“Stay focused guys! One misstep and you’ll die! If you want to make it out of here alive, then follow me!” Luon roared.

After breaching the Inzektor's frontline, many other Inzektors started to swarm in on them.

Carefully analyzing the situation, Luon motioned his team to the direction where he found to be weakest. An earth-shattering roar startled the nearby Inzektors. It happened once, twice, and over and over again. As more and more explosive resonated, the number of Inzektors surrounding them increased. Like a drill digging through dirt, the squad slaughtered through the Inzektors.

Their actions devastated the Inzektors backline, the effectiveness of this strategy could plainly be seen as it forced many of their front line attackers to turn around.

Suddenly one of their teammates screamed. They were swallowed up by a massive pack of Inzektors, creating an ugly ball of darkness, the Inzektors scattered leaving very few remains behind.

The new recruits who knew very little about this strategy became afraid, who knows when they will be next. This mission wasn’t going to be easy.

A new problem soon arrived, the walls of Inzektors in front of where their team was heading was too dense to penetrate with their strategy.

“What do we do? We’re surrounded!” one of the new recruits cried.

Luon piled his explosives onto the ejection chute and hesitated. With a quick calculation, he knew that shooting one at a time is the most effective way to penetrate through the swarm’s defense. That was only when their numbers weren’t too dense to do so.

Thinking about this carefully he slowed down his the spaceship and shot the explosives in multiple directions, this caused the Inzektors who were nearby to flee and those who found themselves to be too slow to react perished. A sizeable spherical region had opened up. Although they now have more breathing space they weren’t home free.

The Inzektors, afraid of being killed slowly encased the squad. Luon’s ship stopped moving.

‘There has to be an opening somewhere!’ Luon searched, he scanned in all directions, but all he could see was an equally dense amount of Inzektors. There was not a single opening he could exploit.

“Co-could this be the end?” asked one of the new recruits.

“Stop speaking nonsense and help us look for a good spot to attack,” Gizmo bellowed, however, despite his remark he still felt gloomy about the situation.

Bendan folded his arms and gave it some thought as he said, “Isn’t the solution pretty simple? Just charge one way and blast through everything.”

“You idiot, if we could do that we wouldn’t be picking a direction right now.”

“Why can’t we do it?”

“It’s because we don’t have enough firepower to do so!”

“Then get some more firepower!”

As Bendan and Gizmo started to debate, the Inzektors crept in closer. Hearing the two argue, Luon felt a slight headache.

‘More firepower? I should have equipped the other ships with the ability to shoot explosives, despite the amount I have remaining. There’s no way to produce the same effect unless we self destruct the ship and even then we won’t have enough,’ Luon thought.

“All ships, we are now in phase 2 of the operation. Please make your way back to the fleet. There are 15 minutes left on the operation,” announced the communications officer.

‘We’ll barely make it. It looks like we’ll have to take a little risk,’ Luon thought as he mapped out the direction to begin his retreat, he decided to return the same way he came from.

Luon sighed, “Sorry guys. We might have to go in like this, and some of us might die on the escape. I am just letting you know now… I'll do my best to ensure that we'll all make it out of this alive.”

“At least we'll go down with honor right? Hahaha, let's just go at it.”

“Honour? That's useless. It's better to live another day and take out more Inzektors when you can then to die here.” Gizmo retorted to Bendan's remark.

Everyone else didn't feel that optimistic about the situation. “Just lead the way. We'll all follow through,” Angela commented.

Opo solemnly nodded in agreement.

“Alright, guys ready up then. I have nothing much to say other than we’re going to break through and make it home. Switch the formation plans to B and follow me.”

With that remark, Luon made his move. The Inzektors who were cautious of Luon’s group were startled by the sudden movements they made.

Luon turned his ship around to the direction where he came from, he was planning to use the planet’s stratosphere to reduce the number of Inzektors they would have to deal with.

To do this, he needed to first break through the Inzektors blockade. At this moment, four ships appeared in front of Luon as their formation changed into a long single file.

The first ship rammed into the first Inzektor it made contact with and exploded. Their team dove through the flames as the second, third, and fourth ship did the same actions. It was a kamikaze attack done by the four robots that they had left on their team.

Luon had launched their self destruct sequence of both the ship and the operator. The explosion was more than what he estimated, it was still within reason as the spaceship was able to resist the blast. With the death of the last robot teammate, Luon started to launch several explosives once more.

‘Only a little bit more!’ There were only a few more Inzektors in the opening that they created, by his estimates at least half of their team would get caught unless someone sacrifices themselves for the team.

Before Luon could resolve himself, a beam vaporized the remaining Inzektors. Luon turned to look at the origin and found their Fleet ship had aided them by firing the attack.

