Ellis Forward Operating Base, Approaching Sector 32, Eastern District: Thirty hours into initial drop.

The storm had broken.

A seething wall of thunderheads, flickering with angry lightning, that slowly dissolved into the eastern horizon.

Their armored column snaked through the darkened street leading to Sector thirty-two, where a troop transport waited to evacuate the small group of Fleet officers they'd extracted before their base was overrun by the Nek'var.

The night was hot, tropically so, even in the comparative coolness of the dark.

The road gleamed with a watery sheen in the aftermath of the storm, and ponding water stood high in the cracks and craters blasted into its surface. A murky network of puddles that jumped and rippled at the passing of their heavy boots.

Erik picked his way through a tightly packed labyrinth of steam-shrouded rubble, past the smoldering remnants of armored vehicles, downed aircraft, and enemy remains, toward a strobing green arrow that pulsed in the distance.

Tiny droplets of water flashed, and heliographed on his armor with each heavy step. Like a thousand tiny gems refracting the firelight within their watery facets before rising from its matte black skin as curling steam. A surreal, almost hypnotic procession of flashes.

Behind him, the armored column stretched back to encircle a small group of unarmored officers huddled within their protective ranks.

Captain Wen, Havoc Squads commanding officer, was among them, trudging through the sodden streets beside a man of equal rank, named Captain Pearson, who'd made it his mission in life to be the biggest pain in the arse he could be.

Wen firmed her jaw and stoically suffered his endless string of complaints about the heat and smells, or how if he were running this war, it would have been won months ago.

Erik shook his head. What a self-righteous blowhard.

This Captain Pearson character was the type of self-deluded narcissist that gave all officers a bad name. He probably came from money, mommy, or daddy, having bought his Fleet commission with their fortune, perhaps even, with political favors or blackmail. Erik waved this aside. It didn't matter how he got here. Only that Captain Pearson was clearly an incompetent fool, who had no business in a position of command within Fleet.

But, it was the way of things. Money begets money. Even in these dark times.

Up ahead, a sprawling, nightmarish scene of battle resolved and spread out before them, littered with the remains of fallen soldiers in various states of disarray, some still locked in the throes of rigor mortis. A thin channel of crimson-stained water rippled down the center of the street, fed by numerous tributary runoffs trickling out of buildings and off sidewalks all across the area. It was a gut-wrenching sight that stole his breath and froze his heart into a chunk of ice that bled frozen vapor.

A few of the officers gasped in horror and looked away, thoroughly shaken. Others heaved violently and emptied their stomachs in the street between their polished boots, folding over at the waist retching, sucking in ragged gasps of air that did little to cool their bile slicked throats. The horrors of war were never real for these people, some no older than Erik, who'd spent the vast majority of their time tucked away in a command center, staring at screens, wholly disconnected from the bloody realities of war. It was a cerebral shock to their sheltered psyches.

Erik shook his head. And they were supposed to be their leaders...

They'd never acknowledged their soldiers as real people before, merely abstract numbers on a screen. A casualty report buried amidst a vast spreadsheet of information. Still, it was a whole other affair to see the corpses of soldiers who once drew breath, people you personally had a hand in ending, lying in contorted heaps all about you. It stole a piece of your soul and left an empty, gauzy feeling in its place.

The landscape slowly transitioned from crumbling urban sprawl to cratered lots and streets filled with armored cavalry.

Erik abruptly recoiled in shock from the sight of a headless torso hanging suspended by a wrist from the side of a blackened armored vehicle, still smoldering in the street. It was impaled through and through by a large, jagged shard of plexium armor that jutted like a spearhead from the demolished vehicle's plating. Its other hand stretched down toward the pavement as if it meant to swirl a ghostly finger in the crimson pool congealed below its pallid fingertips.

A few of Erik's squad cursed and looked away, or drew silent prayers over their chests as they passed the grisly scene. It was, without a doubt, the most disturbing thing Erik had ever seen. Despite this being his first drop, he'd experienced a lot of shit in short order. But nothing that disturbed him quite like this particular corpse. Perhaps, it was how it just hung there, bloodless, as a fish hooked on the end of a line that sent terrible shivers of ice up and down his spine?

