The year 1825 of the Emperor Saris, counting 14858 years of the House of Lios, Planet Vazz…

The missile blasted and blew a huge crater some fifteen feet in front of Derran, dusting his neck as he kept his helmet-covered head between his knees. Then, an instant later, one overshot him, landing among ground troopers in the raw behind.

Poor bastards. They didn't even have time to scream. Their torn body parts and guts landed partly over his back and arms. He tried not to notice it.

Derran knew that at that point it really didn’t matter if the targeted droid-lunching station was five meters or five hundred miles away. They were never going to reach it.

The objective, to incapacitate it, seemed all but forgotten, a dream told to them by some superiors who obviously underestimated their enemies and who vehemently and blindly louded their own superiority.

He could only guess which of the next projectiles would terminate him together with who ever remained of his unit.

"We are dead here!" Next to him, Wills was yelling, still keeping his hands over his head as if that could offer any protection and keep him safe.

"Sure we are! We’re all dead!" he answered back through the grinding teeth then lifted his rocket rifle and fired three shots at the low flying droid which was already turning around, getting red and ready to blast them again.

He did not even wait to see if his shots had brought it down. It did not matter. Not much. The shots would have been registered and the next droid would come and pound them even harder. \

So, he frantically searched the space around. It was not easy to see anything. The smoke and dust around had turned the mid-day into dusk. Blown parts of the walker, a two-story-tall tactical armored unit, burned but yards away.

His squad was lucky to have escaped from it before droids had shredded it completly down. Many units around seemed to have less luck, with dying screams of men trapped inside, frantic shrieks slicing through Derran’s heart. He could do nothing for them.

"That hole there looks better!" Derran yelled again through the explosion, and before another droid could re-target them, he jumped up and raced forward toward the hole, to the place where a large, knocked-down bar-reinforced concrete wall covered most of the bomb-produced crater underneath, providing at least some kind of protection.

As he moved, his left calf shoot pain through his whole body, but he did not stop, only twitched and jumped in. Seconds later, three other troopers skidded in on top of him.

"Is that all we are?" Derran asked unsure, his voice trembling through his quivering lips.

"Probably..." Wills uttered the words out, getting off him. The squad of fifteen seasoned and hardened veterans brought down to four. Derran dared not to look at their faces to see who made it, and who didn't. He dared not to think whose body parts were still covering his fatigue armor.

As a droid’s whistle appeared overhead again, they creped deeper inside the hole, inching onward.

The explosion over their heads shook their protective roof, their body heat obviously revealing their location.

“Check your armor,” he instructed his men. “One of them must be leaking heat.” But then, if his calf was cut and hurting, it might have been him. He put his gun down and felt it with his glove. The armor was still hanging on, but the stream of blood was sipping through its crack. “Shit, my armor is down” he grunted and took out pain-blocking syrum and sticked it in his neck. Then the wound freezing and disinfecting foam that he sprayed in between cracked leg armor. He did not dare to take the cracked armor off.

“Mine is gone as well,” Ron-Ton replied as he hustled to get deeper inside the cover of the crater. “The heat regulator seems to be shot.” He tried punching it with his armored fist, but it showed no sign of light as it lay dead there on his left hip.

“Go deeper in the hole! Cover yourself with dirt!” he ordered. “I'll do too.”

But it was too late. Another missile tried to find them, and Derran felt its torching flame on the back of his neck as it lifted the ground under their feet and raised him up and threw him on top of his friends.

If they stayed where they were just a minute ago, their body parts would have been mixed with the debris of stones and metal that scattered the back of his helmet.

“No way back now,” he shouted over the ringing in his ears, his fingers moving over his left shoulder which he seem suddenly unable to move very well,. The shielding was torn there and his gloved fingers could feel the moisture of his blood. It did not hurt. The syroom worked fast.

"Just a scratch," Derran told himself and pulled from his backside pocket the last bottle of the honey-like septic foam to spread over the wound.

“Everyone okay?” he called through the curtain of dust to his friends.

