I laid low, and crept through the bushes. The hive mind couldn’t communicate everything, but it could communicate that I was here, and alone. I saw that these guys also had quarterstaffs, and two had what appeared to be a hammer, and one had something resembling a sword. Shit.

I slowly moved my hand down towards my gun belt, and slowly and methodically took out a small WireNade. There was no chance I could just roll it into the middle of them without them noticing and losing the element of surprise. I slowly moved away, not turning my back to the small group. They continued to sniff around the nearby jungle, and closely inspect the bodies, or guard the ones inspecting the bodies. I then threw a rock at my feet, they all noticed the noise and looked to where the rock could’ve come from, and three split off from the group to go near where they heard the sound and check out the area. I then threw a small rock in the air, and all but one ran over to where it was. I dropped the WireNade, and slipped behind the tree behind me.

I took all power from my cloaking and diverted it to my shields, and put all my shields on my back. As one saw me, opening its beak and charging, the others followed. Then tiny wires erupted from the small ball I’d dropped, slicing at the world around it, Slicing into the tree I was behind, as my shields flickered with each small slice that made it through the tree. One second later, the barrage stopped. It was a bloody mess of orange and melting foliage.

There were a few remnants of what they were, and the last Hunter, seeing the gore had stopped charged me. This was the one with the sword, probably the smarter of the bunch. My shields on 25% energy reformed over my body, and I ducked as the Hunter swiped the blade over my head, and brought it down again, trying to slice through my shields. I barely managed to dodge out of the way, again as the red and speckled orange wood swished past my face. I lunged forward, punching the thing.

It caught the punch. And threw me, one handed into the tree I had hidden behind. I rolled out of the way as a blade came right past my ear. A Strand tentacle smacked the motherfucker away, and sent it tumbling, but it just landed on its feet, and this time, picked up a nearby branch and threw it like a javelin.

At this point I was on my feet, and sidestepped the flying weapon. A thin blade swun from my suit’s wrist, and ignited with plasma. The charging beast was already at me, and swung again. I jumped forwards, into the creature, stabbing it through, and dodging the blade. Before it could snap it’s beak at my helmet, I drove the blade upwards and through it, coming out the shoulder. The arm holding the sword went limp, along with the rest of it. As it fell to the ground, I stabbed the blade and watched it’s still tense lower arms truly go limp.

The motherfucker was playing dead, they were getting smarter. Or here they were smarter, or I don't know. I left three plasma grenades on the ground, and ran. I sprinted through the foliage, hearing the plasma release into the jungle, and starting a hot burning, rapidly spreading forest fire. As I emerged from the forest, I didn’t stop running until I was on my rescue fighter.

As we passed, we dropped some more magma on the foliage, and by the time we were back, I realized how big an issue this was.

This was an enormous issue, I barely got out with the element of surprise and the most advanced gear we had. Why were they now using tools? Was this a new hive mind, what was going on? As I landed, I requested an immediate, meeting with a high level management bot, which was allowed. I walked to a room in the building, and put on a small visor.

I was in a large white room. Across from me in the bleak furnitureless atmosphere was another human, although I knew that was just an illusion. What was standing in front of me was a hyper complex series of wires and computer chips. Hyper-thin pieces of technology, and all of this built within a day using a plethora of pre-assembled pieces. “How are you today, G’ell?”

“I’m doing pretty badly, the Hunter Ul have figured out basic wooden tools.”

“Repeat please”

“The Hunter Ul have made wooden quarterstaffs, hammers and one had a sword, and was acting intelligent as me, almost killed me.” I repeated, sensing the impact of the statement as the supercomputer took a whole second and a half to process this.

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“That is not good. I’ve come up with over a dozen possible and feasible possibilities for this. I will send a messenger back to Earth itself to have this information processed. It’s eyes glossed over, as in seconds, it had hacked my suit. It took not even half of a second to break through the advanced firewall, accessing my files and the suits memories. “This is not good. They are getting better. Much better. I have sent the messenger now.”

