A heavy, ringing silence settled over the scorched stretch of battlefield, the kind that after-action reports usually describe as the calm before the storm.
We stood frozen on one side of the field, with the Loz'an infantry lined up in perfect formation directly across from us. About two hundred yards of charred, smoking ground separated the two forces, all that remained of Danny's recent pyrotechnic display. The heat was relentless, and the air shimmered above the purple grass.
The enemy was completely exposed. Under normal circumstances, both sides would have already broken into a chaotic firefight driven by instinct alone. But now our suits' power grids were dead, leaving our internal reserves severely limited. Both sides had also learned the same lesson just a minute earlier: frontal assaults accomplished absolutely nothing. Their effectiveness was a flat zero.
There was one man responsible for that. Standing a short distance behind the enemy line was a typical member of the Loz'an species, large and covered in grimy green elastic skin. What distinguished him from the average rubber soldier were the thick golden tattoos winding across his forearms and neck. Among their kind, markings like those signified the highest officer rank, as well as the status of an Awakened. His face had appeared during the pre-mission briefing at headquarters, but intelligence had provided only vague estimates of his abilities. It was time to update the file and conduct an audit firsthand.
[Enemy Analysis]
Name: Untranslatable Acoustic Index
Age: 90
Occupation: Combatant, Tactical Strategist
S-Power: 46,700/48,000 [Control Level: Medium]
Special Skill: [S-Power Disperser]
[A unique ability that generates directed microspheres capable of destabilizing the molecular structure of any S-Power constructs or projectiles. The spheres are completely inert when interacting with physical matter or biological tissue.]
Race: Loz'an
Strength: 16
Endurance: 22
Agility: 19
Current Effects: No negative status effects.
We could not have faced a worse opponent under these circumstances. The EMP blast had already stripped us of our armor, and now the squad's greatest advantage, our superhuman abilities, could be erased with the flick of this guy's finger. Loz'an command had engineered this ambush with an accountant's precision.
It might have looked as though both sides were starting on equal footing, but that was far from true. We were deep inside enemy territory, well behind their lines. Every minute we spent staring each other down brought their mobile reserves closer to this sector.
A decision had to be made. I glanced at Leon, the man who officially held command. His eyelids moved slowly beneath his visor. The veteran was obviously running through every possible option, but his biological limits kept him from reaching an answer instantly. Without false modesty or theatrics, I was the fastest processor in this sector right now. That meant operational command had to fall to me. It was not ambition or ego. It was simple logic and a matter of survival.
The problem was that the Loz'an's distributed liquid brains gave them a serious cognitive advantage as well. Their green-skinned commander had almost certainly finished calculating his next move.
A plan came together in my head. It was far from perfect and rested on more assumptions than I liked, but I had nothing to lose. If it failed, I would simply tap into the reserve fund, trigger another [Special Command], and drag the squad through on raw triggers alone.
"Everyone with ranged offensive abilities, front line," I ordered, my voice calm but firm. "Everyone else, fall back one step and form a second line. Tighten it up, shoulder to shoulder, so Mary can cover all of us with one defensive field. Move."
To my immense relief, both the veterans and the rookies shifted into position without asking a single question. I had been worried the old hands might dig in with something like, Why the hell are we taking orders from a rookie pencil pusher instead of the colonel? Apparently, I had earned enough trust after pulling them out of that blazing death trap a few minutes ago. Or maybe nobody had time to worry about the chain of command.
The enemy was moving too. The gold-tattooed Loz'an officer casually swept a hand forward, sending another dense wall of pearlescent bubbles drifting toward us while the slingers behind him drew their bands in perfect unison. Damn. I saw the tactic immediately. The bubbles would travel alongside the shrapnel, acting as a moving shield. They would neutralize Mary's telekinesis before it could reach the projectiles, allowing the superheated metal to tear straight into our unprotected bodies.
"Miguel, you're up! Smoke screen, right across the bubbles' path!" I shouted. "Mary, forget the bubbles. Stay locked on the metal and grab those rounds the instant they leave the slings! Danny, get ready for a special maneuver on my command."
The disperser spheres drifted slowly, about as fast as a falling feather. That sluggish pace bought us a pitiful ten-second window.
