The warbling thrum of helicopter rotors filled the inside of the cabin as the Dark Sparrow flew over the sprawling hills of the world, which was apparently named Omen according to Spatha. A total of 45,000 US Marines had landed on the planet, one of the largest combat deployments since World War III, and even then, as Darren looked out at the secluded hamlets hidden in every nook and cranny of the terrain, he could tell that it wouldn't be enough.

According to Spatha, this was the Ovinis' homeworld, home to an estimated four billion prior to the Poslushi invasion and their abortive rebellion. The death toll of the two wars had taken away a quarter of that, but still, the planet had a population nearly matching that of the United States. An occupation force would need to number in the millions, and that was for just one world. The only consolation was that Omen was apparently in the upper bracket for planetary populations in their empire.

"Excited to get back to the front, eh?" Pavlov asked. A gas mask hung by a strap around his neck; supposedly, the Poslushi resistance forces had been using gas weapons remarkably similar to those used during World War I.

"I guess. Well, we're trouncing them in the air, so I'm happy there; I always hated those duck-and-cover drills in basic training."

"It's a little closer than we think, I've heard. Your Poslushi friend got into dogfight range with one of our squadrons, and it's a miracle she didn't wipe out the whole unit; they're faster and more maneuverable, and their pilots are trained from birth. The Air Force is already giving out contracts for an ultralong-range missile, just so they don't have to even risk fighting the Aerial Knights close-up."

Darren thought that over. It worked with what Spatha had said, and it explained why one less fighter returned the day she was captured than went out.

"Now you're making me doubt myself."

"Oh, cheer up. This'll be easy, just kick down the door of their compound and lead the way while the Jarheads do the heavy lifting. Compared with Kormoran, this won't be an issue."

"I hope so." Darren said, clutching his rifle to his chest. It wasn't loaded, but the mere feeling of it made him feel a little bit safer. He understood why the Marines were so intent on reciting the Rifleman's Creed.

The Dark Sparrow swiveled and rolled to one side, coming to a stop outside a small, hastily-fortified village, just barely visible in the trees. Darren pulled a suppressor from his bag and screwed it onto his longarm's muzzle. The pilot turned in his seat.

"Remember, if things really go south, we've got an AC-250 on standby to bomb this place to hell, but don't call it in unless you absolutely have to. Captain McCullough wants this place intact for some reason."

"Sir, yes sir!" everyone said simultaneously. Then, the side doors of the helicopter slid open, its side-mounted winches lowered a pair of cables to the ground, and the light on the roof turned green. Darren grasped the thin wire and latched a lowering device onto it; they didn't want to risk starting a forest fire with jetpack exhaust. Then, Darren leapt from the helicopter. For a few heart-stopping moments, he was in freefall, and then the device's brakes activated, slowing him until he made a comfortable landing on the forest floor's soft, spongy ground.

The first thing Darren did was check his surroundings, unconsciously loading his rifle and pulling back the charging handle. He turned in a full circle, the laser on the end of his firearm shining forth into the gloom. This was one of the most heavily-forested regions on the planet, analogous to what the Amazon Rainforest had once been on Earth, and that made it a perfect location for an ambush.

"Clear." Darren called, lowering his gun and looking at the little map displayed on his wristwatch. The village was roughly five kilometers to the south, a brisk walk by special forces standards, but, just like the Amazon, this place was hot and incredibly humid. Soon, the entire force was being assailed by the strange insects of this world. Darren hoped that they wouldn't all be coming down with space malaria in the next few days.

Darren took a drink from his canteen and sighed. It was just as warm as the rest of the place. Already, he was almost dripping with sweat. Pavlov seemed to be doing even worse; he was constantly wringing his hands to shake the moisture from them. The two seemed to be doing about as well as the rest of their sixteen-man group, however. Several members, Darren included, were silently furious that the environs SOCOM always envisioned them to fight in were icy tundras or dry deserts. Darren could handle dry heat just fine.

As they got within about half a kilometer, two men broke off from the group, a sniper and his spotter, and began setting up a blind in a particularly tall tree. The sniper brandished his rifle, a coilgun first brought into service a year before the start of the war and intended for anti-material use. They really don't want to leave these things a chance, Darren thought.

Then, one of the female soldiers held up a hand. "Hold. Patrol." she whispered over the radio, then pointed to the southeast. Instantly, everyone knew what to do, running behind trees and other flora to conceal themselves. Darren hid himself behind a particularly-large fallen log, while Pavlov took cover in an indentation in the earth.

They heard the Poslushi long before they saw them. Their high-pitched, chittering voices carried quite well through the forest, but were hard to distinguish from the buzzing of the insects, explaining how Darren hadn't initially noticed them.

"Safeties off. Prepare to open fire on my mark." the same lady from before commanded. Darren thumbed the latch on his rifle, making sure to keep his finger off the trigger until he was aimed and ready to fire. The Poslushi were talking loudly, their steps inexpert and noisy. These weren't trained soldiers, but Darren wasn't interested in a fair fight. Fair fights died with the Medieval Era.