The visor disconnected from my head, and I walked out, dazed. I had nothing to do, so I was going to sleep off some more fatigue.

After a 9 hour rest, I reported for something to do.

“You again,” The guard asked, a bit puzzled. “Most people aren’t this… energetic I guess.”

“I’m bored, what’s available.”

“Go out there and be ready in case of another push from those Ul bastards, they haven’t attacked in a while. Check in with those in the field to see if anyone needs anything.”

“Alright.” I muttered, getting in a patrol floater, revving it up, the magnetic boosters, lifting it off the metallic floor, and then the plasma jets activating, propelling me forward. I cut through the atmosphere of the dimension surveying the area. Nobody was in need of help, and nothing too significant was happening. There were dozens more in the sky like me looking for things to do.

I flew around like this for another half hour, before an army stormed from the brush. And another. Each on opposite sides of the base. I flew to the smaller one, expecting the others on patrol to take care of the bigger army. Two chainguns popped out of the bottom of the disk shaped structure resembling an elongated UFO with no prominent bulge on top. I flew over the crowd, strafing the army, the heated metal shells cutting through the Ul and covering the ground in bodies and gore. I was running out of ammo extremely quick, I only had enough ammo for five more strafes like that.

The long range railguns and the far shorter range plasma lancers were taking shots when they could at the Avians.

An echoing warning rang through my helmet and ship.

RED ALERT LARGE UNKNOWN FLEET SPOTTED. I immediately flew back to base, knowing that some other empire must have made their way into the dimension, somehow. If I was out there for too long I would be shot down. Then I saw the ADRR fire. The magnificent bolt of energy emerged, bouncing off atoms towards it’s target like a thin controlled lightning strike. My eyes followed the beam, as it soared into what was… not a ship. An enormous fleshy bulb. Like another Ul. Except it was massive, the size of a cruiser. I looked past it seeing dozens more.

I called HQ, in a panic. “What the fuck are you shooting at?”

“Shut the hell up soldier, go back to base and await orders!” I put more pressure on the engines, and got, as he said, the hell back to base.

I flew into the hangar, leapt out of my cockpit and pulled up the radar in my helmet. The enormous bulbs had been dubbed Ul destroyers. Then small zit-like bulges on the bottom of the ship opened like a flower petal, releasing what resembled to be, drop pods. They slammed into the ground, releasing, hundreds of bipedal creatures.

I switched to a computer structured image of the things based off the seconds of seeing them. They were not as tall as the Hunters, only being 6 ft tall. But they had variety. From 6-5 ft tall. Some were outside of this range even. They had mouths with what appeared to be eight small clattering mandibles arranged vertically in a line, four on each side. They had one long head tail coming from the base of their skull, and one at their hip. They were scaly, and grey colored, contrasting their purple-green ships. They had legs with two joints, and four eyes. Only one pair of arms, but they were proportionally longer than those of a human’s. Seven fingers with small nails. Three horns emerged from what would be their forehead, and nostrils by what would be their chin.They had ears placed where most species had them, but they were hooked and long. These were not Ul. Ul did not have variety, no Ul yet had scales, and no Ul, had guns.

These things charged thousands of dog like drones released from the base. The thing launched salvo after salvo of 4 shot bursts of crystal like shells out of their guns that resemble larger longer UMP’s of old. The crystals slammed into the canid-like robots. The crystals imbed into the bots, and knocking them back significantly. These guns were purely biological, or so it seemed. I requested deployment, which was immediately granted. The Ul armies were still approaching the base, although their diversion had already succeeded. Three nuclear missles launched from the base, hitting and obliterating four of the ships, three from direct hits and one from collateral. The ADRR was firing again, destroying three ships in one enormous blast. Railguns hit the big ships, doing little, if any, damage. The plasma lancers fizzled away against the armor of the ship, being a bit more effective, but not much.

As I ran out into the battlefield, and saw the corpses covering the battlefield, I got the feeling that this was only the beginning. This would be worse than the Jhar Empyrean. Far worse.