Falcon9

An air force pilot is plunged into an alien invasion during a perilous mission

Falcon 9                             

 

    The rotor blades of the Blackhawk helicopter thundered through the air like deaths’ own scythes. For Remi Vasquez, it was the sound of her own heartbeat. Whump, whump, whump, whump. Vibrating in her chest, becoming more than sound, more inside than without, like her direct physical link to the world around her. She was the machine, and it was her.
      The joystick in her hands responded with smooth mechanical grace as she tilted it towards herself, sending the roaring bird into a steep climb, up towards the dull austere sky. Her booted feet slightly manipulated the pedals underneath, rolling them into a tight curve to the right, and they spiralled up, gaining altitude. They’d need it.
      The oversize olive green flight helmet squawked in her right ear through its headset, and a radio transmission on the closed mission band chattered in her ear, the voice a familiar monotone clipped by radio static. Almost reassuring. Almost.
     “All falcon helos, this is Talon actual, Mission is green, good dustoff. Climb to cruise altitude and proceed to mission objective, thirty mikes to the insertion point.”

      Talon. HQ, the base underneath the climbing chopper that began to slowly recede away into the distance as she accelerated away. Her and the helo, one and the same. Pre-mission checks. So familiar it was almost mundane. How many times had the same static-laced voice crackled into her ears over the years? How many missions had she flown now? She’d lost count a very long time ago.
     Rescue. Extraction. Medi-vac. Combat. Air support. She’d done them all. A veteran. The fierce visage of the raptor bird that was her call sign was emblazoned on the left side of her olive flight helmet, next to a large red 9. There was a time when the helmet had been heavy, bulky. Now it moved with her like an extension of her own body. Where she went, it did too, even off the job.

 “Air support has you covered for tangos, but be advised LZ is reporting heavy ground and air fire. This is a hard fast drop, not a field trip so stay in that flight window. Switch to internal coms from here on out. And good hunting.”

      A simple flick of a switch by her gloved hands, bared at the knuckle. Mechanical, fluid in motion as the machine around her too, was just another part of her body. Vasquez reached up and flicked down the sun-visor of her helmet, the insect-like tinted glass bubbles shading her view of the outside world. It was 0500 hrs, the sun was beginning to peek above the eastern horizon over to their left, and she didn’t want the glare to kill her visibility. It stained the sky red.
     As the visor slid home she saw Bear do the same. Her co-pilot, a mountain of a man, was like her: one of the best. His massive size and barrel arms were at odds with his ballet-like handling of the aircraft. His arms darted and danced, fingers pirouetting around dials and switches, performing checks yet again as they rose.  She’d given him the nickname so long ago now, calling him her ‘teddy bear’ due to his docile nature. He was a gentle giant, and quiet too. Which was good. She liked quiet when she worked.
      The eight other birds of Raptor team flew ahead of her in a loose column formation. Dark birds of prey in the dawn light, speeding shadows across the earth below. Desert again. Rocky fissures in the barren soil littered with scrubby, hard growth. She was sick of deserts by now. Three tours in the war had dulled her taste for the arid colour tones of sand and rock and red dirt. Now that war was over, and they had much larger fish to fry.
     Behind her in the rear of the helo was the mission. The real mission. She was just a courier. The ten-man squad were deathly still and quiet, but for their slight and easy sway to the movements of the craft beneath their feet. All stood in perfect assault-drop formation, and would remain so until they reached the LZ. Very little could shake their steely masks of calm. She’d seen countless squads like it retain the formation in the thickest of anti-air fire and RPG salvos. And those had been merely marines.
     These were delta boys. Hard, mean. Fatigues black as death. The things they’d likely seen and done would no doubt make the thickest firestorm she’d ever flown through seem like a day out at the beach. Like fun in the sun.
     To a man they were fully geared and loaded with personally modified weapons and armour, combat packs and weapons bulging with spare ammo, radios, side arms, and many other items. Hydration pack hoses snaked over each of their shoulders, hard knee and elbow pads adorned their limbs. Very few wore helmets, favouring speed and visibility over protection. Some wore shemagh, the Arabic desert headscarf patterned in black and green. A fashion adopted in the war, especially by spec ops. Despite their variability, with their own personalised weapons and gear, when they’d climbed aboard Vasquez had seen one thing about every one that was the exact same. The eyes.
