Incursion Vector

038

"Forty-two at last count," replied Ueda. "They are moving through this facility from the west and killing everything that moves, even going out of their way to destroy the decorative fish tanks. Their armor is resistant to projectile weaponry but is proving vulnerable to our prototype ELRs. I have distributed what remains of those from the laboratory to our defense forces."

"Very good."

"Let us be done with this place," announced Katsurou abruptly, pushing between the both of them on his way out the door fully outfitted in his exosuit.

The corridor immediately beyond the bulkhead exploded with white-orange light and rifle fire. Yutani hauled his father out of the doorway by the bar across his back while Ueda rolled to the opposite side. "That was not arms fire."

"Sub-orbital strikes from fighters," clarified Ueda. "The air defense network must be completely down."

"Ueda, your pistol. We must get my father to the evacuation site."

The man nodded and passed over his sidearm and the two continued down the corridor now laid open to the sky. Churaumi was a promising colony world, even if the atmosphere was a bit thick due to its massive warm oceans and seemingly permanent typhoon season. A natural abundance of deuterium had made it ideal for conducting their particle research, but as they made their way through the wreckage and out into the torrential rain outside Yutani realized he was shuffling through the ruins of nearly three decades of dedicated work.

Once the invaders had annihilated their communication system with a massive electromagnetic surge it had taken just five minutes for them to cut a wide enough hole through planetary defenses, usually used to fend off mercenary attacks funded by rival corporations, and land their obsidian capsules only a few kilometers from their main research facility. Walking out onto the wreckage littered over the rooftop of the office building he spotted several of them in the distance, empty and still hissing back at the rain as they bled off heat from their crashes. How anything had survived such a landing was a mystery, but they were out there. He could see two of them scuttling down into the freight entry of the office as they made their way to the landing zone.

The things were bipedal, with large grasshopper-like legs and another set of vestigial limbs sprouting from their chests just above where they connected to the creature's rather triangular torso. Their arms looked similar to those of a human, and he assumed they functioned the same way since the things utilized weaponry and managed to fly interstellar ships. From what he could tell their handheld arms were similar enough to the electrolasers his company had been developing in the very facility they were abandoning.

The thought that the enemy had somehow found out he was sending the designs into mass production and was attacking Churaumi precisely to prevent that from happening disturbed him. How long had the aliens been spying on the human race?

A sonic boom drew his attention to the sky and he watched a glowing cylinder of metal descend from orbit and tear into the ground near the outskirts of the colony's largest population complex, Koukai-fu. The ground rose into the air as a tidal surge of prefabricated housing and the shockwave knocked them flat to the ground within seconds. His suit's VTI managed to filter out the irrelevant noise from the blast but what he found most disturbing was the low-volume background chatter he had been hearing from the city now fell completely silent.

Making sure his father was still nearby he turned over to stand just as two of the aliens came tearing through the dust cloud towards them with bounding strides. Immediately behind them were three suits of forty-year-old powered armor covered in what could only have been irezumi in the most garish colors imaginable. The only fortunate thing he could see was that neither of the enemy soldiers looked to be carrying their bulky particle rifles.