morbidfinwe:
mr-phoenix-93:
metal-queer-solid:
bigwordsandsharpedges:
systlin:
rowantheexplorer:
chungkingosaurus:
dragon-of-sapphire:
nedark:
pokemonsunburn:
petermorwood:
lyricwritesprose:
majingojira:
ohgodhesloose:
morebadbookcovers:
myurbandream:
jabberwockypie:
skeletonmug:
artiestroke:
splintercellconviction:
giraffepoliceforce:
I really want a science fiction story where aliens come to invade earth and effortlessly wipe out humanity, only to be fought off by the wildlife.
They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Imagine coming to a hostile alien world and being attacked by a horde of creatures that can weigh up to 3 tons, run at 30 km/h (19 mph), and bite with a force of 8,100 newtons (1,800 lbf).
By the time you realise that they can traverse water, it’s too late. The surviving members of your unit manage to make it back by shedding their excess gear and running for their lives; the slower ones were crushed to death within minutes.
You later describe the creature to one of the humans you captured, wanting to know the name of the monstrosity that will haunt your nightmares for cycles to come.
The human smiles as it speaks a single word, slowly and distinctly, in its barbaric tongue.
“Hippopotamus.”
This is giving me the biggest, creepiest grin I might have ever grinned
Imagine being the next crew to go down to earth and thinking “it’s fine, we got this. We have the weapons and equipment necessary to deal with bears and *shudders* hippopotamuses. We’ll be fine.”
And at first you are, you’ve learned how to dodge. You’ve learned where their territories are. You know how to defend yourself.
But then one night you are sleeping in your shelter. You’re in a tree covered temperate part of earth. It seems benign. There are been no sightings of the dreaded “hippos” around. Not even any bears. But there is a slight rustle of the undergrowth. You try and ignore it telling yourself it is just the wind.
Then you hear the rustle again. closer this time.
You peer out into the darkness but see nothing amongst the trees.
The rustle again and now you realise you can smell something. It’s musky and slightly foul. It’s the smell of an omen, a warning. But what of? Where is this smell coming from.
You sit up, but it’s too late. The foul smelling creature is on you. You are hit with 17kg of coarse fur and vicious bites. Long dark claws tear in to you and you are pinned down white the striped creature tries to bite your throat.
It takes some doing but you manage to wrestle free. Blood drips from your wounds and already they itch with the sign of infection. The creature has a bloodied snout, rust rad, mingling with the black and white hairs. It lets out a terrifying growl from the back of its throat and looks to attack again. It’s between you and your knife, so your only choice is to back away.
Eventually the creature gives up and snuffles off in to the undergrowth, down a hole near your shelter you hadn’t noticed before.
When you make it back to your base you once again consult the captive human.
“Badger.” they say, with a solemn nod.
One word: Moose
“Our vehicles are far superior to the local human models, in range, speed, armament, and any other metric you care to name! Nothing could possibly-”
BAMrumblerumblethumpcrash!!!
“That’s called a moose.”
Wolverines.
Also.. dolphins.
The invasion is going slowly. The humans have caught on and are actively destroying information on the planet’s flora and fauna before Intelligence can capture and process it. All that they have are survivors’ accounts. Bears. Hippos. Badgers. Moose. It is becoming obvious this mudball planet is a full-on Death World to the unprepared, and you are so very unprepared.
You lost Jaxurn to a plant. Not even a mobile or carnivorous plant, just one that caused a vicious allergic reaction on contact that killed him in less than a rai'kor. Commander Vura'ko died to an insect bite, a tiny local pest that sucked a tiny bit of her blood and apparently replaced it with a bit of its last meal, which was full of disease. Backwash. She died to bug backwash. And yet you honestly envy them after that… thing you encountered…
When you got back to base the quarantine officer refused to let you inside. They had to roll a containment tank outside to put you in, because you all knew there would be no chance of eliminating the smell if it got into the ship’s air ducts. Smell. You wonder if your nasal slit will ever recover from this stench.
