Isaque paused. The jungle was quiet. Far too quiet. That was to be expected though. Yyasums could do a lot to hide their bases from detection. Sensor jamming, old-fashioned camouflage, murdering recon teams that drew too near, but ultimately, they were intruders on this planet, and it was impossible to linger in someone else’s home indefinitely without drawing their attention. When their presence had been confirmed, ISOC teams had been dispatched to eliminate them. They were dug in hard; intelligence suggested this settlement had been here for a few years as they built up strength, a remnant from a previously-shattered base. A jetbike assault could have worked, or it could have been suicide: there was no way to tell. If the ISOCs could remove any countermeasures though, jetknight reinforcements could hurtle in to take care of the remaining survivors. It was a simple operation, but simple didn’t mean easy. Xenos-busts were a staple of most military branches, but the Yyasum were never pushovers. Turning to his left, Isaque nodded towards another soldier, who locked eyes with him, nodded back, then pressed a figure of Santa Jorge against her lips for good luck. Moving in single-file now, the group crept through the undergrowth, each footfall carefully chosen to minimise their presence. The camp unveiled itself slowly. Isaque had seen similar structures before. Yyasum engineering was a peculiar beast. Squat, barrel-shaped buildings jutted up from the ground like a collection of malformed teeth. Between them, Yyasum could be seen- some patrolling, some clearly carrying out tasks of some kind, others, perhaps, at leisure. All, however, plotting the downfall of Matuvistan society. That was the simple matter of the Yyasum presence here. There could be no compromise, no peace, no mercy. The planet may have been large, but humanity’s continual existence demanded that they stay the only, unquestioned master of this world. This was why, as Isaque took up position behind a rocky outcropping, he felt no mercy towards the creature on the wrong end of his gun barrel. It would do the same to him. The shooting began with a single word issued over their closed communications. The ISOCs, having spread out to provide overlapping fields of fire, caught any of the Yyasum in the open in a devastating fusillade of lead. Isaque knew, of course, that it would never be that easy. These villages weren’t just what you saw on the surface- Yyasum built [i]down[/i] too. As he relinquished his pressure on the trigger and let his gun cool off, he looked about for the next foe. He didn’t have to wait long. One minute the camp was silent but for the dripping of foreign ichor, the next, Yyasum warriors burst out in a counter-attack. The air was filled with the crackle of ozone, the Yyasum guns conducting their lethal charges through the moisture in the air. Isaque watched as one of the unfortunate ISOC’s nearest to one of the aliens was caught by the blast, body twisting and twitching in unnatural ways. His training instincts kicked in. Focus. He dumped his magazine, slotted a fresh one in, and sighted his next target. His rifle rattled and barked under his firm grips, one of the gangly figures spasming as bullets rent holes in its form. As a figure turned towards him he ducked down behind the cluster of rocks he was using as cover. He had managed it just soon enough. He heard the sound of a Yyasum gun firing up, but with him out of the way it was conducted harmlessly down and away from his body. Not harmlessly enough. By now the gunfire, explosions and electricity had caused the damp underbrush to catch on fire despite itself. Smoke began drifting up into the air, even as the muffled detonation of an HE charge sent vibrations rattling through his teeth. Peeking back up and out of cover, Isaque was met with a hellish scene. [hr] Blood. Fire. Corpses lying on the ground. Explosions rocking the tiny fraction of the universe that his world had been compressed into. Alpha-Amundsen pressed himself against the subterranean rock, gun lying forgotten on the floor, a tear streaming down his face. Then, the Undefeated soldier, unmerciful, uncaring, unforgiving, stomped through the tunnel. Its armoured form barely even turned to acknowledge him, instead merely pointing its gun down towards him and muttering ‘fucking Clanker.’ Then, it pulled the trigger, and… Alpha-Amundsen was violently pulled out of his sleep cycle. Electronic neurons fired violently, wrestling this way and that, until at last they settled and he felt himself able to exert control once more. If he still had a body, he knew his lungs would be heaving, his face slick with sweat and clammy, but instead, the room was deadly silent, the military grade chassis’ cooling systems naught but a whisper, and he didn’t need to glance down at his articulated, artificial fingers to know that no sweat beaded across his skin. Wordlessly, Amundsen let out a scream of exhaustion and frustration, stopping himself from putting a fist through a nearby wall with some effort. Every time he slept, the nightmares tore through him. Always the same. The same place, the same people he was fighting, the same result. No matter who or what he tried to do to stop them. Speaking of who though, Alpha-Agnesi had been roused by his violent awakening. The feeling of warm skin against his metallic shell brought some sense of relief to Amundsen. His fingers searched for hers and squeezed down, hard, a drowning man clutching at the first thing that could be found. Of the half a billion people that lived on Zeta-5, not a single one was a psychiatrist. Oh yes, there were people who academically studied the discipline of psychology to learn about it, but when intimate thoughts were shared and everyone was united in a common thread, what need was there for shrinks? Before the war, Amundsen had been of the same mind. Now though… With Eta-Theta roaming around and acting more independently than anyone else before had, and with so many shaken by the fighting, he could only wish that there were people around who could help him. [hr] Eta-Theta looked up at the raindrops falling from the sky. They had never felt rain before. They never would, the android supposed. They could sense it now, of course, water dripping down, soaking the oversized clothes they had draped themselves in to help conceal their form if it was glimpsed in an alleyway or slipping through a doorway, ran down their metallic face, spilled out onto the concrete beneath them… But they would never feel it with flesh. The thought… Eta-Theta scoured themselves for any sign of what that thought meant to them, and came up blank. [i]Oh well.[/I] They pressed on, through the abandoned alleyways, the sound of marching feet sending vibrations up and through their carefully-engineered form. Then, a voice from the crowd catches them. Holds them still. They recognise that voice. They move through the alleyway and lean against a filthy wall, tugging their collar up to give themselves the best chance of disrupting their inhuman silhouette. [i] "Just more bodies in the ground. Just more dead people. Stop, everyone, stop. Walk away. Go home."[/i] Oh Yun. They had listened. Listened to Eta’s proclamation in the desert, with blood and snot running down their nose. But, Eta-Theta knew something. Sometimes, it didn’t take many bullets to kill many people. Sometimes, all it took was just one, placed well. Their chest holster pulled open, and Eta-Theta removed their handgun. They examined it carefully, then eased back the slide. The crowds are silent. Ashamed. The fate of this night, perhaps the fate of the entire ECU regime, hangs in the balance created by a single ex-protector. And that balance will be destroyed by a set of mechanical hands. The gun twitches a little as Eta-Theta pulls the trigger. The suppressor’s ability to… Well, suppress had been somewhat compromised during their time here on this planet, and the resulting [b]bang,[/b] is muffled, yes, but still distinctive enough that everyone knows what has happened. A neck-shot is a little too good for the people that turned Eta into this form, but it will do, the android watching as Hollywoodite blood spills out onto the street. They don’t stick around to see how much havoc one well-placed bullet has caused.