“We’re told the AHF exists to protect us, but have any of you even seen an alien? How do we know the creatures that attacked earth weren’t demons sent to claim what is theirs? If they are, I say we let them keep the godless rock.” – From the Pastor Alex Moens show, April 22 3265.

  The pod shook violently as it began its long journey to the distant planet’s surface. Jack tried to brace himself, but the quartermaster hadn’t been exaggerating when he said they wouldn’t be able to move. It took even the freedom to clench his hands as they fell like an artillery round.

  As the atmosphere grew, the walls rattled with increasing intensity. The sound reinforced Dave’s fear and justified it to a certain extent. The knowledge that it was essentially a steel coffin did not pair well with the gloomy lighting of the pod’s interior.

  “Private West,” Warren’s AI called cooly, “Significant heat is rising on the outer hull. Please divert thirty Light seconds of power into the pod so I can reduce heat.”

  “Sent.” Dave replied quickly, obviously not liking this any more than the rest of them. “If you need more, let me know and I’ll give you more.”

  “Thank you. Privates Neilson and Walker, would you both transfer one Light minute each? Until this is complete, we cannot course correct due to lost aerodynamics.”

  “Are we off course?” Jack asked.

  “I would not request resources if we were not. With our current trajectory, we will miss the rendezvous point by roughly five miles.”

  “That’s not too much of a correction. I would rather they hold on to what Light they have and use it for the fights.”

  “Clarification. That was five miles behind enemy lines. Our current impact site will be roughly one mile away from the research facility holding the engine. However, the rest of the company will land outside the complex. Without correction, your squad will need to finish the mission alone. Need I remind you that being deep in enemy territory is dangerous and will probably result in your death?”

  “Being that close to the target could look good for us. We could be successful.” Nessa said.

  “Agreed,” Warren added, supporting his friend. “The mission is too important to waste time collecting the rest of the company. They said it needed to be a smash and grab. I’m not sure how much better our chances could be.”

  “Squad leader, do you agree with this order? Do you wish to remain on our current trajectory?”

  “Yes. Continue with the current flight plan.”

  “If it is any consolation,” Hawkins said over the comms, “We agree with your assessment. Now, make me look good and bring daddy a new engine.”

  “Understood. Target drop zone verified. Turaspeir Squad will make an impact in approximately two minutes. Privates Ortiz and Hayward, please transfer ten Light seconds of power into the shuttle.”

  “Why in the hell do you need binding?” Ortiz complained, complying with the request.

  “Controlling our landing is a very precise calculation. I will use your Binder energy in conjunction with the Aegis energy Private West has already given to create a parachute.”

  “Apparently, your friend Ortiz has a desire to see the inside of the local fauna. If you survive this drop, could you please feed him to whatever creature we find out there?” Bob quipped.

  “Enough.” Jack whispered, “we need to land safely, but this is the first time any of us have done a drop. I’m sure he just wants to get the ins and outs right.”

  “Oh sure, you mean the ins and outs of what, exactly? Waiting in a metal tube? Come on, Jack, it takes no effort on your part to fall out of the sky.”

  “Yeah, but it takes effort for me not to turn you off.”

  The AI fell silent the way it did every time Jack threatened to deactivate it. Before long, they felt the shuttle slow as Warren’s AI deployed the chute and guided them to the landing site. If not for a constant string of updates from the machine, Jack wouldn’t have realized they’d touched down at all.

  “Landing successful. AI’s may release their soldiers. Shuttle will disconnect from armor in ten seconds. Capsule walls will deploy for attack in thirty seconds.”

  He felt the armor release his stiff posture, letting him relax for the first time in several minutes. Jack pulled a rifle from its magnetic holster on his back and pulled up his interface. Realizing he needed a constant stream of power, he redirected a single thread of Light into the weapon. It was an old optic trick; channeling a single thread only capable of transmitting power wouldn’t cost anything once fully established.

