A radio cackles in the darkness.
“West outpost four. West outpost four. Kill your lights. Kill your lights. Kill your lights.”
Meiden hits the breaker and the lights in the encampment fizzle. It will take no small amount of effort to get them running again. He reaches for the radio to acknowledge, but he thinks better of it when he sees why the order was given. Two Skion stealth craft rip over the skyline towards him.
Briefly, he glances to the machine gun lazily keeping watch over the street. Could he engage it? There’s only a little ammunition left…
He cranks the radio volume down as the birds hover over the courtyard his camp overlooks.
“Skion craft spotted,” he says quietly into the mic.
Down below, the craft unloads a handful of troops and various pieces of technical equipment.
“Four, look below. City hall,” the personal radio barked.
Meiden gingerly made his way to the edge of the roof and looked down. A small light flickered inside the broken windows. It was Jirac and Lorr, on a patrol. He hadn’t expected to see them for another day or two.
Jirac signaled with the light. “Rockets. Be ready.”
“No rockets.” Meiden replied.
“Grenades.”
“No grenades.”
“Anything.”
“Affirmative.”
Meiden carefully crept back to the camp and readied one of the last rifles.
Down below, Jirac and Lorr watched the Skion set up their lights and get to work. The craft soared away.
“What are they doing?” Lorr whispered.
“That big ring? It’s some kind of transportation device,” Jirac said.
“For the colonization?”
“These assholes are worse than colonizers. They’re apparently going to lure all the bugs into it and send them to their enemies.”
“Fuck…”
They watched in silence as the Skion set up the terminals. Atop the ring they set a huge speaker.
“Okay, what frequency is all that working on?” Jirac said to herself, spreading all the Skion tek she’d brought with her.
As the apparatus was assembled, the head engineer set up a camera and called to the station orbiting overhead.
“Station Tumult, we are live and transmitting.”
“Copy, ground team, command deck receives.”
In the station, Mara and her sister Mira stood with Dienekes and Skulna.
“I should be with them,” Skulna sighed… again.
Dienekes ignored her. “It looks good so far.”
The engineer gave a thumbs up. “Everything is nearly ready. Once the coordinates are locked in we will call for extraction and hit the alarm on the way out.”
“Any trouble from the locals?” Skulna asked.
“No ma’am, nobody even knows we’re here.”
Another engineer dashes quietly into view. “Sir, we’re reading another signature of ours from the console. Something nearby. I didn’t think we had a presence in this area.”
Mira cut in, “I’m sure they raided all our bases down there before they were overrun. Who knows what it still running. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Meanwhile, Lorr whispered, “We don’t have the weapons to destroy it."
“I see that. But maybe we can fuck it all up, instead," Jirac replied, starting to type on the stolen console.
Lorr positioned his rifle out the window, “just say the word.”
Jirac continued typing. “No. Stop. Signal the outpost to ignore my previous command. Do not engage”
Lorr obeyed, and Meiden confirmed.
“Clock is ticking,” Lorr said, finger on the trigger anyway. The bugs and their zombies could appear at any minute. The Skion weren't being very quiet.
“Not for us,” Jirac said, typing madly.
The screen fizzled a little while the command deck patiently watched the crew working in the darkness.
“Zero that in,” the deck officer said impatiently, trying to make a good impression on the important personalities in the room.
The feed stabilized and an engineer stepped back into frame.
“Okay, so there is some local interference but it’s probably just trying to follow older protocols before we left the planet. We’re nearly ready to—“
The night exploded with sound. The alarm rang at a deafening volume, echoing violently through the empty streets.
The command deck watched the engineers scream helplessly, voices drowned out by their own alarm. The shadows started to move as many hundreds of assimilated citizens started to move in on the disturbance. The troops began to fire. Grenades popped and splattered dried blood on the stones.
“Extract them now,” Dienekes spat. The deck was drowning in the alarm on the feed and dozens of voices trying to coordinate a response.
An engineer appeared in front of the camera. "I'll take this!"
The feed wandered over the chaos on the ground, the troops in disarray and firing wildly into the growing crowd.
Lights toppled and the crowd closed in.
"Fleebnorks!" shouted an officer when she sighted the little bugs crawling through the crowd of assimilated citizens.
"There's no way out!" the engineer screamed in terror.
The feed swung around to flee, but was immediately blocked by angry, bloody figures.
The camera falls and a moment later the engineers scream abruptly end.
The officer rises, the visor a visage of blood and vomit. The body makes it's way toward the light of the camera.
The feed fizzles and blurs before shutting out entirely.
Nearby, Jirac cut the sound and sprinted off with Lorr. The swarm would get curious in the silence and they had to make for higher ground.
Meanwhile, the lights fell and the darkness returned.
Above, in the station, Skulna was already arming.