     Unflinching. Unwavering. A surety of purpose and resolve she’d never encountered before, like a quiet calm, yet infinite intensity and drive. Vasquez had flown damn near every type of chopper and plane under the sun, but these guys. These men were the real war machines.
     The thing was, none of them had ever been on a mission like this before. It was likely that no-one ever had, soldier nor pilot. This was new territory for everyone, and not just the ones riding in the helicopters in the formation. Or maybe it wasn’t new at all. That thought was equally as disturbing.
     Ten minutes deep into flight time and the air support arrived. Six raptor F-22’s screamed over the helicopters of Falcon team, on the same bearing towards the horizon.
     There was another sound too, a heartbeat different than hers, faster and lighter. Vasquez leaned right and took a quick look to attain visual.
     Three AH-1Z Viper gunships had joined the flight group. Lean, fast and agile predators bristling with under-wing hydra 70 missile launchers and nose-pod 20mm cannons. The Blackhawks were the tried and tested old workhorses of the entire US armed forces. The Vipers were the modern, ultra-sleek killing machines of today.
     The entire Falcon mission team complete, the group closed formation into a tighter wedge, and as if in anticipation, each helo leant forward to increase speed. In any other scenario, Vasquez would have called the support overkill. Here and now, on this mission, she wasn’t so sure.
     The minutes flowed by. For a long time there was nothing but the heart-beat rotor and the seemingly endless expanse of arid land below, craggy stone and barren desert whipping by underneath. The sun climbed sluggishly into the sky, the golden glow stark and bleak. The mission clock wound, and despite the thermal lined flight suit, Vasquez shivered. For the first time in years, she was nervous. And she didn’t like it. Next to her, Bear telepathically sensed her disquiet and gave her a solemn thumbs-up. She returned the gesture numbly, but it did little to help.
     The horizon rose ahead of them. There was a chatter over the mission frequency in her ear, and a collection of radio clicks. Time seemed to slow. Each solid whump of the rotors, of her heart, seemed inexorably stretched out, like time was flowing as cooled honey. Whump, Whump, Whump.
     They crested the rise of the great desert hill before them and the City came into sight.
     Tracer fire lashed through the air. The trails of surface-to-air missiles and rockets created a haze around long lines of low, residential buildings. She could see armour units around the outskirts of the city, big Abrams M1 tanks and large artillery trucks supporting mobile weapons platforms. Constantly firing.
     In the centre of the city was the ship. A colossal behemoth of a thing, ovoid and latticed in metal constructs and panels. Stark dirty grey against the beige of the desert. It lumbered, wallowing above the city, levitating its unimaginable bulk above the towering fingers of the skyscraper buildings below. Several had already collapsed, their metal skeletons exposed, many with raging infernos within, the streets between glittering brightly with billions of broken glass shards from their windows. And everywhere were the invaders.
     Blue beams of energy or orange darts scythed through the air and streets, both from ground forces and flying machines. The machines themselves were beetle-like things, rounded and carapaced in some kind of metallic armour. Weapons slung underneath their fuselage spat beams of death at the ground, lancing through the human ground forces currently assaulting the city. They were large, bigger than any of the helicopters thundering towards the battle, the size of large semi-trucks. But for all their size, they darted through the air as nimble as wasps, moving omnidirectionally, in triple formation, the groups of three in tight wedge formations that calmly and mechanically sped to engage different targets directly, heedless of the munitions fired at them from below.
     As Vasquez watched, a group of three was hit by a salvo of high-explosive rounds from either tanks or artillery, she couldn’t tell. One was speared directly through the middle by a shell, which tunnelled through and out the other side of the insectoid thing. It exploded, careening into the machine next to it, which was subsequently hit by two more shells, detonating the pair. They erupted into a bright flower of blue-white fire, hulls rushing downwards to meet the earth. The last continued its course, as though un-aware of its comrade’s demise. The thing continued to fire down into the streets below in support of its own ground units.
