The transition was not exactly painful, but it left a distinct physical aftereffect. The instant my foot crossed the portal's threshold, a sharp, prickling sensation raced across my skin and deep into my muscles, as though every cell in my body had been jolted by a mild alternating current. I recognized the signature immediately. I had felt the exact same thing back at the training camp whenever Sam completely shut off the flow of S-Power through my system, then abruptly restored it with one of his manipulations. That settled it. The portal's technology was built on the same fundamental energy.
A second later, the steel soles of my boots hit solid ground on the other side of the veil with a dull clang. My head spun from a brief wave of spatial disorientation, and my stomach lurched into my throat. It felt like the instant an overloaded roller coaster reaches the top of its climb and suddenly plunges downhill, leaving your insides floating weightless for a split second.
Thanks to staying in good shape, I needed only a second to regain my bearings and take in my surroundings. Ted was not as lucky. He doubled over with his armored gloves braced against his knees, gasping for air while desperately trying to keep his breakfast where it belonged.
The outer perimeter looked nothing like the purple vegetation we'd seen during the briefing. The platoon had emerged inside a spacious rock grotto beneath a high vaulted ceiling. It was the classic blind zone positioned directly behind a transition point, a tactically sound design that kept the enemy from mining the portal itself. This served as the reconnaissance unit's forward outpost. The setup, however, was modest: a pair of standard military tents, several numbered cargo containers with unknown contents, and one particularly striking object standing in the middle of the cavern.
Inside a transparent cryogenic chamber, its interior coated in thick frost, a living Loz'an was stretched taut between four massive restraints. Its body had been pulled into an unnatural shape, like a bedsheet stretched tight across a clothesline. The physiology of these humanoids was extremely vulnerable to severe cold. At deeply subzero temperatures, their elastic muscle fibers lost both their regenerative ability and their capacity to contract, becoming as brittle as frozen polymer, while even the slightest movement caused excruciating pain. None of that had been included in the standard training curriculum. I had stumbled across those details in Selina's restricted medical archive.
"K-kill... me..." The sound came from the Loz'an's head, which resembled the flat cone of a massive speaker.
Its voice rumbled at such low frequencies that it sounded like the distorted bass of a blown subwoofer pounding against your eardrums, but I understood every word. One look at its condition told me exactly what had been done to it over the past several days.
"Holy hell... Is that thing actually real?" Ted had recovered enough to stand upright again, but he stared at the transparent cube like a kid seeing a wild animal for the first time. "Why're they keeping it alive? What's the point?"
"Insurance, kid." Danny stepped closer, and for a moment the usual easygoing edge vanished from his voice. "Once the main assault kicks off in the jungle, nobody's gonna be counting bodies. If we wipe out every last one of them, the portal starts collapsing. To keep it from shutting down too early and make sure we've got time to haul everything valuable out of here, recon grabs one of them ahead of time and keeps it alive until the last truck rolls out."
"They tortured him?" Mary asked evenly, without the slightest tremor in her voice, though there was something unsettlingly detached about the question for someone her age.
"Didn't expect that question from a twelve-year-old lady." Kim flashed his trademark white smile, hoping to lighten the mood.
It did not work. The little Ice Queen did not so much as blink, her eyes still fixed on the frost covering the chamber's glass.
"Yeah, Mary. They did," the captain said flatly, no trace of a smile left. "Interrogating prisoners is the fastest way to learn the enemy's tactical plans."
"That's rough," Ted muttered, taking half a step back from the cryochamber. "I don't think I could do a job like that."
"And nobody's asking you to," Danny said. "Intelligence gathering and field interrogations are handled exclusively by recon specialists. They spend years learning the Loz'an language, its phonetics, and its dialects. That's why they get special treatment."
By then, the last squads had emerged from the shimmering portal. Without wasting a second, the platoon reorganized into the marching formation approved by the colonel. Scouts and heavy assault troops took point. Kim, the teenagers, and I occupied the protected center, while another lieutenant led the rear guard covering our flank.
