A/N - Thought two chapters was a nice way to make up for me being terrible with updates!
Again, I own nothing NCIS. And, again, I'm making up everything to do with war and fighting.
Isgul was a busy, industrial planet famous for its arms production. The standard Stars-issue weapons were crafted on Isgul, both the high-energy laser firers and the more traditional metal-bullet-based guns. Not exactly a tourist destination but a well-known and respected planet, which contributed a great deal to the Peace Force. It was an oxymoron of a place, with quaint little villages nestling alongside great smoke-belching factories, cities densely packed at the centre and rippling out to become quieter and more sedentary on the outskirts.
It was these outlying villages and towns to which Timothy, Harriet and her unit were transported. The Elite unit was comprised of four other soldiers, three human and one alien, the very best warriors Stars had to offer. These people had marched into the worst situations both wartime and peacetime could hurl up, and marched back out the other side as the victors. As one of Timothy's old teammates had noted; "Hell is our day job."
Timothy had not met these four before - his own unit were long since dead - but made an effort to talk to them on the journey to Isgul. He would no doubt be spending a lot of time with them. When General McGee entered the battle, Harriet always marched at his side and her unit ever accompanied her.
Lisa Mican and Alice Springborn were the most senior - the longest serving - of the Elite unit. Lisa was an exuberant, dark-skinned woman who at first seemed very far removed from the Elite standard mold. Her hair was tied back in a long braid and her brown eyes glinted with laughter as she whispered with Alice.
Alice was more conventional, in that her red hair was cut brutally short and her manner was sombre. Her skin was very pale, almost unhealthy, though she was muscular and fit. She seemed serious and focused, the epitome of 'warrior', but Timothy caught the amusement in her deep blue eyes as Lisa chatted away in her ear.
"Nuisances, the pair of them," Harriet muttered under her breath as she took a seat next to Timothy in the cramped shuttle. He could tell she was fond of them, though - at least, as fond of people as Harriet could get. If she didn't respect their ability, and couldn't tolerate them as people, they would not be in her unit. "They never stop talking."
The shuttle the six of them rode in was too small to accommodate them all, but it was very quick and would get them to Isgul before the invading forces could do too much damage. Hopefully.
The third member of the team was a quiet young man by the name of Joseph Peterbrock, with dishwater blonde hair cut as short as Alice's and bright green eyes that seemed to notice everything. He didn't speak much, except to mutter a few words now and then to the only alien onboard.
Mo'il was from a planet called Vexdra, a species known more for their intellect than for their fighting prowess. His inclusion in the Elite squad served to show there were exceptions to the rule in every species. What set him apart from his human teammates were the large pair of wings tucked neatly against his spine and the clawed talons tipping his bare feet. Mo'il greeted Timothy in flawless English even without the use of the translation chip every Stars soldier was issued.
Lisa and Alice's quiet conversation was the only noise during the five-minute journey to Isgul.
The outlying villages of Isgul had already fallen victim to the attacking army. Many homes were aflame, pointlessly destroyed, as Isgul did not have a dedicated army of its own to protect these small places. The Isgul forces would abandon their towns, villages and cities to the protection of the Peace Force, in order to concentrate on fortifying their factories and production centres.
Apart from the mad crackling of the flames, the area was eerily silent as Timothy and the unit landed.
"Civilians?" Timothy inquired as the six began to move into the first village, slowly and cautiously, inspecting every possible hiding place.
"Fled, from what I can tell." Harriet answered. "No evacuation order was made but this area is abandoned and there's no sign of casualties."
"Secure." Lisa reported, jogging back from a small, one-story home that had escaped the fires. There was no trace of laughter in her voice now.
"I don't think there's anyone here any more." Joseph said, voice low.
"Move inwards?" Mo'il suggested.
Harriet held up her hand. "There's something not right here."
"We're being watched." Alice said, tightly, staring around at the surrounding houses. "I can feel it."
Timothy believed her; he felt it too.
The six spread out a little way, forming a circle so they had a line of sight on all approaches. No words were said as they maneuvered into place; this was the well-oiled operation of a unit who had done this more times than they could count.
For a few heartbeats, there was dead silence.
Then, a gunshot. Timothy moved immediately, instinctively swinging around so his weapon faced the direction of the shot. A breath later, a green laser bolt shot past his shoulder and impacted against a stone wall inches from Alice's head. The woman showed no reaction to the near miss.
In seconds, the battle was raging.
A bewildering combination of high-energy laser beams of varying colours and ordinary metal bullets flew about, forcing the unit to duck and dive and scramble under the onslaught, firing back blindly. Their enemy was advancing on them and they were outnumbered at least ten to one.
Warfare in the Peace Force was nothing like that on modern Earth. Battles were not fought, as Timothy had first imagined, in the depths of space. There were no starship dog fights of the kind sci-fi movies are so fond of and no great motherships hovering over a doomed planet, releasing death-rays and all but impregnable to outside attack.
Battles were fought on the surface of planets which had done nothing to deserve this level of death and destruction. The hostile enemy invaded, the Peace Force retaliated. It was war fought on foot, fought by hand, numbers against numbers, seeing the whites of your enemy's eyes as you killed each other.
Fighting off-planet was simply too risky. The energy released from war-machines battling it out in the depths of space caused terrible things to happen; the fabric of the universe became stretched, torn and warped. Time broke down in places or else stopped all together. Creatures were born from the destruction and hate - terrible creatures, interested only in annihilating all that came into their path. Creatures without names, the fuel of nightmares for billions.
No matter how many lives on-planet fighting cost, it was preferable to risking the destruction of the universe.