     The breath had stilled in her chest. Vasquez had known it was bad. Twenty-four hours ago when this thing, this ship had shown up above the earth and descended death into the city, she’d known. She’d watched all the news reports and viral videos of the ships spilling out from the craft, of the spider-like ground vehicles lowered by faintly glowing beams of blue light to the ground from the central ship itself. Watched as tall, humanoid figures had strode forth, encased in burnished grey steel armour and armed with yet more energy weapons, cutting down waves of military personnel, bullets bouncing harmlessly off their bodies as they came steadily forth. But she’d never known until right now how bad it was. It was hell, made manifest.
     “Rem.” The low grumble broke her out of her shock and she remembered to exhale. She turned to Bear, who’d spoken.
    His jaw was set, the line of his mouth firm.
    “Rem, we have a job to do.”
     Grimly, slowly, she nodded. And chastised herself for being so stupid. Caught like a deer in headlights, like a green rookie on her first mission.
     Angry at herself, Vasquez gripped the joystick before her in both hands, hard. The Blackhawk lurched forward, following the rest of Falcon team. The Vipers rose smoothly up and over the group, accelerating hard, coming forward to screen the front helos from oncoming fire, and to deal out death.
     She could see in the distance the F-22’s had already engaged, their sheer speed outmatching the nonetheless nimble otherworldly ships, carving a clear path through to the mothercraft directly ahead.
     From all three other points of the compass similar aerial incursions were taking place. Columns of Blackhawks and Vipers sped towards the hulking ship in the centre of the city, all carrying their own precious cargo of insurgents.
      They passed over the outskirts of the city, suburbs and shopping complexes whipping by underneath, some ablaze and sending long plumes of black smoke into the sky. Their own forces, USMC and Army both, looked up at the roar of their rotors overhead, and those with the morale to do so whooped and hollered.
     Then they hit the city proper, and the trouble started.
     Sporadic fire whined up at them from below, long straight lines of laser, blue and bright was supplemented by red angry bolts of energy from alien weapons. The majority of the shots missed, many not compensating for the aircrafts’ speed, though a single laser lanced directly through one of the lead Blackhawks, Falcon two, and pierced through the underside of its fuselage, up and out through its engine housing.
     The rotor failed, smoke gushing from the fatally wounded machine. It spun hard, until the pilot killed the tail rotor. And it fell. Down and into the close streets, mostly stores and small businesses with their front windows smashed in, littered with abandoned cars left by fleeing civilians. It bounced once, hard, and slid along on its nose before colliding heavily with a building at the end of the street where it ended in an intersection. There was no explosion. It was likely that there were survivors, stranded now behind the lines of an ever-expanding enemy force.
     Not one of the Falcon helos stopped. Bear had been right. They had a job to do. Vasquez was not religious by any means, but she prayed right then and there that the survivors-if any-were picked up safe after the mission. But right now, they had a planet to save, if not a city.
     The column gained altitude, hoping to escape more of the same ground fire. The random shots eased, the flickering lines and scything bolts dying away as they passed over the main advance force of the enemy units, whoever and whatever they were. They closed deeper into the city, the buildings below growing, becoming taller and wider, the streets widening with them to become multi-laned avenues. Ahead, the great mothership wallowed, spitting its own rays and beams of destruction towards the fighters of man who had come to slay it. That’s when the ships found them.
     Silently, suddenly, two triple groups of the beetle-like gunships rose from behind obscuring buildings severa; hundred meters ahead. They shot up into the air, and headed directly for the line of helicopters striking deep into the heart of the besieged city. The Vipers ahead of the main column screamed forward to meet them.
     At the exact same instant the gunships fired a volley of hydra missiles at their respective targets, the alien vessels opened up, bright lances of energy spurting forth from their weapons. The rightmost group’s opening salvo thankfully missed entirely, the shots going wide due to the range and the speed of the vipers. On the left, multiple blue lasers struck the leftmost helo, spearing through its plating and eviscerating it completely. The Viper fireballed, still loosing ammunition payloads as it died in a flaming spiral to splash dramatically into a building below, tearing much of the structure down with it and exposing its internal rooms.
