"Fay?" Slippy worriedly croaked.
In a panic, she stood up from the office chair she was sitting in. Before she could have tried to run, wherever that would have been, some kind of energy wave hit her. This elicited a yelp as she fell backward into her office chair, which fell backward with her in it. The assailant came into view soon after and proceeded to remove a small power cell of some kind to reload its weapon.
They all looked on at the screen, shocked at what they were seeing. The creature was tall and skinny, with a disproportionately large head, grey skin, no earlobes, and bottomless black eyes. It was wearing a white, loosely fit armored jumpsuit with fur lining the ends of the sleeves and something similar to a Russian ushanka hat with a chin strap on its head.
If anything, most of the shock factor came from the fact that Fay had just been shot by an alien whose species hadn't been officially contacted. Nothing was known about it.
Before the creature finished reloading its weapon and aimed again, Fay started erratically vocalizing off screen, then an audible sizzling noise started followed by a series of awful shrieks from the poor canine. The alien seemingly felt pity for her since it immediately holstered its weapon and drew a second pistol from the holster in front of its secondary sidearm. Slippy promptly fainted before the alien proceeded fire the newly revealed induction pistol into Fay multiple times, causing the room to go silent again. Katt just sat there slack-jawed.
A moment more of shocked silence passed before the alien dropped the ballistic pistol with a visibly horrified look on its face.
The creature disgustedly and gutterally exclaimed something in its native language, quickly unholstering and disassembling the first weapon and stuffing the separate parts in a bag around its waist. The creature turned to look at the desk and then the monitor. Its expression went from disgusted horror to "Uh-oh.", then it looked to the left of the camera when the sound of an energy weapon discharge rang out in the background. The call cut off abruptly, leaving the two shocked vulpines, feline, and unconscious toad in silence.
9:41 PM FT, K.E.S. Neçaì. Three minutes ago.
In orbit over Fichina, a relatively large saucer-shaped craft remained motionless, hovering miles and miles above the Spaniel residence.
Its halls bustled with a crew of four-hundred-fifty-two relatively short, relatively large-headed grey people. Similarly to the tall, skinny home invaders on the ground, they had large and slightly angled, yet more "normal" eyes with white scleras, black pupils, and irises of varying colors much like that of humans and most Lylatian species.
On the inside, the ship's captain spoke into the headset he wore in this people's native language while jogging down a hallway. "Call a shipwide announcement."
The headset responded by replying "Calling shipwide announcement.", also in the foreign language.
"Narth here. Officer Xal, Officer Karn, Lieutenant Zya, and Nixus, please meet me in Translocator Station Two. Bring your weapons and armor, and be sure to wear extra layers. I'll explain when we get to the surface. Also, Zya, bring your gadgets."
Two men clad in orange and black armored uniforms, advanced full-face helmets, and vests with back-mounted machines no bigger than school backpacks came into a rectangular room toting sleek energy rifles, followed by a woman in a dark green and black uniform, black gloves, and three silvery bands sewn in around the right arm. She was wearing a pair of augmented-reality goggles and had a belt with a series of gadgets around her waist. On her hip was a sort of energy pistol with a similar appearance to the rifles held by the security officers, and was wearing body armor made with one of the ship's highly advanced molecular fabricators, as opposed to the armored uniforms issued to security personnel.
Lastly, a six foot tall, matte black robot walked in. It appeared similar in shape to the rest of the ship's crew, but about two feet taller than average. It was wearing a red and black uniform with three silver bands plus one thinner one sewn in around the right arm. Some would think of a uniform from a human-made science fiction show, but the colors were configured differently. The material was almost leathery, the uniform designed to function as a spacesuit if needed.
A fifth individual stood at a console adjacent from a lit-up platform where the ship's captain, Narth, stood wearing a red and black uniform with similar yet non-integrated combat armor to the security officers. On his back was another rifle mounted on a magnetic holster, and four silver bands were sewn around his right arm.
"Great, you all here." He greeted, making a gesture to the man behind the control console. "Let's get down there, and I'll explain."
On the surface of the icy planet, the alien away team materialized silently in a flash of yellow light. To most of their surprise, in a forested area. Even on a cold, nearly inhospitable planet, native life had managed to develop and thrive...
That, or they were genetically modified to grow in the cold.
Nixus immediately begun scanning the surrounding area and drew a pistol from his belt, his eyes going from a soft white to a vibrant blue.
Zya, the technician on the team, looked at the captain expectantly.
"Alright, friends: based on eavesdropped communications, apparently, a Cornerian woman somehow got ahold of a zvëzdar memory card. Also, based on those communications, I believe there's something important on it. We're gonna thwart a hit squad and take that card." He pointed to a lit up house past the trees.
"Why didn't you call earlier if you eavesdropped a signal?" One of the security officers, Xal, asked him as they all began toward the house.
"That's a good question." He replied quietly. "The thing is, I picked it up in my office just a few minutes ago. It was too on-the-spot to forewarn of."
"How should we go about this, sir?" Officer Karn asked and reached up to scratch his chin. Narth stopped. "You and Xal, power up your vests and you can deal with them how you see fit. Nixus, how many life signs can you detect nearby?" Narth instructed, then asked.
