02:01AM August 2, 2009 - 3km above Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

“Approaching target, ETA twenty minutes,” came the crackle over the headset of each member of the drop team.

Staff Sergeant Alastríona Mac Cormaic double checked the straps on her parachute amid the green glow of the night operations lights and noted the rest of her team was doing the same. Everybody had been constantly rechecking their equipment since they left the NPS Freedom, evidence that the entire squad was feeling a little nervous about the operation. For six years her team had been training, drilling, and preparing for this, but everybody remembered the history lesson that was taught before training began. The story of the incident in the Kentucky backwoods, where a crack special forces team was obliterated by a single alien was constantly brought up during training to keep the elite of the elite from ever forgetting that the best the world had to offer at the time had already been defeated.

She keyed up her mic to go over the plan one more time, “Alright listen up, this will be the last time we go over this before go time. We’ll be parachuting in one click north of the crash site which is going to put us close to the western edge of the town of Badger. I seriously doubt the town slept away the crash, so be prepared for civilians both in the town and near the crash site. Canada has fairly stringent firearms laws so we shouldn’t have to deal with an armed mob if things have already turned deadly.”

“The craft that crashed is roughly the size of a small yacht, so if we’re dealing with things the size of a human we could be expecting as many as ten hostiles. Initial satellite images show the craft to be mostly intact, but what we’re calling the ‘engine section’ is a pretty twisted wreck. Command thinks one of the missiles got lucky and hit a power source of some sort. A crash of this magnitude would have disintegrated any of our aircraft, so we don’t know the condition of the crew. They could be all dead, or all alive.”

“Load up subsonic and keep your suppressors on until otherwise told to swap. Harrison and Lane, find a spot with a good view on the way down and set up for precision cover fire. The area is lightly forested so hopefully gunfire is kept at a minimum and you have good line of sight. We’ll stick to night vision goggles, hopefully if there’s a fire down there it works to our advantage, but since we don’t know anything about these alien’s physiology I could be wrong.”

Lane chuckled at her, “Look at the Sergeant using the big words.” Everybody laughed and the tension eased from the group. “We’ll keep an eye on ‘ya Alex, don’t you worry your head about it, we know our roles and now we’re going to put them to use for something besides training.” There was a hunger in his eyes reflected by the rest of the squad.

“Alright liven up, it’s about to be go time,” she shouted over the sudden wind as the rear ramp began to lower. The light flicked to amber and everybody stood up and faced the rear, tension starting to build up again. The light flicked to green and the soldiers practically flew down the ramp, jumping into the night.

02:21AM August 2, 2009 - 1.5km West of Badger, Newfoundland - Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

At six hundred feet twelve parachutes snapped open with a crisp thwack and a rough jerk for each individual tethered to one. Thirty seconds later the squad was on the ground and pulling the clutch to cut-away the chutes. Quickly the twelve person team regrouped and made ready to move out. Alex glanced at each member of her team making sure everybody was wearing their night vision before setting out to the south. The orange glow of a large fire could be seen in the distance but didn’t look bright enough to be a fully-fledged forest fire. Harrison and Lane broke away to the west as the rest of the team continued toward the objective.

At half a kilometer from the target, Alex pulsed her infrared illuminator to signal a halt to the team. Pushing her goggles up, she swapped to a pair of IR binoculars and scanned beyond the end of the tree line. What she saw momentarily took her breath away. A small group of humans were surrounded by half a dozen things.

They were bipedal but that was were most of the similarities ended. The bodies appeared to be covered in some kind of chitin and the legs were digitgrade in function, each ending in a foot with two forward toe-like claws and a rear spur. Two spindly arms sprouted from the torso that ended in large hands comprised of two large fingers and a thumb. The head was the most disturbing thing about them. Two large bulbous eyes made up the majority of the face with no apparent nose or ears. The mouth had the shape of a hagfish with the teeth of a leatherback sea turtle rolled into one horrifying package. All of the abomination-creatures were armed with something that resembled the shape of a rifle, but that’s where the similarities ended, and the distance was too great to make out any details beyond trigger and barrel.

They seemed to be waiting on something while they milled around keeping an eye on the humans in the middle. It was unclear if any of them were injured because of how alien the anatomy was but Alex did notice one appeared to limp every time it turned around to scan the tree line. Another one held some kind of device up to its mouth and she assumed it was speaking into it, as the creature’s mouth was moving.

She stowed her binoculars and pulled her goggles back down before turning to her squad and triggering her throat mic. “It looks like some locals got curious and are now under guard. I count six hostiles, all armed with… something, and one that might be in possession of a communication device. They’re some ugly motherfuckers so don’t freeze up when we engage. Priority one is eliminating the aliens, priority two is rescue of the civilians. I know this doesn’t sit well with any of us, but our mission isn’t regular military and the civilians are acceptable collateral damage. But so help me if any of you shoot one, I’ll put a bullet in you myself. They’re still people.” Everybody grumbled at the reminder. Nobody in The Project liked that standing order, or if they did, nobody voiced it. The reality was any survivors would be evacuated along with the squad and probably wouldn’t be returned to the regular population for quite a while.

