Despite the rough landing, we didn’t have a scratch on us when all was said and done. A quick look outside using one of the pod’s exterior cameras told me that it was rapidly approaching midnight. Already the night outside was dark enough that without some kind of artificial assistance, I’d hardly be able to see more than a dozen metres in front of me. Luckily for me, my armour had terrific low-light optics and a variety of different solutions for that.

Gone were the days of needing night-vision goggles and external quad-NODs, at least in military circles. It was all internal now. The four of us got to work quickly, wasting no time in preparing our gear and following the loose plan we’d concocted. Larsen and I made our way to the small airlock where I overrode its normal functioning. I didn’t want to give any potential threats the chance to trap one of us in the fatal funnel, leaving us to be picked off one by one. While I didn’t think there was a sniper outside waiting for us, I didn’t want that as my epitaph if some other nasty fate awaited us.

“You know, they really should add windows to these things. An airlock is practically tailor-made to be a chokepoint.” Larsen remarked, mirroring my thoughts closely. We stood in front of the airlock to the outside and I turned to look at her.

“I know what you mean. I feel like I’m about to get my lights punched out by a sniper. All that wide open space and only one tiny door for us to go through.”

“Condition one rifles!” I barked, stepping forward to take the lead. Behind me, my words were echoed by the other as we all worked our charging handles to chamber a round.

I agreed with Larsen's comment about the airlock and so did the current Marine Corps doctrine. We didn’t want to go through a chokepoint and out into a wide open space where a hundred snipers could sit unseen. Despite that, it would be monumentally stupid to blow a hole in the pod for that reason alone, so we would just have to hope that all that waited for out there was grass.

Half-turning, I addressed Chen and Carver who’d stay behind to watch the pod and attend to the fabricator. “If you see something hostile, do us a favour and don’t keep it to yourself.”

"Same to you." Chen gave me a thumbs up. Carver raised his head from his datapad briefly before moving further into the pod’s interior, toggling his radio as he walked away.

“Don’t worry, if I see something big and scary, I’ll be too busy running for my life and screaming to keep quiet. Good luck.” He said.

Turning back to the fore, I verified that I did indeed have a round chambered. Eyes flicking to the ammo readout floating above my rifle, I saw my . Four and a half magazines, or just over ninety rounds. Behind me I heard more than saw Larsen step to my left, clearing her line of fire to the outside. I appreciated the gesture, even though it was doubtlessly an automatic reflex we'd all had ingrained in us by now. Blue-on-blue wasn't my idea of a good time.

I raised my rifle to my shoulder and stepped slightly to the right, opposite Larsen, so I didn’t silhouette myself in the doorway too much in case someone was waiting for me. I overlaid the pod’s feeble sensors onto my HUD, spying large open plains and thunderclouds overhead. It was raining hard outside.

“Keep your comms open. You ready?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the airlock.

“Ready.” Her soft reply answered my question.

I raised my voice. “Going left in three…” I bent my knees slightly, flicking the manual switch for my rifle’s fire selector to automatic. It wasn’t the best for accuracy at long distances unless I fired in bursts, but judging by the lack of cover outside it would be more than enough to keep heads down and enemy rifles pointed away from me.

Realisation struck me then. I wasn’t facing insurgents, a first-world military or even a farmer with a bolt-action hunting rifle. I swapped over to semi-automatic. I had to make my shots count and prioritise accuracy at range over weight of fire.

“Two…”

The doors slid open. “Three!” I yelled.

I burst out of the pod and onto the darkening plains, I ran to my left, throwing myself at a grassy berm. My head was on a swivel as my legs churned the dirt beneath my feet. I hit the ground with a dull thud and gave my surroundings a more thorough look.

Larsen was about fifty metres to my right. I could see the sky was a dark morass of heavy grey clouds, but the land itself was a collection of hills, berms and gullies all flowing together, covered in wet grass. As expected, dirt was nowhere to be having already turned to mud as the rain lashed down at us.

