A narrow gorge cut through a flattened ridgeline. A shard of a massive vessel lay overtop, shrouding the ravine in darkness. The occasional pillar of soft grey light cloaked the ground in twilight. Empty shadows dominated the hall, and all was quiet until a cry was heard in the distance, accompanied by the flash of a blue bolt.

  And then, nothing. Silence.

  Minutes passed as the darkness endured—featureless and impenetrable—before a singular figure stepped out. And then another, followed by another, as a hundred armored shades steeped in indigo blood stepped out.

  Amos motioned – the jamming device was shut off – before relaying:

  “All clear.”

  ///

  Moira surveyed the battlefield from inside her vessel. A detailed map was displayed, with the location indicators updating in real time as the ship’s system unscrambled the new access key with each group’s individually assigned decryption code.

  The planet’s unique spatial disposition, combined with severe interference from the wreckages, significantly destabilized quantum transmission, shrinking the available bandwidth. In turn, any higher-level virtual technology was restricted.

  Nevertheless, there were already multiple successful virtual intrusions, but the team’s location remained cloaked. The simplistic encryption Moira had enforced acted as a fail-safe that could only be breached by brute force decryption protocols that simply didn’t have the network capacity to overcome the code’s refresh rate.

  The teams had dispersed in three general directions, and as hoped, each cruiser had split off to pursue a tail. They were out of visual range and steadily growing apart, allowing the dispersed crew members to circle back and converge on her third of the search sector.

  This was the second half of her strategy. Stall for enough time to fully separate the three vessels and then face each individually. ‘So far so good,’ she thought as she monitored a blue indicator with key interest.

  Amos blitzed across the landscape at speeds exceeding twenty meters per second. His breathing was shallow as he pushed his taxed body and suit to keep going. He had taken down fifteen or so of the search parties – while his unit had held key choke points and led effective ambushes – cutting down most of the enemy.

  The problem was that the remaining forces had noticed something was wrong.

  They had rallied under an officer and were slowly aggregating, converging on a plateau where the enemy held fortified positions. There were a hundred and counting, and they would soon grow to the point of being unmanageable.

  He had to take them down before that happened, or they would be overrun.

  Amos sprinted forward, spotting a group rushing back to the encampment. They ran through a narrow gorge with gently sloping walls. Amos hurried as he detached the rifle strapped over his shoulder, brandishing it with one arm. It was rectangular with sharp corners, the white metal marked with blue iridescent strips.

  Amos jumped, setting his boots to ‘repulsion’ as he skated down the side of the gorge, catching the soldiers by surprise. Amos unloaded the full charge as blue cylindrical beams streaked across the battlefield, cutting down twenty unsuspecting soldiers.

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  The Manzar in front turned to return fire, but before they could even get a lock, the bluish wraith had skated up and out of the gorge, slipping out of sight. The soldiers tensed as they rushed to find cover in a debris field, still disoriented by the ‘shock and awe.’

  Amos watched from a boulder several hundred meters away as he slotted a black drum magazine into the rifle. The Manzar had deployed a simple energy field as they started to take positions to cover a 360-degree field of view.

  Amos struck before the security perimeter could be completed. He discharged the six rounds into the sky before rushing forward, timing his speed with their arrival. Six soldiers felt a shadow obscure their faces, and just as they started to look up, six metal spikes pierced through their heads, a storm of blue electricity in their wake.

  The shield only invalidated energy projectiles, so the physical rounds slipped through the barrier effortlessly. The spikes stopped, stationarily floating for a moment, before all angling towards the center of the formation and shooting forward. Blue electric lines lit up as the silver shadows rotated furiously, chaining through any enemy in their path.

  Looking from above, it appeared six bolts of lightning snaked across the debris field before converging and destroying the shield generator. The energy bubble slowly receded as large holes began expanding on its surface just as Amos arrived.

  Amos wiped away the blood from his sword as he received a message that all currently deployed ground forces had been eliminated. He looked to the side as he studied this wave’s last contingent.

  The soldiers had dug in on an elevated plateau and were currently installing a communication relay to establish contact with their central command. ‘Hfff,’ Amos exhaled, recognizing the difficulty of what lay ahead.

  He watched for a moment before finding his point of entry – the well.

  Manzar are carbon-based lifeforms with extremely high body temperatures. As such, they require vast amounts of water and often construct a communal well when congregated for ease of access and conversion efficiency.

  Amos ran forward, his suit now camouflaged, shielding him from sight. A preset charge detonated, sending the atmospheric energy haywire and disrupting any scanning equipment. He quickly scaled the rock face before concealing himself near his objective.

  Amos patiently waited for a gap in the patrols before summoning his blades and tossing them into the well. The Jians began to dissolve as the metal shards separated and dispersed into the vast pool of water, the tasseled handles drifting into the bottom’s obscurity.

  He retreated and started to wait. He watched as the last few stragglers trickled into the camo and as, inexorably, one by one, each Manzar drank from the well. Nearly an entire hour went by before…

  Finally,’ Amos thought to himself before bursting from the shadows and piercing the lieutenant’s unsuspecting head. He locked eyes with the stunned Manzar remnants, flashing a rare cordial smile before snapping his fingers.

  All one hundred and forty-three burst into a fountain of blood.