Timothy couldn't identify the species of the three aliens bearing down on him, far too busy with his gun to notice what they looked like. For every one that fell, another appeared to take its place.
They had not been expecting this number of hostiles. The unit had been forced backwards, pinned in one space with little room to maneuver and little cover. Any other unit would have been dead by now, but the Elites fought on.
Timothy fired steadily, and the three approaching aliens fell. Before he had time to register this, to notice that the dead had left a space he could use to break out of the circle and perhaps gain an advantage, Timothy's world lurched and he hit the ground hard.
Harriet had body-checked him to the floor and was even now on her back, half-sitting, firing a volley of laser beams at two more hostiles who had been about to ambush Timothy from behind.
"They're human." Harriet spat out as she clambered to her feet, pulling Timothy up with her.
Back-to-back now, aware of their vulnerability in this open ground, Timothy managed to ask; "What?"
"Some of the hostiles are human!"
In the next second, Timothy noticed she was right. He hadn't paid any attention, before, to just who he was fighting. There were too many laser beams and too many bullets flying about for that and any spare thought he had was focused on calling for infantry back up.
Among the hostiles were a small number of humans, male and female, a wide variety of ages. Now he was paying attention, Timothy realised there were a large number of different species here. All wore different uniforms, all carried different weapons - some were even armed solely with blades. There seemed to be no cohesion in the group and, were they not attacking Timothy, Harriet and her unit as one, he would have thought they weren't on the same side at all.
The only thing 'uniform' about them was, Timothy noticed with a horrible feeling in his gut as one alien with a long sword came in too close for comfort, the look in their eyes. It was the same depth of loathing, of utter fury, as Gibbs had worn back on the Orbiter.
But there was something else there, as well: a strange kind of emptiness, behind the hatred. The soldiers moved skillfully but uniformly, as if they were simply reciting a long-practiced group routine.
Timothy knew mind control when he saw it. Perhaps in any other situation he would have been hesitant about cutting down people so obviously in the grip of a controlling force but now was not the time for morality and ethics. It was kill or be killed and Timothy's duty was to end this invasion.
"When is the damned infantry getting here?" Harriet spat, cursing as a red laser beam hit the barrel of her gun and caused it to burst into flames. She dropped the weapon instantly but her hand was already badly burnt. Without missing a beat, Harriet grabbed the sword from the alien Timothy had felled, wielding it in her left hand with as much ferocity as her right.
"We need to retreat." Timothy said firmly, seeing Lisa firing desperately at a large group of hostiles while supporting half of Alice's weight. The woman had hurt her leg, somehow; there was a lot of blood. "We don't have the numbers for this."
"Pull out! Pull out!" Harriet barked into her radio, grimacing but accepting defeat. She followed Timothy, walking backwards as he guided her forwards, towards Lisa and Alice and took Alice's weight on herself.
"You alright?" Timothy asked Lisa as they struggled away from the horde, towards the field where their transportation waited.
Lisa didn't answer. She shot down four hostiles instead and Timothy took this as her answer.
"Thank god." She muttered as the low drone of engines signalled that back up had finally arrived.
Harriet passed Alice's weight back to Lisa as Joseph and Mo'il pulled themselves from the fight. One of Mo'il's wings was bleeding heavily and Joseph's left arm sported a deep gash.
"Go ahead, get into the shuttle. As soon as you're in, get the pilot to pull up. We'll cover you."
The four didn't look happy but followed Harriet's order. As the two senior soldiers, Harriet and Timothy both considered it their duty to stay behind to ensure their injured teammates reached safety.
There was no time to talk as the pair slowly backed up; the hostiles oddly focused on them despite the infantry troops landing with their weapons already ablaze.
The shuttle began to take off, as the incoming fire was too heavy and might at any moment hit the craft. At the last second, Timothy dived through the still-open door and hauled Harriet in after him, Lisa and Mo'il anchoring him by the waist to support her weight.
They sprawled on the floor, gasping for breath. Timothy's left arm hurt badly. A laser beam had grazed it and the burn was still spreading through his muscles. There was a second laser burn on his right leg, and several smaller cuts on every limb.
"You alright, Harriet?" Timothy asked quietly, after checking to see the rest of the unit were fine. There were injuries, but those would heal. None of them felt much like talking. They had been confident going into this but, just half an hour after landing, were sent scurrying away. It was hard to stomach but a unit that couldn't accept defeat was a unit that wouldn't survive long. Sometimes skill and tactics won the day against insurmountable odds; sometimes there was no substitute for numbers.
"I knew him." Harriet frowned, looking up at Timothy with bewilderment in her eyes. At Timothy's raised eyebrow, she went on. "One of the humans who attacked us. I knew him, from my very first assignment."
Timothy half-shrugged. "I don't get it either. But sometimes people ... go bad. Choose the wrong side. Though I'm fairly sure they were being controlled, somehow."
"No, you don't understand." Harriet grabbed his arm and pulled him closer, speaking low and urgent. "That man I saw. He's dead."
It was Timothy's turn to frown. "What?"
"He's dead. I saw him die."
Harriet's tone was completely serious but Timothy couldn't help saying; "Well, obviously not."
"No, Timothy. That man is dead." Harriet's grip on his arm grew painful but it was the use of his first name that got Timothy's attention. Though she would call him 'McGee' sometimes, Harriet had only ever used his first name in the direst of situations. She had used it on the three occasions when both she and Timothy were fairly sure he was about to die. "I killed him."
She was not lying, Timothy could tell that clear as day. "You're sure?" He had to ask.
"Of course I am." Harriet snapped. "You don't forget the first life you took."