"Three... two... fire, fire, fire." the woman said rapidly. Wordlessly, everyone emerged from their hiding spots to the great astonishment of the Poslushi. Darren picked his target in a fraction of a second, the bright red dot of his laser settling on the Poslushi's center of mass. He could see the primal terror in his eyes as he squeezed the trigger.

The rifle clicked once, ejecting a casing but otherwise not making more noise than a polite cough. Darren's target staggered backwards, hemolymph gushing from the grapefruit-sized hole in his chest. He tried to choke out a word of alarm, but his strength failed him before he could do so and he crumpled to the ground, dead on the spot.

It was like the team was psychic; no two people had fired on the same target, and not a single shot had missed, leaving half a dozen Poslushi militiamen dead where they stood. It was a display of skill that would've made the careers of any implanted reporters in their unit. Unfortunately, they were special forces, which meant their missions all too often passed into the unknown or were sealed away in some obscure military archive.

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But no matter. They still had a war to fight, so they carried on. The forest fell away into an artificial clearing about a hundred meters from the village's walls, so newly-cleared that the stumps hadn't been removed. A palisade had been erected around the settlement, four meters tall. The tallest buildings within its limits just barely rose over it. The gate faced to the northwest, with two armed guards keeping watch from stands behind the wall. Apparently, they hadn't the time to realize that there was a reason why human forts weren't walled off very often.

The unit spent a few minutes maneuvering itself until it and the gate were facing each other dead-on, and the guards were none the wiser. Then, Darren looked over at Pavlov.

"You got the goods?" he asked.

Pavlov gave a sadistic grin as he brandished his new M54 rotary grenade launcher and loaded it with six 40-millimeter grenades. "Just say the word."

The guards still hadn't seen them. Darren clicked on his radio. "You got a shot on the sentries, Sparrow?"

The voice of the sniper returned almost immediately. "Negative. I can't see anything inside the walls; you'll have to lure out anyone you want shot."

Darren looked back at Pavlov. "On my command."

Pavlov flipped up the rangefinder on the launcher and quickly adjusted his firing arc. Darren looked over at the other members of the platoon; they were ready as well. Darren took a deep breath, then said, "Open fire."

Ptunk! The launcher let loose a puff of smoke and a tiny projectile. The grenade arced through the sky before screaming towards the gate. The guards didn't even know what hit them. A column of smoke blasted into the sky, intermixed with what remained of the Poslushi, and the sound of the explosion came a fraction of a second later.

"Go, go, go!" Darren shouted, emerging from cover and running at full tilt towards the blown-open gate. No sooner had he done so than the grass around his feet charred and caught fire. Looking at the top of the palisade, he saw another guard aiming his power rifle at the incoming force. Darren didn't even slow down as he drove the soldier back into cover with a burst of gunfire; in any assault across coverless terrain, stopping was suicide.

Darren crossed the expanse and took cover behind the palisade, taking what little time he had to remove the suppressor from his rifle's muzzle and affix his combat knife in its place. Pavlov soon joined him, and as did the rest of the unit. When all had been assembled, Darren surged through the gate.

Immediately, he found himself facing a guard, but the Poslushi didn't have the time to react before Darren lunged forward, jabbing the point of his bayonet into his throat and ripping it out perpendicularly to how it went in. As he fell, a few more emerged from a hut facing the gate, and Pavlov sprayed them down with a long burst from his rifle.

Suddenly, one of the men behind Darren fell dead, his armor vest blackening where the lethal rays of microwave radiation from a power rifle struck him. Then, a wave of blistering heat just barely grazed Darren's neck, leaving a red mark where it passed by and causing the wood logs of the palisade to smolder and char. Darren quickly located the source of the shots, a window in one of the two two-story buildings in the settlement.

He shouldered his rifle and held the trigger down. The firearm chattered out a spray of lead, suppressing the shooter long enough for someone to hurl a cylindrical grenade through the window. Instantly, the building burst into flames as the incendiary detonated. After that, no shots rang out. A few seconds later, the shooter ran from the door of his building, completely ablaze. For a moment, Darren felt sorry for the screeching, flailing Poslushi, but then Pavlov put a slug between his eyes, putting an end to his suffering.

When the action had come to an end, everyone knew what to do. Eight men went to secure the perimeter, while the other six, which included Darren and Pavlov, went to clear the buildings, splitting into two-man teams. One cleared a bank of houses branching off to the left of the gate, the second took what appeared to be a small open-air market, and Darren and Pavlov went to clear the one tall building in the settlement that wasn't on fire.

Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be a town hall of some sorts, with a sign out in front written in the vaguely-Cyrillic script of the Ovinis and an additional attachment on its bottom in smooth, curved Poslushi letters. Darren knocked the door from its hinges with a well-placed kick and the two stormed in.

The lobby was dim; the lights had been switched off and the power cut. In the center of the room sat a circular table with chairs, and each wall had a doorway leading somewhere else. Darren noticed that they had been modified to be far taller than originally intended. He looked over at Pavlov.