“Yeah, I'm fine here,” Wills answered with the coughing voice.

“I heard you use the foam. I could use it on my knee,” Ron-Ton told him, and Derran passed the bottle to him.

“Anybody else needs to be foamed up?”

“No, I think I'm fine,” Kazan's voice came through. Derran heart warmed just a bit. He was glad it was Kazan who was the forth, a kid from his own sector. “Only if you have something to stop the ringing in my head, that would help.”

“Hey, don't bitch,” Will answered. “The ringing only means you have something still remaining in there, and in your case, Kazan, I think that might be improvement.”

Derran didn't want to wait for the dust to settle but found the hole through which the light was beaming down, and leaning against the bare and twisted iron bars. He placed the gun through it and steadied his shaking hand. And waited. For one breath and two. Another. Everyone waited as well.

When he heard the low zooming sound, he squeezed the trigger, holding it and letting the bursts of deadly light zip the air above, and did not stop squeezing that trigger till the droid passed over, exploding in the air and hitting the ground somewhere beyond them.

“We have to move on!” he yelled. “Twenty seconds max!”

“Hey, the hole goes deeper,” Kazan said, obviously not eager to go and expose himself again. “Would be smart to check it out. I see something like a little tunnel.”

“Go then,” Derran told him unnecessarily since he already snaked through debris to the narrow tunnel.

The last in line, Derran stepped swiftly over debris, his armor scratching over the sticking metalix bars. But he felt no pain. Only numbness. And rage. Rage over everything. Over the enemy he fought, over his superiors for their infinite stupidity. To think a long time ago, now seemed like a lifetime ago, he raged over his father who suggested he better not have anuthing to do with this war.

Before there was a very tall building here, Derran could tell, with thick iron posts sticking out from underneath. But the whole structure seemed almost completely obliterated, probably during the last week’s orbital bombardments, the one that lasted for a whole seven days and was supposed to destroy the planet's defenses.

Nobody could hope that the bombardments would completely obliterate all the Techies military structures, but they were at least supposed to soften them enough so the mock-up troops could be placed on the ground and overrun the place without much trouble.

As soon as they hit the ground, it was obvious that nothing of the sort had happened and that their enemy’s defenses were almost intact.

Lack of information. Lack of intelligent planning or understading of the enemy. And too much of stupid bravado and confidence. It could only lead to a complete disaster. And now, as he looked at that small tunnel that might have been a utiity corridor time ago,a week ago, he thought how stupid that it might serve as his toumb.

The command, in their last briefing, said that the plan was to save this planet. No more turning livable environments into some indiscriminate space rock. How noble. But for Derran that only meant spilling his own blood and the blood of his men. And with the enemies' droids operating so freely, almost completely unharmed, it came down to a lot more than blood.

If he was going to die, maybe it was just that he dies under the ground.

In the distance, more blasts, explosions, the chaos raged. People died. Those that remained screamed, calling for backup, help, syrums. More droids would come for them. For each they shot down, at least three would come back to finish the job. The battle was without hope. He dreadfully accepted it.

Maybe if they sent magnetically-shielded heavy mechs, maybe they could have stood up to the droids, Derran thought before realizing whatever was to happen next, he will probably not be around to see. Stupid assholes! To see my end just because some ignorant general thought that he could mope it all up with a light infantry!

His men did not wait for his thoughts. They moved deeper inside, and, surprisingly, instead of narrowing down, the crater and the tunnel sneaking through it seemed to grow bigger. Soon, they could even stand in it with their back stretched straight. A sliver of hope sparked inside Derran’s head as he thought about the prospect of his near future existence.

Not dead, we are not dead yet.

Two of them had still lights working on their helmets, and when they lighted up the darkness in front of them, they could see an iron door blocking their way.

“Let me through,” Derran commanded as he threw his rifle around his shoulders and pulled out his laser knife from his left boot.

He didn’t bother with the lock or try to bust through it. It seemed secured enough and would not bulge not even an inch. So he used the knife to go through the metallic sheet, cutting out a dog’s door in its lower half, big enough for each of them to crawl through it.