  Immediate worries taken care of, he reached for his power and looped two threads of Light through the group. The first would cover the visual connection, allowing him to see and warn the team of various situations. The second was for verbal communication and was open on both ends so the squad could talk freely to one another. With just moments to spare, he threw one last thread up to the ship to bond with the command deck.

  When he’d first been learning to use his power, the feeling of displacement brought him to his knees. It had taken nearly two years, but for the first time, he could say that he truly wasn’t thrown by the constant shifting of perspective.

  “Speir squad, sound off when ready,” Jack said through the link.

  “West, ready.”

  “Walker, ready.”

  “Alexander, ready.”

  “Morningwood, ready.”

  “Hayward, ready.”

  “Neilson, ready.”

  “Jenkins, ready.”

  “Olfson, ready.”

  “Ortiz, ready.”

  “Heard and understood. Command, this is Monroe, Turaspeir is ready for assault. Please advise.”

  A hiss pierced the air as the pod split apart and the natural light of the planet beyond filtered through. Seals broken; every third panel fell away with a clang. This way, if the enemy had been in position to attack, the human soldiers could take cover behind the remaining barriers.

  “Turaspeir, this is Striker. Looks like we went a hair off course. We are roughly thirty clicks from your location. We landed on what appears to be a government building for this small town. If it is ok with Command, we want to make some noise and cause a distraction.”

  While the leader of Striker squad spoke, Jack took the time to reroute a line of Light and view their situation. Apparently, they’d done this before… many times, in fact. Their entire squad was already out of the pod and in an attack formation, ready to march. If he had to guess, it would only be a matter of minutes before the squad could provide a distraction.

  “Nebula here. We’ve landed at our intended target. We are in position to attack the south-eastern gate and are ready for deployment.”

  Doing the same thing he’d done a moment ago, Jack verified Nebula’s position and marveled at how quickly these veteran soldiers could get into place. Not a single one was out of step, and he had absolutely no doubt that they could truly rock the field.

  “Understood. I’m going to share a current Light Map.” Jack said, “Blackrock, did you land safely?”

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  “We’re good, Speir. We’re near what looks like a dam. If I’m right, not only can we take out a huge chunk of their power grid, but blowing this thing will flood the city to the south. It’s unguarded.” The leader of Blackrock reported.

  “Roger that, Turaspeir moving out,” he replied, motioning for the squad to move.

  The rookie soldiers moved with an undeserved confidence only new soldiers can pull off. With Dave in front for protection and Cecile in the rear for long-range support, they looked like nothing could bother them.

  Jack didn’t need to be looking through their eyes to see how every sound in the forest spooked the squad. At one point, bullets ripped apart a branch when Alec whirled and let loose on an unknown noise in the woods. More than once, Ortiz would strike out with his ropes of Light to capture an unsuspecting animal just trying to live peacefully.

  Perhaps it was a good thing they were far from friendly soldiers.

  Unfortunately, the biggest danger when traveling through a jungle wasn’t the possibility that something was watching you. It’s that you know something is watching, and you can’t do anything about it.

  A javelin flew out of the forest confirmed their feelings of dread. The projectile sparked wildly as it grazed Candice’s pauldron and slammed into a nearby tree. She glanced down at her shoulder and cursed at the scorch marks on her armor.

  A cry sounded from the undergrowth as ten short creatures charged out of the trees. True to the briefing, they looked like mutated geckos standing on their hind legs. Instead of skittering around on all fours, they carried primitive weapons in their long, three-fingered hands. For a race of highly advanced engineers, their battle practices were seriously lacking.

  Clothed only in loincloths and undersized breastplates barely protecting their hearts, the small lizards charged with weapons raised.

  Before the attackers could get too close, a blue field of interlocking hexagonal plates materialized around the squad.

  “What kind of backward pageantry is this?” Alec shouted, spinning up his weapons.

  “The local population,” Jack replied coolly. “Don’t waste ammo. We all have short-range capabilities that won’t spend rounds. Use those.”