The shimmering wall had crossed half the distance when I saw the taut skin on the enemy slingers' arms quiver under the strain just before release.
"Miguel, now! Go!"
I did not know the guy personally and had never spoken to him before today. But while our echelon had been stuck in the staging camp waiting for deployment through the portal, I had killed time by scanning the profiles of every soldier in the barracks. Miguel's ability was unusually specialized. He could instantly generate a dense cloud of smoke anywhere within his line of sight. Normally it was used for reconnaissance or to cover a retreat, but right now I did not care what it was designed for. We just needed volume.
A dense wall of pitch-black smoke materialized out of nowhere directly in front of the advancing wave of shimmering spheres. The calculation proved flawless. The Loz'an bubbles, programmed to dismantle energy constructs, collided with an entirely physical cloud of microscopic soot and ash. Thousands of tiny spheres greedily absorbed the particles, growing heavier, losing stability, then floating upward with soft pops before dispersing into the atmosphere along with the smoke.
It was spectacular, like a high-budget special effects show. Unfortunately, this was not the time to sit back and admire it.
The black wall had barely begun to thin before thermal projectiles came screaming through it. More importantly, there were no shimmering spheres left in their path to interfere.
"You're up, Mary," I said quietly. Through my visor, I watched her fingers go perfectly still while her eyes locked onto the incoming shrapnel. "Send it back."
"Gladly." A cold, vicious smile crossed her pale face.
A hundred white-hot metal balls froze in midair under the force of her telekinesis, then rocketed back at twice their original speed. The Loz'an officer frantically spat out another wave of bubbles, but it was nothing more than a panicked reflex. His spheres had been designed to annihilate S-Power constructs. Against chunks of white-hot metal, they were completely useless.
The enemy ranks answered with wet, gruesome gurgles and the sharp hiss of flesh charring. The air instantly filled with the sickening stench of burning rubber.
Unfortunately, we did not wipe out the entire formation. Their heavy infantry had not been carrying tower shields for show. The aliens moved in perfect unison, stretching and compressing their elastic bodies to absorb the impact while taking the brunt of the blazing metal on their composite shields. I had no idea what alloy those things were made from, but they withstood temperatures of five hundred degrees without showing the slightest sign of deformation. Even so, the enemy had lost four soldiers. That was a solid start.
Their commander adjusted in an instant. After sending a dense, unbroken wave of pearlescent protection ahead of them, he drove the rest of his infantry forward. The Loz'an advanced in a tight wedge, safely tucked behind their shields with long spears leveled at us. It looked like a Roman phalanx with an alien twist. Not good.
"I can't crush them while they're hiding behind those bubbles!" Mary hissed through clenched teeth. Her fingers trembled with strain, and large beads of sweat rolled down her forehead. "Every telekinetic vector falls apart the second it touches them."
"Don't waste your energy," I replied evenly. That calm, steady tone was exactly what the platoon needed from the person calling the shots. "Ease off the overall pressure. Stay focused on the front line."
Another volley of thermal shrapnel streaked toward us through the curtain of bubbles. With her attention no longer split, Mary caught every projectile cleanly and hurled them straight back into the enemy shields. This time there were no screams. The aliens were well protected.
"Miguel, smoke screen across their whole advance! Make it thick!"
Another wall of pitch-black smoke billowed up directly in front of the advancing Loz'an wedge. Predictably, they slowed to a halt while their gold-tattooed officer frantically spat out fresh spheres to clear their line of sight. For a split second, through a break in the smoke, I caught a gap in their defensive line.
"Miguel, don't stop. Give me more."
Every fresh cloud broke their momentum, forcing the formation to stall while their commander burned more of his own reserves generating bubbles. I was not naive enough to think I could drain his massive energy pool with a trick this cheap. I only needed to buy enough time to set up our real play.
A heavy metallic crash rang out beside me, followed by a wave of scorching, bone-dry heat. Danny skidded to a stop at my side, his armor wrapped in roaring orange flames. He had carried out my instructions perfectly. He had flown down into the crater and returned with an armful of spears fitted with thermal tips. Out of everyone in the platoon, only his resistance to extreme heat let him pull that off without ending up in the field hospital.
"Nice work, Danny." I gave the veteran a quick nod. "All units, open up! Keep the pressure on!"
