Touchdown

Jia Siang, Shanxi. March 13, 2157 AD

Michael Finnegan (Finn to his friends) adjusted his exographic targeting sensor, the damn thing never sat right on his head, and tried to make out what the aliens were doing. And, no surprise, they were doing the exact same thing that they had been doing ever since they landed, unloading cargo. After the alien fleet had arrived over Shanxi General Williams had ordered all military personnel not guarding civilians to scatter, he hadn't wanted people to congregate in great numbers and get taken out by orbital strikes. Turned out to be a wise decision seeing as how the aliens had blasted Baikal, Caspian, and Loch Ness to dust. They had also bombarded the airports and spaceports, but not as thoroughly. Finn had been part of a group soldiers hiding out in a strip mall near the Mao Zedong Spaceport so he, along with three other men, had been ordered by their commanding officer to go investigate. They had actually been forbidden from getting too close in case it was a trap by the aliens to lure people in to look for survivors before shooting again. However, it turned out the aliens had a different plan for the spaceport, they were using it as a base. It made sense when Finn thought about it, they had a building that was heavily reinforced to withstand a crash from spaceship along with plenty of space to land and take off from, as well as plenty of empty rooms designed to hold excess cargo. Finn gave the aliens credit, they were well organized. After their initial landing, they had conducted a room-to-room search of the entire complex (unfortunately, about three dozen civilians had decided the spaceport was a good place to hide out and had been captured though the aliens hadn't harmed them yet) and then set up a pretty secure perimeter and only after all that had the cargo transporters started landing.

"Looks like they are planning on staying for the long haul based on the amount of crap they're unloading," Finn said to his partner, Yon Yonson.

"Yea, I'd like to say that that means they are overconfident and so they will be in for a surprise when we kick their asses but considering how they beat the defense fleet. . ." Yon trailed off, letting the thought hang in the air.

"Tell me about it, hell, I haven't even gotten a chance to take out any officers because I can't tell who's freaking in charge over there. Bastards are almost as efficient as the Borg. Makes me wish I hadn't hauled this heavy-ass gun through the damn swamp," Finn complained. His gun, a TR-116 rifle, was some experimental new slug-thrower developed by the Borg. It synced up with his targeting sensor and could (somehow) shoot through walls. Finn understood the basics of how his targeting sensor could see through walls, measuring wavelengths that passed through objects and whatnot, but he had no idea how the drones managed to figure out a way to get a bullet to pass through walls. The only thing that confused him more than the workings of the gun was how a batch of the things ended up being assigned to his unit. Sure, they were all good snipers, but they were stationed on Shanxi, it wasn't exactly a planet brimming with conflict. Then again, it was the first planet to got invaded by aliens so what did he know.

"Hey, it was your idea to take the side of the spaceport with all the nature. Schmidty and Jingles only took the north end because you wanted to take this route," Yon retorted.

"I know, I know. I just didn't like the idea of spying on the aliens via a bunch of stores which probably still have civvies hiding inside. This way if we get caught it's just us. Speaking of," Finn pushed a button on his wrist computer and his radio activated. "Schmidty I'm not seeing any change in behavior, how are things on your end?"

Finn and Yon's earpieces crackled to life as John Schmidt's voice came over the line. "Well, they moved all the civvies into an area with bathroom access, so that's a potentially disgusting crisis averted but beyond that I got nothing important. The aliens did finally give up on trying to get any information out of them, guess the language barrier was too much."

"I wonder if our translators work on their speech? I doubt other species have a bunch tech savvy drones sharing thoughts inventing things, we've got to be more advanced than them on something," Finn said.

"Judging from the reactions I saw, I would have to say that the captured civvies have no clue what the aliens were saying. Plus, the only reason our translators work so well isn't just a matter of technology, its also the fact that the Borg have such a huge knowledge base of languages because of how many people they've assimilated," Schmidty answered. "It's not like you or I could hack our earpieces and program in a new language."

"So the Borg need to assimilate one of the aliens before we can understand them. . .you know there has got to be at least one drone somewhere on this planet-"

Finn was interrupted by a new voice coming on the line, Schmidty's partner, Jacob Jingleheimer. "If you ladies don't have any vital information to relay I suggest you shut the hell up before you give away one of our positions. If an alien race has the technology to travel between solar systems I think they've probably figured out how to triangulate radio waves so we should try to keep the jibber-jabbing to a minimum!"

