[ :: WARNING! INTRUDER ALERT! :: ]
The alarm ringed in all the structure. Soldiers immediately got up and armed, running to their stations.
“What the hell is happening?!” Turgyh asked.
“Can you read? Hostile spotted!” Petros responded.
“How many?” Turgyh asked again.
“I don’t know. Twelve? It could be one of those warclone assaults”.
The soldiers reached their position, starting to take aim to the desert lands out of their command post. Patrols started to roam around and got out of the facility. They expected a scattered small number of intruders, usually composed by three individuals per group with the same goal and coordinated to assault small waypoints around the command post. Radars spotted two threats, three… increasing slowly, as expected.
“Do you see something?” Petros asked.
“No.” Turgyh didn’t want to discuss. He was too focused to watch over the outpost, holding his rifle and costantly with the eye on the sight. Proximity sensors started to confirm what the radars reported. Movements were detected in proximity of the command post and patrols were the first to engage the intruders. They fell one by one.
[ :: RECON PATROL: NOT RESPONDING :: ]
“We lost our men out of the facility! Backup team, go out! I’m calling the orbital fleet!” The commander assigned the team of Turgyh and Petros to get out from the positions and assuming the role of the eliminated recon patrol. Knowing what’s coming for them, they executed the order and once exited from the outpost, the doors closed behind them. The first thing Petros had in mind is going to the location where contacts were lost, expecting hostile contacts would have waited for them. So they stopped tens of meter right before the position, starting to plan a flank attack.
“Three bodies, probably two intruders would be still there to loot our men.” Petros plans the attack: “Turgyh, you go to the left! Erlis, charge! Find a cover and prepare to get there after you gained their attention! I’ll cover both of you once they’re on range!”. Erlis followed the order immediately. Turgyh started to move while being more anxious than his friends and came to his assigned position later than others. Observing from the cover, what Petros theorized revealed the truth: Two of those warclones, of the Vanguard program, were looting three corpses of the recon patrol. They were looking for something and they stole their weapons. They were distracted.
Petros made a sign and Erlis attacked. The first Vanguard immediately fell while the other one found a cover and threw a grenade on his direction. Erlis did the same but he got hit from the blast and reached the cover not on his feet. Turgyh started to engage and managed to surprise the warclone, hitting him but not killing him yet. Petros didn’t see Erlis moving from that cover and started to do suppression fire hoping to gain time for Turgyh to make pressure to the target. After unloaded two mags, both soldiers waited for a response until to realize the Vanguard disappeared from that cover, running away.
“Erlis!” Petros called for a response, then reached his cover, finding him down, but not out. He was bleeding but not dead yet. “Find a medic kit!” He shouted to Turgyh while Petros used his first aid one to close the critical wounds. He found one, but while returning to Petros, he spotted “A third one!”.
Petros left all what’s doing and grabbed the pistol to shoot but this time Turgyh was quicker to engage with his rifle and hit the target. Before falling, he fired some shot and Petros’ shields were down. Erlis continued to press on his wounds and he was going to medicate himself trying to grab the medic kit that Turgyh found: “Find the other one! He could take advantage of this!” He said.
But suddenly, a new communication alert came from their command outpost:
[ :: ALERT! 78 ENEMIES SPOTTED! :: ]
Seventy-eight. Seventy eight contacts. Never seen in a Vanguard assault. “GET BACK TO THE BASE NOW! WE HAVE A FULL SIEGE HERE!” The commander shouted while suddenly multiple screams can be heard in direction of the base. Erlis returned to stand up and all men run towards the destination. The scene was shocking: many of the assaulters weren’t warclones, they were simple humans blinded by a homicide/suicide instinct running directly to the walls and the doors of the outpost and being killed from the defenders for that; but this allowed the warclones to take time and engage defenders distracted to hit those men. Human shields who decided to be human shields. “Why the ■■■■ should they…!?” Turgyh was the most confused one but the orders were clear. They flanked the siege and engaged.
