The black always existed as a beacon, a frontier that would invariably be the goal, the endgame ideal for many an explorer. So was the case for anyone from that pale blue marble, that lumpy sphere of water, earth and oxygenated air - the stars held the future, and they hoped to greet it with open arms. Radio-telescopes, then long-range satellites, then macroscopic stations designed to bring the universe closer to humanity, to those of us who stood on the ground and dared scream into the void the words that were ours, our legacy.

We. Are. Here.

The void, however, did not like our statement, as not long after the broadcast, they came. Shadows, insect-like and monstrous, descended from above, many nations of that little blue dot wholly unprepared for the onslaught such strange vessels brought. In the first day alone, thousands perished as they burned through the countryside, bio-mechanical sprayers imbued with acids more akin to a caustic chemist's worst nightmare turning once-green hills into brown, cracked mud and sand.

To the invaders, Russia fell first, their armies scattered to the wind among their attempts to withstand by themselves.

India fell soon after, the mountainous terrain of their northern regions becoming a breeding ground for the new warriors of the insect invaders.

China held, but Taiwan, North and South Korea, and Japan burned, the once-great palaces and government houses reduced to ashes, their peoples reduced to naught but floating grey dust and bleached bones.

They simply ignored China when they could not break the bastion of force that had been erected, citizens hurried into massive underground fallout shelters never used before.

Not a word came out of Africa, though reports came in constantly about the warlords banding together and turning the insects into nothing but mush.

"Sergeant Hayes!"

No one ever got an actual moment to themselves anymore. Not even myself. Insectoid bastards burned, pillaged, slaughtered and consumed, and too many humans had fallen to their admittedly erratic tactics.

"Sergeant Hayes!" A red-faced, out-of-breath greenhorn stood in front of me, doubled over as he desperately tried to keep his composure, giving up as his stomach evacuated its contents all over his shiny new boots. Placing a free hand on his back, I gave him a couple quick pats before I hauled him upright. He barely had his uniform on correctly, but his eyes gave off a spirit unlike any I had seen before - he had drive, and he had plenty to spare.

"Private. Mind explaining what's got you so out of breath you ruin your deportment just to get me this info?" My question snapped him back to reality, even though he still had chunks of what I could only assume was canned beef stew still stuck to his lip. Shaking my head, I let go, fixing my own admittedly disheveled uniform - there had been no rest, no let-up in the bombardment in nearby areas from what I could only assume was some sort of biological artillery, considering all we knew of the bugs and their... technology, if you could call it that.

"Sergeant! We do not have any reinforcements coming! The United States Marine Corps is bogged down in what's left of New York, the United States Army's armored divisions have moved into open battle in the Midwest, and the Mexican Army just pushed through to Texas to clear bug landing sites! We're all that's holding here... urgh, Sergeant," the private spat out, almost vomiting a second time before he regained control. Nodding, I motioned for him to follow me as I approached what little passed for a command tent. Exhausted, disheveled men and women stood or sat in various areas, some taking turns having a short rest, others taking their sweet time smoking cigarettes or their electronic equivalent. My outfit was nothing close to an actual fighting unit, just a lot of the displaced who wanted to get back at the invaders and show them just how strong we could be. They all wore the grey uniform we all shared, black panels denoting the sleeves on the jackets where someone could slide ballistic plates or ceramic plates to at least attempt to mitigate some of the more terrifying weaponry the insectoid beings fielded. Glancing over at a tent surrounded by wire coils, old microwaves and whatever else we could scavenge, I nodded at two barely-adult twins, the two younger women hard at work tinkering and building - despite all appearances, those two were my outfit's saving grace, our secret weapon in this crazy war.

"Private, report to our... logistics- okay, just go talk to the twins, all right? They'll get you sorted. Don't come back until you have a Faraday gauntlet, a coil rifle and a communicator," I ordered, seeing the newbie spring to attention and then slowly make his way over, a limp fairly evident from the way he carried himself. Straightening out my own jacket once more - it was an annoying habit, and one I had picked up from my former commanding officer, Colonel Westerhouse, may God rest his soul, and may he be avenged.

