First Contact Fallout by Aer-ki Jyr (best non fiction books to read txt) 📕

Gon’zu was one of many passengers inside the 540 meter long transport, yet he was the only one comparable to the Era’tran in size. Had he simply wanted them killed he wouldn’t have come, but if these two were from those that had stayed behind at the Zor’do then he needed to know what they knew, and retrieving information from a corpse was not easy. Not to mention it required equipment that he did not have. No, if they were to be taken alive he might have to get involved himself, and he couldn’t trust the troops he’d been assigned to get the job done when they were dying to keep the Era’tran alive.

The thing with killing Era’tran was you had to overwhelm them with targets. Send a few, or a single one to them and they were near impossible to defeat. But give them many small ones and while they killed some of them the others would get the job done, and his troops had a fair amount of experience in that department, though attrition kept the number of true experts to a minimum and he didn’t think they’d have the courage to not overuse their lethal weaponry only to disable when their own lives were on the line.

Gon’zu didn’t doubt their loyalty, just their nerve. One’s natural reaction when being killed was to strike back with as much force as possible, and that could not occur here. At least one of the Era’tran wore no armor and had a single forearm weapon. That would make for an easy target, and too much damage was a subjective thing. His troops were not issued stun weapons larger than a pistol, and very few of them. Those could not be effective against such a large beast as the Era’tran unless employed en mass…and Gon’zu didn’t have that luxury. He was going to have to injure the Era’tran into submission, and given their nature to fight to the death rather than succumb, he was probably going to have to personally end this fight with his own psionics…for even his own armor did not come standard equipped with stun weapons.

He already had troops in the field pursuing the Era’tran, and apparently they got to the scout’s location before his transport did, for he suddenly started getting combat reports from the location indicating that the scout was dead and they were engaged with Zen’zat on the ground in addition to the Era’tran.

That was acceptable, for there weren’t enough troops on the ground to actually win, but they could begin wearing the Era’tran down and plucking away the Zen’zat they had before he arrived to finish up, though he was mildly concerned that the scout hadn’t reported any Zen’zat. Was there a camouflaged outpost here with more firepower than he was anticipating?

There was another V’kit’no’sat operation going on nearby, outside his command, and he opened up a comm line to the gunship to inquire if they knew anything about the location ahead and if they could assist with the takedown of these Era’tran…but he got no response. After several attempts he wasn’t sure if they were just ignoring him or if that was actually a hostile craft, because its automated codes were all responding appropriately.

He used the transport’s sensors to zoom in on the gunship just before it dipped down into the treetops. Visuals showed some damage to the hull, so it was possible that the comm system was damaged. He didn’t know how likely that was, for he was not intimately familiar with the craft the Bo’ja used, but something about this did not feel right…and when the gunship rose up again and altered course towards the fight he wasn’t sure if they had heard him and didn’t respond or if something else was in play.

“Tag that gunship as an unknown unit,” he told his pilots. “They’re not responding to comms. Does it have enough weaponry to give us a problem if it turns out to be hostile?”

“It won’t get through our shields, but it has more firepower than we do,” one of the small, duck-billed biped pilots answered. “If it sticks around for a slugging match we’ll eventually win.”

“Good. Keep an eye on it,” he said, devouring every snippet of information coming back to him from the troops on the ground. A few more minutes and they’d be at their landing zone, so he mentally activated his gauntlets and donned his own armor to match the infantry that were already fully suited up and standing shoulder to shoulder around him in the main deck. Not quite enough to make it crowded, for they could have included more…if he had them. As it was, these were all but a handful of the troops that assaulted the Zor’do. A few stayed there to continue investigating and guard the facility, but he’d pulled everyone else on this hunting mission. He couldn’t afford to have it go wrong, one way or another.

He was convinced there was something special about that Zor’do, but the only ones who knew what it was were either dead or on the run ahead of him. He couldn’t afford to waste his infantry assets, so grouping them together was the logical move. Spread them out and his casualties would increase. Focused operations in force were the mathematically most viable option for hunting missions…and fortunately he had the assets available for this one while most combat on the planet had devolved down to single units out hunting and engaging each other far from the fortified cities.

But then the gunship arrived at the battle site a few minutes ahead of them, and it started pouring firepower down into the jungle as Gon’zu railed at them on the comm that he wanted the Era’tran taken alive…but there was no response or alteration in course as tree after tree was obliterated from above with who knew what damage was being done to the Era’tran below.