3.26.

John twisted the powerblade in the man’s chest. The Rosantean, in armor much like Johns, gasped and tried to grab the weapon that was in the process of ending his life. The energy of the blade cut his fingers off instead.

John watched with detachment as the enemy’s life ended.

“Thirty one,” he whispered.

He shook his head in bemusement. He had literally caught this soldier with his pants down as he had left the landing zone for biological functions. The idiot. What sort of soldier goes into combat with full bowels?

The powerblade, almost as long as John was tall, had once been a hoverbike, and a car before that. He instructed the nanites to reclaim its mass and attache itself to his suit for later use. It resulted in a hump on his back, but if he needed another weapon he wouldn’t have to go searching for a car to transform.

He engaged his stealth mode once more and turn continued to scout the enemy LZ. He realized in a second that they’d noticed him; that they’d realized that they’d been losing their men. He wouldn’t get any more easy kills.

There were thirty soldiers remaining in the base. Too many to take head on. They were in the forest, limiting John’s options further. If they were in a city, he’d be able to claim all sorts of weapons and engage guerrilla tactics.

He frowned as their base constructed itself. How was he going to eliminate them, when he was alone and outnumbered?

They answered the question for him as they broke into five teams and began sweeping the area.

If he weren’t in the calm zone where the only concern was the mission, he would have smirked.

He couldn’t fight thirty-on-one.

Six-on-one from ambush, however, was another story. He’d just have to be careful.

He slid into the foliage and began preparing the traps that he’d use to reduce the enemy’s numbers.

~~~~~~~

Enidi walked into the enemy base, her hands up in the air. The soldiers swarmed around her, barking orders in Rosantean for her to dismiss her armor and put up her hands.

She didn’t speak Rosantean.

“I have come to discuss your surrender,” she said in High-Yonohoan. She’d been surprised to learn that the language of the little people she’d found on her first ever mission as a scout had become one of the primary military cants of the universe.

The soldiers, each in power armor and wielding a weapon that could burn a swath of forest to ash in an instant, paused at her words. The commander stepped forward. She could hear the disbelief in his voice as he answered her in Yonohoan.

“We accept your surrender,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, idiot. You must surrender to me, or else you die. I do not care either way. Your choice. Surrender or die.”

He scoffed. He raised his weapon to end her life.

The light took him straight in the chest, burning through his armor.

Eight more lights streaked out of the forest, killing two thirds of the enemy forces as the Mokoari tribe utilized the weapons she’d provided to kill the evil spirits that threatened their way of life. Enidi dove and picked up one of the weapons from a fallen soldier.

She engaged her stealth systems, ducking and weaving through the combat as she engaged in a firefight with the remaining soldiers.

It was over in seconds.

She tisked as she stood over the bodies of the Rosantean infantry.

“Standards have really slipped if this is the best they could send,” she commented.

She sent Trewali confirmation of her success. He pinged her back with the location of the next nearest landing zone. She tisked. It was too far away for the Mokoari to support her. She’d have to kill those fools by herself.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Oh well.

Hopefully Towari was still guarding her drop pod. That remained her primary weapons cache and source of energy. If it fell into enemy hands, she’d be SOL.

The village chieftain appeared on the edge of the clearing, the heavy weapon in his hands. He nodded at Enidi.

The Weapon looked like a spear. It was, in fact, a high powered plasma lance that was designed specifically to feel comfortable and intuitive to anyone who was familiar with that sort of weapon. Enidi had only had time to give the villagers the weapons and a brief explanation as to their use, and it was easier to shape the weapons as something familiar to them than give them a gun and expect them to intuit its use.

And it was easy to use. Very short ranged, unfortunately, but it wasn’t any more complicated than point and twist the trigger on the shaft to fire. And, in a pinch, it could be used as a regular spear as well, with a monomolecular edge to the blade.

“Have we served well, oh great one?” he asked.

“Yes. You serve well. Go now and take your children to safe place and be safe. Take weapons. Kill any evil spirits come close.”

“Yes, Great One,” the chieftain agreed. He dropped the weapon to the ground and began dragging it off in the direction of the caves.

She sighed, then gathered her energy and leapt into the air. Hopefully the Mokoari wouldn’t accidentally kill themselves with the weapons she’d provided, she thought. She’d return to the drop pod quickly to check on Towari and resupply, then head out and hit the next LZ.

She wondered as she sped through the rain forest how the Mokoari were understanding the events. Night had fallen, and the sky was rippling with the fire of terrible weapons and explosions in space. Did they believe that this was the end of the world, some sort of final battle between their gods and the evil spirits?

She wondered if her identity was blown. Towari had seen her equip her armor, but perhaps she could convince him to stay quiet. She liked the Mokoari people. She didn’t want to have to find a new village to blend into.

And besides, she didn’t want to abandon her husband so soon after getting hitched.

~~~~~~

The infantry came out of the ocean, their heads peeking above the water slowly as they came to shore. They had expected the sites in Western Europe to be poorly defended, still recovering from the effects of the Kirata beam which had started this war. Instead they had faced a surprising amount of ground fire from buildings which were clearly constructed with abilities beyond what Earth was rumored to possess.

The lieutenant of the force had ordered an oceanic landing instead. Theirs was a large force, almost two hundred soldiers strong, but the density of the ground fire had threatened to disperse them where it didn’t destroy them outright. Better to remain as a cohesive group and run a coastal insertion. Once they had established a beachhead, they would branch out into Europe and swiftly crush the locals.

As they ran to the beach, a flare suddenly lit up the night. The soldiers paused to look up in wonder for just a second before the shooting started.

Weapon emplacements above the rocky shore tore through their ranks. The lieutenant had just enough time to curse his bad luck that he had missed the emplaced defenses on the fly-over before a hyper-velocity shot, fired by a magnetic railgun at six times the speed of sound, struck his helmet. The helmet survived the shot.

His skull did not.

Opala watched from the darkness as the defenders she had wrangled up at the last moment cheered when the last of the enemy soldiers died, dozens of rounds impacting his body, their kinetic energy transferring through the armor to pulverize the flesh beneath.

She hadn’t had much time to arm the locals after being shown the error of her ways by the scout. But she’d had enough.

The latest battle of Normandy lasted ten minutes.

~~~~~~

The squad of Rosanteans first indication that they had entered into a minefield was when one of them stepped on a mine. An orb the size of a basketball bounced out of the ground nearby, yellow lights flickering on its surface for a fraction of a second before it exploded.

Half of the six-man squad was ripped apart by the shrapnel, despite the power armor they wore. A plasma-lance swiped from left to right and cut two of the survivors in half at the abdomen. The sole survivor began firing upon the location where the lance came from, unable to see what was there in the dense foliage until the weapon cleared it out.

The weapon turret was unmanned.

He spun around, looking for the enemy.

“Behind you,” a young voice said.

The Rosantean spun, and the blade punched through the weak point in his armor where the neck joined the helmet, severing his spine.

“Forty three,” John said, his stealth flickering for a second as he wiped the blood off his armor.

He vanished into the forest to take care of the next squad before they realized what was happening and regrouped.

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