The thunder rolled overhead and the dark storm clouds cast a dim light over

I did spy a ruined castle wall far away in the distance. I wasn’t able to make out any details at first, but I magnified my vision several times and began to study it in detail. My armour made it out to be just shy of seven and a half klicks. The fortress, if that’s what it was, looked to be falling apart, abandoned and in ruins. As for signs of life, or hostile intent, unless the dirt qualified as hostile I didn’t see a damned thing either in our immediate surroundings or atop the crumbling castle walls. I brought up my suit’s sonar and thermals and ran a scan anyway. It wasn’t at its best in the open outdoors like this, especially during a thunderstorm at night, but it would do the job. As expected, my suit computer didn't alert me to a match for any of the enemies we usually faced. There also wasn’t kind of thermal signature that indicated a person was nearby. I skimmed the raw data briefly, just to be sure, but I found nothing even remotely noteworthy.

Larsen’s calm words translated over the radio, pulling my attention away for a moment. “I’ve got nothing. You?”

I swapped from the default light amplification from thermals over to the multi-spectral filter which overlaid passive light amplification, infrared and several other separate filters on top of each other, all tied together and collated by my suit’s tactical computer.

“Hold.” I ordered, my open hand coming up.

Passive light amplification didn’t show much in the way of movement, so I let my suit take over the augmentation of my vision. My HUD flickered slightly as the formerly empty plains lit up with red target markers.

“Shit!” I raised my rifle and tracked them with the muzzle of my rifle. Seven blurred human-shaped outlines moved towards us at an unreal speed. Outlined in red against a dark and unmoving background, they were impossible to miss.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Contact front! Two hundred metres! Go augmented!” I cried out.

Our two suits coordinated to indicate the direction and position of the contacts I’d spotted in milliseconds. I knew that our suits would also relay the information back to Carver and Chen, too.

My suit drew little “UNKNOWN, PRESUMED HOSTILE” markers above their heads as they ran and outlined them in a pale orange colour. Something wasn’t right. If they were running to us for help, what were they running from?

“Any ID?” Larsen asked.

“I know for sure it ain’t the Chinese. You see any weapons on them?”

“No, wait- Yeah, one of them’s got a wicked looking sword, he’s raising it at us?”

“The fuck’s he gonna do with that?”

My question was answered as a beam of blue light reached out and slammed into the ground next to me, kicking up dirt and grass in an explosion of energy.

The outlines flickered from pale orange to an angry red.

“Holy shit! Weapons free!” I swung my rifle around to fire at the strangers, the need for stealth giving way to adrenaline and fury.

Their acceleration and agility was unreal, at least as fast as your average dog can run, flat out. I had no idea what they were up to, but I didn’t exactly consider that a vital priority since they were shooting at me with some kind of ray gun.

When the outlined human shapes morphed into solid red shapes, a muzzle flash momentarily lit up the dark as I stroked the trigger of my rifle. An instant later I heard the report of Larsen’s own rifle to my right. The rifles ‘talked’ back and forth for a few seconds, but the expected dropping of bodies didn’t come. If anything the figures moved more, not less, spurred on by our weapons fire.

“Who the hell are these guys?” Chen asked over the comms.

Fifty metres out. I cursed and looked at the HUD indicator for Chen as it ticked down to indicate seventeen metres. The directional marker on my HUD said he was somewhere off to my right and behind me, slightly.

“Fuck knows, just shoot ‘em!” I replied, flicking the fire-selector for my rifle to automatic. I feathered the trigger, dumping the remainder of my rifle’s magazine into the midst of the figures in a series of long sustained bursts.

Larsen growled over the comms before spitting out a few terse words. “No joy! Rifles are ineffective.” I could see that for myself, having fired a whole magazine to no avail. Nothing that moved on two legs should’ve been able to keep moving after an entire magazine was dumped into their centre of mass, armoured or not. It wasn’t a maybe, or situational, no, it just shouldn’t have happened, period. We used armour-piercing ammunition that could punch through hardshell, so it could definitely go through leather and whatever armour these folks were packing.

Something about that discrepancy warned me that letting them get close to me would end badly.

A distinctive sound erupted from behind me as Chen’s SAW put a short burst into the mass of moving figures.

They were getting closer now. Within eighty-two metres, according to my HUD. The steady and authoritative staccato of Chen’s rifle behind me was a comfort, but I could see that while they’d slowed a bit, they were still coming and his fire was not having the effect it should be. I briefly wondered what kind of thing could just shrug off dozens of thirteen millimetre rounds without a care in the world.

I raised my rifle and pulled the trigger. This time, I was done fucking around. If regular bullets didn’t do it, an underbarrel grenade launcher was my next step. As my finger squeezed, a small explosive streaked out faster than my eyes could see and detonated at the feet of the seven hostile contacts. Dirt erupted into the air and I got my first positive results of the night.

