Phaethon system: Hyperion city

Pioter slowly exhaled as he squeezed the trigger on his gauss rifle, the weapon's distinctive report split the air as it hurled a slug downrange and into a legionare almost a kilometer and a half away. He sighed as he felt his partner tap him on the shoulder and pulled his eye back from the scope.

"you got another target for me?" he asked as he jacked another round into the weapons acceleration chamber, "I thought I saw one heading south along Main street..."

"Pioter, we need to move. You know the golden rule, no more than two shots per position..." Nathan looked at his shooter, his hand resting on his shoulder, "We've fired sixteen times from here."

Pioter stayed silent as he shifted his attention back down the rifles sight. he remembered that there was one right about... there he centered his rifle on the target adjusted for distance and... Whizz Crack! Another dead, Beetle. The sight of the creature toppling over as it's innards were liquified made him feel... something. He wasn't sure what that feeling was, just that it was better than the terrible cold void that seemed to grip his heart. For those precious few moments, he felt something other than empty.

"Pioter seriously, we need to move before they call in an artillery strike on our heads! I know how you're feeling right now, I grew up here for heavens sake, but we'll do more damage alive than we will dead." The spotter grabbed the sniper by the shoulder, pulling him gently away from the rifle. "You need to calm down, think things through and act rationally or we're both going to die for nothing Pioter. Nothing."

"They killed my wife..." Pioter replied shakily, looking over at the spotter.

"And they'll pay for that, we'll kill them all for what they've done. However, we need to be alive in order to kill more of them, now don't we?" The spotter asked rhetorically, "come on Pioter, let's go. There's another location I saw around a hundred meters northeast from here that's should give us a good sight line down sixth avenue."

Slowly Pioter nodded and took off the linear accelerator attachment on the end of his rifle, cutting off a third of a meter's length from the weapon and stowed it in his bag. "Gotta love German engineering." He quipped "Assault and marksman's rifle in one."

His spotter, Nathan, nodded in agreement, slowly relaxing as he realized his friend had finally listened to reason. "you know..." he muttered to himself, "we should leave them a present..."

Pioter looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "like what?" he asked sarcastically, "I'm fresh out of cake."

In response, Nathan pulled a small rectangular object, about the size of a pack of playing cards, out of his bag before slinging the duffel over his shoulder. Then, taking the box in both hands, he pressed it firmly up against the wall next to the entrance, sticking it to the surface before he and the sniper exited.

Five minutes later, a squad of troops stormed the now vacant sniper's nest. In the process, they tripped a small infared beam which the box had emitted. Ten seconds later, the box detonated hurling broken masonry and shrapnel throughout the enclosed room, spattering it with dirty yellow blood and setting the building alight.

Now sequestered in their new hide, the Sniper and Spotter smiled as they heard the resounding boom tolling thoughout the air like a bell announcing the death's of their foe.

Elsewhere in the ruins of the city, the Ruk soldier's advanced forwards, meeting and overcoming the stubborn resistance of the surviving local population.

Shak Kall was what was known as a squadmaster, what a human might refer to as a sergeant. He had fought campaigns on a half dozen worlds and had survived through a combination of luck, tenacity, and skill. None of his experiences however prepared him for how the "pink things" these humans were fighting back.

He snared as a burst of fire tore apart one of his troops, that was... Kae Fas... yes, young and un blooded. It appeared that the idiot had made the mistake of moving into the open. His armor, normally tough enough to shrug off a couple of plasma blasts or laser strikes was as good as so much toilet paper against... whatever form of weaponry these creatures seemed to be using. He stuck his weapon around the corner and fired blindly into the last position he remembered the enemy to be in, the heavy plasma beam ripping through the steel girders and melting concrete like it was ice cream in a blast furnace.

The fire from the defenders ceased and he felt a momentary surge of satisfaction. He poked his head around the corner wondering what he would see.

The sight that greeted him was an empty corridor with a duet of fallen enemy soldiers, one of them was missing their head, with nothing left but a charred singed stump remaining. The other appeared to have recently died from another injury, their leg had been blown off by what looked like a hit from a plasma repeater and his blast appeared to have cut them in two. Good that was two less of these nightmares in the area...