"Right, sorry! Finn out," Finn said as he shut off his radio.

"Jingles sure sounded angry," Yon said.

"Can't really blame him, he's right. There's no guarantee that were safe right now. Just because we're hard to see doesn't mean we're hard to detect. Plus, there's the fact that if we're talking to each other we aren't paying attention to the aliens."

"Well technically, you're supposed to to be paying attention to the aliens, I'm just supposed to make sure no one comes near us."

"Yon, you're acting like a five year old. I know you prefer to be the sniper but we're supposed to rotate the pos-whoa hold on," Finn said, looking more closely through his targeting sensor.

Finn activated his radio, "Schmidty, I have what appears to be a VIP getting out of the shuttle that just landed. I'm gonna try and take him out unless you or Jingles can think of a reason not to."

"We were only supposed to do reconnaisse but screw it, they gave us these guns for a reason. Fire away, but after he's down run like hell, we don't know if they will be able to figure out where the shot came from," Jingles answered. "We'll hold position and see what their response is."

"Roger that," Finn said as he took careful aim at the target. There was no guarantee that this guy was vital to the war effort but based on how every alien at least turned to acknowledge the guy he had to be an officer of some sort (or maybe he was just really well liked). Regardless, Finn waited till the alien had passed into the building before he pulled the trigger. Hopefully, the guy getting sniped while inside would throw some confusion among the aliens. Finn saw the alien's shields flare up briefly flare up before its head exploded.

"Target's down Yon!" Finn exclaimed as he quickly stuffed his rifle into its carrying case.

"After one shot? What, did he not have personal shielding on or something?" Yon asked as he scanned the surrounding area for any approaching aliens.

"Oh he did, it just didn't do any good," Finn said as he hefted the rifle case onto his back. The two men slipped into the waist deep water of the swamp and began making their way away from the spaceport.

"So either the TR-116 is that good or their shields are that bad," Yon reasoned.

"Probably the former but I hope it's the latter."

Yushan Mountain Range, Shanxi. March 13, 2157 AD

Fred shivered in the cold. He was sitting atop one of the buildings of the Pua Aloalo Observatory looking through a pair of binoculars at alien ships landing at New Beijing. Last night when Kevin had tried to watch Revenge of the Radioactive Mutant Space Dwarves the television had instead played an emergency broadcast explaining that Shanxi was going to be invaded by aliens. Neither man had any clue what to do after that so they just locked all the doors in the Observatory and had waited. They didn't have to wait long, no sooner had they sat down that the ground started shaking. Fred and Kevin had gone outside and could see it was the aliens launching orbital strikes on New Beijing. When the bombardment had stopped Kevin had gone back inside but Fred had decided to stay out and observe. Fred wasn't really sure why he had decided to watch. It wasn't like there was anything he could do, hell he couldn't even make out anything vital at this distance, but he still felt he had to sit outside and watch. Oddly enough, one of the first alien ships to come down had landed about halfway between the Observatory and New Beijing. Fred hadn't understood that, it was the only ship to do it, all the others landed in the city. At one point Fred had seen an explosion occur in the area around where the ship landed but no other ships had come to investigate so he wasn't sure what the deal was.

Fred's thoughts were interrupted by a loud cacophony of noises. As he strained to listen Fred realized it was some kind of machine, though it was in terrible condition. He could make out grinding gears, sputtering of steam valves, and a high pitched whine. Right before Fred stood up to go see what the hell Kevin had done he heard a very familiar sound, the sound of a truck horn honking. Fred whipped his head around to look at the road leading up to the Observatory. He saw Mike's truck driving up the hill. The truck looked like hell; its cargo container was simply gone, the cabin's roof was smashed in, smoke was pouring out from under the hood, and all the tires were deflated. Fred had no idea how Mike had managed to drive that truck up the mountain in that condition. Fred hopped up from his seat and ran to the door. On his run through the building he grabbed Kevin and the two quickly ran out the front of the building just as Mike's truck limped its way into the complex.

"Andropov's grainy scotch, what happened?" Kevin asked in shock.

