir, is roughly ten thousand ground troops. Give or take a few. They also have some ATV type vehicles, something that looks a lot like a huge cannon that keeps up a ten second repeated pattern of fire directed at the shields and a few dozen hovering attack aircraft just itching for a fight." He said blandly.

"Are their troops formed up in ranks or are they in smaller squads?" Shawn asked.

"Now that you mentioned it, they are formed up in shoulder to shoulder in ranks, like we did in the revolutionary war. Which doesn't make any sense. They would be massacred by the dozens sticking together like that." The private replied showing the first signs of confusion.

"Their stupidity is our salvation people. Before we dropped our given orders were to harass the enemy at any given time we encounter them. Now we have a large supply of high tech gadgetry and some good old fashion army hardware on us. So far we have eight plasma rifles with extra battery packs, one stun baton each, ten frag grenades each, one ten inch long titanium blade each, four claymore mines in each pack. Plus a P-90 with ammo clips, C4 plastic explosives, and a few sawed off shotguns just for fun. Each squad has the same compliment as we do, so we can set up booby traps and ambushes between them and the city. Any questions?"

A private standing opposite of Shawn raised his hand. "Sir, are we using Guerilla tactics, hit'em and run then set off whatever traps we lay or are we just going to set traps and make a stand to keep them busy?"

"Hit and run, mostly. We set up the ambush at a good distance, pick off as many as we can, pull out and repeat the process as many times as we can until aerial support arrives. That won't happen until the Dagon support ships orbiting this planet are taken care of, something which is going to take a while."

"Sir, what about the Battle Droids that we've been hearing about?" A lowly private asked.

"They're being held in reserve until we whittle them down sufficiently enough. Then, Wham!," Shawn clapped his hands together, " the Dagons get a big surprise that will rip through their lines."

"Shit." Was chorused by all.

"Alright let's do it!" Shawn said.

Makkari was hunkered down behind a pock marked boulder; fatigue, exhaustion, and especially fear hounded him in the near-dawn twilight. His assault rifle lay perched across the top of his knees as he watched his breath come out in small fluffy clouds. He and his squad had been on Helios Prime for ten hours, in which they were attacked at least three times by the Dagon forces. Their landing craft were lucky that they avoided the Dagon blockade while their comrades suffered the brunt of the attack. He knew deep down that the League ships were doomed and most likely he would never see his home again, only to die trying to hold off the Dagon incursion.

"Makkari, they're coming again!" said his squad mate in a strangled whisper, from his hiding place behind a stump no more than twenty paces away.

"Right then." Makkari grabbed his communicator off his web harness and gave the orders that might well be their last.

After they had landed a Dagon long sword, which are possessed by elite trooper commanders as a ceremonial accessory beheaded Sern, their squad leader. Now Makkari was now in charge by default more than choice. He knew they were low on basically everything; rations, ammunition, communications gear, even troops.

'If this is it, then I not going to be taken alive and I'm going to take a lot of the bastards with me when I do it.' Makkari thought ruefully.

"Alright boys, lets give'em something to remember us by. Lock and load. Free range, choose targets of opportunity." Makkari ordered.

He thought he heard a slight whimper over the channel and thought he knew whom the whimper came from.

The sound of marching feet and boisterous calls were carried on the wind. A small horde of Dagon soldiers were drawing near their position, uncaring whether or not they were heard. In Makkari's opinion it was merely a ploy to instill fear in enemy troop and to create self-doubt in troop morale. As soon as they were in the clear the Dagon troops opened fire with energy weapons, streaks of light flowing through the air, chipping away at the landscape. Makkari and what was left of his troops returned fire and watched as a scattered few Dagons fell to the ground, with smoking holes in their now dead bodies. Unfortunately, Makkari saw a few of his men go down too, more than he would like if the truth be told. With a scream that could only be described as primal, Makkari picked up a dropped weapon and redoubled his fire with both rifles in hand. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, they just came coming, no matter how many Makkari killed. They started to pull back away from the Dagon troops, forming a small knotted circle, making sure that none got behind them.