The command tent, like almost every canvas-based structure we had in our little camp, was over-secured, and still let the rain in, even though the canvas was wax-treated. Maps were strewn across an old table one of the others had scavenged from an abandoned diner, pins denoting positions. Satellites had been the first thing to go down when the bugs invaded, so cells like ours, little outfits grown out of a need to fight back and defend ourselves, had to kick it old-school. Some of the maps dated back decades, but the topography had not changed that much.

"Wish you were here, Colonel. Could have used a good nugget of wisdom from your ugly mug."

I swept a few of the maps aside, folding them as I examined a map built off of an old Predator drone's camera feed we had managed to swipe when insect acid-rifles shot it down. It was a mighty big hole, and they were building something inside. Something immense, and my scouts had confirmed that the local presence was far in excess of what those insectoid bastards normally fielded, making it something vitally, vitally important.

Our 'telemetry' - unfortunately, without advanced reconnaissance equipment, it was Joe Sprang and his rifle scope - showed strange filament-based structures almost growing out of a vessel that landed. Only nearest city was what was unfortunately left of Vancouver, largest city in what used to be British Columbia, and in the mountains, such a big hole would normally go unnoticed.

Unnoticed, of course, unless you had been watching them for some time.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Despite their apparent semi-hive-like behaviour, it still seemed - to those of us who cared - that they were partially individualistic, but it felt less like a working theory and more a hopeful personal projection onto those monsters, as if we could humanize them somehow. Like the people of California, who had tried to be civil with the bugs. But when anyone asked now what California was, no one could answer. They burned the entire state, leaving nothing standing except skeletons fused together in a grim memorial and reminder.

This semi-hive-mind behaviour - a scientist we had unfortunately lost in the line of duty mentioned it was closer to how some insects influence each other through pheromones - had allowed us to cut off a few of their basic warrior drones from their 'link.' However, despite any efforts made to keep them alive, their bodies shut down entirely, almost like a pharmaceutical-based dependency. Even their weapons decayed when they did.

"Sergeant Arthur Hayes, as I live and breathe," a voice spoke out of an area beside me, prompting a quick turn while drawing my sidearm, a beat-up old nine-millimeter handgun that, while aged, still did its job. Planted square in the center of my crosshairs was a soldier I knew well, and had cooperated with multiple times, his bald head and camouflage pattern a dead giveaway where he had just come from.

"Damn, look what the cat dragged in! Sergei!" Sergei Anatoly, one of the survivors of the burning of Russia, smiled and chuckled before he drew me into an embrace that only brothers in arms ever gave. Holding but for a moment, we separated, my hand instinctively pointing down at the maps before the both of us.

"They're digging a big hole."

"That they are. They're building something in it, or rather, growing it out of one of their bio-craft. It's almost like a seed that they planted into the ground," I stated, sliding up the map for the bug-hole. Pulling out a handful of pins, I started marking each little area where a structure, support or otherwise, had been grown, muttering to myself about timestamps and the actual pattern.

"Doesn't that look like wasp nest? It looks like wasp nest to me," Sergei mused, his accent thick as he spoke. On close examination, it almost looked like a nest, but that would be impossible, unless the invasion was meant for something more sinister than previously thought. Speculation, however, was not practical, and with a stern glare from myself, Sergei's wry smile dropped as he focused back on the task at hand.

"We don't know if they've dug these kinds of... holes across the world, or only here - international communications are shut down, and we're limited to local radio channels - the twins are good, but they're not that good," I explained, swiping my hand over another map that displayed a nearby ruin, what had been a village, but was barely rubble at that point. I rubbed my wrist where two thick lines, rub marks from the rubber mounting for a Faraday gauntlet, were clearly visible, an unfortunate habit that was almost unconscious - everyone in my outfit, regardless of time, invariably picked it up, rubbing the marks when they were nervous or annoyed.

