Captain Corban Rhodes tightened his grip on his weapon and hunched a little lower behind a pile of gnarled debris, but it didn’t offer enough protection.

Explosions and blasts of laser fire flickered through the darkness above him and behind his back.

Those lasers kept smashing the rubble mound against his back. The ground shook under his seat. The mountain of twisted metal and destroyed ship parts shuddered every few seconds.

Lieutenant Zack Turley leaned in close to Rhodes’s ear and bellowed over the noise. No one could hear a thing without yelling. “What do you want to do, Sir?! We can’t stay here!”

Rhodes only nodded. He already knew that.

He sat up and adjusted the strap of his Jackhammer around his elbow to brace the weapon tighter into his shoulder. He had to straighten all his body armor and helmet before he showed his face in the open.

He already knew what he would see when he stuck his head over this rubble pile. He wasn’t overly enthusiastic to see it again.

Dead bodies, the smoking wreckage of downed ships, and the twisted remains of buildings spread outward from his location as far as the eye could see—except that he couldn’t see it because it was nighttime.

Three moons hung low over the planet Luluna—at least he thought that’s what the planet was called. He couldn’t be sure.

These Fringe planets all blended together after a while. He’d fought on so many of them in his career. They all looked the same during a battle and he never got a chance to see the countryside in peacetime.

He took a deep breath, crammed his helmet onto his head, and sprang up from his hiding place.

He lunged for the top of the rubble mound, flattened himself on his stomach at the top, and aimed his Jackhammer outward to sweep the destroyed landscape.

He didn’t open fire. That would only show the enemy where he was. He didn’t want that. Darkness and silence gave him the best protection right now.

The minute he got into that position, he saw exactly what he knew he would see. He’d seen exactly the same thing for days now. The landscape never changed.

Lasers snickered all over what was left of the dark city. They gave more light than the three moons.

Mid-sized Duster attack ships swooped low over the landscape and released breaker bombs, gravimetric fusion rockets, and Viper missiles on a massive horde of aliens surging closer across the wreckage piles.

The rockets and breaker explosions erupted out there in the darkness. They gave the only other light for Rhodes to see the enemy.

Not that it mattered much where they were. They were always way too close and always getting closer.

The lasers all came from the enemy side. The aliens crawled over the rubble on multiple legs. The cilia around their mouths wavered when they moved.

Their eyes gleamed faint bluish-green in the darkness when they turned their heads in any direction. Then their eyes vanished in the darkness when the aliens faced somewhere else.

Thousands of them swarmed over the rubble mounds inching closer to Rhodes’s position. The Dusters unloaded dozens of projectiles on the alien horde, but nothing slowed them down.

Four Predator fighter craft howled over Rhodes’s head, blasted toward the alien swarm, and unloaded rattler guns on the oncoming enemy.

The rattlers unleashed hundreds of fusion loads with each shot. They brought down countless aliens with each pass, but more aliens materialized out of nowhere to take their dead comrades’ places.

The aliens seemed to grow out of the ground—but that wasn’t possible in this destroyed landscape.

Where did they all come from? This wouldn’t be the first time Rhodes wondered. He would probably never find out.

The aliens fired their lasers forward to bombard Rhodes’s position again and again. He had to huddle behind the hill for protection to avoid getting his head sliced off.

A second later, the aliens turned their lasers on the Dusters soaring overhead. Lasers swiped through the darkness and cut two Dusters in half.

One of them exploded instantly. It detonated in a blazing fireball, tilted downward, and shrieked out of the atmosphere on a death plunge straight into the enemy horde.

The ship smashed into the ground with bone-crushing force. The ship burst in a mushroom cloud that lit up the landscape.

That one flash of light showed Rhodes all he needed to know. A long line of soldiers curved to his left and right facing the advancing swarm.

All those soldiers crouched behind the debris for protection from the enemy laser fire.

Pulses of fusion blasts popped off from some locations down that line going in both directions. Jackhammers fired in the darkness and jets of fusion charges ejected from the guns.

They swept the enemy ranks and cut down aliens by the dozen, but those shots only gave the aliens visible targets to shoot at.

The aliens turned their lasers on those gunshots. More lasers carved the rubble to pieces until they cut down the men hiding behind the mounds.

Screams and dying groans drifted across the wasteland from all directions. Those sounds even came from the mountains of destroyed wreckage near Rhodes and under his feet.

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He couldn’t see the thousands of dead and wounded nearest him anymore. There were too many of them and it was too dark.

Right then, a man thirty feet away from him opened fire. A jet of fusion fire lit up the night and smashed into the enemy ranks.

More soldiers yelled, pounced on the shooter, and dragged him down out of sight, but it was too late.

Dozens of aliens turned their lasers on the spot and smashed the mound to pieces.

Rhodes jumped back down behind his hill and grabbed Turley. “Get out of here!” Rhodes bellowed. “MOVE!! MOVE OUT!!”

He shoved Turley away. Rhodes straightened up just enough to signal the other men around him. “Move out!! Come on!! This way!! MOVE!!”

Lieutenant Justin Upshaw and Captain Tate Vernick crowded close behind Rhodes to follow him. The rest of their men of the Aemon Legion’s 249th platoon scooted down the rubble pile doing their best to scramble over fallen junk to keep up.

Rhodes, Upshaw, Vernick, and the rest of their platoon had to wait for Turley to get his men moving. None of them could see a thing in this darkness, but no way could they stay here.

“Where are we going?!” Turley yelled over his shoulder.

“Away from here! That jackass showed them exactly where we are. KEEP MOVING!!”

Rhodes bellowed over his shoulder, but he couldn’t be sure his men heard him over the noise.

More laser fire hit the second Duster. It kept pounding breaker bombs into the enemy, but that only drew alien fire back to the ship until they destroyed it, too.