Two flashlights were sufficient to point the stairs that seemed to spiral themselves to somewhere underneath. Derran pointed them down.

“Who knows, maybe we can get to that droid station this way,” he whispered hopefully although he doubted they would find anything more than the stinking sewage where the stairs ended.

They descended in a single file, with stairs spinning around and around, showing no sign of ending.

It was a good respite. At least for a few minutes. They almost felt safe since all that structure above their heads provided the best possible protection against the flying machines that were waiting for them outside.

*** But as soon as the stairs ended, the anxiety returned. Instead of the river of crap, they faced something completely different. They looked at the perfectly round, smooth and made of concrete tunnel, perfectly maintained with no cracks or mold. It was going both ways and was big enough for four of them to comfortably walk shoulder to shoulder. Could it be some kind of an underground public transportation? It had no rails. And it was not vacuumed-sealed, so it could not have been a tube like those he flew through in Capital City. A water tunnel? Its floor and walls were completly dry. Clearly it must have been some kind of a government installation. The only question was what kind.

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Whatever kind it was, Derran just wished it was not the kind that would get them killed. Maybe he wished for too much.

How well was it guarded?

He could see no light other than their own. Still, he brought his gun back to his hands, and pointed it in front of himself.

They moved aimlessly around till Derran rested his hand on the shoulder of his nearest companion, indicating him and the rest of them to stop.

“What is it, Sergeant?” Wills’s whispering voice hardly made it to Derran.

Derran put a finger to his lips, and nobody made another sound. The battle that raged above could be heard no more. They went that deep. Forward or backward, the tunnel was equally dark and quiet. Which way to go? The darkness ended both ways with their breathing being the loudest sound around.

None of them were sure. Derran had to decide and chose to point forward to the right.

They tried to move as quietly as they could. Obviously, they were not quiet enough as before too long they could hear spiders with their metallic legs scratching the concrete floor and walls, somewhere coming from the blackness, clanking their ways toward them, frantically, almost animal-like.

Before even seeing them, before waiting for their machine guns installed on top of their heads to cut them down, Derran fired a salvo of plasma rockets down the tunnel. As they exploded, the ground all around them shook, the tunnel squealed, the broken pieces of the mortar from the ceiling started to rain over them.

“This must be a military installation… If they have spiders guarding every door,” Derran grunted.

“Yeah, but what kind?” Slicky said from the back.

Who knows, maybe this can take us to the droid station, Derran let his hope light up.

“Well, they know we are here now… So, we better hurry!”

They ran then, as fast as they could, as fast as the light in their helmets showed them the way. Soon, the darkness ahead was lighted with the metal of spider legs and torsos melting and burning, with many parts still covered with the orange plasma. Blown pieces of concrete debris lay everywhere revealing a few feet of tare in the tunnel’s right wall.

Wills, without any thinking at all, stuck his head in it. "Airway... Big enough to…" He said as the noise of countless more spiders rushing toward them overpowered his voice. They could not have been more than a hundred yards away, a minute time to reach them at most.

“Can we get in?” Derran asked.

“Maybe…”

Derran checked his plasma rifle. Only three charges left. So he reached and pulled off a metallic ball from Wills’s belt. It instantly lighted red, with five seconds counting down.

"Make the hole bigger and get in," he told them as he pointed to the airway. His trembling fingers moved feverishly over the timer, but he succeeded in stopping it when only one second was left. He moved the timer forward till it hit eighty seconds mark.

He then threw the bomb like a bocce ball in the direction they came from, making it roll with all the bouncing noise it could make, hoping it would attract all the spiders.

“No way of going back there now,” Wills commented while he could hardly squeeze his shoulders through the airway. Luckily, they all fitted inside.

“Go forward, fast…” Derran begged them.

There was not enough room to stretch up, not even to their knees, so with their bellies pressed against the tube, they used their elbows, knees, and feet to push themselves forward, stopping the crawling and getting dead quiet only when they heard the thunder of spiders passing them by.