The Dagons laughed at their pitiful attempts, smelling that they were close to the kill. Only six men were left, their ammo running near depletion, Makkari knew that the time was near. As soon as it started, it all stopped with a click, a sounding confirmation that the last of the ammo had been spent. Several clicks, in fact, alerted the Dagons that their prey was now defenseless. A captain of their vanguard moved forward, partially stalking Makkari and his men, drawing his sword form the scabbard on his back. The captain raised his sword in a graceful arch over his head, poised to strike the killing blow.

"Any last words Humans?" The Dagon asked, barely suppressing his feral grin.

Before Makkari or his fellows could answer, a rather large blade ruptured through the captains' chest. Shock reverberated through the enemy troops, some not believing what they were seeing, others wondering how this could have happened. Before Makkari's eyes the large Dagon captain began to rise off the ground, by some unknown force, and was thrown a good twelve paces into his troop formation. That was when he saw or rather didn't see something blocking his troops from the Dagon formation. Whatever it was, you could barely make out what is was, it was humanoid in shape, but if it stopped moving you wouldn't know it was there at all.

"Private, how many we got here?" asked the burly lieutenant over the combat suit comm system.

"Sir, around a hundred and twenty-six, give or take a few." The private responded and was thankful that he was able to see his comrades that their enemies could not.

"Alright, spread out. Set your plasma rifles to cover a wide spread. Activate your shields, if the situation deems it necessary. We can replace hardware, we can't replace people." Said the lieutenant.

"Yes, sir!" exclaimed his squad.

And then the fighting started to get very interesting.

Makkari sat in disbelief, as small suns began to appear where the Dagon trooper had once stood. The rest of his men looked pale as the driven snow. Whole clusters of Dagons were obliterated, sometimes leaving nothing but small chunks of smoldering flesh, while other times leaving nothing but ash. The Dagon line crashed forward, unwilling to give an inch to this unseen enemy, hoping to overwhelm them with sheer numbers. The first to even get close to where the new threat might have been, were brutally assaulted, sometimes with a blade but more times than not with nothing more than physical force. Then one of the new creatures revealed itself for the first time since the fighting started and what Makkari saw frightened him to the marrow of his bones. The pale sunlight gleam off dull Grey armor splattered with blood with flicks of gore spread out here and there. An enemy soldier got too close to whatever this thing was and was wrenched from the ground in what appeared to be a vise-like grip. Its struggle lasted only for a brief moment before the solider went limp and blue blood began to foam at the corner of its' mouth. Other were enraged by this display and rushed forward to avenge their comrade only to violently slam into an invisible wall of force. The creature dropped the now dead solider and disappeared from sight again.

Lieutenant Armstrong was a fighter at heart and, to a certain degree, enjoyed the thrill of fighting a large number of opponents. It reminded him of his misguided youth in east Texas, when he would be in the middle of drunken bar fight, one which he had in fact started, but that's neither here nor their. Something about fighting the Dagon set his blood to a low boil and it filled him with a certain amount of pleasure. Revealing himself to the enemy might had been a tactical miscalculation but for some reason he couldn't resist. Now though the fight brought him back to reality and the Dagons were trying to surround them, though their numbers were significantly less than what they were.

He swung his plasma rifle around to his front and adjusted the settings, narrowing the beam to the size of a quarter, took careful aim and fired at his selected target. He watched as the plasma beam leaped out of the rifle and, it seemed as if time slowed for just a fraction of a second, the beam slowly moved across the distance towards it's intended target. The beam of coherent light passed though the target searing vital organs, cooking meaty flesh, and actually boiling the targets blood. It went through three more enemy soldiers before striking a rather large moss covered boulder, which glowed white hot, and medium size chunks exploded outward, taking and even larger group of Dagons with them. Now it was over, just a quick clean up and a progress report back to command.

Makkari stared in shock as the entire Dagon battalion was torn asunder, with very little was left to be buried. The air was still with no play from a breeze, but the putrid smell of rotting meat reached his nostrils, as did the smell of fecal matter. He didn't move an inch, fearing that any movement would result in his death and the death of his comrades. Suddenly, we were surrounded again, this time though it was the same soldier with friends. They appeared at once, making the transition from invisibility to visibility flawlessly, as if they had done it together a thousand times before.