“...You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did.” - T.R. Fehrenbach

Corporal Barnes of the AARON 5th Multiversal Army, 3rd Task Force, 10th Division, watched his wife perform an exotic dance for him through the volumetric display of his Mark II Communitron high-energy comms device strapped to his wrist, the subdermal needles in his tissue monitoring his vitals, which, thanks to the suggestive movements of his human-monstress wife, were noticeably high. The I-27, the machine gunner of the group, a gruff man with a breathy barreled chest and shoulders chiseled from marble, peered over the bench seat of the H-160 Basilisk gyrocopter they flew gracefully into battle with. He had to speak barely above room volume to be heard, thanks to the pressurized atmosphere and smooth aerodynamics of the dark wraithlike-craft that slicked through the nighttime rain onwards to their destination; an intercept point. To meet an enemy that Corporal Barnes knew almost nothing about.

“Hey, Barnes. Let me get that hoes ID.”

“Man, fuck you, I’ll see you out there gettin’ lit up by the X-rays and I’ll dog your ass for every shot you miss. Mother fucker. Couldn’t hit the broad side of the Emperor’s ass.” Corporal Barnes replied indignantly.

“Peg it down.” smoothly came the voice they grew to be familiar with. Ensign Lieutenant Xavier, the silver haired grass-to-brass fox of the era of the First AARON republic. The combat valiancy badge and the quintuple campaign bars on his right uniform bracer told anyone familiar with the iconography all they needed to know.

“Peg it down? I didn’t know we were in the Naval Corps, sir.”

An alleviated chuckle spread like a contagion amongst the young men to be put in the charred concrete of urban warfare. Having done their briefings for the afternoon, each man knew his task, and as it drew closer to fruition, less jokes spanned the cockpit. The waiting creeped in like ice water into their veins.

Joking and jubilation faded to stern and grim determination. The lit cabin the half-platoon sized force occupied grew dim as the transport lights clicked off, replaced by dark red combat lighting - a subtle signal to the combat veterans of the helicopter assaults that they were within 30 miles of their landing zone. Muscles tensed. Moods of juvenile bravado ended.

Cigarettes were lit, though technically against regulation, as AARON issued Simarettes free of tobacco were the norm. Food Planets could scarcely be allocated to growing amenities and luxury products these days - soldiers had to each as much as, if not more than civilians, and those who bled in the mud had first priority for the best food.

His face darkened like chiseled stone in the lighting, Lieutenant Xavier stood and gripped the hold bar above his head normally meant for the rappelling teams. He took the time to space and emphasize his words in his harsh commanding tone, as if reading unfamiliar names off of paper.

“By the Emperor, I will be the first man out of this hunk of hydrogen-powered shit and I will be the last to leave. Laying down in it if I have to. Keep. Your spacing. Report everything you see, scan the horizon. Respect their desire. To kill you. The locals can’t handle this anymore. We can. That is why we are here.

GET TACTICAL, PEOPLE. PEACE BE ETERNAL.”

Each man knew his task, and the veterans, the old breed, knew what they would each be doing in the absence of order and control if it came to that. This was a mission they could afford to mishmash and interment with the enemy, even if that cost them their orbital fire support they so wetly dream of. Search and destroy. Drive the x-rays from the village. Kill.

Corporal Barnes readied his SR-17 rifle with plasma bolts, watching the seemingly normal silvery-cased cartridge glide into the chamber, stripped from its mass-produced steel magazine lubed with clear, cold oil. It made a well-maintained CLACK as it found its machined mark, ready to do its purpose - a glinting red tracer soon to light the night sky and eradicate the dark force stupid enough to wind up on the wrong end of a glowing AARON barrel, fired by a man no older than 25 with orders from an Emperor he had never seen, never mind heard his voice.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

The rain pelted against the tinny frame of the hydra-chopper as the vehicle made a smooth glide to its off-point. The pilot registered no thermal contacts. Thus, he gave the go-ahead signal, and as a nearly silent buzz emitted from the interior speakers, Lieutenant Xavier made good on his promise as he gripped his E-3 blaster pistol and stormed out from the craft in vehement, cautious defiance to the danger. Silently, each man followed in twos, sprinting out and forming a rehearsed arrowhead formation on the wet rain-plopping dirt and grass on the outskirts of the city internal proper. Having landed in an abandoned city park, every other hydra-chopper had ample room to ignore the danger of power lines and drop their respective teams with room to spare. Half a platoon to a chopper. Four choppers. Two platoons. Element A. Element B made their drop on the other side of the city, a whole other legion of armed red-clad bringers of peace. A whole company of AARON’s finest Army Corps descended upon this city tonight.

Corporal Barnes stumbled but only for a moment as he remembered to turn off his volumetric display from earlier, muting the sound as the screen went to black. It was replaced by a radio-wave position finder, a readout of his vitals, and a comms link display to himself, his commanding officer, and the rest of his team.