If they have thermal scanners, we are gone, Derran thought, unsure that the tunnel's wall was thick enough to prevent them from being detected. And the soft plastic that the airway was made of certainly would not conceal their body heat.

But spiders didn’t stop, and the bomb went off, and the airway shook like a suspended bridge in a torrential wind.

"Well, at least we have some air here," Wills's chuckles reached Derran and he instantly shushed him down.

They continued to crawl, almost soundlessly. Soon the fresh air rushing like a river through the tube chilled their sweat.

They moved as fast as they could, fearing more spiders would come to meet them. The only question was from which side. But none came.

I guess whoever build this, have not considered that not all of the emperor's soldiers were oversized, meter- shoulder-wide fighters. Who knows, they might not have even considered that people from Lixia might actually side with the emperor. Derran tried to occupy his thoughts, tried not to think of cramping muscles and what was waiting for them in front.

Never thought of being small would ever have any benefits sometimes. And all the rap we used to get the entire time during the training from the rest of the troops? I’d like to see them in here now….

Soon the tube tilted to the right, and the shimmer of the light further ahead meant that they came out from behind the wall.

“The lights out!” Derran commanded as the light grew stronger.

In another few seconds of crawling, they figured the rays of light were coming from the airway opening. A bit more of moving their elbows and knees and soon the first of them was right on top of it.

The opening was big enough for Slicky to see everything below them, and the light was enough for all of them to see a pure terror on his face as he turned his head around to look for the Derran’s instructions. His lips moved to form words but Derran could not read them.

So, Derran nudged his head, indicating them to move forward. In three elbow pulls he was on top of the airway net, checking to see what had spooked his comrade so much.

The openings were tiny, less wide than his little finger. But that was still enough to see three oversized metallic humanoids guarding the door. Each of their hands was substituted with a neuron gun with its ammunition taking almost all part of their torsos. Transparent, electric shields were placed three feet in front of them. They were standing guard, waiting patiently.

Nothing would come through them. Any kind of a frontal assault would prove to be futile and fatal. They could take down ten thousand armored infantry troopers in a matter of minutes. Derran wasn’t even sure that a hand grenade thrown from a side would be enough to take them all down. And they had but a few left. Maybe only burying them under a whole mountain could disable them. He was not sure.

Wills lifted his head, looked back at Derran, asking for instructions. Without a word, Derran pointed his head forward. They quietly crawled past them, not even breathing, thanking space spirits that their prying red eyes have not turned up and zoomed in on them.

They moved onward, but the next ventilation opening was close by and it proved to be showing the same scene of more silver-looking humanoids guarding the steel door behind them. They crawled past that door as well.

But then suddenly, the airway split into three parts. The middle one seemed the biggest, so that’s the one they chose.

Derran calculated that all that air must be needed for a lot of people… And it had to be people. Why would they do that for animals, certainly not for machines? How many, maybe thousand or ten thousand? He could only guess.

Then another thought crept, uninvited in his mind. How many of them are going to die here? Who is it going to be next?

Probably all of us. And it will come before I would be able to see it. That fast. Maybe it's even better that way. And for what? Oh, pa', were you right or were you right?

He clunged his teeth, not letting the tears come down.

Suddenly, they started to hear distant voices, firm sounds of someone talking.

Derran pulled Slicky’s leg, signaled him to stop, and listened. Nothing could be heard close by, only those distant voices, and they seemed too distant that they could not even understand them at all.

They waited and waited, and still, not even a single feeble sound had reached their ears. With a laser knife from his boot, he pecked a few holes in the tube.

He looked at the yellow-painted concrete floor which was at least ten feet below them now. He could see nothing. So, he put his laser knife to work some more and silently sliced a hole in the tube big enough to jump down through it.

He was expecting to land in some kind of a passageway, unoccupied. But he was wrong.