Fred was about to reply when his brain processed what Kevin said. Fred turned to the younger man with a look of disbelief on his face. "Shanxi is being invaded by aliens, Mike shows up in a nearly ruined vehicle, and your first thought is to quote Attack. Of. The. Radio. Active. Mutant. Space. Dwarves?!"

Kevin looked at Fred sheepishly. "Sorry, but I was so hyped to watch the sequel that its all I've been thinking of."

Fred didn't even know what to say so he just shook his head in silence. When Mike's truck finally ground to a halt and the door to the cab opened Mike half-stepped, half-fell out of it. Kevin and Fred rushed forward to check on him. His clothes were torn and dirty, he was covered in cuts, bruises, and blood, the left half of his body was singed from some kind of fire, and he was barely conscious.

"Geez Mike, how did you make the drive up here in this condition? Kevin, grab his feet, we need to get him inside and check his injuries."

Jia Siang, Shanxi. March 13, 2157 AD

"You sure Schmidty?" Jingles asked his partner.

"I'm telling man, not one alien has made its way over to where Finn and Yon were hiding when Finn took the shot. Granted, I can't see the entire spaceport from here but I can see the swamp and no one has gone in there," Schmidty answered as he scanned the spaceport.

"What about the hostages? They catch any flack for it?"

Schmidty sighed. "Unfortunately, yea. They all got roughed up when the aliens did a weapons search on them. There was shouting and shoving, nothing too bad though."

"Well, hate to say this but. . .sucks for them. If the aliens can't figure out where the shot came from that is great news for us and if the civvies get blamed for it, that means we aren't being hunted." Jingles felt bad for saying it, but there simply wasn't any way around it. The broadcast signal had told everyone to grab a gun and find somewhere to hide, these people hadn't grabbed guns and had chosen a big, open spaceport to hide in. What did they expect was going to happen?

"That's a little harsh man, its one thing to not rescue hostages but to actively engage in behavior that will endanger them, I dunno, I don't feel comfortable doing that."

"Schmidty," Jingles said as he patted his friend on the back. "I realize that its not the honorable or, hell, even the moral thing to do but you have to realize something: in war victory doesn't need an explanation and defeat doesn't care about excuses. We are trapped on a back-end planet, with no hope of evac, with an alien fleet in orbit that not only destroyed every ship we had in the system but also has not hesitated to blast our buildings into craters. So you tell me, which would you prefer, a beautiful loss or an ugly win?"

Before Schmidty had the chance to answer a voice came over the radio. "This is Yon, Schmidty, Jingles, you there?"

"Jingles here, how are you and Finn doing Yon?"

"Safely made it back to base camp, didn't see any aliens following us, Lieutenant wants to know what happened at Mao after we high tailed it outta there."

"You can tell him that there was a lot of running around looking for you guys, but they never figured out where the shot came from. They interrogated the civvies and did a fair amount of climbing through the hard-to-reach places looking but didn't turn up anything. I'm guessing they don't have any technology similar to the TR-116," Schmidty said.

There was a pause as Yon relayed the information to their Lieutenant. "Lieutenant says you are no longer on reconnaisse and that you can take out as many aliens as you want. Finn and I are getting sent back out to help, make sure to keep mobile, last thing we want is the aliens getting their hands on our rifles because we stayed in one spot too long."

"Roger that, picking my targets now," Schmidty said. "Jingles, since they don't seem to have officers down that I'm gonna take out anyone by themselves first. Once they figure out people are dropping let's move to a new location."

"Sound like a plan," Jingles said. He started re-evaluating their surroundings. Whereas before he had only been on the lookout for approaching enemies, now Jingles also had to plot out possible courses to new sniper perches. The two men were at the entrance of an alley between some kind of flower shop and a bakery. This entire street was on a high rise overlooking the Mao spaceport that was primarily populated by tourist trap type businesses. Glancing down the road, Jingles saw an electronics store with a big neon sign atop its roof. Could lay underneath the sign for some more shots. There was probably a way up there in the back of the building and if not, they could always just parkour it.

As Jingles looked down the alley he heard the soft bang of Schmidty firing a shot. Jingles was impressed with how little sound the rifle made, the only guns he had ever heard quieter than that were nadion particle beam phasers though with their long, bright, easily traceable beams those guns weren't really conducive to guerrilla tactics. When it came to hit-and-run sniping, there wasn't a gun better suited for the task than the TR-116 with a synced exographic targeting sensor, provided you were strong enough to carry the gun of course. Weight usually tended to be a problem with first generation Borg weapons, they were either so heavy they gave you a hernia or so light you forgot you were holding them.