“All right. Tree line ends in a hundred meters. When we reach the line, form into fire lines and give ‘em hell. They look to be insectile so aim for the eyes. Ready? Move out.” The soldiers crept through the remaining underbrush toward the end of the tree line when one member stepped on an innocuous twig, no bigger than a pencil. The snap was barely heard by the squad, but the reaction from the aliens was nearly instant. All six turned toward the tree line with weapons raised and took a lowered position, putting the civilians between themselves and the trees.

“Shit” a soldier at the far end of the line said aloud, and instantly all six alien weapons were trained on his location and discharged without warning. Plumes of fire erupted from the end of each weapon, and the soldier was engulfed in a fireball as each projectile impacted at the sane moment, burning away large chunks of his body as he collapsed to the ground, dead. Alex had a brief moment of shock at the raw savagery of the weapons before her training kicked in and she screamed “WEAPONS FREE!”

The staccato puffs from each rifle filled the night as lead found their marks against the enemy combatants. One fell, screaming a most unholy sound as both eyes ruptured into a putrid looking slime. Others took hits to the body, but the subsonic rounds failed to penetrate the alien’s chitin. One alien pulled the screaming causality behind the group of humans as they all crouched low, their heads intermixed with the civilians.

“Fuck, take cover. Their weapons must not be capable of rapidly firing,” Alex shouted as she dove behind a tree. Keying up her mic so she knew everybody could hear her, “I don’t think their eyesight is all that great despite the size of those eyes, but their hearing appears to be insane. The one we shot in the eyes is also still alive based on the screaming, so I’m guessing that eyes aren’t a vital spot. If they don’t come up from behind those civilians we’re going to have one hell of a problem on our hands.”

“We have a shot on one of them,” Lane’s voice came over her ear piece. “If the eyes aren’t a weak spot, we could put a round through its neck and see what happens.” Alex mulled it over for only a moment before responding in the affirmative.

The neck of an alien at the edge of the group exploded as chitin was sprayed toward the crashed ship, a sharp report followed a moment later. The alien let out a blood curdling shriek, dropping its weapon and falling to the ground clutching its neck. Mercifully the sound ended a few moments later and the aliens begin a frenzied conversation among themselves. After a moment, one of the creatures stood up, pointed its weapon at a civilian in the small crowd, and pulled the trigger. The head of the man disappeared in a cloud of blood and brain matter. Without missing a beat, the alien hunkered back down behind the rest of the group.

“FUCK!” Alex screamed. “Hold fire, HOLD FIRE.” She pulled the cover off her wrist mounted palm top and fed her radio through it. “Project Command, this is Kestrel Actual. We’ve engaged the hostile force and have taken out one combatant. Hostiles have a captured group of civilians and have just executed one. They’re using them as human shields. Please Advise, over.” She spared a glance around the tree to keep an eye on the situation. After a few moments her radio crackled. “Gimme the damn radio if you won’t relay the order. Kestrel Actual this is General MacKenna. Termination is top priority. Human casualties are at an acceptable minimum. None of the aliens survive, you hear me? Take whatever necessary actions are required to meet that outcome. MacKenna out.”

The color drained from Alex’s face as she listened to the order she’d just been given. It went against everything she had trained for in her regular service as well as what she thought she was fighting for with The Project. Biting her lip while she decided on what the right course of action would be she finally reached her decision. “Sanders. Deploy the RPG-7.”

“Excuse me but what the fuck ma’am. Did I hear you correctly? You want me to fire a rocket at them? That will kill all the civilians at minimum. Ma’am I’m sorry but that isn’t a lawful order and I refuse to follow it.” Alex gave a look toward Sanders before motioning to him. “We’re not under any national command, there is no such thing as a lawful or unlawful order. Gimme the damn thing I’ll do it.” Sanders wordlessly passed over the RPG and a rocket.

Alex fit the system together and took aim from around the tree bend. “I’m going to hell for this,” she muttered before pulling the trigger. The rocket sped across the four hundred meter distance and impacted in the middle of the clustered group. Viscera, chitin, and other bits scattered around the area as a plume of fire and smoke rose from the ground. Nothing was left upright at the impact zone. As she peeked around the corner again, she couldn’t help but notice the expressions of horror peeking around the night vision goggles her squad wore.

The carnage was absolute, and nothing large enough to immediately identify at her range could be seen. She started to wave everybody forward when a screech of metal on metal could be heard and a section of wall partially buried in the earth started to slide away, revealing another pair of aliens, but this time unarmed. Immediately they started animatedly talking to themselves before depressing a switch on the wall. The door started to close again but jammed and refused to finish cycling.

Swearing to herself, Alex motioned for everybody to circle around and approach the craft from what she hoped was a blindside from the doorway. Keying her mic she asked, “Lane, can you see the door from your position?” It took a moment to receive a reply, “Yes Ma’am. We can see everything from here.” Shaking her head she simply said “Cover us,” and took off to lead the way around the craft.