Erik strained his eyes away from it as he passed, stubbornly refusing to glance back at the gruesome spectacle. The cohort of officers was seemingly outraged that this particular man, or perhaps it had been a woman, he couldn't really tell, had been left unceremoniously hanging from the tank.

Seriously? Had they forgotten where they were at, or were they truly this clueless? Did they know why they were being evacuated in the first place? The fucking base was overrun with Nek'var. It simply was not possible to recover the remains of every fallen soldier. It was a fool's quest to even attempt it. Countless men and women had fallen and not been recovered. What of them? Shouldn't they be treated with the same level of respect?

Erik suddenly recognized the charade for what it was, an empty gesture, a farce. A feeble attempt to appear sympathetic and compassionate toward their troops in front of strangers. It was a grand show put on for the benefit of the Armored Corps, nothing genuine about it.

Erik's lips pulled back from his teeth, and he took a long pull of water from a tube, swished it, and spat it back out into another, rinsing away a sudden foul taste brimming in the back of his mouth.

He was never much for politics. This was a glaring example of why.

Gunnery Sergeant Moore spared the corpse an impassive glance before barking at the column to keep moving. He wasn't callous to the death of another human being, or a sociopathic monster who was entirely incapable of caring at all. No, it was because he'd already seen worse, much worse. Many, many times before. A warrior with two and a half decades of combat experience didn't get rattled at the spectacle of death, no matter how gruesome. It was the way of things.

Erik moved methodically, peering into the coiling shadows of each alley, blasted doorframe, or mist-shrouded rooftop as he crept along the pitted, crack-lined street, scanning the orange haze for enemy presence.

I know you're out there...come out and play.

Tendrils of steam rose all across the area and coiled in the gloom, coalescing into drifting clouds of fog that caressed against Erik's faceplate like airy satin, leaving a fine layer of tiny drops that distorted the scene of destruction.

Flames writhed, shadows skulked, time passed, and MX-Primes vast azure curvature took its place in the sky.

A plasteel door suddenly roared off its hinges, and a group of Nek'var commandos poured into the street and spread out wide, filling the air with crackling disruptor bolts.

Erik dropped low, pivoted, and squeezed his trigger all in one fluid motion as green fire tore the air above his helmet. His rifle barked its harsh song, and crackling pulse rounds found their mark on an enemy soldier to either side of their leader. They violently snapped backward as if jerked from behind by a cable, glowing holes punched through their chests, crashing down to the pavement back first, where they twitched once and lay still.

Their squad leader's disruptor rifle clattered loudly when it hit the pavement, pulled from a nerveless grip. It grunted, swayed and staggered forward a step, translucent membranes flicking rapidly across four black faceted eyes staring from an expressionless face. A large, neat hole in the middle of its ridged brow leaked wisps of smoke, showing a shaft of light from the back of its head. Three of the four membranes slid halfway shut and froze, as the corpse twisted forward, knees buckling, collapsing on its face in a pillar of water.

Erik rolled left, kicked water into a charging Nek'var's face, and split its head down the middle with a blast from his pulse rifle, smoothly stomping over its falling corpse to engage the stunned Nek's behind it.

Artillery thundered, soldiers roared, and death grinned wide its teeth at the Nek'var.

"Diiiiiie!!" Private Min dove into a forward roll and came up gunning, her pinpoint accuracy dropping a trio of Nek's with tightly grouped holes smoking in their Jade-green armor. She sidestepped past Bracken, tore a nova grenade from her waist, and hurled it at a mass of Nek'var boiling forth from the building. They boiled in a blaze of white fire.

Plasma rockets blasted geysers of chunky asphalt-water high into the air around them, and disruptor bolts shattered against their armor in green splintered refractions, yet the vast majority missed their mark and hissed into the water all around the armored soldiers.

It was a sudden shock of adrenaline and deafening thunder and everyone moving at once through the chaos of explosions and green disruptor fire.

Bracken caught his boot on an object submerged within the dark water, and pitched forward onto his face with a splash of muck, but still managed to take an enemy off its feet with an accidental shot to the groin, and swiftly finished it with a smoldering hole where its short, scaley snout had just been.

"Go, Slacken Bracken!" Someone roared out.

