Chapter 1 – Welcome to the Jungle
He leaned forward slightly from his cover to take a peek – then ducked back down as fast as he could as he caught sight of the massive alien cannon-like gun turned his way. A couple of seconds later, green plasma flew overhead and smashed into the metallic walls. Even some distance away from it, he could still feel the heat radiating.
"This is Shaojie, requesting support. The Muton is suppressing me, I cannot get clear shot with rocket, and I have no sight on Ethereal. Over."
"Roger. This is Darrell. Hunker down Shaojie, rocket incoming. Also, you know you shouldn't be so verbose right? Over." After hearing that, Zhang was about to reply after hunkering down when there was a louder-than-usual explosion. The rocket had been fired – and the plasma was still splashing in his general direction, albeit with significantly worse aim than before.
"Shaojie, blindfire counter-suppress the Muton. Everyone else, move in!"
"WILCO". Five to six different voices filtered in on the radio. He took it in, and raised his gun from his cover, just enough to fire in the aliens' general direction per his orders. As soon as he felt that he had the correct direction, he squeezed down the trigger. An indeterminate but short amount of time later, he heard updates on his radio.
"Muton dead! Ethereal doing something psionic!" Annette's French-accented voice, tinged with trace amounts of panic given her past.
Shaojie rose up. He had since stopped firing his gun, given that the Muton was declared dead, but now, as he took in the sight of the awkwardly-shaped room that was their battlefield, he could see the Ethereal seemed wounded – it was sluggish but struggling to do something with the unknown device.
The unknown device, big and tall and circular in shape, was glowing ominously. And then suddenly, the purple glow in the center churned and twisted into an unknown but recognizable sight: another alien ship!
"The Ethereal is trying to escape! That alien device is a gateway!" Shaojie yelled into the radio.
"Roger! All units fire on the Ethereal! Annette, Alon, throw your grenades at it! If we can't kill it in time we can at least make that gateway unusable!" Squad Leader Darrell issued the orders, and Shaojie was slightly impressed – he hadn't thought to destroy the gateway or render it unusable, merely focused on killing the Ethereal. It made sense though, as the gateway might be weaker than the Ethereal's so-far ridiculous toughness – it had taken a rocket, plasma and alloy cannon(s) and was still not yet dying.
Darrell's plan worked, although not in the optimal way: the gateway seemed to destabilize as the colors returned, bleeding into the picture of the alien ship, rendering it purple and hazy and fuzzy, before vanishing completely in the prior swirling purple vortex. The Ethereal screeched loudly, turning around to face them, its four arms holding glowing balls of purple.
Then the gateway flared brightly and spat out something.
That something was black, and that was all Shaojie saw before he saw it crash into the Ethereal, knocking it down. A closer look showed that the thing was actually humanoid in shape if not too much so in appearance. It was as if someone had decided to make a thick, bulky but not overly so armor composed of muscle fibers and strands and painted them black. Even as he ruminated on this, he still had his gun up and pointed at the two entangled beings.
"Annette, Alon, move up and taser them. Everyone else cover them!"
"WILCO" He replied along with the squad as they all surrounded the aliens at a safe distance apart from Annette and Alon.
BZZZ, went the two Arc Throwers, and the small movements of both aliens ceased. They were down. Annette and Alon then proceeded to restrain them.
"Alright, mission complete people. Good work today! We'll have presents for everyone back home, what with all these shiny and newfangled toys!"