Lasers converged on its lower hull, carved through it, and hit one of the Duster’s lateral engines. The hull erupted outward and the explosion hurled the ship sideways.

Rhodes couldn’t watch anymore. He bent his head and shoved Turley forward faster. The rest of Turley’s squad blocked the way.

The men had to climb across the steep slope piled with bent pipe, jagged torn beams, and burned sections of fuselage. The men inched sideways nowhere near fast enough to get out of danger.

Rhodes didn’t dare to check how far away the enemy was. More screams drifted out of the noise. Then an almighty boom rocked the landscape when the Duster exploded directly over Rhodes’s head.

Every man in his platoon ducked including Rhodes, but the ship was already veering away somewhere else before it dove to its destruction on the planet’s surface.

He gave Turley another push, but Turley couldn’t go anywhere with so many other men in front of him. This was getting hopeless.

Rhodes made the mistake of glancing around. At that moment, dozens of glowing, bluish-green eyes appeared out of the darkness above him.

They materialized in the darkness at the top of the rubble pile. The aliens looked straight down at the men who were trying to get away on the slopes below.

Those eyes set off a chain reaction in Rhodes’s gut. He spun around fast, raised his Jackhammer, and opened fire on the aliens.

“GO!!” he roared. “GET OUT OF HERE NOW!!”

He backed away and swiveled sideways so his men could keep fleeing behind him. A few others opened fire, too. Most dove down the piles trying to get as far away from the aliens as they could before all hell broke loose.

Rhodes took a split second to see his men totally exposed to alien laser fire. He couldn’t let the whole platoon fall right here.

He backed a little farther away and ran into another mound rising behind him. He scrambled onto its steep side and unloaded on the aliens to draw their attention away from the platoon.

“OVER HERE, YOU BASTARDS!!” he roared. “OVER HERE!!”

It worked. The aliens all looked up at him and lasers punched out of the darkness.

Three shots hit the debris near him and then a laser sliced across his chest. It cut straight through his body armor and scored a blistering path of fire into his skin.

He bellowed in pain, but the laser pivoted away too fast to do any other damage. He fought through the agony to bring up his Jackhammer again.

He already knew he was about to die. He just had to distract the aliens long enough for the platoon to get away.

Screaming pain tore him apart when he moved his arms. His vision swam. He couldn’t see well enough to aim.

All those alien eyes gleamed out of the darkness. They looked right at him. They didn’t have any problem targeting him.

At that moment, three Predators shrieked out of nowhere, pelted down the ridgetop in front of Rhodes, and unloaded on the aliens.

Their bodies blasted into the air and dead aliens rolled down the mound toward the platoon. The sight of reinforcements coming to his aid gave Rhodes superhuman strength.

He opened fire and roared out all his pain and hopeless frustration on the aliens. He gunned down fifty of them. That definitely got their attention.

He kept bombarding them and yelling in a combination of pain and battle fury while he did his best to stumble farther up the slope.

He didn’t care about anything but getting the aliens to look at him instead of looking at the platoon.

More Predators zoomed back and forth across his line of sight. He didn’t pay much attention to whether they made any progress to slow the aliens down. Nothing would slow down such a massive tide of bodies.

He tripped over a piece of fuselage and slammed down hard on one knee. That pain made him clamp his hand tighter on his weapon.

He raged at the aliens through gritted teeth. How much fuel did his weapon still have? He couldn’t be sure.

He pawed at his body armor trying to grab his cluster grenades, but at that moment, another laser skated across the mound behind him.

He saw it coming closer and tried to aim his Jackhammer at the source, but not fast enough.

The laser sliced through his arm and severed it across the middle of his bicep. His weapon fell to the ground with his hand still clenched around the trigger grip.

He roared out in hopeless agony just as another laser clipped him in the thigh.

A laser shot smashed into the pile right next to his head. Some white-hot metal fragment wheeled out of the wreckage, struck his face, and sliced across his eyes.

The impact ripped his helmet off and stars burst in his head before his vision cleared.

He came back to his senses standing in front of a colossal mass of aliens all staring straight at him. He had to shoot at them, but he didn’t have a weapon anymore.

He dove for his Jackhammer, snatched it with his left hand, and lost his balance. He tripped over a piece of twisted pipe embedded in the hill. He barely managed to grab his weapon before he pitched head over heel down the slope.

He slammed against something solid and looked up at dozens of aliens all staring down at him. He tried to grab his weapon and bring it up, but he tried to grab it with his right arm which wasn’t there anymore.

He took a split second to remember that he had to use his left arm instead.

In that moment, four more Dusters thundered overhead firing dozens of breaker bombs into the alien horde. He didn’t see the platoon anywhere nearby. He was all alone out here.

His dazed brain stared up at the Dusters in stupid shock. Were they coming for him? Would they lift him off, take him to the hospital, and save whatever was left of his pathetic life?

He already knew they wouldn’t. They didn’t rescue the wounded. Anyone who fell on the battlefield stayed where they lay. No one came to get them and no one would come to get Rhodes.

Lasers sprayed out of the enemy ranks, fired into the night sky, and targeted the Dusters. Blasts of yellow and orange explosions ejected from the ships’ hulls.

That flash of light brought Rhodes back to his senses. He floundered to sit up enough to aim his weapon at his enemies. He couldn’t stand.

He propped his Jackhammer against his knee to steady it, but before he could fire, alien lasers hit the engines of a Duster right above him.

The ship shuddered once and detonated in a catastrophic boom before the whole burning mass of torched metal plummeted toward the ground.

Rhodes didn’t see it until it was too late—not that he could do anything about it if he did see it. He kept shooting at the aliens crawling closer by the second.

He bared his teeth in a feral roar right up until the moment the burning Duster smashed down on top of him.