Moving as quickly and quietly as each man could, the Platoon-sized force took to each city street like drainage fluid takes to pipes, squeezing and cleaning out each and every nook and cranny in the tight concrete spaces. The largest and bravest of the men kept their guns level up front, usually the machine gunner and his support crew. Immediately behind them in the moving stack followed Lieutenant Xavier and all others behind him. They moved in parallels along the road, sticking to each side of the pavement and covering each other’s sides from potential threats.

Even a sloppy search could fail to turn up the results of the attack on the city. Dead civilians propped up in doorways or in corners of rooms, most having improvised shelter in an attempt to hide from their assailants. Most died from some form of slash wound or blunt force trauma. The rare corpse dead from gunfire brought to their attention the cleanly burnt hole and the sporadic spider-web destruction of capillary veins around the wound, suggesting a great shocking force followed the projectile.

Lieutenant Xavier quietly let out what sounded like a growl.

“Electron bolters”, he said curtly. “Its the damn lizard men fuckers again. If I see one more scaled slimy fuck, I’m gonna turn him into a belt.”

None of the men bothered to halt his rampant questionable vocabulary. He had earned the right to speak such things through seniority and experience alone, failing to add in the fact that Lieutenant Xavier was, in fact, a scaled member of the very same species. No love lost. His planet having been taken over by AARON some time ago, it was standard policy for local forces to be given sufficient training and arms in order to effectively occupy their own planet in exchange for better rations and creature comforts. He didn’t mind. He did not care for the outlanding tribes of his kind. The savages…And this attack only reinforced this notion in his mind.

As the team approached the shopping plaza, wide streets gave way to a winding series of side roads led away from a central feature, a newly erected public fountain supplying fresh clean water - a nearly priceless gift to the desert people of this world, regardless of how modern their surroundings of glass, steel and wires were. Lieutenant Xavier paused at said fountain, brushing his hand into the icy cold liquid and splashing it over his face after removing his segmented ballistic visor, which also served to seal his helmet off in a pressurized manner, rendering it immune to smoke inhalation, gas, and other threats.

“Spread it out and search the innermost shops in teams of 3. MG, back it up and set the gun on-”

And the last words the senior officer spoke in this life were set in stone. Lieutenant Xavier had failed to maintain situational awareness at a vital time, and this one mistake is all it took. An electron bolt cleanly beamed through the bridge of his nose, dead center, as the lizard-men soldiers on the other side of the open market plaza gave their answer to the red-clad barbarians encroaching on land that had been theirs for centuries before AARON even existed.

With centralized command lost, the remaining soldiers took their individual liberties in combat to the extreme upon seeing Xavier’s lifeless body thump backwards into the wet stone. Command was delegated to fireteam leaders, whom carried on the final orders of their respected leader in a chaotic whirlwind of shouting and angry gestures at the vague direction of the enemy. With civilians no longer a factor, the wisest decision for the lizardmen soldiers would be to fight a retreating battle, picking off AARON forces one at a time, shot by shot, to erode their morale and confidence.

AARON training, however, held adamantly strong. Thermal and night vision gave easy outlines of the obscured riflemen taking their foolish stands in the shop windows, reinforced lightly with overturned furniture and shelves. They did not stop the accurate enfilade fire of the SR-17s, nor the air-ripping roar of the MG-4s that belched their plasma rage at 1500 shots per minute. The MG-4 gunner took the time to let his gun barrel expose itself to the rain. The steam wafted and hissed as the water evaporated, cooling the gun excellently and allowing him to score a majority of the kills in the 3 minute engagement.

Corporal Barnes loaded a time-delay fused bearing grenade into the launcher on his SR-17, firing it into the strongest concentration of the enemy in the second floor of a tailor’s shop. The dozens of pea-sized metal shrapnel bits exploded in an expanding cone upon detonation, eviscerating the three lizardmen and liquifying most of the remains against the wall behind them.

Corporal Barnes shook in silent regard for what had happened. It took his fireteam leader smacking him in the back and demanding he move with his unit to pay attention long enough to force his legs into action, vaulting over a low wall and assaulting the shop fronts to root out any survivors. There were none. Each lizardmen lay dead, smoking glowing holes betraying their end was brought on that night by the brave men and women of AARON’s finest.

Brave, Corporal Barnes thought with a disgruntled scoff. I wasn’t brave. I shit myself as soon as the Lieutenant got shot. We just got lucky. But, we did do our best…

Corporal Barnes would go on to be a campaign veteran and survive the occupation war, retelling this story to Colonel Belinda Romanov of the ISB once an investigation of the planet’s occupational forces being insufficient was completed. She passed high remarks to the Corporal, and he retired with full compensation.