And the smell would. Not. Leave. After incinerating your gear the Q.O. had you use every cleansing agent they could think of, including a few janitorial ones, and still everyone fled the stench if they were downwind of your tank. Desperate to protect everyone’s nasal slits from the smell the quarantine officer interrogated the humans. From them, a glimmer of hope: there was a cure. Somehow the juice of a certain fruit on this mudball was the only thing that could break up the chemicals in the little horror’s spray. Immediately the Q.O. sent a team to recover buckets of the stuff and made you bathe in it. That was hours ago and it didn’t seem to be working, though. All it was doing was turning your blue skin an interesting shade of purple.
Sighing in frustration you wave the med-assist on duty over, who only approaches after checking the wind direction. Annoyed, you flip on the tank`s vox speaker.
“The humans did say it was “grape” juice that removed “skunk” stench, right?“
Every night.
It came for someone almost every night.
Any soldier alone was a viable target for this native monster that moved unseen by any but the security viewers, usually only spotted in hindsight. They were taken as silently as this earth-monster moved. Sometimes they’d find the remains in the morning taken up a tree and hung there, mostly eaten, as if it were a grisly reminder that the monster was still there, waiting unseen, to strike again.
What little they saw of the monster on the vidfeed showed true horror. Yellow eyes that shone with all the light it could gather. It had fangs as long as his grasping digits. Claws half that size formed curved hooks that allowed it to climb up their fortifications with impunity. And in the underbrush, its spots made it almost impossible to see clearly in the undergrowth, if it could be seen at all.
Even the native sentients, the humans, had a healthy respect and fear for it.
The earth natives called the monster a leopard.
It was a constant fear that muddied the senses, and let the monster hunt even more effectively as the soldiers were always on edge. Sleep deprived with fear, it made them even better targets for the monster.
But rumor was that there was worse on this planet. Rumors of a monster like a leopard but larger, and bigger in every imaginable sense. Stripped instead of spotted, which leaped from the underbrush with a sound.
A sound that burst eardrums, paralyzed entire units, and let the monster kill with impunity. While the Leopard wrestled soldiers down and ripped their throats out. This other monster, the Tiger, killed with its pounce alone.
“We’ve been through this,” Group Leader 455 snapped. “The dissection of an Earth life form will help the scientists make weapons to combat the rest of this planet’s hellbeasts. And these are domesticated. Harmless.”
The troops were not-quite-looking at her in the way troops do when they don’t want to be seen to contradict a ranking officer, but can’t quite muster a correct Expression of Enthusiastic Assent. “The name of this species,” she pointed out, “is synonymous with dullness and slowness in the language of the Earth barbarians.” Well, one language out of several thousand—these creatures needed Imperial guidance more than any other world on record—but there was no point in confusing the rank and file.
More not-quite-looking. 455 bubbled a sigh and consulted her scanner. “That one,” she decided. “Alone in the separate pasture. Scans suggest that it’s a male, which means it’s probably weaker. Possibly it’s kept isolated so that the females don’t eat it before mating season. And yes, I know some of you are here on punishment detail, but you’re still soldiers of the Imperium. This squad is perfectly capable of handling a lone, helpless, pathetic male cow.”
I’m enjoying this immensely. Wait until the aliens try Australia for size…
It was a strange creature Tar'van glimpsed at on the vast island known to the humans as ‘Australia’.
“I would warn you not to fuck with us, mate.” Their forced guide, a prisioner, had warned with a chilling grin upon capture. “If you think a moose is bad, wait until you tango with a red back.” To this day Tar'van fears the creature known as the red back, and what horrors it would bring.
The prisioner turned out to be of little help,the stubboness of his people causing them to refuse the danger that the captured human warned of. Tar'van recalls a moment when one of his squad members approached a creature know as a dingo, insistent they had seen these creatures before and they were tame. They barely escaped with 5 of the original 7 members of his squad.
Another moment Tar'van recalls was the brutal mauling they witnessed by the hands of a creature called an ‘Emu’
“Don’t feel too bad,” the prisioner mocked. “We lost a war to the Emu’s as well.”
Now with only 4 members of their squad left, including themself, Tar'van had learned to listen to the prisoner, to be wary of the simplest of creatures. This human was of the sub-species of ‘Zookeeper’ after all.