Jingles still remembered Schmidty's surprise when the kid had first been assigned to Shanxi and found out that Jingles collected Borg weapons as a hobby.

"Yea, I've got at least one of every kind of gun the Collective sold after 2084," Jingles had explained. "Everything from electrolasers to vortex gas guns. I even got a photon torpedo mounted above the fireplace."

"There is no possible way it's legal for anyone to own a photon torpedo, they have antimatter warheads for crying out loud!" Schmidty had exclaimed.

"On Alliance planets, which I'm guessing you grew up on, you're right, but my house is on Ego so it ain't a problem."

"Why would the Borg even sell you a photon torpedo?"

"For the same reason they sold me the Plutonium Gun, because I had the money to pay for it," Jingles had explained.

"You own a Desolator?" Jingles had been impressed that Schmidty had known what the Plutonium Gun was. Most people only knew the gun by the moniker given to it by the media, the Desolator, which, to be fair, wasn't an inaccurate nickname. The gun transmitted magnetic fields through plutonium isotopes stored in the gun, creating a concentrated stream of radioactive ionic waves that desolated anything organic in its path. The gun had been outlawed by the System Alliance and had actually prompted a 'radioactive' weapons banning by the Geneva Conventions after a some nutjob took one to a school killed over one hundred people, the worst school shooting in human history.

"Theoretically I do. It's one of the few guns I own that I've never actually used so they could have just sold me a very expensive inoperable replica."

"I just cannot fathom why the Borg would sell that gun to anyone. . .hell, even after the Aurillac School Massacre, that gun still isn't as bad a photon torpedo, those things can destroy a city when they go off. Why would anyone other than the military need one of those?" Jingles had never seen a person so depressed, confused, and simultaneously shocked as Schmidty had been when asking that question.

"You know, when it was being delivered to my house my neighbors came over to see what I was getting and when they found out they asked that same question. Before I had a chance to answer one of the drones did, any idea what they said?"

"I honestly have no idea," Schmidty had said.

"The drones said 'A government, and by extension, a military, is nothing more than a group of citizens. Therefore, to make something legal for the government but illegal for the citizens is both tyrannical and illogical.' Now you can say what you want about the Borg, how they are uncaring, evil husks that don't understand humanity, but you gotta understand something: if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. I live on Ego despite being an Alliance citizen, but I get treated the same way as citizens of the Collective who get treated the exact same as a freaking Alliance Fleet Admiral. Why do you think so many of the high and mighty types don't ever visit planets under the Collective's banner? It's because they know they won't get special treatment."

Jingles shook his head, now was not the time to be reminiscing. Besides, Schmidty was no longer the wet-behind-the-ears, naive rookie that he had been when he first got assigned to the unit. He was a competent soldier that had a better grasp of how the universe worked. Granted, he was still a kid to Jingles, Finn or Yon probably would have made for a better partner but both loved to argue about anything they could whereas Schmidty was at least willing to shut up and learn.

"They just noticed when I took out my fifth guy, time to move Jingles!" Schmidty said as he shoved the TR-116 into its carrying case and swung it over his shoulder.

Yushan Mountain Range, Shanxi. March 14, 2157 AD

Michael awoke with a start, quickly taking note of his surroundings. He was inside a building that he hoped was the Observatory. The room he was in was small, the only furniture was a dresser and the bed he was laying in. Michael looked down at his body, he was only in a pair of underwear though it was hard to tell because he was wrapped in so many bandages he may have well have been a mummy. As he tried to sit up the door to the room opened and Kevin walked in.

"Mike, you're awake! I was just on a bathroom break, man figures you would wake up when no one was in the room. How are you feeling?"

"Been better. . .been worse. Were my injuries really so bad that you guys felt the need to cocoon me in gauze?" Michael said as he gestured at himself.

"I have no idea," Kevin said, raising his hands up defensively. "Fred was the one that did everything, I just handed him the stuff he told me to. Speaking of Fred, lemme go get him so you can explain what happened."