Every ranged ability in the platoon slammed into the advancing wall at once. As expected, roughly half our energy attacks vanished into the Loz'an leader's bubbles, while the rest ricocheted harmlessly off their tower shields. It did not matter. The volume of fire created exactly the confusion I needed. A clear opening appeared in the wall of enemy shields.
I instantly wrapped myself in an ultra-dense layer of insulating S-Power, shutting out the external heat, and grabbed one of the ten spears Danny had brought back.
The weight was perfectly balanced. I drew my arm back, planted my left foot, and let pure biomechanics take over, techniques I had studied years ago from videos of Olympic javelin throwers. My memory supplied every movement flawlessly.
[The Trainer's Presence adjusts movement biomechanics for maximum efficiency.]
I put every ounce of strength I had into the throw. The blazing spear ripped through the air on a perfect arc and drove straight through the gap I had picked out between the shields. A high-pitched Loz'an scream confirmed the hit. One of the central shields toppled sideways, opening a perfect line of sight to their tattooed commander.
I was already reaching for another spear, but the gold-tattooed officer reacted fast. He launched his elastic body nearly ten yards into the air, slipping out of my attack lane. Survival instinct. Without thinking, I hurled the second spear ahead of him, leading the target.
He did not even try to defend himself with his spheres while airborne. They were useless in this situation. Instead, he shot an arm toward the canopy of a massive nearby tree and yanked himself toward the trunk. My spear sliced through empty air, taking off nothing more than a few branches. I immediately launched a third spear after him, though by then I did not care whether it connected. My real move had already been made.
"Danny, they're exposed! Burn them!" I shouted, feeling a cynical grin spread across my face.
The Loz'an wedge erupted in flames as if it had been soaked in gasoline. While their precious commander was scrambling through the branches to save his own skin from my spears, he had left his soldiers without their energy cover. He realized his mistake too late and tried to send another wave of bubbles downward, but Danny's flames did not care. Within seconds, the assault force had been reduced to nothing but a mound of gray ash. There was a reason Danny topped the Corps' combat damage rankings.
"Mary, pin the survivor to the ground. Don't let him move."
The gold-tattooed Loz'an did not even have time to brace for another jump. Mary's telekinetic force slammed him face-first into the purple mud with a heavy thud. Since he could generate those destructive spheres only through his hands, he was completely neutralized.
I walked over at an unhurried pace and fired a compressed S-Power round into the back of his head just to be safe. Instead of the expected spray of green fluid, the shot struck a transparent cocoon with a low hum and dissolved into it.
Made sense. Humans did not have an exclusive claim on defensive techniques. Any intelligent civilization advanced enough would eventually discover how to manipulate raw S-Power into personal energy shields.
The officer could not move under Mary's telekinetic pressure, but his barrier held firm, rendering our standard attacks useless. We could have spent the next half hour wearing it down while draining his reserves, but we had one highly specialized tool for exactly this situation.
"Ted, you're up." I stepped aside to give him room.
"Finally!" The hyperactive kid practically bounced forward, already forming his peculiar substance in one hand.
What Ted proudly called "plasma" looked anything but impressive. It was a pale, crumbly mass that resembled a lump of melting snow. It splatted against the transparent shield with a wet smack. Visually unimpressive, but Selina's lab had analyzed it thoroughly. Ted's substance was a perfect destabilizer for energy field frequencies. It forced an enemy shield to operate at maximum output, burning through its energy reserves at an insane rate.
Five seconds later, the massive reserve my system had recorded for the gold-tattooed officer was completely gone. The transparent cocoon shattered with a soft chime, and the remaining plasma dropped onto the exposed Loz'an's back, burning straight through his elastic flesh and internal organs.
Enemy eliminated. Operational area secured.
As I looked at the fallen body, a series of intriguing system notifications appeared before my eyes, but I never had the chance to read them.
"Second Lieutenant Ross," Leon said from behind me, his voice dry and official. "We need to have a serious talk about what you pulled out here."
I sighed to myself as soon as I heard his tone. Fair enough. This was exactly what I had expected. It sounded like I was about to get the standard military chewing-out for freelancing, breaking the chain of command, and ignoring operational protocol. Time for the debrief.