     Despite the loss of one of the guardians, the missiles �"slower moving than the energy weapons- struck home, dead centre.
          The Hydra 70 rockets lacked the penetration of the HE artillery rounds that had gutted the alien ships earlier. But what they lacked in that regard, they made up for in sheer ferocity. The leftmost craft of the second group was struck by no less than four times, jets of fire plumed at each point of contact. It visibly shuddered and jerked, rolling in the air with the force of the explosions. It listed, venting thick roiling purple smoke and more of the blue-white fire. A devastating secondary explosion from within tore apart the front half of its bulging carapace, and the thing plummeted to the world below. The next ship in line was similarly hit by several missiles, careened off to the left and began losing altitude as the propulsion system keeping it aloft gave out. It veered low and smashed through the top floor of an office complex, burying itself deep inside the wreckage of the building, where it lay for the remainder of the battle.
     Four tangoes left in total. Two Vipers.
     The helos pulled up sharp, each banking in either direction away from the oncoming vehicles. For a moment Vasquez thought they’d abandoned the fight, and ice shot into her veins. But their strategy was sound. The nose cannon on each flared to life, spitting tracer fire at the rushing ships as they came adjacent to the aliens. Though followed by returning broadside fire by the energy weapons, the vipers moved at attack speed, out-flanking the machines easily and making every return shot fly wide.
     The 20mm cannons, however, were next to useless. Bright sparks rippled across the metal skin of the great levitating insects, but they came on. It seemed as though the solid rounds were having little to no effect on target whatsoever. It’d have to be the missiles, which meant lining up for another run, head-on.
     Vipers were not built for air-to-air combat. The majority of their armaments were un-guided, the pilots used to ground-attack missions and danger-close fire support missions. While this made the destruction of the two alien ships already miraculous, it meant that despite their speed, they’d have to line up again for another bombing-run, as it were. Leaving them incredibly vulnerable to the high-velocity laser-fire streaming at them from the ships at that moment.
     If Vasquez knew it, so did the pilots in the attacking helos. They circled wide, crossing paths at the rear of the ships that continued to plough onwards towards the main bulk of the Blackhawks. Any minute now, and they’d be on top of them with their energy weapons. Some even began to fire volleys of red angry bolts at the distant helicopters, prompting Falcons one and two to take evasive manoeuvres.
     The Vipers came abreast of the oncoming group of craft, each on either side of the vessels, dividing all possible fire between them in a perfect pincer movement. Bright jets of backwash flared from their Hydra missile pods.
     The Viper on the right was atomised by seven jets of blue energy that lanced out from the intact group of three ships. It erupted in a massive spasm of fire and debris mid-air, the explosion so immense that the helicopter didn’t merely come apart, it was utterly destroyed. The concentration of energy left no trace of the human vehicle behind other than a blossom of quickly-fading smoke.
     The other banked sharply, and lived. Beams cut the air from the sole survivor of the decimated trio on the left side, but it was too late. Its fate was sealed. All missiles fired from the two vipers connected.
     The lone ship was struck aft and tail and went into a spin, rotating wildly to smash into the ground below, erupting into a blue fireball in the street below. Another from the full group was struck from an immense concentration of rockets amidships, the force of the explosions cutting it clean in half. It died mid-air, both halves falling, on fire, down to the earth. One more was struck by two lone missiles from the dead viper, directly in its nose. It shuddered and vented more of the blue smoke, but kept coming on.
     Two more down. One Viper left against two of the ships. The odds, as they were, definitely seemed bleak. But they knew, they all knew, that the lone Vipers’ pilots would at least try. If not for their fallen comrades, their wingmates, then for the families back home they were fighting to protect from the monsters.
     The Viper banked hard around the oncoming ships, all the way over to the left of the damaged one pouring smoke. The rocket seemed to have damaged an energy weapon, the shots coming significantly less frequent from that angle of approach. The Viper slowed and lined up.
