Due to Their Natural Resistances to Most Energy Weapons Its Not Unusual for Humans to Completely Forgo Armor

The landing had been a surprise to all the humans in the nearby town. Before they could even try to form up a resistance, we had debarked our full fighting force and were currently unloading the armored vehicles.

Within 25 fems we will be ready to leave our perimeter and start our advance on this town, wiping them all out. They know we are here now and we have seen some scouts by their youths peaking at us from their forestry but they would scurry away too fast for any of our scout squads to chase them down. They were only youths, not even of military height, so no threat at all. Most probably worker caste due to the vast fields of grains and animals we saw on our scanners coming down.

They will be a good test of our latest advanced weaponry when we come with a full fleet to wipe these interlopers out.

The armored floaters are out and on overwatch so we are now moving out towards their town. Scouts are on our flanks and forward of our advancing force. 1,286 of the best and brightest warriors of the Hophtalian Conclave are advancing on a human town with a population of 2,600 estimated workers with maybe a small squad of warriors or protectors. Maybe 50 all up. This will be like pulling weeds in the cave gardens. Easy as moss.

Our forward scouts have spotted the edge of their town and there are rudimentary barriers set up. Mostly their ground vehicles and some wooden carts they use a lot on this planet. There are more humans at these barriers than the 50 or so warriors we expected. Quick scans indicate that almost 1,720 humans have lined up behind the barriers or are using the closest dwellings to look out their openings at our advancing forces.

This would be worrying but most of them are only workers. If they were warriors, even youngling warriors in training, they would be a threat. But facing our fiercest warriors, these workers will be nothing but fodder for the carrion animals of this planet after we leave.

I signal for our snipers to set up and for the rest of the force to halt in defensive formation whil we pick off as many of their warriors as we can see.

The 14 snipers have set their weapons up and are scanning for the armed warriors but there is a problem. The vast majority of the humans are all carrying weapons. This makes no sense, until I think about it. This is a defensive display. They gave fake weapons to their workers and tell them to pretend to be a threat so their warriors will be able to outflank us or hide among them until they can surprise us. It won’t work.

I order the snipers to start firing on any human they can see, no matter what caste they are. Our orders are to wipe them out so it matters not who dies first, workers or warriors, they all will die.

The snipers start picking off humans and we hear faint sounds of shock and fear as humans drop out of sight. It takes just 4 seconds for a sniper to choose a target, sight their weapon, fire and recharge. 14 humans dropping every 4 seconds and we can keep this up for minutes. If the humans don’t realise how we can target them so quickly, they will be losing hundreds in those minutes and then the rest of our force can close in to pick them off with their rifles and pistols.

Something is wrong. The humans are not panicking. I just watched a human drop with a scream and then I saw the same human stand back up as if nothing had happened. I watch another one drop and then a moment later it too stands up, brushes something on it’s face and then it says something to a neighbor.

I call the snipers to halt. The weapons must be malfunctioning. The rest of our force is to advance in ranks ready to charge when close enough.

I don’t understand. We had advanced to within 230 ghents of the humans barriers and then suddenly there was a thunderous roar and clouds of smoke appeared in front of the humans and dozens of my troops died in horrific ways. Some had their heads just explode, others had holes blown through them, others lost limbs or chunks of their bodies blown away.

Our formation broke as terror spread through our ranks at the horror that appeared in it. A second roar and more smoke appeared and dozens more of our troops died and the formation started to retreat back towards our ship.

The armored floaters zoomed forward to lay down suppression fire but I saw dozens of humans aiming their weapons at the floaters and then the roar sounded and the smoke appeared and the floaters just exploded in vast gouts of flame as dozens of holes appeared in them.

I fled with our troops and tried to keep order but the horrors were too much for most of the warriors. Seeing others dying from an unknown cause while the enemy seemed to be immortal; taking lethal hits from our most advanced weaponry and getting up again, was just too much for even our most battle hardened warriors.

We fled back to our ship and were shocked to find that our camp had been overrun by human warriors. The ship was disabled and I could see holes in the viewing portals. Space glass rated for pure vacuum, had holes in it. How?

But now we had to deal with the human warriors who were barricaded behind the remains of our camp and I ordered a charge. The warriors took less than 3 steps forward when another roar and cloud of smoke appeared but this roar kept going. Dozens of warriors were dropping dead every second. We couldn’t understand what was happening, until an impact hit us.