"Radio check. How copy?" Leon Stewart's calm voice came through the helmet speakers, softened slightly by the electronics.
"Loud and clear, sir," I replied, confirming the channel. The rest of the platoon answered with synchronized clicks over the comms.
"Listen up. Stay on me. Three-yard spacing. Don't break formation," the colonel ordered crisply. "Keep your left hand on the shield activation controller at all times. Right hand stays on your weapon. Don't fire unless I give the order. The operation has begun."
Leon stepped smoothly through what appeared to be the grotto's solid rock wall. From our side it looked like a paper-thin membrane of S-Power, transparent enough to reveal the tropical landscape beyond in perfect detail. From the Loz'an side, however, it appeared to be nothing more than an unbroken wall of solid stone.
The column, clad in heavy composite armor, filed out onto open ground one soldier after another. The first thing that hit us was the suffocating tropical heat and crushing humidity. For the first couple of minutes, my brain insisted on treating everything I saw as something utterly alien. Then cold logic took over. Aside from the unusual purple pigmentation of some shrubs and the oddly shaped fruit hanging from the trees, these were perfectly ordinary dense jungles, the kind you see in every documentary about the Amazon. It made perfect sense. If the Loz'an were adapted to Earth's atmosphere, then their native biome would naturally share the same basic characteristics.
"Feels like I'm back in Vietnam," Ted muttered, swatting aside a thick branch that nearly scraped across his face shield.
"You've never been to Vietnam," Mary replied without emotion as she walked through the muddy ground.
"I was speaking figuratively, you little know-it-all."
"That's enough," I cut in quietly, though my voice carried enough weight to end the exchange. "You're not on a training range anymore. We're in enemy territory, so keep your mouths shut and stay sharp."
"Yeah... got it," Ted mumbled under his breath.
At that moment, one of the lieutenants leading the advance element stepped over to the colonel and quickly reported something. Leon immediately raised an open hand, the universal signal to halt. The entire platoon froze as one, every movement stopping in perfect sync as the joints of their armor gave off a faint metallic clink.
"All units, listen up," Stewart's clipped voice came through the earpiece, instantly putting everyone on alert. "Enemy trap detected straight ahead. Hold position and await further instructions."
Leon snapped a thick branch off the nearest alien tree and walked forward alone. I instinctively craned my neck, trying to catch every detail of what he was doing. Mary took the smarter approach. Using her ability, she silently floated about three feet into the air, giving herself a perfect view.
The colonel tossed the branch onto an otherwise unremarkable patch of ground. The reaction was immediate. A thin silver filament snapped out of the earth with a sharp click. Like a steel python, it coiled around the branch and tightened with such incredible force that the wood swelled like an overstuffed sausage. Less than a heartbeat later, the thick branch burst into splinters with a dull crack. Leon gave a quick forward wave. The column started moving again, each soldier carefully placing their heavy boots in the footprints ahead.
"That thing slices through human bones just as easily," Danny whispered. "Step on one, and you've got less than a second to realize what's happening and hit your shield switch. Miss it, and you're leaving a limb behind."
"Let me guess. It cuts through a Loz'an's elastic tissue just as easily?" I replied, keeping my voice calm and analytical. "Another defensive technology they originally built to use against each other, and now they're using it on us."
Over the next five minutes, the scouts uncovered another twenty of the same nasty surprises. The Loz'an clearly had not skimped on resources when they fortified this perimeter. Without the painstaking work of the specialists leading the advance, we would have taken serious casualties before covering our first hundred yards.
I found myself curious about our guardian angel, the reconnaissance lieutenant feeding Leon the exact location of every trap with flawless precision. I focused on his silhouette, and the information I needed immediately appeared.
Profession: Soldier, Tracker, Engineer
S-Power: 6800 / 7000 [Control Level: Supreme]
Special Skill: [Technosense]
[Technosense: A mental ability that projects the user's perception for miles in every direction, allowing them to detect any artificial mechanism, wiring network, or technological system with perfect accuracy while simultaneously deciphering how it operates.]