Escaping through the opening Luon and the members of his squad left the Inzektor death ball and was now clinging to the side of the planet.

Unfortunately for them, the pathway back was still occupied with Inzektors, their numbers may have lessened, but it was still quite the challenge.

“How many more times can you support us?” Luon asked the NX Fleet communications officer.

To his dismay the answer he received was nil. Most of the ship's energy was concentrated on their defenses, basic operations, and the warp engine. They don’t have the spare power to lend them a hand.

Luon looked at the number of explosives he had left and let out a dry laugh. Their squad continued on, he fired explosives after explosives and after traversing half the distance, did he stop. “Stop firing and conserve your energy. We’re going for a rough ride!”

Luon forced his ship into the stratosphere of the planet, and the others followed suit. The Inzektors who had gotten closer to the world was pulled in by the gravitational force. Their team was able to resist the power due to their ships mana usage. This couldn’t be the same for the Inzektors as they burned and fell to the planet’s surface. Luon and others managed maintained their direction towards their fleet ship, as a side effect of taking this approach their energy reserves dropped rapidly.

“Let’s go, go, go!” Luon screamed as his ship went left and right dodging the crowd of falling Inzektors. Besides Bendan and Opo who were extremely enthusiastic about the situation, the rest of their members frantically escaped as hard as they could...

At this moment, Luon detected an Inzektor heading straight for him. He tried to motion his ship away. However, he failed to do as he found that the stratosphere had burned away a large portion of one of his engines.

Before the Inzektor could crash into Luon’s ship, a barrage of lasers gutted its body, and it fell from grace. The projected shots were frighteningly only meters away from Luon’s ship. The origin came from someone he had least expected to arrive and help them. Leading the squadron was Zythos who came along with his teammates and had appeared in the nick of time to save Luon and the others.

Luon’s squadron members couldn’t help but start to cheer and tear up from the frightening life and death experience they just had was now over. Luon felt relieved that no one else in his squad was going to die today.

Zythos gave a quick look and snorted as he said, “Looks like you guys lucked out a bit.”

“Umm, thanks. I really appreciated the help,” Luon answered, he wasn’t used to being polite with Zythos.

“Don’t thank me yet, we’re almost out of time, and we haven’t made our way out yet.”

“What do you mean by tha-”

Another explosion happened, only this one was several times closer. Luon’s ship lost its engines and fell towards the planet. He tried to move the joystick. Nothing happened, his systems were completely shut down. Luon looked at who had shot him from the only visual display available and was surprised to find out that it was Opo!

“Luon! You! Why did you do it!” Bendan demanded Opo to answer but had his communications cut in response.

Opo’s ship flew out of formation and position himself next to Zythos’s ship, who in turn, gave him a quick glance before staring at Luon’s demise.

“More importantly, we need to help him out!” Gizmo proclaimed.

Most of the original members nodded, however, a cold a desolate voice argued, “Why? Don’t you know we have no more extra time to go help him out? The ship is about to warp away without us on board, do you honestly think that with our number of ships we be able to return safely?”

Angela rejected the notion of saving Luon, but this only made Bendan, and Gizmo angrier. They didn’t even have a chance to argue, all of the squadron members BMPU’s went off. Luon appeared on their screens as he responded, “She’s right, it’s too late for me. You guys retreat back to the ship. Even if you saved me now, there isn’t enough time to escape the swarm.”

“But...”

“No buts. You guys need to follow the one in charge, and with me inoperable, the next in command is Angela. Follow her orders and leave back to the ship,” Luon commanded.

“Why! Just why! We could still do this!” Gizmo cried.

“Don’t be ludicrous, you still have a job to do. Don’t let your father down and become a great general one day. Don’t worry about me, I’ll somehow make do while on this planet.” Luon assured him.

“It’s filled with Inzektors! How can you possibly make the best out of this situation like this!”

“Stop being a cry baby now. If you want to die then go right ahead. Everyone else, follow me back to the ship. We’re checking in now,” Angela proclaimed as she left the vicinity, along with her newly recruited teammates.

“Gizmo… its time to go now. Even I know it isn’t possible. Luon would want us to continue on his path.” Bendan sighed, everything happened to fast. One moment they were penetrating the Inzektors lines, the next moment they were escaping back to the ship. Now they were forced to leave a comrade behind. Bendan questioned how fickle fate can be.

“I’ll see you again, one day,” Gizmo saluted Luon once more before leaving with the others. Zythos gave a small laugh as he realized how easily he had gotten rid of his biggest rival, he now felt a little empty inside.

Luon’s ship continued to fall, without any thrusters there was no way to reduce the impact. Luon opened up the cockpit and tried his best to cushion the fall, but to no avail, the ship continued to drop.

Locking himself back in the cabin, he prepared for the worse as the ship landed, Luon blacked out.