The ‘Zookeeper’ looks off to the distance, where the creature is.
“It’s a kangaroo, leave it be and you’ll be fine.” Tar'van nods, a human signal of acknowledgement if they are correct. The human smiles a bit.
“That creature cannot possibly harm us.” Tar'van’s squadleader protests. “It is so docile. I will aproach it and bring back it’s head to show this human is a fearmongering liar.”
The human reels back, a look of disgust crosses their face and anger passes through their eyes.
“Fucking do it mate, I dare ya.” The human hisses. The squad leader puffs up their hoinn gland, a sign of pride to their species, and aproached the so called ‘Kangaroo’.
“This will be unpleasant.” A squadmate mutters as they watch their leader raise their fist and bring it down on the creature. The ‘Kangaroo’ looks a little stunned by the impact, before it raises itself upon its strong tail and uses its powerful heind legs to launch their squadleader backwards through the air.
Their squadleader lands upon the ground, unmoving with black blooded oozeing from them. It appears Tar'van is the squads leader now.
“I don’t know what they expected.” the human says, smugness filling their tone. “Kangaroos are fucking shreaded. 8-pack and all.”
Tar'van steps forward to the human, whom inches back in a sign of fear as Tar'van pulls their blade from its holster, and in their first act as leader, frees the human of the bonds around their hands.
“Please,” Tar'van bags. “Get us back safely.”
As the surviving human guerrillas destroy more and more zoological information, the invaders must turn to older and much less reliable sources to aide their strategy-making. After scouring many particularly old documents, a group of researchers found references to a horror that all other Earth-Beasts pale in comparison to. Causing quite a stir, more research was directed specifically towards these rare creatures, and these endeavors uncovered that these monsters have many detailed and complimentary references across thousands of cultures and thousands of years, including many contemporary ones.
Compiling the common features, the aliens set about crafting a new weapon that would be designed specifically to combat this as-of-yet unseen foe. Chief Engineer Cho-lo’ack, upon the completion of the prototype, personally escorted a human pilot around the experimental hangar, on the advice of a friend currently moving through “Os-t’raylee-ya.”
“Human, I would like to introduce to you our new fighter, the TY-0001 ‘EhgsK’al-aber’ after your primitive legends. It’s hull is perfectly curved at every angle, and has been reinforced with five times the average heat shielding, in addition to a liquid-nitrogen environmental temperature regulation system.” The ship hovered in the hangar, bobbing up and down gently, as the human eyed their own reflection in the sleek hull. Reaching out their hand, the human pilot touched the surface and found their fingers sliding off uncontrollably.
“Speaking of the environment system, the two pilots are seated here, in the rear of the craft, and are completely sealed in.” The alien gestured several tentacles towards what apparently was the back of the fighter. “The cabin is entirely invisible from the outside as a result, thus making it impossible to target the pilots themselves.
“In addition to these passive defensive measures, we have armed ‘
EhgsK’al-aber’ with a number of active defensive and offensive armaments. For example, these here are ‘air-o’ class projectiles.” The human turned to face the missile-like objects held in suspension beneath the glass floor. “Using precise heat-seeking capabilities modeled after several of your own human armaments, these weapons are able to detect missing armor plates, penetrate the exposed surface, and explode inside the target.
“Defensively, these spouts here are designed to allow two different chemicals to pass through the hull of the vessel.” The alien ducked below the craft and led the human to an exposed port in the hull. “The secondary pilot chooses either a harsh spray of liquid nitrogen or a flame-resistant foam that is able to force any penetrating objects from cracks or breaks in the vessel’s hull that may form from combat damage.
“Finally, the last defensive measure.” Withdrawing a small screen from their robe, the alien shows a scale model of the fighter. Suddenly, the hull of the model begins to crack and turn gold, soon sloughing off of the craft altogether and fragmenting into a dazzling array of gold specks fluttering through the air in a dense cloud. “When escape becomes the only option for the craft, either pilot will trigger the top layer of heat shield to crack and flake off of the craft, similar to many of your Earth-Beasts “molting” habits. The underside of this shielding layer is coated in purified gold flakes, gold having proven a suitable distraction, and allowing our pilots to escape.”