  “These assholes are going down. Do you know how much crap Smith is going to give me for scorch marks?” Candice complained, raising her arm and sending out four strands of the yellow two-hundred-micron fibers that were the mark of her corps.

  Before Jack could draw his knife, Candice had four creatures captured and was actively squeezing the life out of them. Apparently, she was more than a little upset about needing to spend an evening repainting her armor.

  Nessa flicked her wrists and a pair of rods dropped out of her bracers, settling nicely in her hands. Moving with the grace and confidence of an experienced swordsman, she dashed through a small gap in the shield Dave opened for this exact purpose.

  She attacked with no mercy, reaching the first unbound creature as sabers formed in her hands. A wide arcing strike that was little more than waist level on her was the perfect height to alleviate an Oteric of its head.

  As the gecko-like creature fell, she moved on to her next target, leaping over lines of binding Light as she danced across the battlefield.

  Jack cast out his senses and found another squad of enemy troops closing in on their location. Trusting his power and relying on his training, he triangulated the leader’s location through a combination of viewpoints. All it took was a single shot of densely compressed Light and the alien dropped to the ground.

  “Be careful, they have backup in the trees. Ranged fighters, feel free to shoot but try to conserve Light.” Jack said over the comm, changing his previous order and ensuring everyone was aware of the pending danger.

  “Give me about ten more seconds,” Warren said, weapon lowered and clearly deep inside the nearby machines. “I’ve almost broken their encryption. Once I’m in, I’m going to disable the power matrix in their weapons.”

  “Why not just rip out their teeth while you declaw them?” Nessa quipped, cutting down another enemy with an overhead strike.

  “Says the woman that’s butchering them without breaking a sweat?” Jack asked, pulling the trigger to drop another creature.

  “Done,” Warren said simply.

  Not wasting a moment, Thea dashed out of the protective field and immediately dropped to the ground, avoiding a set of thrown bolas. Unlike her Breaker friend, she didn’t need a physical weapon to be deadly in combat. All it took was a single brush against their skin to impart lethal damage to her targets. To an outside observer, the method appeared gentle, almost kind.

  It was anything but.

  Dashing through the fight with speed to match the name of her corps, the young Phantom executed the eight creatures held by the binders. Flashes of green Light were the only sign she’d been there… that, and the bubbling river of blood pouring from silent mouths after she severed random arteries.

  Getting close to the enemy reinforcements, Thea dropped to the ground for a second time to avoid a thrown spear that would have slammed into her chest. She exploded forward like a compressed spring, redirecting her path and grabbing her target’s ankle. The doomed creature had just enough time to look down before a flash of green left it little more than a pile of twitching flesh.

  “Morningwood, Neilson, focus on the targets in the trees. The others can handle the rest.” Jack commanded as he dropped the leader of a third wave of creatures.

  “Heard,” the two soldiers replied in unison as they changed targets.

  Diego Ortiz was not like Candice at all. She could control four lines of Light with extreme delicacy, while he’d never been able to handle over two.

  What he lacked in volume and control, he made up for in his ability to multitask. While she was incredibly skilled, she had absolutely no talent for wielding her power and a rifle at the same time.

  For him, it was like an extension of the self, indistinguishable from his actual body while controlling it.

  A tendril of fiber optic cable wrapped in a micron-thin layer of titanium glowed with the Yellow Light of the Binder Corps, wrapping itself around the ankle of one of the few remaining creatures. Like a fish on a line, the young man pulled in his prize.

  A pair of rounds to the head silenced the struggling creature forever.

  Stories talk about battles that lasted hours, sometimes days, but that is simply not true. When the dust settled and the last of the attackers were dead, a quick look at the clock in the corner of Jack’s vision showed that only five minutes had passed.

  It wasn’t the first time Jack had experienced this phenomenon. But no matter how many times it happened, it always surprised him.