"Get some!" Erik heard Ramirez repeatedly howling as he strafed right, rifle unleashing a chain of automatic fire in one hand while tossing a nova bomb with the other. The ground quaked with its explosion, and Nek'var parts blasted outward in a shockwave of entrails and black blood while a fountain of water shot high into the sky and rained fragments of scaley grey skin down around them. "Get some, mutha fucka!"

Gunny took down the last Nek, who'd turned to flee, his rounds blasting into its back and out of its chest in gouts of swirling black mist. And then it was over. All of the Nek'var lay dead or twitching in the watery street. Everyone's rifles swung with adrenaline, back and forth, scanning the area. Heavy, ragged breathing scraped across the comm.

"Report?"

A momentary crackle of silence echoed in their helmets before the reports started coming in.

"All clear upfront Gunny," Erik responded, continuing to scan.

"Same over here, Gunny," Several voices rattled off one after the other.

"Casualties, injuries?"

After a few moments, Doc reported everyone fighting fit, no injuries, or casualties. All officers present, alive and accounted for. Fantastic.

"Very well," Gunny said gruffly. "Recover, let's move out."

Erik stood up, shook grey skin fragments off his helmet, and started forward.

He was beginning to think these creatures were mindless automatons or something. There was no strategy, no maneuvers, or attempts to flank. Zero tactics whatsoever. Just a blind charge of rage that ended in a hail of pulse rounds. At first, he'd been wary of their motives, expecting some exotic flanking maneuver, or bizarre alien end game tactic. But nothing ever materialized. Just endless waves...

Oh well, fuck'em, he thought grimly. If they wanted to throw their lives away, he sure as hell wasn't going to stop them.

A series of explosions boomed in the distance, and rapid bursts of artillery pulsed behind a veil of swirling smoke. Snapshots of battle-torn buildings appeared with each flash of light, then swiftly vanished into a sea of night. The base was waking up after the passing of the storm, and battles were rejoined with furor.

"You guys think we're going to abandon Ellis?" Private Barrera suddenly asked. "You know, finally pulling off this rock?"

Thunder rumbled and rolled in the distance. Missiles streaked down from the darkened skies to rise once more as boiling fireballs that seared the night. The ground tremored and jumped violently under their boots. Shouts and screams echoed from streets in the surrounding area.

"I dunno," Sanchez shrugged, pulling his eyes away from a shadowed alley and looking at Sara. "You heard anything?"

A staccato of explosions and disruptor fire trumpeted a street over, then fell silent.

"Nope," she shook her head and clomped along, glancing over her shoulder at the Gunny. Flashes of firelight reflected off her faceplate. "He hasn't said anything about it."

"Well, why else would we be evacing the brass then?" Min pointed out.

Sara shrugged her shoulders helplessly.

"What about you, Corporal," Barrera raised his voice without thinking, despite being on proximity band. "He said anything to you?"

Erik swept his gaze across a row of darkened structures to their left, imagining shapes writhing in each doorway.

"Nope, not yet."

He felt edgy, the wrung out dry feeling left by adrenaline quivered throughout his body. You'd think he'd be used to it by now.

"I can't see us abandoning the base," Ramirez broke in, explosions booming in the background. "Not after all the fighting we've done to keep it."

"True," Erik replied absently, frowning into the shadows. Was that movement just now? His senses redlined, and his eyes scoured the dark, faceplate shifting between the various light spectrums. "We've shed way too much blood trying to keep this foothold just to give it over now..."

"Yea."

"Is the Sixth Fleet still running the blockade on the jump gate?" Bracken asked.

"Dunno..." Erik answered distantly, maybe it had been nothing, a trick of the shadows.

"They have to be, dumb ass," Ramirez suddenly blurted. "Otherwise, the fucking Nek's would be pouring into Sol. Fleet ain't ever gonna let that happen."

"What's yer problem, Ramirez?" Bracken sounded taken aback.

"Nothing, I'm just saying..."

"Hey, Bracken," Private Rivers called out. "That was a nice trip you had back there!"

A cacophony of laughter burst over the comm, but most thoughts had turned inward. The future of Ellis, MX-1, indeed, of Humanity herself, churned within their minds.

"You're an asshole, Rivers!" Bracken shot back, anger simmering in his voice. "When you gonna introduce me to your sister?"

