Like someone flicked a switch.
The Company snapped from sluggish formation into controlled panic. Officers barked into comms, troopers scrambled behind cover, and the Knights, those towering eight-foot armored bastards stood tall like metal gods and reported calmly over radio, "Engaging suppressive fire."
Cyma moved like a single nerve. Berta bellowed orders that were half-roar, half-threat. Rus coordinated with the Company officers, voice steady, because someone had to keep a grip on the chaos. Bullets cracked the air. The rhythm of war returned. Rapid-fire roared from a hundred rifles. Knights unleashed torrents from their autocannons, the 30mm rounds shredding into the first wave of winged monsters that blackened the sky.
One of the gunships tried to lift.
Tried.
A winged beast slammed into its rotors. The chopper coughed smoke, spiraled like a broken toy, and slammed into the tree line in a bloom of flame and twisted metal.
They weren't dumb. This wasn't a wild swarm. They moved like they understood. Hit the skies, aim for the tech, suppress the suppressors. They weren't mindless, they were coordinated. Like they'd learned.
Rus didn't have time to admire it. He had to stop it.
The Missiles were on the move as combat engineers rolled out the beehive launchers, positioning them between armored carriers and ruined stonework. Technicians shouted over static-filled channels. One mistake and the whole thing would be ripped apart.
Cyma was too deep in the shit as they were the tip.
They held the line, close enough to be clawed. Close enough to feel the wind of their wings pass their ears.
Rus's combat indicators flared across his vision. The targeting lines painted in red arcs, predicting claws and trajectories. A swipe went for his neck. He dipped, pivoted. Slammed the butt of his rifle into the beast's jaw, staggered it, then cut it across the face with his rifle's bayonet. Too close. Always too close.
Rus squeezed the trigger. Nothing.
Empty.
He slung the rifle over his shoulder, reached to his side, and drew Salvo. His custom blade hissed as it left its sheath, a vibrating hum dancing through his bones. A single arc of blue voltage lashed out as he swung it, severing wings and ribs in a blur. Three down.
Rus planted Salvo into the mud, grabbed his rifle, swapped mags, cocked it back, and opened fire again. The motion was smooth. Muscle memory. Like breathing.
To his left, Berta barked, "Reloading!"
Stacy and Kate stepped in. Automatic fire laced the air. They moved like gears in a machine, precise, practiced, lethal. Amiel was in her zone, cold, quiet, deadly. Every shot landed. Every shot mattered.
The creatures noticed. One peeled off and made a beeline for her. Rus saw its intent. So did Foster.
He tackled her, shoulder-first. The two tumbled back, his plating absorbing the brunt. Gino grabbed Amiel's vest and yanked her behind a wall. Dan took position, emptying a belt of ammunition into the bastard until its wings were nothing but meat confetti.
"Status on the HIVES?" Rus shouted.
No response.
Another second. Another heartbeat. Then the comms cracked with that cold, uncaring voice of an operator. "HIVES online."
Thank God.
He looked up.
The missiles launched like angry wasps. Miniature warheads. each the size of a marker pen painted the sky in trails of light. They tracked targets mid-air, adjusting with inhuman precision. The swarm of beasts turned to smoke and screamed. The ones that dodged were clipped. The ones that didn't were erased.
Berta laughed, sharp and mad. "Now that's more like it!"
Rus ignored her.
Rus kept moving. Combat indicators blinked, adjusted. A flanking route forming in the east quadrant. "Dan! Cover angle 17. They're circling."
"On it!"
He switched his position with a grunt, setting up a light machine gun on a crate. The belt whirred and another line of monsters fell.
"Foster!" Rus shouted, "Gino! Rotate to rear coverage. They'll break ranks!"
Gino grinned. "Was wondering when you'd let us have fun."
They moved.
It was beautiful. Painful. Savage.
They weren't winning. They were surviving.
The Knights stepped forward again. Their cannons boomed with mechanical wrath. One of the winged bastards tried to dive at one, it exploded mid-air.
