The Prelude

There's no sun in the sky today, dark clouds have covered it, and it's pouring down with rain. Or it would have been had it been a normal day. These days though, the clouds that are blocking the sun are actually thousands of planetary warships and carriers, and the rain is actually highly concentrated plasma being fired from these ships. Every break in the sky between clouds and ships showed how great the human fleet fought against the brutal juggernaut known as the Sqorpion Empire. On the ground many major cities like Ottawa in Canada, Moscow in Russia, Berlin in Germany, Paris in France and London England have been destroyed in a matter of hours. The enemy were ruthless, leaving none alive. Parts of the old USA was in ruin, Reports from China showed that several billion of their inhabitants were dead, Russia was holding its own in the ruins of their cities and Europe was in stalemate, Canada wasn't faring well either many of their civilians had taken refuge in the northern forests. Intel had lost all communications with most of the third world countries that were still located in the red zones and were still rebuilding after the three wars. The remaining satellites showed images of nothing but burned earth in the red zones and very little of a civilization left in these parts. Zack grew tired of waiting for information from Intel and stared back into the sky from behind his piece of cover. A planetary carrier was flying overhead, releasing more single ship fighters which Intel had dubbed 'Stingers' by the hundreds, which differed from the ‘Viper’ which was the enemies’ main space fighter. Zack looked back at the ground. His gloves had burns through them, as he looked around he saw that some of his men had taken off their helmets and were paying for it by getting burns on their faces. This isn't the first time he was glad he never took his helmet off in a combat situation or at least not for a few hours after the combat stopped because that's how long the plasma particles from the enemy weapon shots stayed around for was two hours after the engagement... yet another new trick of the enemy.

"Sir! We got more hostiles inbound!" A private yelled while holding one of his hands over his cheek covering the burns while still holding onto his weapon.

"Get to cover!" Zack yelled back while taking cover again against a blown out car, through the broken windows on the cars door Zack could see a couple of eagles fly overhead and engage a couple of enemy stingers. The stingers were fast agile craft that were shaped like the stinger of a scorpion’s tail. They had shield generators and multiple cannons attached along with a small plasma beam weapon attached to the top of its stinger like design. The eagles, although technologically inferior to the stinger put up a good a fight none the less. By the time Zack looked back down he saw a few squads of the enemy moving from cover to cover, led by as usual a few Snake-Beings and a couple of Sqorpion commanders. Zack looked back to the building behind him, it was an apartment building that looked close to collapsing and prayed that the snipers were still in position.

"This is bravo-1 to far sight... take them out." Zack ordered the snipers. There wasn't a response from them, mainly because the enemy had taken to tracking the radio signals that humanity used and the last thing the snipers needed was their cover blown by responding. Zack looked around at the men and women around him and told them "Wait for the snipers to take out their targets, once their down we'll mop up."

Everyone just nodded their heads and replaced their helmets to link their guns to their H.U.D (Heads up display). Zack turned back and kept looking at the enemy squads as they got closer, when they were within 100 meters of Zack’s cover, several Eagles flew overhead and within a few seconds, using the sound from the Eagles engines to mask their shots, all four of the enemy squad leaders were dead from head shots. It happened so fast that Zack almost missed it. The enemy stopped jumping cover to cover and made the stupid decision of standing in the open looking down at their dead commanders. Zack knew that the snipers would relocate so he couldn't rely on them to take the rest out, he ordered his men to open fire. The moment the enemy started to take fire they dove back into cover realizing their mistake. There were approximately ten enemy soldiers left after the quick sniper attack. A few more of the enemy lost their heads as they tried to fire off a few shots... apparently far sight hadn't relocated. The ground around Zack exploded as the enemy fired at their position. Zack turned to call for his men to fall back to the next set of cover when the ground exploded in front of him from an enemy mortar, everything went black after that.