Part 1

With a blast of energy and light, the six figures burst out of the cliff wall. As the first patrol in their mission, they begin to scan the area for hostilities. Scanning the surrounding ravine, they find nothing of interest to them. Two of them streak up into the sky while the other sets of two explore each direction into the ravine. As they leave, the glowing porthole behind them closes with a bright flash.

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At a nearby military operations base, Stedrick looked up from his computer console. "Commander, we’ve lost the radiation source."

Commander White held the phone aside for a second. "Did we track it to specific coordinates Stedrick?"

"Yes Sir. It’s five miles north at coordinates, uh, A15,27."

"Good." He spoke into the phone again. "It’s at coordinates A15, 27. Get an air reconnaissance team there immediately. I’ll be monitoring the results from here." He set down the phone.

"Stedrick. Keep searching for the type of radiation we saw."

"I have been Sir. We’ve never seen this kind of radiation before. Our sensors barely detected it. At the time I was running an intense scan after the earthquake. I don’t know what level of the scan we were at when I got this reading."

"Well, let’s see what our recon team finds."

Hienman turned to face Commander White. "Commander, the air born recon team has made course corrections to investigate the radiation source. They’ll be there in six minutes."

"Good. Notify me when we get the first pictures of the area."

"Yes Sir."

Stedrick suddenly looked up at the radar. "Commander, we have picked up two unidentified objects directly above the radiation source. They are circling the area."

"Hienman. Do we have units anywhere in the vicinity?"

"No sir."

"Goffman! I want the whole base on yellow alert!"

The alarms flashed as the room turned into an unnerving yellow lighting.

Four minutes later, Stedrick looked up at the Commander concerned. "Sir, we’ve lost the objects from radar. They’ve disappeared!"

"Have they dropped below radar?"

"They must have Sir. Should we keep the recon planes on course?"

"No. Let’s change course and fly at higher altitude to take pictures from far above."

Five minutes later, the recon team prepared to fly over the area. "This is skyliner5 preparing to survey the area. We have long range visual contact with the area. No sign of activity."

Stedrick notices a blip on the radar from the corner of his eye. "Commander, we have contact again. They are flying straight towards skyliner5! Their speed is, um, mach 2!?"

"What? How is that possible?"

"This is skyliner5, we have visual contact. Two bogies heading right at us. Fast!"

The two large figures flew past the jet at mach 2.5 shaking it.

"They look like large humanoid bugs! They’re fast suckers. I lost visual. Where’d they go?"

They heard a boom behind the jet. "What was that!?" "We lost our wing cover! Crap! Get us out of here!"

The plane was rocked again by another explosion. This time it was the rear of the plane being blown off.

"They're right behind us! They’re firing missiles.. ah..…"

"We’ve lost them! Those things blasted them out of the air!"

"Put the base on red alert!" Commander White picked up his phone. "I want air support out there now! Take these guys down!"

The yellow lighting turned to red.

The air strike was in the air within minutes.

Stedrick announced to his commander, "Sir, the bogies have changed their course and are on an intercept course with our air strike."

Over the radio base monitored the radio communications. "This is Team Leader. We have them in our sites. They are closing fast. Heads up team, prepare to engage."

The first barrage of missiles was fired at the two bogies. The missiles, to their surprise, were all evaded. "Holy crap! These guys are fast! I have never seen anything move so friggin fast!"

Stedrick lifted one ear of his earphones and turned slightly from his console. "They’ve engaged them sir."

Within moments, half of the strike force was taken out. The bloodbath left the enemy with not much more than a few scratches.

"They’ve got these boosters on their arms! These things are wicked looking, like bugs. They are huge, at least 25 feet tall. They pack a wallup." The team leader watched as another one of his fighters explodes. "Crap. There has to be a way to hit these things! Stromkins, this is Christians. I’m going in! Draw his fire!"

"Yes sir!" Stromkins banked left and fired his plasma cannon into the monstrous looking figure. It was alone. The other one was off engaging another squadron. With ease, the alien dodged as the shots passed him. This was when Christians made his move. He fired two plasma missiles into the alien. This time it could’t dodge. The missiles pounded gracefully into it exploding with a nice plasmic glow.

"I got him!" Christians banked high and right as Stromkins circled around for another shot. "You got him good sir!"

The strike stunned the alien while another fighter came in and pounded two more high explosive missiles into it. The remains of the aliens shot out of the fiery mass. "Good shot Timms! You got him. That’s one down and one to go!"

Timms fighter exploded without warning.

"Where’d that come from?!" Christians noticed that the other alien was quite a ways away. Then he saw another shot come from beneath the forest cover. The blast was huge. "We’ve lost another one! There’s enemy ground fire coming from straight-ahead! Evasive action! Regroup and form up!"

Another shot fired as he said this. The fighter managed to evade the shot and headed out of the area.

The second squadron took heavy damages. "This other bogie is leaving! He’s taken a couple of shots and is hurt pretty badly. Where did he go?"

"Sir" cried Stedrick "We have lost contact with the second bogie. He’s left our radar range. We last detected him going Mach 4 and still accelerating!"

"What?! These things are obviously not human. No human could stand acceleration like that."

"That’s not all, Sir. We’ve encountered ground fire from within the region where the radiation emission came from. According to Col. Christians, they were very heavy blasts."

"Well, send out the ground troops. Let’s see what these things are. And keep an eye out for the flying one. I suspect that he’ll be back. How many fighters did we lose?" Commander White was almost afraid to ask.

"14 total losses while the others took minimal damage. It looks like every blow was fatal."

"14?! That’s more than half of the squad sent! Goffman, notify ground commanders to proceed with extreme caution. If two can take out half of my fighters, and they have friends, then we better be cautious."

"Yes Sir." Replied Goffman.