As Kevin left the room Michael tried to take better stock of his injuries. Michael stretched out his limbs and decided that he could feel all of his extremities and that their movement didn't seem hampered. All things considered, Michael was actually doing pretty good considering how much his body had been screaming at him on the drive up the mountain.

"Mike, how are you feeling? Hope my makeshift medicinal skills didn't make anything worse?" Fred said as he entered the room, followed by Kevin.

"I actually feel pretty good, though I have to ask, why am I covered in bandages? Shouldn't Medi-gel have worked fine for this?"

Fred snorted. "Yea right, like our bosses would send us Medi-gel. We make do with the knock-off brand that only comes in cloth form. Still, it gets the job done, once I had removed all the shrapnel from you that is. You're damn lucky I used to own a farm and was too cheap to hire surgeons for the animals otherwise you'd be SOL right now."

"Mike, does that mean you really were attacked by the aliens? What happened exactly?" Kevin asked.

"After the radio announcement about the invasion I decided to head to my house, but en route, I found myself in an ambush situation. Seems the bastards had seen me from above and so set up on the road ahead. Must have been a couple dozen of the things! They were all armed and had their weapons pointed at my truck. One of them shouted something at me and gestured that he wanted me to come out." Michael chuckled. "Well, I knew I had that cannon installed under the truck cab for a reason so that took out the first group but the damn thing only points forward and there were more of them on the sides that I hadn't seen and they started shooting. I returned fire with the guns I keep in the passenger seat but didn't have a good angle. I knew I wasn't getting out of there alive and decided I would take out as many of them as I could. Sheer luck I saw their transport shuttle through the trees, so I just popped it into six-wheel and drove straight at it. Now either their shuttles don't have mass effect shields or they turned it off when they landed because I didn't see so much as a damn flicker while I shooting at it. I must have made a lucky shot with the cannon because as I was driving towards it the whole thing exploded! That's what did the majority of the damage to my truck. Blew me all the way back onto the road, somehow I landed upright though my trailer ripped off in midair, don't know where it landed. At that point I'm just in shock that I ain't dead so I slam on the gas and just start driving. Aliens didn't even shoot at me while I left and I know I didn't kill them all."

Kevin stared at Michael in awe for several seconds before speaking. "I knew you kept several guns in the cab but you had a cannon mounted under your truck? Damn Mike, you really put a whole new shine on the word 'overkill.' Course, it did just save your life so maybe I shouldn't judge. . ."

Michael shrugged. "Some people think I'm paranoid, over-prepared, maybe even a little crazy. . .but they never met any alien life forms did they?"

"Wait, I just realized something," Fred said, his voice suddenly full of urgency. "Mike, you said you were sure you didn't kill all the aliens right?"

"Yea, only about a dozen or so but they were flanking me when I was first stopped so they were well outside of the blast radius when the shuttle detonated."

"Well, what do you think there next plan of action is? There is only the one road from here to the New Beijing suburbs. So either they radioed for a pick up back to their fleet, decided to meet up with their fellows in New Beijing, or are on their way here," Fred reasoned.

"Whichever it is, I've been laying in bed long enough," Michael said as he swung his feet off the bed. "Come on, we need to get all the weapons out of my truck since there is no way I'm going to be able to make the trip home in that thing. What sort of defenses does this place have anyway?"

"Kevin and I each have hand-held phasers," Fred said as Michael stood up. "Though I don't know if their weapon settings even work. We've only ever used the tool functions."

"That's what you get for using Borg tech instead of good ole human ingenuity."

Michael saw Fred roll his eyes at that statement. While Michael and Fred generally agreed on pretty much everything the Borg were the one point of contention in their friendship. Michael didn't understand how lackadaisical Fred was about the drones. Fred didn't deny that the Borg were mindless slaves to their own collective consciousness that were utterly lacking in morals, but he didn't believe that they were out to take over humanity either. Fred's opinion of the Borg could best be described as 'meh' which boggled Michael to no end.

"Seeing as how the phasers have more uses than a Swiss Army Knife with a blowtorch attachment, I think human ingenuity can go screw itself," Kevin said, throwing in his two cents.

As Michael opened his mouth to retort Fred cut in, "Look Mike, you don't have to use the Borg tech. Let's just gather all possible weapons and then we can analyze the situation and see what the best course of action is."

"Fine," Michael agreed. "But I need some pants first."