     Like falling hail, there was a flurry of sharp sparks from the upward hulls of each alien ship. Smoke trails jetted out from the other side of each vehicle as whatever hit them penetrated all the way through their chassis and out the other side, shredding them internally. A pair of rockets �" one for each craft �" slammed home, tearing them from the sky in a bright blue flare of light. They were unquestionably eradicated.
     Two F-22 raptors screamed past, their radar-ablative hulls a dull, dark grey in the light of the steadily rising sun overhead. The armour-piercing rounds fired from their internal six-barrelled 20mm Vulcan cannons had done the job far better than those employed by the Vipers, right before their short-range guided missiles had decimated the alien ships. As they banked and returned to the group, they gave a fraction of a wing-tip each in greeting. As if to say ‘We’re here now. We’ve got you.’
     The feeling of relief inside the cabin was immense. Even the stone-hard delta men in the rear let out held breaths. Vasquez and Bear exchanged nervous grins below their bulging tinted visors, eyes hidden. They were still in the fight, for now.
     The Raptors circled wide overhead, providing overwatch as the lone Viper gunship returned to the head of the formation. Vasquez became grim. Not even ten minutes had passed since they’d entered within view of the city and already two Vipers and one Blackhawk were down. Acceptable losses, but still, every one weighed down the mission.
     The column sped onwards, over a tall, proud hotel that was entirely engulfed in flames. The soot-blackened paint would never be pristine white again. Vasquez could smell the smoke as they thundered onwards, flanked by their guardian angels high above. Angels of death.
     The city proper rose up to meet them. The buildings became wide and tall as they approached, and the helos had to climb steeply and gain altitude to go over even the moderate ones. Ahead, the leviathan mass of the mothership loomed, dark and impassive, the laser fire from its many weapons glittering like its hull did in the sun. The sheer size of it took her aback. It was larger than any single human construction in the history of the earth. Its bulbous shape was similar to its many smaller craft that swarmed around it and through the city. Vasquez could see clouds of them roil across buildings in the distance, towards where the fighting was heaviest. Likely at the sites of armoured assaults and forward incursions by the main battlegroup into the city.
     A tall row of skyscrapers loomed up. Square and sleek, their mirrored surface showed the members of Falcon team their approach, reaching high into the sky, blocky and almost sinister.
     ‘All Falcons, this is Falcon Lead. Proceed between the ‘scrapers. We’ve lost enough time and people to mess around going over. Watch your spacing, people. Lead out.’
      The radio transmission was loud and blaring in Vasquez’s imagined quiet. After the battle she had been lapsed into a lull by the steady throb of the bird’s heart-rotors. Now, as the towers loomed ahead, and the main enemy craft just beyond, she gave herself a mental shake and re-focused. First being rattled and now napping on the job? What was wrong with her?
     Sparing a glance above, she watched as the F-22s peeled off to each side, climbing and beginning to circle around the tall buildings ahead. Likely they would meet up again on the other side.
     Closer and closer the mirrored glass panes of the skyscrapers came, until Vasquez felt like she could merely reach out from the cabin doors in the rear and touch them.
     Their reflection chased them as they sped in-between the buildings, the downwash and the sound from the many rotors vibrating the huge panes of glass as they passed by. Each mirror image of them was near perfect, and squinting, she thought she could make out her own refection in the glass. And then they were out from between the buildings, in the clear. The massive mothership dominated the entire skyline ahead, menacing and larger than even some cities she had seen.
    The radio screamed into her ears.
     ‘CONTACT, CONTACT!’
     Nine alien ships, three groups of three, rose into the air from around the base of the skyscrapers they’d just passed between. The energy fire fell like snow flurries around the Blackhawks. And into them.
     Falcon five was struck twice by blue lasers and spiralled out of the sky, burning and venting smoke as it fell. Eight, directly ahead of her, was hit by multiple energy bolts, red and angry. They sheared through the helos’ tail and it came apart, sending the bird into a wild flatspin before the pilots killed the main blades, stalling it.
      There was a very, very loud bang. Falcon nine slewed sideways, warning lights beginning to flash in the cockpit as Bear next to her raced to compensate for the damage. They weren’t dead, but Vasquez could bet that it’d been a main rotor hit. They’d be venting smoke themselves, and there was no knowing how long they could stay in the air.