One of their Humvees flipped. Not from a blast. A creature the size of a small car landed on it and bit through the roof. Its limbs scraped metal, claws shearing through the windshield. Rus sprinted, HF blade humming, closed the gap in seconds.
One clean cut. From thigh to neck.
The beast fell in two.
The driver inside gave Rus a thumbs-up with a shaking hand. He nodded back and moved on.
No time.
Every part of his intrinsic HUD was a blur of movement. Rus didn't feel tired. Didn't feel fear. The indicators guided him like he was just obeying QTE prompts.
Another winged one dove for hi,.
He slashed up.
Caught it in the chest. It twitched. Rus kicked it off the blade and reloaded. Again.
Behind him, Kate shouted, "Sir, three o'clock!"
Rus twisted and fired blind.
Headshot.
"Thanks."
"Buy me dinner first."
"Shut up."
Another scream.
Another slash.
They kept holding.
The creatures started thinning. Not because they killed them all, because they were retreating. Flying off into the clouded sky, wounded and screaming.
Smart enough to strike.
Smart enough to run.
Rus hated them more for that.
"Cease fire!" came the order from the top brass. "Do not pursue. Hold positions. Secure wounded."
The field fell silent.
Just breathing. Just the hiss of smoke. Just the slow, haunting realization that they'd survived.
But the cost?
Rus didn't look.
He didn't count the dead. He knew they were there.
The engineers cheered. HIVES had worked.
Rus wiped the blood from his blade. Salvo was warm and was still humming.
Berta walked up beside him, panting, scratched but alive. "That's all you got, boss?"
"I hope so," Rus muttered. "I'm tired of these fuckers already."
She gave a bloody grin. "You say that every damn time."
Amiel limped over, half her armor scraped. "One got too close."
"You okay?"
"I killed it."
That was enough.
Kate and Stacy regrouped, their armor blackened by soot but eyes still sharp.
Dan had his sleeves rolled up, one arm bleeding but functional.
Foster and Gino dragged one of the creatures by the tail to examine it.
Rus was glad that none of them bit the dust.
But the job's not done.
"Cyma, get patched up and fix your gear. No slackers, no bitching. If you're walking, you're working."
The medics were already dragging the wounded behind cover. A few got torn up pretty bad. A few deaths, but it was enough blood to remind everyone that their flesh isn't as bulletproof as their egos would like to believe. That encounter? It dunked the whole damn battalion headfirst into reality. The illusion of invincibility was gone. Shattered. Some of the newer grunts had gone into this like it was another milk run. Just another formation, just another sweep.
Then the sky opened up and flying bastards rained down like the wrath of a very pissed-off nature god.
They weren't just mindless flyers either. No, these ones had patterns. Formation. Fucking tactics. They dove in coordinated arcs, knew how to flank, knew how to retreat and bait. Smart. Smart enough to understand what a Knight's 30mm gun could do, and still brave enough to charge.
If they didn't have those walking gun platforms belching metal into the air? They'd be meat. Torn and gutted and dropped from the clouds like bad memories.
Berta was holding her arm, blood seeping through her armored sleeve. She looked at Rus with that usual mix of sarcasm and spite. "Think I broke something fighting off sky demons. Can I punch a sergeant and call it medical leave?"
"No," Rus said. "But you can sit the next wave out if you keep bleeding like that."
Foster was lying against a crate, coughing. Gino and Dan were helping a grunt from another squad who'd gotten his leg sliced. Kate and Stacy were quiet. That was rare. They both looked shaken. Not broken just… touched by the realization that the line between predator and prey was razor-thin.
Reed came on the line.
"Wilson," he said, "Kilgore's calling in heavy strikes. We're following the bastards to their nest. You're attaching to the artillery group. Secure a forward position and hold it. Air support's not available."
Because of course it wasn't.
"Copy," Rus replied. "Cyma's mobile after we patched up."
After they got patched and armoire fixed. They got moving.
They accompanied a fire support unit of Knights—three of them, all dented and scuffed but still walking tanks. The engineers moved with Cyma, hauling the mobile launchers and drone relays in dog-like crawlers that could traverse terrain. They didn't need encouragement. Everyone knew we weren't going to wait for those flying freaks to regroup.