The base was the most active it had been in a long time. Power armors ejected one by one from the hanger as the troop carriers lifted off. Each was eager to fight. Many of them had not had much combat experience. There was tension in the air as the troop carriers moved forward.

Behind the troop carriers were the battle bot deploy ships. Each carrier housed four 18-foot robots manned with a crew of one. Each bot carried a large plasma cannon and was armed with six micro missiles on the left shoulder. This crew had been in many battles and was anxious to feel the adrenaline of a good fight after a virtually uneventful stay at this base. The power armors and the fighters received most of the action because they were the most mobile. Each knew nothing about the enemy that they were to fight, but were confident in their battle skills. They each smirked as they felt the transport lift off and rocket forward.

"The power armor squad will reach the site in two minutes Sir." Hienman was tense, as this was his first combat experience. He had to remind himself that he was safe in the command room, although part of him wished that he could be out there in one of those fast and furious power armors.

"We’re under fire!" They heard from the radio. "Fire your cannons into that group of trees! That’s were the blast came from!" Some of the power armors flew up while returning fire, while some landed and fired. The grounded units were to become cover fire for the rest of the squad. Dozens of shots fired into the trees as two 25-foot giant humanoid bugs leaped out from their cover.

"These thing have a huge cannon on each arm! Watch out for those! They look nasty!"

Just as that was said, one of the cannons erupted into a ray of death turning one of the power armors into a fiery blaze. As fire was returned, the second mecha took out another power armor as the first one shielded most of its torso and head with the arm force fields that covered the forearm guns. "These suckers are heavily armored! Concentrate fire on the left one!"

The grounded power armor fired their cannons as cover fire while most of the flying power armors flew around to the rear of the monstrosities. "Let’s get them into a crossfire!" The passing armors went a ways and turned around to send a volley of fire up into the back torso of the aliens. Two more ground based power armor exploded as the beams passed right through their armor.

Behind the battle scene, the ground troops were let off to set a defensive position in case the enemy advanced towards the base. The two bot carriers rushed by them as they set up heavy cannons and entrenched themselves into a good defensive position.

"Oh crap! We have some new ones behind us! Fire!" The ground based power armor found they were now in crossfire. "These two are different kind. They look like ugly bugs too though."

"Don’t worry. Us ground pounders are on their way. We have detached from the transports and are here to save the day!" Fire emitted from the bots’ giant guns into the rear of the ‘new kind’. "Get out of there!"

"Armors, fall back to the left side and regroup! Gray, Simons help me lay cover!" Fully automatic shots emitted out of the three armors’ rifles causing the gun aliens to parry again with their shields. Gunfire and missiles caressed the rear of the giant cannon bearers. One turned a quarter turn and extended his gun to fire upon the rear armors. His target didn’t manage to dodge all the way. His right arm was blown off by the blast.

Back behind the ‘New ones’, the bots fired their heavy cannons into the rear of the aliens. Both turned around and bore their huge forearm shields. Obviously, they were designed for heavy hand to hand combat. The next volley of fire consisted of both micro missiles and cannon fire. Most of the shots were successfully parried.

"Those shields weren’t even scarred after that huge volley! We will have to draw their fire so that we can shoot at the unguarded spots. Use your marksmanship boys and girls!"

Missile fire erupted from the shield aliens hips. The two missiles exploded into one of the bots. The pilot took the hit and used the chance to fire a shot at the head with his cannon. The alien tried to block, but was unsuccessful. The shot pierced the head and blew a great chunk of it off. The alien ceased moving and a silver substance leaked out like blood.

The second alien managed to fend off most of another set of blasts as its shoulder cannon fired at one of the bots. The blast blew the bot it off of its feet.

"Don’t get too close! We don’t want to go hand to hand with these things!"

The alien parried a head shot and created a small hole to the chest. Two bots took advantage of the hole and opened fire with their cannons. Only one shot actually hit the torso.

By this time, both of the gun aliens had been heavily damaged by the power armors. But they were successful in taking down several more armors. Each was noticeably emitting the silver liquid like blood. Suddenly one of them completely exploded. The armors looked up and see the fighters bearing down upon the scene. The other gun alien became riddled with holes as a fighter and three power-armors fire at the same time. It finally fell to the ground incapacitated.

"All units, concentrate all fire upon the last two!" The jets flew by and prepared ready for another run.

Now the two remaining aliens were caught in crossfire. The one capable of moving boosted up into the air to try to escape the heavy fire.

"The last one is airborn! Shoot it down before it gets away."

The fighters banked and formed up to target the alien. The alien boosted faster, but it wasn’t enough to escape the speed and furry of the fighters. It was blown to shreds before it could get very far.

Even though the incapacitated shield alien had taken many hits in the crossfire, it was still standing.

"Are there any more?" Someone was heard over the radio.

"Conduct a search of the entire area and make sure that there are no more." Commander White turned to Stedrick. "I want a full report of the damages as soon as possible."

A few minutes later a preliminary report was given from the battlefield. "We have completed the sweep of the entire area and we have found no other aliens around. These things bleed. Judging from the samples that we have found, the metallic blood dried quickly. One of my power armor units touched it before it dried and it solidified on his hand. Now the power armor's hand can't move. It seems that the blood is used to re-armor these things. We are bringing home one that is the most intact to study."

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Somewhere else, six globes light up the darkness of an old base as they discuss the dreaded radiation.

"It has begun again. We have detected radiation in their 3^rd quadrant."

Another voice spoke. "The emission has ceased. It seems that this is a preliminary scout unit."

"We should use a probe to discover what dwellings are in the near area."

"In any case, we should start acquiring those that have been selected. The time has finally come."

"The devices have successfully been placed. Have we appropriately assisted the ownership?"

"Yes. Activate the crystals."