Faraday gauntlets, designed by the Faraday twins I employed, were just static dischargers - they helped, in some small way, to prevent detection. Considering the insectoids used some sort of localized electro-magnetic scanning, the less of a signature we gave off, the better off we were. Our communications devices, and our coil rifles, unfortunately, offset that advantage whenever we activated them - combat was not a priority, and we simply ran radio silent whenever we could. We had lost a few members that way, but they had gained us the knowledge of how they were tracking people. The Americans and the Canadians did not believe us, but that was their loss.

A bolt of lightning crashed overhead, eliciting a sigh from me as I packed up the maps. Plastic coating was not an option when you had to be mobile, and I was not willing to lose maps again to some errant moisture that wanted to make my day somehow worse. Glancing under the table, I smiled - the old ammunition can we used for map storage was left where I had placed it a few hours earlier. Good storage was hard to come by in the burned-out areas, but we were doing our best. Folding maps and storing them was almost as automatic as breathing, so I glanced around while I worked. Everyone had donned some sort of covering, a puffy jacket here, a camouflage long-coat there, and here I stood, glancing up every once in a while to make sure the roof was not going to dump a load of ice-cold rain onto my head.

With the maps stored, I coughed a little, feeling a chill blow through as a light breeze accompanied the oncoming rain and lightning. Storms were far more frequent in areas of high bug activity, which did, in some ways, coincide with a bio-ship entering the atmosphere in that area. I was about to let the errant thought be an errant thought when I paused - lightning storms with heavy moisture accompanying a bio-ship's arrival? It was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

"Form up! That means you, Faradays! You all know the brief on bio-ship atmospheric entry, and with the sudden onset storm, we are most likely looking at a new bio-ship's arrival! Get these tents stowed, get your kit squared away, and get ready to mount up! We leave in thirty minutes or less!"

Without a single complaint or muttered curse, as had been the norm for some of the individuals I commanded, they immediately set to work. Materials were stowed, poles were shortened, canvas was folded, and vehicles were loaded - vehicles, unfortunately, being four old sport-utility vehicles we had 'liberated' from an abandoned dealership. They had even had full tanks of gas, which made them our go-to vehicles. Our modifications made them semi-usable as combat vehicles, though they amounted to a hole cut in the top with a surplus American machine gun, usually a two-forty, mounted on a hastily welded rotating ring. Like all of our toys that the twins had concocted, it worked, but it was still jury-rigged to hell and barely combat-ready.

Each person at the camp had their own duffel bag, well-worn but treated for waterproofing, and now they all stood at attention, awaiting my command or a dismissal so they could enter their assigned vehicles. I opened my mouth to speak when the shadow appeared in the distance, lightning striking it briefly like an illuminating spark. A bug bio-ship hung in the clouds, almost as if it was looking at us, daring us to move. Slowly crouching, I motioned for everyone to do the same, glancing around for any sign of insect infantry moving towards us.

"Everyone, keep down. Stow your duffels in your assigned vehicles, and then charge your rifles. Go, now," I harshly whispered. Even with the boom of the thunder crashing all around, my words carried as the rain began to hammer down on us like tacks of ice. Stealing a quick side glance at the bio-ship, I was surprised to see what looked like small puffs of explosions buffeting the side, almost like missiles or rockets impacting-

"Cobra One One, strike effective. Circle around for another pass."

"Roger, One One. One Two, ground that ship!"

I thought I was imagining it, but to my rather bemused chagrin, my communicator was automatically locked onto the radio frequency of whoever 'Cobra One One' and 'One Two' were. Snaking out of the clouds, strange aircraft darted around, sprays of caustic organic acid barely missing them by a minor margin. They careened in, dumped a payload of missiles, and then rocketed away, nearly becoming kamikazes in a fashion.

I barely heard Sergei step beside me as I watched the tiny craft hammer the bio-ship relentlessly, explosion after explosion beginning to display the barrage the ship was undertaking. Chunks sloughed off the vessel as parts of it almost appeared to die, like an animal in its death throes, whatever passing as engines on the underside to keep it aloft beginning to sputter intermittently. Before I could let out a quiet cheer, two of the strange aircraft lost out on Lady Luck's offering, taking nearly simultaneous hits and attempting to get clear away from the storm.

They were streaking down, like fireballs.

And they were burning right at us.