The trek was mostly quiet. Just crunching gravel, the low whine of servos from the Knights, and the distant thump-thump-thump of their artillery catching up. The area ahead was rough terrain, a mix of low hills, scattered trees, and a ruined residential block half-eaten by time and moss.
They reached position just after sundown.
Shells were already in the air by the time they dug in.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
155mm howitzers pounding the enemy nest like angry gods with anger management issues. The sky lit up every few seconds in blinding flashes of white-orange as fire rained down. The noise wasn't just loud. It was violent. You could feel it in your bones, like your ribs were being played like a drum.
They didn't speak much. They didn't need to.
Cyma held the perimeter. Rus was perched on one of the old rooftops, using his scope to watch for stragglers. Combat indicators and compass flared faintly with nothing solid yet. His HUD was clean, but my instincts were twitching like mad.
Berta limped up beside him. She'd refused proper treatment—just wrapped her arm, took a stim, and started barking orders.
"Place looks like shit," she muttered, watching the artillery rounds land. "And I say that with love."
"It's about to look worse," Rus said, just as another volley tore a chunk out of the treeline.
Down below, Dan was setting up motion sensors with Gino. Amiel was further back, perched behind a half-busted drone uplink, tweaking it to get thermal readings through the thick smoke. She didn't say much, as usual, but when she did, it was always something worth listening to.
"Movement west quadrant," she said over comms, just a whisper.
"Visual?" Rus asked.
"No. Just air shift. Vibration patterns. Could be wings."
He checked again, but there nothing on scope, nothing on indicators.
But he didn't argue and reinforced the west side.
And still, the shells came.
For fourteen straight hours, they bombarded the region. Anything that flew out of that place got turned into chunky mist. The air grew thick with the smell of scorched meat and cordite. The sky was a constant strobe of incoming fire and impact.
Kilgore's command post was all business. His voice cut through the chatter every few minutes with updates, kill confirmation, and adjustments.
"Shells hitting the secondary nest. Adjusting forty meters northeast. Confirm when the crater forms."
It was mechanical. Clinical.
Massacre delivered by precision and logistics.
They took turns resting. No one slept deeply. They rotated shifts, patched armor, reloaded. Repeated the loop.
At some point, Rus stopped tracking time.
He watched the sky go from smoke-streaked blue to black to grey again. The light barely changed, just grew more artificial. The haze from the shelling made everything seem unreal.
Then, they saw the aftermath. The nest had been leveled. No more screeches, no more winged shapes. Just ash and broken things twitching in craters.
But no one cheered.
There was nothing glorious about this.
It wasn't victory, it was erasure.
Burning an entire ecosystem because it was inconvenient. It made sense. It was strategic. It was also a reminder that this world was not solely theirs. That they still need to keep carving out little corners and bombing the rest until no enemies were left.
Then he order came.
"Cease fire. Advance to confirm elimination."
Cyma moved in.
The place was a smoking ruin. Chunks of flesh the size of trucks littered the field. Bone, chitin, and melted wing membranes. Some pieces still twitched.
Cyma stayed sharp and cleared buildings, tunnels, nests.
Then they found eggs.
Burned them and collected some for TRU.
A few stragglers tried to lash out. Didn't last long. Cyma moved like clockwork. Even wounded, even exhausted, they were efficient and ruthless.
Rus watched Amiel shoot one in the eye from thirty meters as it tried to crawl toward an egg sac. One shot. No hesitation.
Kate and Stacy moved together, clearing the north ruins with Gino. Dan and Foster were on point, tossing grenades into whatever hole looked too deep.
Berta... she was quieter now. Still cracking jokes. Still calling people names. But the way she walked? Heavy. Like the last few days had carved something permanent into her bones.
After they confirmed the area, Kilgore radioed in.
"Good work, Cyma. Regroup at FOB. Debrief at 0900."
Rus looked back one last time.
At the broken terrain.
At the ash-filled wind.
At the way the world looked when you stripped it bare.
Then he turned and walked away, wondering about the many wastelands they'd leave behind in the future.