"Oh, shit..." Sara hissed.

"I gotta be something---wait, what?!" Private River's voice rose three octaves. "How about never fucking gonna happen, Mate?"

"Calm down, geez."

"I'll calm my armored boot in your ass," Rivers snapped, clouds of anger seething in his voice. "Leave my sister out of your filthy sewer. As a matter of fact, don't even think about thinking about her, you dig?"

"Yea, yea..."

"Probably just trying to get the officers somewhere safer," Sanchez offered. "You know, just in case?"

"In case what?" Barrera asked.

"I guess we'll know soon enough, won't we?" Erik said, his eyes boring suspiciously into every flickering shadow.

Hypersonic fighters shrieked across the horizon, their scarlet drive-glows streaking down out of the blackness to stab at the heart of the enemy with devastating missile strikes that scorched the swarming Nek'var hordes into billowing shockwaves of burning ash expanding below tremendous, roiling fireballs that clawed into the sky. Over and over again, they struck, the night blazing with the fires of hell, ground-based automated turrets neutralizing enemy bioraptors that tried to interfere.

The tempo of the war had noticeably shifted. Fleet was clawing back from the brink, and the Nek'var Empire was scrambling to keep their bitterly contested gains.

A ghost of a smile stretched across Erik's face as he idly watched the fighters angle sharply into the clouds and climb toward the stars until they disappeared from view. It vaguely pleased him, the hurt and death he'd just watched rained down upon the enemy. Hundreds of them incinerated within those boiling, righteous blasts.

The world was filled with the discord of war, screaming hypersonic fighters, and thundering explosions blended with shrieks of the enemy and their death rattles emanating from the streets clustered around Erik's column.

All around him, the night was suffused with the pulsating orange glow of a thousand fires of varying sizes and intensities flickering across the base. The brief summer storm that had blown through earlier had done little to diminish the heat of their rage. Shouting soldiers, pounding boots, and growling assault rifles echoed strangely through the damp streets, building suspense within his heart. Disruptor bolts and rising detonations joined that strident song as pockets of brutal fighting rose up and raged throughout the streets adjacent to the armored soldiers.

Gunnery Sergeant Moore struggled with an almost overwhelming urge to redirect his column of troops toward the battles. It was the visceral instinct of a battle-hardened warrior forged in the tempering fires of twenty-five years of war. A dauntless marine who advanced through withering enemy fire, ignored the bullets snapping past his head, and snarled straight into the deadly teeth of the enemy to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

He'd never run from a fight in his entire life. But now, the devil dog must evolve, put aside his primal instincts to kill to ensure the success of his mission.

Loud rumbles reverberated in the distance, pulling the Gunny's eyes to rising fountains of fire in the skyline above a row of buildings to the north.

The fighting drew nearer on all sides, too close.

They'd been lucky so far, defeating several Nek'var attacks without suffering so much as a scratch on any of the officers, but pushing their luck was not in their best interests, luck would only take you so far, and had a bad habit of running out when you needed it most.

"We need to pick up the pace, gentlemen," Gunnery Sergeant Moore's electronically amplified voice boomed from his armor's external mic, startling the Fleet officers trudging along amidst his armored troops. "A few more klicks, and you're off this rock."

After a brief moment, he added, "Sirs."

And no longer my responsibility, he thought gravely.

Gunny, absolutely despised Exfil ops, always had.

There were too many variables, too much that could go wrong for him to account for every probability. And that was without a whiny little bastard of a Captain hobbling his platoon's progress.

He glanced over his shoulder at the sullen officer plodding along in the middle of his troops and shook his head disdainfully. Indeed, this particular situation was made far worse by the presence of that man's constant ranting.

Gunny glanced up at the glittering night sky, at that giant blue ball working its way across the night, and for the one-hundredth time, wished the dropships had been able to extract the brass straight from command HQ.

He was a warrior, born to fight, to kill the enemy. Playing babysitter to a bunch of whiny ass officers was not in his playbook.

The whiny little captain, what was his name again? Something stupid, Poptart? Peartree? Something like that. He was whining still. This time about the water soaking through his boots.

Gunnery Sergeant Moore sighed heavily, and his jaw flared wide.

It was going to be a long five klicks.