"Five zvëzdar, no Lylatian of any ki-." The robot replied, then cut himself off. "Wait, there is one. It's feint, but it's there."
Both security officers flipped switches on their vests and zipped off out of the trees and toward the house.
"I didn't say now!" The captain exclaimed and started running in the direction the officers went. Zya just snickered and followed as multiple high-pitched oscillating whines rang out in the background as the rest of the away team came running out of the forest, where at the now open front door lied a dead Zvëzdar hitman with a newly made crater in his chest. When they entered, another dead hostile was flat on the floor. A blast from a particle beam weapon just as the first.
Narth drew his weapon, as did Zya, who took a rectangular device out of a pouch on her belt.
She pulled out a collapsible antenna from it and placed it on the ground, flipping a switch to activate it.
The device produced a short, loud beep, and began to generate an invisible field which temporarily disabled all electronics in the building and would block most signals, including any matter transportation technology and devices not adjusted to bypass the disruption field.
Everyone looked back at the door when an audible whack rang out. A now unconscious zvëzdar hostile dropped to the floor after getting hit in the back of the head with the butt of Xal's rifle. He stepped through the the door with his vest deactivated, then took some rather simple chip-embedded handcuffs out of a belt mount, cuffing the unconscious hostile's hands behind his back and checking his pockets. The chip in the handcuffs automatically sent a signal to the orbiting vessel and moved the assailant straight into a holding cell.
"Nixus, are you sure there were only supposed to be five?" Zya asked the robot. "This woman's a former member of the mercenary company Star Fox. I'd think she's a bit dangerous."
"They may send backup. According to intelligence related to Lylatia-" The robot paused for a moment and looked up toward the ceiling. "I'm detecting one more lifeform upstairs and a Lylatian life sign nearby, but the fading one I mentioned before... It's gone."
"Damn!" The captain ran toward a staircase and went up them, his rifle at the ready. On the floor was the lifeless body of a certain Lylatian poodle on a patch of bloodstained carpet. There was no enemy, only an open window. The rest of his away team followed him up.
"Nixus, hostiles?" Narth looked back and asked.
The robot looked around as though looking through the building.
"We've got an eschryk life sign near the guy who left. Both are stationary."
The captain looked over at Nixus, then crouched down next to the partially charred body. "Zya, could the P.R.S. revive this woman?" He asked her as she entered the room across from the stairs. She immediately gagged and looked away upon seeing the carcass. "Shit, man!"
"Can it?" He asked her again in a serious tone.
"Well, there's no guarantee, but maybe." She looked back queasily and walked over. "Can I try my tracking anklet, sir?"
Narth looked at the body, then the technician. "No. I'll have a guest anklet sent down here. Gimme a sec." He tapped the side of his headset. "Call Fabrication."
"The other lifeform's within fifty feet and approaching rapidly. That person may be a friend or loved one to this woman and may become hostile out of vengeful anger." Nixus stated bluntly. "If you're gonna put it on the body, you ought to do it now."
"Crap. Dell? I need a guest anklet sent down here now." Narth spoke into the microphone on his headset. A sleek, black tracking anklet materialized in the air and fell to the floor. Zya fastened it around the dead Fay's ankle, and a moment later, a light enveloped the body before it started to disintegrate, the particles being moved to and reconstituted on the vessel above.
"Put 'em on stun, guys." Narth stood up. "Can you speak to that person, Nixus?"
"Yes, I can. What would you like me to say, sir?"
"Explai-" It was before he could finish that sentence, or even that word, he made eye contact with an asssault-shotgun-toting lynx a few steps down in the stairway. The barrel had a rather strange look for that of a ballistic shotgun. "Uh-oh."
She looked at the aliens, then at the dematerializing body. It took a moment for her to realize who it was. Without another word, she aimed and fired the shotgun twice at Xal as he raised his own weapon. His helmet was designed to stop medium-intensity particle beams, plasma bolts, and smaller caliber ballistic projectiles, but not exactly armor-piercing slugs out of a bootleg coilgun. Dark majenta blood and what could only be assumed to be bits of his brain blew out the back of his helmet, splattering the wall and formerly un-pierced closet door behind him. Before the body even hit the floor, it started to dematerialize in a similar way to that of Fay's.
Karn fired his rifle at the lynx, who he just barely missed and, in turn, took a slug to the neck. He now knew not to choose a scarf over a neck guard, or better yet, to just wear both. Another staggeringly lucky headshot to Narth and he was out for the count as well, all of that happening over the course of about two seconds.
Nixus immediately stepped in front of Zya, who stumbled backward into the corner with her gun aimed past the robot.
He spoke sternly, now in the language Miyu understood, as she stepped up the stairs with her aim trained on him. He holstered his pistol and raised his hands. "Your friend's alive."
Miyu looked to where the bodies were, then back at Nixus. Having a hard time processing what was happening, she opened her mouth to speak. She heard another high-pitched oscillating noise, accompanied by a searing pain in the middle of her spine. She found herself unable to make a sound as she dropped forward to the floor.