The human eyes the features of this strange vessel once more before speaking to the expectant captor. “This is all well and good, but what is it for?”
The alien clicks confidently before speaking.
“Dragons, of course.”
Karda’en had been sifting through rubble on zir research recovery expedition. Karda’en and their troop were scavenging a ‘Thee-ah-tar’ for information on the advice of their human captive, that may contain information they were looking for.
The human ‘Kim-bra-lee’ had already proven very useful in avoiding highly dangerous creatures that were seemingly harmless. Such as the ‘wra-bits’ creatures. Upon first spotting one, Kib-bra-lee had shouted “Run away!” repeatedly while attempting to flee. Karda’en after hearing of the many horrors that plague this planet knew better than to doubt the small female, and with her, xi and zir troops fled the area. The small creatures were, Karda’en was later told, able to decapitate a single human in a moment and could fend off large numbers of attacking humans with ease.
In zir expedition, they had already uncovered a wealth of information stored on rudimentary ‘Cel-oh-fane’ disks and viewed with light projectors. Kim-bra-lee showed them a wealth of information on creatures they had yet to encounter.
Among them were amorphous creatures able to consume and digest any bio organism within moments leaving no trace behind; which would explain the countless missing they had. Limbless creatures that could detect you by movement and swam underground as if it were water, solid stone and elevated structures were their only weaknesses. Relentless aquatic beasts able to sink moderate aquatic vessels that had too many teeth and were hard to kill. Parasitic organisms that gestate in it’s host body before violently bursting out of their chest cavities and grew into even deadlier beasts with acidic blood.
Worst of all was a creature that loomed over entire city structures. Kim-bra-lee had shown them a horrible beast called a ‘God-zil-ah’ a creature of their own creation by accident that, no matter what they did, they could not be rid of it. Even the violent fiery doom of a volcano could not stop this singular creature from returning.
It lives deep in the ocean, which explained why a creature of such mass avoided detection, but also the sheer exoskeleton crushing weight that it could endure spoke of it’s resistance to their weaponry. A single step could crush several dozen troops. Then there was the antenna quivering fact that it could breath massive beams of plasma that could certainly wipe out an entire fleet.
With hearing all the stories from injured troops, Karda’en was uncertain that invading this planet was a good idea, upon seeing the horrific creatures Kim-bra-lee showed them, Karda’en was now curtain it was not. For they had only scratched the surface of a world made of Monsters.
Ra’charr had been assigned to a mysterious land called “Louisiana.” He and his troops traversed through a hellish land called a “swamp.” Bizarre clumps of grayish stringy plants hung in long strands from the trees. Ra’charr quickly learned not to brush against the stringy things, for when he did, tiny red bugs, too small to see, would cover his body. The bugs spit a substance on his skin that liquefied the skin cells, leaving tiny pits and a horrendous itch. The itch was so tormenting that Ra’charr wanted to rip his skin off.
This “swamp” was filled with blood-sucking insects that were so numerous that Ra’charr and his crew breathed them in with every breath. Many of his soldiers were felled by the bite of a legless, slithering reptile with a short, fat body and a bright white mouth. The horrendous beasts were everywhere in great numbers.
After a few days of trekking, Ra’charr came across a human woman sitting on the front porch of her wood shack. She was wearing overalls and as soon as she sighted them, she grabbed her primitive projectile weapon . “Git off mah property!” she yelled.
Ra’charr pointed his paralyzer device at the woman and pressed a button. She instantly froze. Ra’charr noticed a fenced-in area containing large reptiles. He said, “Human, I will unfreeze you, but you must tell me what those creatures inside the fence are. We have heard about the many monsters of Earth and you must instruct us on them. If you attempt to use your projectile weapon on us, we will kill you.”
Ra’charr pressed the button again on his paralyzer.
The woman blinked. “Dem’s gators.”
“What are they for?”
“Fer eatin’.”
“Eating? We could use these gators. It has been days since we had protein nourishment. Hand over the gators.”