With an ability like that, he was priceless to the Corps.
At that moment, Danny took advantage of everyone looking elsewhere and quickly plucked a cluster of long alien berries from a nearby bush. He popped one into his mouth and handed another to me.
"Corps regulations say everything that comes through a portal goes into a secure storage facility," Kim whispered. "Even something as simple as edible berries. Unless you've got a couple million to buy them later, this is your only chance to find out what they taste like."
The idea of committing even a minor disciplinary offense and risking my record over a handful of wild berries did not appeal to me. Still, I pushed that aside and gave it another thought. My internal analyzer reached a conclusion almost instantly. No toxins. Pure organic matter. Turning Kim down outright might also come across as distrust or some misplaced by-the-book attitude, and that would only damage our relationship. Besides, I was curious.
I slipped the yellow berry, shaped like a tiny seashell, beneath my helmet and into my mouth. The flesh was firm, and the flavor was surprisingly good, somewhere between a ripe wild strawberry and a sweet pear. Nothing extraordinary, but definitely worth trying.
"Pass these to the kids." Danny quietly slipped two more berries into my glove. "They've been burning energy all morning."
I turned to Ted and Mary, quietly explained the need to keep it discreet, and handed them the fruit. While the teenagers hurried to hide their little prizes behind their face shields, I kept a careful eye on the rest of the platoon. It felt ridiculously like we were sneaking candy. Childish, maybe, but it took the edge off their nerves.
"Attention, platoon. Enemy contact confirmed. Four Loz'an on foot patrol," Leon's calm, emotionless voice came through the comms, instantly pulling everyone back to reality. "Maintain current pace. Weapons ready. Contact in one hundred twenty seconds."
A low rumble rolled through the ranks as everyone adjusted their grip on their weapons. I tightened my hold on both S-Guns. To my surprise, Kim did not even reach for his issued sidearm.
"Never liked guns." Danny caught my eye and winked. He raised one finger, and a sphere of flame about the size of a large rifle cartridge flickered into existence above the tip. "I don't miss with these."
The column approached a dense wall of towering ferns. We still had no visual on the enemy because of the thick vegetation. Leon raised his hand.
"Shields up," the colonel ordered. "First squad, prepare to fire straight ahead. Second squad, watch the canopy. Fire on my count. Three... two... one... Fire!"
A concentrated wave of compressed S-Power blasts ripped through the wall of vegetation. Heavy impacts, tearing flesh, and wet, guttural choking sounds erupted from the jungle. The first two Loz'an died where they stood, taking the full force of the barrage. The remaining pair reacted with the speed of seasoned soldiers. Their legs compressed like powerful springs, launching them straight into the treetops. Even as they rose, they were already swinging their long laser carbines toward us.
The maneuver had been anticipated.
"Suppressive fire!" Leon barked over the comms.
A second volley streaked toward the canopy. Without precise target locks, most of the shots missed, shredding bark and leaves instead. Danny's firebolt arced through the air and narrowly missed, but Kim bent its path in midflight. Like a drop of mercury racing across tilted glass, the blazing projectile veered sharply and wrapped itself around one of the alien's necks. A second later, the charred Loz'an crashed into the mud below.
The last surviving enemy had already lined up Ted's head in his sights when two bullets slammed into the precise point where his neck met his shoulder. My shots. The alien's body went limp, sagged across a branch, then slowly slid to the ground.
"Nice shot, Ross," Leon said over my private channel, his voice steady.
There was no surge of adrenaline and no existential crisis over my first kill. My brain processed it the same way it would have processed correcting an error in a report.
"That wraps up the warm-up, gentlemen." The sharp edge in the colonel's voice had the platoon shifting into a defensive formation in an instant. "There's no hiding gunfire out here. The Loz'an know we're here now. Every reserve they've got is converging on this position. Get ready for a sustained firefight."