![]() You do a slow dogleg left as your navcomp finds a place to land when all of a sudden retros kick in and propel you south. Damn! If the Strogg have electromagnetic pulse defenses and we failed to detect them. ![]() Suddenly, distorted radio chatter lights up, "Mayday! Mayday! Lost all power. But where are the other pods? They were there a minute ago. Below you, the large alien city roars into focus on the screen. Based on the pings, the other pods are pulling away. Thrusters and stabilizing gyros are fading. Another pod must have clipped yours on its way in. Ka-WHUMP! The pod wall suddenly buckles to your right, but stays intact. Wheee-oooooo! Incendiary atmosphere howls past the pod’s rapidly heating shell. Shthunk!! Your drop pod is shot from the side of the carrier and hurtles downward. Two demerits for anyone who up-chucks during bounce and roll!" "OK boys and girls, you see the clock on your heads-up. "Roger that!" In another pod, your sergeant snaps back. "Boomer?" the voice crackles through every soldier’s headset. Now is the time to switch on your debriefing panel if ya need it." As we had postulated, Stroggos’ atmosphere is harsh but breathable. We are entering the outer orbits of Stroggos, the alien’s home system. This is Flag Admiral Crockett, speaking to you from the bridge deck of Phobos. "Greetings to the people of the Coalition. Eventually, you nod off to the low hypnotic hum of the troop carrier.Ĭrackle. You close your eyes and relish this thought. In about two hours, we’ll be entering the same interstellar portals, to hit ‘em where it hurts… on their own turf. Either way… it’s just like opening the door to an all-you-can-eat restaurant for these bastards. We still don’t know if they created these rips in the fabric of space and time, or if they simply discovered them by accident. By employing our best satellites and long-range scanners, we learned how they traveled light years so quickly – the Strogg used these black hole-like gateways as their highway to heaven. You recall your first official day of training, your unit commander discussing how these damn parasites made it to Earth and other nearby colonies in the first place. Just a few short hours to sleep, recharge, and then… the moment of glory. You’ve done this a dozen times in the sim classes. Pitch black except for the mild glow of your video readout system in front of you. You’ll see sunlight in less than six and a half hours. One of the techs begins to drop the reinforced pod door. "You in or out?" Competent hands guide you into the coffin-like opening of your Mark 9A drop pod: sleek, dark, and invisible to the Stroggos defense systems. "Yo, soldier, 3585." The medtech’s voice startles you. "We’ll all get a few Strogg heads to take home as souvenirs. "Cool your jets, marine," Tokay mutters and smiles over his shoulder. "I can’t deal with this shit – what’s the friggin’ hold-up?" ![]() The assembled armies branch off into new lines divided by corps and unit. But their onboard storage facilities did little to disguise what they considered to be resources: fleshy limbs and organs for new cyborgs, and of course, food. We figured that the Strogg were after our planet’s resources: minerals, metals, and water: things like that. They killed or captured anything that lived. swarmed out while their ships still sizzled with reentry heat. Like flaming meteors, their crafts pounded into the Earth and unbelievably, these bio-mechanical aliens. Slightly rocking back and forth under the sweltering August sun, you spit out of the side of your mouth, rub your eyes, and think back to the day when the wretched creatures first attacked. "What the hell is taking so long?!" you snarl, slamming the battered barrel of your side arm, the blaster, against your scarred palm. Soon you’ll walk up the ramp into the ship, climb into your one-man cocoon, tear through the interplanetary gateway, and smash down light-years away from the blowing sand and blasted ruins that surround the Dallas-Metro crater. It stretches on endlessly across the rubble, disappearing at last into the cool shadows of a troop carrier. Shading your eyes against the glare, you squint for the thousandth time at the line of soldiers ahead of you. Long shadows claw desperately away from your dusty combat boots, fueled by the relentless sun of a late Texas afternoon. ![]()
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