The human looked shocked and then a slow smile spread over her face. “Okay. Now, you want dem gators, just go up in they pen. They’s real nice like. Let you go on up to dem an’ pet dem an’ such.”
Ra’charr nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation, human. For this, I will spare your life.” He led his men to the gator pen. Once inside, one alien reached for a gator, and it grabbed his arm, dragged him under the water, and drowned him. The aliens screamed, but it was too late for most of them. The gators were grabbing the men and drowning them. Some were ripping off limbs. The gators were immune to the paralyzers, having primitive brains, and no matter how hard the aliens punched or kicked the gators, they could not get free. The gators’ mouths gripped their prey like a vice. Many gators were fighting each other for scraps of alien flesh.
Only Ra’charr and two other men made it out alive. They ran in terror, and heard gunshot as they fled. Devious, wicked human! She had lied! Clearly, these swamp people were some of the toughest humans to live in this wretched place and to view the horrible gators as a tasty treat.
I love how this keeps expanding. And yes, that is my swamp people.
Ma’thek and his squad wondered, when they first saw the human residence, why it had not been destroyed like many of its neighbors. The rural areas of this world were proving somewhat…difficult…to pacify, but this area had been more or less swept clean.
However, there was one area that was still marked blank on their maps. A captured hu-man, when asked about the place, had just said “Oh, well, that’s the Phillips place. Nice people, buy honey from her now and then”
He’d then cackled. “You think you’re goin’ there? Boy, if you thought the farm was bad…”
He’d refused to say anything else. Ma’thek had consulted with Investigations and discovered that ‘honey’ was a sweet sugary food product somehow distilled from flowers, though the process was vague. He’d learned by now not to underestimate this planet, but apparently this food product was not made from toxic plants. He agreed to take a squad in.
The human home, when they found it, seemed ordinary. Isolated, with much land around it. Oddly, the land was dotted with dozens of painted wooden boxes. In among the boxes a female hu-man was working at something.
The boxes seemed to contain insect colonies. Ma’thek was instantly suspicious. However, some extended observation of the female reassured them. She was not wearing any sort of protective clothing, and the insects were swarming around her without any apparent harm.
They advanced. The hu-man female looked up. She seemed neither surprised nor intimidated by their pretense.
“I thought you lot learned your lesson the first three times.” She said. Ma’thek was poor at deciphering the more subtle inflections of hu-man speech, but she was smiling. That was usually a sign of welcome, wasn’t it? Oddly contrasting to her words…
“We have come to take you into custody.” He chirred, and revealed his trap-gun.
“Yeah. Figured.” The hu-man calmly turned back to the box and the swarming insects. “Sorry, girls. You know I hate doing this.”
She seemed to be addressing the insect colony. Odd..
And then, in one smooth motion, the female lifted a box off of the stack she was working on and hurled it at Ma’thek. He quickly shifted back from the poor attack, clicking in amusement.
And then his pheromone receptors caught a hint of…something.
Insects boiled out of the box. Angry insects. As the hint of pheromones grew stronger, insects began swarming from the nearby colonies too.
And then they began stinging.
The following few minutes were pandemonium. Ma’thek and his team fled, shrieking, but the insects chased them. Every sting injected more venom, and they began choking and stumbling one by one, unable to breathe.
One of the last things Ma’thek saw before he asphixiated was the human female ambling over. The small insects were swarming around her, but she seemed only mildly irritated. She leaned over and picked up his trap-gun.
“Sooner or later.” She said. “You lot are going to learn to stay away from me and my girls.”
“How…” He managed to croak.
She grinned again, and Ma’thek belatedly remembered that showing teeth was a display of dominance and aggression in primates as well as a greeting. “Beekeeper. I’m immune any more. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go put that hive back together. Thanks for the gun”
In a desperate effort to reduced the casualty rate, the Admiral of the renowned 45th System Expeditionary Division approved aerial reconnaissance drones, both piloted and remotely controlled.
The initial peacekeeping operations on each landmass had used nanobot swarms, but the volatile humidity levels and sheer numbers of microbial life forms caused too much interference for the swarms to remain cohesive. Strategic intelligence analysis at the Fleet level had determined that the most efficient option was to provide each squad with their own drone.