As he jumped down, his heals didn't even connect with the floor. In a blink, he saw a back of a humanoid guarding the white gate six feet behind them. As the humanoid finally noticed the vibration of the air and started to turn around, Derran touched the floor with his toes, and rolled over toward the robot, then jumped on the machine's back. His hand, with the laser knife still in it, went deep through the protective shield of his neck, puncturing it all the way through. He left his knife in there and grabbed a thick black cord buried inside, yanking it out with all his strength, taking out its energy cord and making a killing machine only a harmless and permanent metallic statute.

“That is how you kill a fucken robot.” He was so proud of himself then, not believing himself of what he had just done.

Three of them came down as quietly as they could, but the alarm started to reverberate through the whole space, almost piercing their ears.

He showed two of them to guard the back door, and with Wills, he rushed forward.

Less than fifty yards away, they almost flew through the swinging door with their rifles pointed forward, waiting to fire them… But nothing met them on the other side. They were once again in the darkness, in the corner of a stadium-type structure.

Twenty feet forward, they came out of the corridor to the space that opened downward.

It stretched hundreds of steps below them and as far as their eyes could see. It was a colossal dome-type structure, resembling sports stadiums only multiple times bigger. The bottom of the dome was filled with thousands of people, each sitting in front of multiple monitors with their hands coiled over droid control sticks.

Derran’s and Wills’s mouth-dropping shock swiftly turned to a maddening, teeth-clinging rage as they observed the entire battle being played out on the enormous 3D screens in the middle of the dome.

It was as Derran had feared.

The second wave of the troops, which came after them, were almost completely wiped out. The battle was obviously lost even as the Imperial command seemed to lunch the rest of their reserve jets. They obviously were trying to fight off droids, and failing miserably.

Derran understood right away the stupidity of the strategy of his commanders, the textbook objective of trying to achieve the air supremacy. How they could think of accomplishing it with the far inferior technology was something he could not figure out. And to throw in ground troops and lightly armored units to somehow compensate for the error was equal to sending his men to the meat-grinding machine. In a moment of a heartbeat, he understood it all, the enemy not only using pitiless AI droids to fight a battle but also machines controlled by humans to lead the way. It was a deadly combination.

Them losing a battle was not a fluke. Connecting the intelligence and ability of AI to predict any established military strategy with the creativity of humans to improvise has given the enemy an edge. The enemy would win this battle. Derran was certain as he watched more of his troopers die. And the enemy and its AI would understand where it made the mistake and would compensate for it and build better outer planetary defenses. What was for machines to spit out hundreds of thousands of droids capable of doing in space what they did on a planet?

So the next time the Imperial forces come to overtake the planet, they would not even be able to land on it. The tide of the war would change. And in the end, the combination of the powerful AI and human creativity might win over brutal military conventional power. The battle was lost, and probably the war with it. Everything would change.

“Stupid general assholes,” was all the comment he could mumble as the nightmarish future flashed in front of his eyes, one bloodbath after another, and hundreds of billions of people all lost to heartless machines and their masters, including his family and his home…

“This comes down,” Derran’s whisper was almost inaudible as the sound of gunfire could already be heard coming from behind. “Even if it means us… Let’s just bury them all. Right here, right now. I lived long enough anyway. So, let’s just bury them in their own hole.”

With those words, he finished his instructions to Wills without knowing that they were being recorded on their helmet censors, without knowing that those words were to be later played over and over again, billions of times over, throughout the empire, for centuries to come, that those words would become part of the legend.

He fired all his plasma rockets toward the center of the dome where he was guessing that the energy supply pod must have been located. He threw in all the grenades toward it as well, but the huge engulfing inferno which suddenly exploded ate them before he could see them detonate.

Men screamed and the ground shook and the inferno of torching fires swallowed thousands. There was no place to hide.

Little did Derran know at the time that the explosion ended destroying the main nerve of the central command system of the Vazz, incapacitating all their flying droids as well as their humanoids meat-grinders, and practically winning the decisive battle for the Empire in that bloody two-year-long conflict.

The peace treaty was signed not even a week after that day.