"I'll take the left, you go forward." Pavlov said, and Darren nodded. The two split up, Darren finding himself in a gloomy archive. Racks upon racks of documents, datapads, and recording tapes stretched to the ceiling, with a desk in the center to sort them all out. On the desk sat one of the tablets, partially bundled in some sort of cloth as though to prepare it for moving. Examining it briefly, Darren saw that stamped onto its rear casing were six Poslushi letters in bright gold, unusual for this kind of device. Four of them were Po, Seh, Leh, and Sheh, translating, unsurprisingly, to "Poslushi."

"Hey, Pavlov, you got the translator, right? Get over here." Darren called.

"In a minute!" Pavlov yelled back. Darren muttered a curse under his breath, but then a footstep from behind stopped him cold. He froze in place, the hairs on his neck standing on end.

"Pavlov, I'm being serious. Get--" Darren didn't have the time to finish his sentence before a hulking body slammed into him from behind in a vicious tackle, carrying him into the wall back-first and pinning him there. Darren let out a piercing cry as his rifle fell from his hands, looking through the haze of pain to see a three-meter Poslushi female holding him up by the torso, her lower abdomen curling between her legs at him, stinger unsheathed. Darren didn't have time to think, so he acted, driving both of his boots' metal heels into the female's chitinous torso, striking roughly where the solar plexus would be located on a human.

A sickening crunch echoed through the room and the female roared in agony, unpinning Darren from the wall and tossing him across the room like he was nothing. He hit the floor and twisted himself such that his momentum carried him into a combat roll, ending with him returning to his feet facing the Poslushi, though trying to regain his balance. The Poslushi took the opportunity to charge him, but rather than engage him further, the female simply bowled him over and made a break for the entrance. As she reached Pavlov's position, he lunged to intercept her, but she sidestepped him and burst through the doorway.

Darren got up and quickly grabbed the tablet before sprinting after her. Pavlov joined in, hot on Darren's heels. As they left the building, they saw the female as she blazed past the other members of the platoon, moving at speeds simply not attainable for a non-Olympic athlete, each bound covering some three meters of distance. A few shots were fired by the pursuing Rangers, but no one was prepared to aim for an infantry target moving so quickly and erratically. Darren and Pavlov could only watch helplessly as the female bolted out of the gate, getting so close to getting away, so close...

And then her knee exploded. The crack of the gunshot wouldn't be heard for several more seconds, but the screams of the Poslushi as she clutched the stump were almost immediately noted. Then, Sparrow spoke over the radio. "That's one shot, one hit. Tell that to my drill sergeant, eh? Old geezer never thought I could hit crap."

"Why, you too scared to tell him yourself?" Darren chuckled as all three room-clearing teams converged on the fallen Poslushi. She howled at them and tried to crawl away, but then Simmons, a slighter lady who was a budding anesthesiologist before the Contact Wars sucked her into the Army, brandished a small wooden air gun and shot two specialized, armor-piercing darts into the Poslushi's back. At first, she was unaffected, but then her attempts to crawl away became subdued, her howls faded into pained moans, and then she fell limp, foam bubbling from her mandibles.

As the six worked to bind and muzzle the female, they got to talking.

"So, what was this one doing, you think?" Simmons asked, injecting the captive with a more long-lasting sedative.

"Females are commanders in their culture. Guess this one would rather hide in her command center than go out and actually lead when things got bad." Darren said, venom in his voice. He knew more than a few commanding officers who had shared this trait.

"And, I would assume, she's the reason why we didn't just perform a localized maximization of entropy in the area?" Pavlov said.

"Probably, yeah. Well, that and this, anyway." Darren set out the tablet on the ground, turning it over to show its glyphs. Suddenly, as though summoned by it, a forest-green Dark Sparrow crested the horizon and slowly came to a landing beside them, its two door-mounted machine-guns sweeping the area as it descended. Then, the doors opened, disgorging a platoon of United States Marines.

"Somebody order takeout!?" their commanding officer yelled over the roar of the rotors. Then, as he saw the tablet on the ground, he barked, "Abilene, we got the data!" hearing her name, an eager-looking Marine hopped out, carrying a laptop under one arm like a book. She knelt beside Darren, taking the tablet from him and fumbling around with a bundle of cables for a few seconds.

"Sorry, USB-to-Poslushi-data-jack is still in its infancy." the Marine, apparently named Abilene, apologized as she finally found the correct connecter and plugged the two devices together.

"Hey, do you know what those symbols mean?" Darren said, pointing to the inscription on the back of the tablet. Abilene traced her finger over the glyphs as the laptop decrypted the data. "'For Poslushi Eyes Only.' Hmph. It was important data."

Then, the laptop pinged, printing the documents in a human-palatable form on the screen. One particular title caught his attention, something by the name of Corruptibles, Volume 9372. It read as a list of people, apparently corruptible, who were mostly unknown to Darren, save one.

Capt. James McCullough, CAST - Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Astral.

Abilene saw where he was looking and quickly closed the laptop, glaring at him before returning with both devices to her unit. Then, their commander approached them. "Well, this is your exfil as well as our entrance! Good work, Rangers!" he said, waving them towards the waiting helicopter. A nauseous feeling had settled in Darren's stomach, but the last thing he wanted to do was make anyone suspicious by trying to stay behind, so he boarded the helicopter, resolving himself to find out if the Poslushi weren't entirely liars.