This decision was not without some debate, as many suspected that squads with true-born leadership would be shown favoritism over lab-born squads. Legally, the supply chain was free from discrimination, but alleged “clerical errors” still occurred on occasion.
Eventually, the Admiral agreed to the controversial resupply plan. Xe had no other options if the peacekeeping forces were to make up for lost time. Field units on every major landmass were behind schedule, and the Admiral already had strained relations with the Internal Inquisitions Department. Failure would not be tolerated any longer.
The barbarian natives had no difficulties misleading them, because even they were generally unaware of the fatal flaw in this plan. Although an appreciable number of them had used primitive combustion-based flying machines, their own records reported good safety statistics. They hadn’t developed advanced nanobot swarms, and in fact they had barely started using inefficient remote-controlled aircraft for combat.
Nobody ever saw it coming:
To the shock and horror of all involved, more than 65% of the reconnaissance drones had been damaged or destroyed within 20 rotations. Even after the Intelligence Analysts had assured Fleet Command that “dragons” were fiction, a mere “distraction meant to waste production resources”, it was revealed that “eagles” were both very real and very widespread. In fact, small numbers of the natives would claim to know of training eagles for cooperative hunting.
There would be a crackdown for this collective deception, of course, but it couldn’t return the wasted time or erase the controversy. Many of the natives had allegedly shouted “The eagles are coming! The eagles are coming!”, which was eventually traced back to a common light projection erroneously classified as “fantasy”. It was re-categorized as “history” immediately, calling the classification of “dragons” into review.
With stoic, proud purring, the Admiral surrendered the ceremonial war hammer of xis bloodline to be ejected into interstellar space. It had been determined that ritual suicide was not required for this level of shame, but the failure still warranted exile to an imperial colony world. Admiral no more, xe and all of xis genetic descendants would be removed from the glorious warrior caste.
Maulgar, the warrior king of the Writonians was called to the small rock in the Milky Way to assist with the hunting down and destruction of the hellbeasts living on the new colony. As he entered earths atmosphere, his intelligence officer was filling him in on the latest findings. The Hu-mans were tough and resilient. Maulgar and his group if warriors were instructed to wear methane masks, as Oxygen was extremely toxic to most life forms in the galaxy.
“These hu-mans” he asked, “how do they survive in such hostile and toxic conditions?”
Grapthor responded by showing the King a chart of human anatomy. “Human lungs are capable of transmitting oxygen to their bloodstream. It is suggested that this may be the source of their resiliency on this planet. Humans can live with missing limbs, eyes and even a few of their vital organs. They have survived plagues that wiped out entire civilizations!”
Maulgar was interested in learning more about these humans after his first reconnaissance patrol.
little did he know, it would be his last.
Maulgar, Grapthor, and several of his soldiers patrolled a desolate wasteland known as “de-troyt” with information that there is a human resistance faction in the city. Clad in power armor, him and his men approached a small structure on the outskirts of the city. There were life forms detected inside, but Maulgar and his intelligence officer were confused. How can such a structure house 80 different individual life forms?
As they reached the front of the building, the door opened, and a human female came out. She was one of their elders. Maulgar was told they were wise, weak and harmless. “Oh, hello there young men, how can I help you?”
“I AM MAULGAR!” he shouted through his mask “Warrior king of the Writhonians! We have detected life forms inside your house, who are you hiding?”
“My my dear, those are just my babies, nothing to be scared of!” Would you like to come inside?”
Maulgar was aware of the deceitful nature of humans. “No, you shall come with us!” He pointed to some of his men. “Nivlac, Nimajneb, Noutcar, go see who’s inside!”
The soldiers disappeared into the house but maintained contact through radio.
“This is Noutcar, i’m not seeing anyone inside, wait….”
The radio buzzed
“Something just moved, NIVLAC! Go check inside that waste repository area!”
Maulgar waited for further information.
“Sir, this is Nivlac, I found a couple boxes that appear to be full of some sort of soil containing black rocks.”