     The Raptors, having just cleared the buildings above, retaliated. A-P rounds from their Vulcan guns shredded into two of the crafts, disabling them instantly. Short range missiles struck forth, killing two, then three more. With their angels as escort, the Blackhawks chances of survival had drastically rose, even with an ambush like this.
     Determined not to be out done, the Viper veered sharply away from the head of the column, and engaged the other ships. Hydra missiles found their mark, shattering an alien vessel apart as it tried to rise and gain altitude. Another was wounded badly, shuddering and smoking, but still firing back at the human assailers.
     Something, or someone concentrated the focus of the rising machines. They all fired in unison on the Viper, and caught in the massive energy salvo, it erupted into flames and too fell to its demise. Vasquez winced. It was all on the Raptors now.
     ‘Rem.’ It was Bear again. This time, there was something wrong with his voice.
     ‘Rem look.’
     Startled, she turned around in her seat where she’d been craning to watch the action behind them. Another rookie move.
     Ahead, the great ship was no longer a levitating entity. It seemed as a wall, gargantuan and world-consuming. So vast it was that she nearly missed what Bear was pointing at with gloved, shaking fingers.
     Over thirty alien ships rose ahead of them. So many that she didn’t even bother to count. They created a flying wall between Falcon team and their objective; the ship itself.
     It was a moment any aviation or air-vet would have been proud of. Not one of the six remaining Blackhawk helicopters deviated from its course, nor wavered in the slightest. They were firm. They were resolute. It was why, after all, they’d been chosen for this mission. Vasquez gently tilted the joystick between her legs forward, and gunned the throttle.
     A thousand meters out from the wall of alien craft, the mothership woke.
    Massive beams of the same blue laser energy lanced down at the Falcon helos, thicker than the birds themselves.
     Falcon three was vaporized before anyone could react. The beam was so immense the chopper simply wasn’t there anymore. Instead, a dark purple after image formed in her eyes where it, and the colossal laser had been.
     The ships ahead opened fire. Four and Five were next. Beams and bolts alike found their fuselage and each was torn apart in the barrage, burning hulks plummeting to the world below.
     Another laser from the ship smashed down at them, burning through the atmosphere so hot it left a meters wide glowing crater where it struck the earth. It clipped Falcon one.
     Spinning out of control, the lead vehicle in the mission convoy bucked and twisted in the air, the pilots still trying to retain altitude. It was no use. Several energy lasers found it as it fell, incinerating it, a fiery comet that too, crashed apart below.
     Falcons six and seven, just ahead of her, began to take evasive action. They ducked and darted between the falling rain of energy fire coming from the ships ahead, racing forward and striving for greater and greater speeds.
     Seven was speared by multiple laser bursts, crumpling and erupting mid-air.
     Six, further ahead still, reached the wall of craft.
     It ducked, seeking room between the firing ships, even as it was struck point-blank by red bolts.
     At the very last millisecond, a single ship darted directly in front of the rushing helo. They collided, Falcon seven flattening against the hull of the stronger, sturdier craft. Still, both fell from the air, smoking and flaming.
     Time slowed like cool honey. Vasquez was aware of her breathing, shallow but steady, each breath seemed to take a lifetime. The energy bolts, red and angry, slowed to a crawl in the air. Even the lightning-fast blue lasers seemed to gently swim through the air at her, as if through cold soup. The universe was viscous, distorted. The blinding blue light of a huge energy discharge filled her vision as the mothership ahead landed another shot into the earth, narrowly missing the lone Blackhawk by mere meters. Ahead, the ship wall contracted slowly, the bug-like shelled alien vehicles coming together like one mind, flowing towards the point of her impact. The rotor pulsed inside of her.
     Whump, whump, whump. Slow, like her heart. Calm.
     She saw then, in that dreamlike time rate, as one, then two, then three of the ships ahead sparkled with the impacts of thousands of armour-piercing rounds. She watched as short, stubby little short-range missiles flew past and around her, each detonating against its own target. Several of the gathered craft erupted into that strange blue fire.