  Five minutes.

  A paltry number in the grand scheme of things, but a lifetime on the field.

  Five minutes.

  For the first time as an autonomous unit, Turaspeir had taken lives in battle with no backup. And it had only taken five minutes.

  “Is everyone ok?” Jack asked, refreshing his Light Map. With the enemy’s willingness to use guerrilla tactics, he needed to keep the map updated while also remaining aware of any new viewpoints entering the area.

  “Yeah,” Dave said, dropping his barrier, “Something tells me that a bunch of primitives with pointy sticks really didn’t stand much of a chance.”

  “You’d be surprised. While I was shutting down their tech, I found out that every piece of weaponry contains a pressure-released neurotoxin that matches nothing in our databanks,” Warren explained, picking up a spear and attaching it to his Mag-holster. “I think we should only underestimate them if we want to die.”

  “Must have been their roving security.” Jack said, pointing deep into the trees, “The Light Map shows an extensive structure about two hundred meters that way.”

  Not wanting to deal with more lizards, the squad set off at a run. In a matter of moments, the trees thinned and gave way to a large open field with a walled structure at its center.

  How the brass considered these creatures advanced, Jack truly didn’t know.

  The facility looked like a stone age architect had found modern-age materials and built a fortress. They made the walls from baked mud, but cameras and heavy steel doors were visible around the entire building. There was no rhyme or reason to its layout. They clearly slapped the facility together with no plan.

  “Anyone else feel like we’re being set up?” Dave asked.

  “Totally,” Alec replied from his hiding place beside Dave, “If this is a research center, they need to research how to build a damned building. It looks like a mud hut, but they ran out of mud. Who was it that said these people were advanced?”

  “Your intel did, smartass,” Hawkins said over the comm, scaring Alec more than he would admit. “They build like ants. This part is just for show. The primary facility is underground.”

  “Right. So, we’re supposed to go underground in a facility that looks so primitive there is no reason any sane person would ever step foot inside?”

  “Did I stutter?”

  “No, sir.” Alec moaned.

  “I see two more guards. Neilson, I’m going to send you the location of the first, then I’m going to make my way around to the second.” Jack said, transmitting a copy of the most recent Light Map to the sharpshooter’s HUD, “Do not pull the trigger until I say.”

  Jack approached a daydreaming guard while watching from every available angle. Apparently, the previous skirmish hadn’t been as loud as they’d feared. Either that, or the creature had fallen into the timeless monotony of guard duty.

  Drawing his knife and sparking it into existence, he silently set a ten-second countdown for both Cecile and himself. When the timer struck zero, so did he. Leaping forward—still out of view from any camera—he wrapped an arm around the creature’s throat and plunged the knife through its back.

  There was no shout of alarm, no screams of pain. Just the muffled thump of a body hitting the floor as it bled out onto the dirt below.

  “Target eliminated. Warren, can you loop the last ten seconds of surveillance for the next ten minutes?” Jack asked, highlighting the door that would be their entrance.

  “Ditto on target elimination.” Cecile replied.

  “Done.” Warren said after a brief silence, “I didn’t drop out of their systems after disabling the weapons.”

  While he waited for the rest of the squad to close in on his position, Jack cast his senses into the building. Just because the enemy hadn’t proven to be much of a threat so far, did not mean things couldn’t change in the blink of an eye.

  What he found made him happy, but did not surprise him in the least.

  Not a single Oteric was battle-ready. In fact, most appeared to be off duty, lounging in break rooms or bunks without a single piece of armor.

  These soldiers were the shining example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “Command, this is Turaspeir requesting permission to breach.” Jack sent once everyone was in place and ready to attack.

  “Granted. Inform once you have secured the target. Command out.”

  With the OK given, Jack nodded to Alec, who delivered an armor-enhanced kick to the metal portal. What remained of the door—and the frame it once sat in—was so far beyond repair, Jack almost felt bad for his targets.

  Almost.