“Nivlac, gather the boxes, they may be some sort of weapon.” The king responded.
“Nimajneb, status report.”
the radio was silent.
“Nimaj-” Maulgar was cut off by a loud scream through the radio followed by a hellish sound and coughing as the oxygen slowly killed Nim. “NIVLAC! NOUTCAR! EVACUATE!” he screamed, but it was too late. More screeching sounds came over the radio as whatever demons resided in the house attacked and killed them by ripping holes in their methane supplies. Maulgar turned to the elder, furious.
“WOMAN! WHAT SORT OF MONSTERS ARE YOU KEEPING!”
The old lady smiled.
“oh, why those are just my kitties of course!”
The door flew open. a choking writhonian stumbled forth and a small army of furry creatures of various colors with sharp claws and jagged teeth burst through the doorway and jumped on the soldiers.
From that day forward, legends were told about the one the humans referred to as the “Crazy cat lady” and her legion of demons that killed the Writhonians.
Scho'tekh stumbled through a feild filled with what the native hu-mans called “corn.” his air sacks hurting with every breath of oxygen rich air he took. He could feel the blood slowly dripping down his lower appendages. He had started in a squad of 10 but it was down to him.
He slumped into the soil, scanning the area around him with his infantry blaster. He had seen countless battles, killed many enemies, both of his own species and others. But nothing could prepare him for what he had come across on their patrol.
They had encountered creatures of this kind before, most just fleeing when in close proximity. But these were different.
They came in massive numbers, their terrible crys echoing as they ripped and tore at his comrades eyes and body plating. They seemed attracted to the glimmer of their bright white scales that covered their most vulnerable areas around what the hu-mans would call their vascular system.
“You can’t run very far!” A voice echoed from the distance. It was the young earth male they had captured as their guide through this rural area. “As long as the sun is I’m the sky they will find you!” he laughed, obviously enjoying the torment Scho'tekh was enduring.
But the male was right. It was only seconds later that the fearsome cry rang out as the so called “bird” swooped from a nearby tree, followed by dozens more. Scho'tekh gave out a final cry as he was swarmed by these “seagulls,” feeling their beaks tear into his body, pulling his scales away. His last moments spent in pain and horror as this planet claimed yet another life.
The mountains (which the hoo-mans could not agree on a name for, and none of their names followed reasonable conventions - one ridiculous name was ‘the Smokies,’ despite the lack of volcanism in the region) had turned into a prime hiding place for hoo-man rebels. The people were incredibly belligerent, inclined towards fighting until the death of their entire side. They were also heavily armed, with enough local production of food that attempts to starve them had proven ineffective. The Admiral had repeatedly vetoed proposals to just set the entire range on fire.
Fortunately, the area apparently lacked the deadly wildlife endemic to much of the cursed planet, it having been driven out by the hoo-man settlers.
Captain Xhi’g’ptl’s squad approached the mountains as night fell one day in the late fall, having received reliable intelligence as to the location of a rebel base. The thin wisps of fog would hopefully hide their shuttle’s silhouette
The mist thickened rapidly as night descended, and they swiftly became lost. Their hoo-man guide protested when Xhi’g’ptl turned on the lights (having decided to sacrifice stealth for navigation; it was near dawn, anyways, past their window for a raid), but was quickly silenced.
They never saw the mountainside.
Miraculously, Xhi’g’ptl survived the crash, though the same could not be said for much of xir crew, as the g-forces of the crash tore them apart. The hoo-man appeared slightly dazed, but its skin had held together. Two guards, from a more durable strain, were all that was left of Xhi’g’ptl’s crack team.
“Told ya so,” the hoo-man said, lifting its bound wrists to rub at its head. “Never turn on your brights in the fog.”
Xhi’g’ptl backhanded the hoo-man, dizzy with anger and pain. The hoo-man barely reacted.
A low, baying call echoed from the darkness. Xhi’g’ptl’s frills rose in tension, and the guards all hissed. “What is that, hoo-man?” xe snapped.
The hoo-man tilted its head to the side, listening, then grinned. “Oh them? That’d be Old Lady Williams’ hounds. Seems like they’ve got a scent.”