One of those baseliners turned on them and charged with a knife. Turgyh still didn’t believe it and hesitated, firing a shot that missed him but this didn’t change the behavior. The second one hit it, falling him down but still crawling towards him. When he had no strenght, he thrown his knif to Turgyh, bouncing from his shields. He fired a third shot, for mercy. This attracted more of them, some with small machine guns and the trio had to find a cover again, outnumbered this time. Killing baseliners was easier but there were warclones in the middle of them, more armored and gunned with the advantage of mobile cover. Grenades were thrown to stop the advance too and you could distinct if a victim of the slaughter was a warclone or not by the quantity of blood around the corpses.
After all baseliners were down, warclones were left and after warclones the Vanguard program remained. The outpost was overwhelmed and the soldiers left retreated to the main command block to defend the intruders. Dropships arrived too late but now the situation was going in favor of the defenders. “Command! Are they all into the block? Command?”
[ :: NO SIGNAL :: ]
“They’re dead” Erlis said the obvious to Petros.
“Even the second in command? What are the orders now?” Petros replied
A dropship landed close to them. The platoon leader asked for a report only to re-assign the remained soldiers once again.
“We believe they will extract to some of those points they placed during the invasion. Orbital fleet is ready to bomb them but they won’t be able to do for all of them simultaneously. Here’s the list of the points sorted by bombardment priority. You will go to the last one!”. The platoon leader gave the order and immediately called his squad to enter the building.
“Do you think they’ll manage to push an entire outpost and come there alive?!” Petros asked
“They’re Vanguards” Turgyh hypothized, “Whoever knows how much they can be powerful.”
The question was to the platoon leader and Petros ignored Turgyh’s one. They moved to the assigned object and waited there for a long time, around twenty minutes. All shots in the block were ceased and there was no response to the reinforcements. Suddenly there were movements around the extraction point. One guy reached a console of that structure beacon and interacted with that. Petros realized something and ordered the engage. The guy found immediately a cover but this time he didn’t want to escape.
“Don’t tell me he was that second Vanguard we almost got him” Erlis said “I wanna make him pay!”
“This is not the moment for personal questions! Turgyh! Same plan! Quicker this time!” Petros replied and then tried to re-open the communications “Don’t tell me even Uiorn died!”.
“He HAS, Petros! All went silent!” Turgyh replied while flanking the target again but this time other two Vanguards appeared running towards the beacon. Then other three appeared from the radars, suddenly other two… all Vanguard survivors were arriving on the position.
Petros was planning for a retreat. He had finished the explosives and his men were in the middle of the enemy fire. “■■■■ it!” He said and charged hoping to save at least one of them; Erlis or Turgyh. He chose Turgyh. While reaching him he was engaged and Erlis took advantage to shoot whoever was engaging Petros. Turgyh took advantage of this too and threw his last grenade. The blast took out 2 Vanguards. One of them was that one of the first encounter.
Suddenly, the Vanguards ignored Petros and even Turgyh and quickly charged towards the structure beacon. Something was charging up, even the downed Vanguards started to crawl to that. All of them targetted one last time to Erlis, the easiest target and unloaded all the magazines to him, crumbling all his cover and making him new wounds. Turgyh moved trying to reach Petros but even both of them had to reload the guns. The beacon charged up and a ray of light blasted from that structure. All Vanguards started to ascend to the skies.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” Erlis shouted with all what’s left of his breath. Same order was issued by Petros, taking Turgyh and pulling him out of that ray. That move pushed Petros in the light instead and he started to ascend too. All attempts and movements to get out of there was useless and Petros started to feel an intense pain. That ray wasn’t just dragging to the skies, where the orbital fleet started an engagement with an unknown one just appeared over the beacon; that ray was consuming him. The flesh into the armor burned, his organs pulverized but his consciousness was being digitalized. He became one of them.
Turgyh didn’t even realized he was hit. Erlis didn’t respond anymore. He tried a radio contact one more time. The fleet above was the only to respond: “We encountered an unknown fleet which’s now warping out. What’s the situation below? Any survivors?”
“Dead.”
“Everyone?”
“We’re all dead.”
“What the hell happened? I’ve never seen the Deathless behaving in this way!”
“Deathless?” Turgyh chuckled: “Nobody would use a similar tactic.”