Three of them were blown apart and another was thrown back by the pressure wave, but the others seemed intact from what I could see. They doggedly continued their charge, slowed only slightly.

“What the hell is with these guys?” Carver yelled from somewhere behind me.

I flicked my taclights on. The bright lights mounted on my rifle, shoulders and helmet burned a wide swathe of clarity in the night. They were getting close. In about ten more seconds we’d be down to knives, knees and elbows.

My rifle which had been firing nearly non-stop so far gave off an audible click as it locked back on an empty chamber.

“Fix bayonets!” I roared. I slid my knife from the sheathe on my hip, slotting it into place on the end of my rifle and twisting to attach it. I didn’t really feel the soft snap as it locked into place, but I knew it was secure anyway after having repeated that same motion hundreds of times.

Thirty metres out. The men opposite me ran with reckless abandon, some unnatural speed guiding their steps. Something wasn’t natural about them, besides the obvious immunity to bullets, I mean.

“Fix bayonets!” Larsen repeated. The enemy were impervious to our rifles and we were too close for our launchers now. I’d never heard of such bullshit. Being immune to modern bullets was far from unheard of, but usually the things immune to those bullets were armoured vehicles, fortifications or starship hulls, not men on foot. Apparently though this world had taken one look at the rational rules of warfare and decided to give us the finger.

“Get ready to charge. I'm dry.” I said.

“Charge?” Carver asked incredulously.

Words came unbidden to my lips as the figures closed in and I fixed them with a stare. Original they were not, but appropriate? I thought so.

“Do you want to live forever, you bastards?” I screamed over our comms, adrenaline well and truly pumping. Getting to my feet in a flash, I commanded my suit legs to full power and leapt forward, sprinting full-speed to meet the enemy charge head-on.

I didn’t need to turn around to know that the other three were joining me in my mad charge. When your guns don’t do shit and your backs are against the wall, what other option is there but a last-ditch knife fight?

Twenty metres. I was close enough to throw my rifle at them if I wanted to. I saw their outlines bloom in intensity for a moment and then disappear entirely. To my surprise, my suit's automatic filters had shifted and I saw a group of men in rugged leather armour decorated with complex embroidery and colorful, artistic flair. With only a dozen metres to go, I switched my suit lights on at full power, as well as my rifle’s. I don’t know if you’ve ever had over ten thousand lumens shone into your eyes in the dark, but saying it’s a shock would be putting it lightly.

I saw men tumble and fall mid-stride, throwing arms up or stumbling to the ground, a few kept running with their eyes half covered by their arms but there was one man who wasn’t affected at all, the one leading the charge, I found that curious and rather annoying. He slowed slightly and raised his arms then shoved the air in front of him as if to push it towards me, but I didn’t see him throw anything. I was about to lunge towards him to push my bayonet through his chest but I never got the chance.

The whole world felt wrong, for just a moment. Like the space I was occupied was part of one big rubber band, it wobbled and snapped. I found myself laying on the soaked ground staring up at the sky. No in-between, nothing at all. I went from being on my feet to on my back, instantly. I also felt like a giant had stepped on me. My first attempt to speak was just a long, unhappy noise. Then my body responded to me properly and I managed to get a few words out.

“Report.” I got out. “Report in.” Without the stars in the sky I couldn’t have told you which way was up, even with all the tricks and toys of the 22nd century crammed into my suit. I was disoriented as hell. If I tried to stand I’d probably just fall right back down again. I went to roll over and get up anyway. I discovered I was just a passenger inside my own body. My arms and legs strained against some invisible force, it was like giant steel bands held each of my limbs in check. I didn’t move an inch, even though I felt my muscles straining against something.

“What the fuck?” I hissed, straining against my invisible bonds.

As though I’d been gassed, I suddenly felt myself weakening and slipping into a haze of sleepy serenity. I tried to fight it but all the fight quickly drained from me like water through a sieve. I wasn’t in any pain or even mild discomfort, really. Disassociating, I think it was called. That’s what was happening to me. I viewed the events happening to me with a detached calm, which in itself should have alarmed me, but it didn’t and that should have freaked me out even more. But no, I just felt myself slipping away until finally, I felt nothing at all.