That was what was even worse than their weapons, how they had fought. As bad as those weapons were if they faced them in an open fight they would kill many yes, but the legionaries could overwhelm and kill all of them before they managed to inflict such horrific casualties. That however was not how they were conducting themselves, they did not fight like warriors instead they never exposed themselves, never assaulted positions, never gave the legionaries even the slightest chance for an honorable open battle where they could use numbers or any of the tactics that they had been trained in to their advantage.

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What was worse was that it was working so incredibly effectively, he had seen the kills to deaths ratio himself and for such a minor world it was appalling. The good part about this however was that they were steadily forcing them back, driving them out of the city and into the surrounding countryside where the constant harassment was much easier to deal with. The defenders were loosing slowly, but they were loosing...

Shak Kal just had to find a way to take comfort in that. He looked over to the fallen legionnaire and shook his head, that was going to be cold comfort indeed.

Hyperion City: Ruk Base camp

"They're never fielding large formations of troops, we're never running into more than three or four of them at a time, and when we do finally corner them, instead of surrender like any sane being, they instead fight to the death! what is wrong with this species!?" Groundmaster Lek Koz growled in rage. The last two of the human's kill teams had cost him more than twenty troops each, EACH! before they died, and that had just been their last stand! who knows how many they had killed before then?

Slowly, the Groundmaster began to relax, after all well... there were always more legionaries, they were one of the things that the Ruk had in absolute abundance. "these casualty rates... if they get out..." He muttered to himself uneasily.

"Yes Groundmaster, but there have been far far worse battles than these." his assistant replied hesitantly, "and we can always replace the losses Groundmaster, they cannot."

"Those were true battles Adjutent, Not mere skirmish actions! My legion is being made into a laughingstock by primitives pink fleshbags! They don't even apear to have had much of a warrior culture, according to the analysts their last major was was over a hundred cycles ago!"

"Groundmaster please, this is well within the acceptable loss rate of such an expedition." The Assistant replied reasonably, "we could take damage like this all day..."

The Ruk sighed and slumped forwards. "I suppose you are correct. Perhaps I just hoped that the first war I would be in command of would be a real WAR not..." He gestured to the tactical map on the table, showing the flashing distress lights of units under attack from the damnable human raiders and kill teams.

"well Groundmaster, at least we're making good progress into enemy held territory, and given their method of combat I assume that they will have a central command hub somewhere near this place. Once we find and destroy it, then their cordination and effective combat capacity should fall drastically"

"Good... these things might not be about to ruin my career, but they're still being quite the thorn in it's side. The sooner we deal with them the better... damn these... Humans, what an ugly name... it suits such an ugly species...

Outskirts of Hyperion City: Human rally point

Major Mikhail Stukov let the smoke from his cigar roll around his mouth before breathing it out, he looked around the broken remains of the apartment building that now served as his command center. He stared for a moment at the holographic playing board he had that was set up to simulate the city. All the reports he was receiving were saying the same thing, they were loosing too many of the kill teams. It didn't matter how many of the enemy they killed, two more of the aliens that the men had dubbed "beetles" took their place. While the kill rates his men were racking up were fantastic, ten twenty thirty... one team even had sixty six killed already to their names... it wasn't enough... in truth he had known from the start that it would never be enough.

"Damn it... we just don't have the men for this..." He cursed as he brought his fist down on the command table, rattling the pieces on his game board, "maybe if we hadn't been bombarded, maybe if we had some more time to repair maybe if-"

"There's always a way to win sir..." His adjutant interupted hesitantly, "we might just need to tweak our definition of win a little bit..." The man fiddled with his collar as he looked up at the major.

Major Stukov slowly looked over at him."What do you mean Lieutenant?" and so the Lieutenant told Major Stukov his plan, and Stukov... Stukov began to laugh."I like it." He said with a feral grin "Let's Show these Alien freaks why you don't fuck with Russians."

"No sir." Lieutenant James Allen said with an equally predatory smile as he extended his hand to shake, "lets show they why you don't fuck with humanity."

The Russian major and his recently acquired American Lieutenant shook hands, old feuds between older rivals would be settled later on down the line this was personal now.

Demispace: TUSS Vigil

Commodore James Samada impatiently drummed his fingers on the command console impatiently T minus half an hour till exit... he would be the first human naval commander to engage the enemy. He was outnumbered almost seven to one, his fleet was outdated, his crew barely trained on their new-old weapons systems. He couldn't wait.