     The F 22s. They’d circled back, disengaged from the skyscraper ambush.
          As the enemy ships fell away, one by one, they left a hole. A wide hole, in the defensive perimeter around the mothership. Just large enough.
      And then she was through. The strange metal hulls of the carapaced flying things flicked past her in the blink of an eye. She was though, and the lone Blackhawk thundered on towards the impermeable grey expanse of the hovering alien spaceship directly ahead.
     Except that this close, it wasn’t impermeable.
     Great holes and bays riddled the lower sections of the behemoth, and as she watched, trios of the flying machines it had birthed to lay waste upon the city emerged all around from them, disembarking. That was her in.
     Another blink and there she was. The grey metal of the colossal craft extended into the sky above and towards the ground below. The hole in front of her was deep and dark, but she could see lights and an interior deck within. Things moved about that she couldn’t make out but there was no time to waste.
     Vasquez gunned the engine and the entire Blackhawk, Falcon nine, hurtled into the belly of the beast. Ahead, the metal horizontal deck rushed up to meet them. Things scurried from the deafening noise the rotors made in the confines space, but she wasn’t aware of them.
     The mission was simple. All efforts at frontal assault and primary offensive from both land and air against the invading extra-terrestrial force had been unsuccessful, with major losses. The central ship, obviously the command centre, had lain untouched at the heart of the city, all efforts at drone or cruise missile strikes had been similarly disappointing.
     Vasquez was part of an insurgency operation. Four columns of air vehicles punching through the enemy lines to the outer hull of the massive mothership. There, they would dispatch spec-ops teams to infiltrate the superstructure and destabilize it, if they could. Leave the external alien ground and air forces vulnerable. All she had to do, was get them inside.
     She flicked a look back into the main cabin of the helo. The delta force men, even shaken by the flight, were poised, readying weapons and gear. Hands flashed over rifle receivers, racked shotgun slides. One unlimbered a smoke grenade while gripping his carbine in one hand. Grim and sweating in the dark of the xeno entranceway, they were ready. Determined.
      She whipped back to the front of the helo as they came in towards a hard flat expanse of the same silvery metal coating the exterior of the hull. No doubt one of the primary building textiles used by the foreign invaders.
     Ten meters out. Seven. Three. Two.
     “Prep for drop!” She heard sharply hissed behind her from the waiting soldiers.
     The landing struts of the Blackhawk never touched down.
      The world lurched, rolling viciously. Vasquez was shunted around in her seat, slammed sideways by the sudden momentum. There was a titanic roar, a flash of blinding blue-white, then the orange of fire. Then nothing.

     She didn’t know how long she’d been out. Vasquez coughed roughly. It was hard to breathe. Groggily, she raised her head, though it swam. The helmets visor was cracked, making the world crazed and slanted outside. Everything was blurry. She reached up with her right hand and unclipped the chin strap, letting the bulky helmet fall away and clatter to the ceiling.
     The ceiling? That was wrong.
     The criss-crossing diagonal harness strapping her into the pilot seat was holding her in, but gravity dragged at her relentlessly with invisible fingers. The entire Blackhawk helicopter was upside-down. Or at least what was left of it.
      Vasquez cast around, the fear beginning to shudder her heart in her chest. She remembered where she was.
     The windscreen of the helo was gone. Ripped out or smashed in, it made no difference. Where once there had been the flawless glass panel, now there was but empty space.
     The co-pilot seat next to here was more shockingly empty. Bear was gone. She looked up and out of the gaping window.
     It stood there, in front of the overturned aircraft. Tall and slender, encased in metallic powered armour that bulged along its humanoid frame, hinting at mechanised power. The metal panels on its chest extended up and over the head in an armoured bullet-shaped hood that had no visible eye pieces not any visual sensors, utterly blank. Its elongated fingers, hanging limply at its sides were clawed, taloned on each fingertip by barbs of cruel-looking steel.
     Slowly, almost reverently, its left hand rose up, and lightly touched the neck of its strange helmet. The front of the visor parted, revealing the face beneath.
     Vasquez screamed. She screamed louder than she had ever done in her entire life.