Worried that the enemy possessed devastating anti-air capabilities against human air forces, Ryk dared not send all his troops forward aboard transport ships.
He rode at the head of the marching column in a Saber command vehicle dating back to the Guild Wars. The infantry advanced in three columns through the rough jungle terrain at a speed of 5 km/h, while overhead, one squadron of Avenger fighters and five Phantom jets provided air support.
The first 10 km were low and relatively flat jungle terrain, allowing the Revolutionary Army troops to maintain a faster pace. But as they ventured deeper, the vegetation grew taller and denser, forcing Ryk to order his soldiers to abandon their vehicles and advance on foot with only their supplies.
It was a green jungle world overgrown with rankor plants, ferns, and primitive angiosperms. In corners covered by vines and moss lay ancient ruins long buried by time.
On those weathered, ash-gray structures were carved mysterious, ancient symbols. By night, these inscriptions emitted a faint, firefly-like emerald glow.
Ruins older than all of human history lay hidden beneath the thick canopy. The massive rectangular structures resembled the Mayan pyramids of old Earth, and the circular altars seemed to hint at cruel and bloody sacrificial rites.
In the distance, geysers of Terrazina gas rose straight into the sky between the vast stretches of primeval forest and savanna, staining Bel'Shir's blue heavens with a magnificent violet hue.
Had they looked up carefully, they would have noticed that within the violet haze of Terrazina clouds, enormous paddle-shaped fins and the outlines of massive whale-like creatures occasionally appeared—as though a pod of floating whales was gliding through the air.
To this day, humanity had yet to discover that, in some idyllic, hidden corners of Bel'Shir, strange forms of life still existed.
As the Revolutionary Army's vanguard steadily pushed deeper into the jungle, Ryk led a company of soldiers in powered armor, advancing on foot through the dense forest of Bel'Shir.
The broad leaves of towering plants gradually blocked out the sunlight overhead, casting a deep, shadowy gloom upon the forest floor. The jungles of Bel'Shir were eerily silent—no cries of beasts or birds, only the droning of primitive insects perched on flowers.
Moisture clung to the diamond-shaped leaves of the undergrowth, and the uniforms of the Revolutionary Army soldiers grew damp and sticky. As Ryk's vanguard drew closer to their destination, the thick vegetation left almost no path to follow.
Under such conditions, Ryk and his men were forced to hack down saplings and the tough vines tangled between the trees with their bayonets. Within this dense jungle, where visibility was nearly zero, the officers of the Revolutionary Army had to use radio transmitters repeatedly to confirm the position of their own units.
Nearly 3 500 soldiers were spread out through the dense jungle, advancing in a search formation. The distance between each soldier was 3 to 5 m. Every ten or so minutes, the marching lines of the Revolutionary Army would briefly halt and regroup, while the officers reported to the commander whether there had been any cases of unexplained disappearances within their units.
Soldiers in deep-red powered armor, serving as the backbone of the formation, advanced along the outer perimeter, while the larger number of troops wearing only standard cotton uniforms carried Gauss rifles, gas flamethrowers, and heavy machine guns to provide covering fire.
When less than 2 km remained to their destination, Ryk dispatched another squad of elite scouts—but within just over ten minutes, contact with that team was completely lost.
Ryk and his subordinates immediately realized that the enemy was nearby.
A gentle breeze brushed against the plants beneath the soldiers of the Revolutionary Army, making the leaves rustle softly. Unknowingly, sweat began to seep down Ryk's face and body.
"Sergeant Noid is still unaccounted for. The locator in his powered armor shows he hasn't moved for over twelve minutes."
As Ryk's powered boots stepped onto the slick, damp grass, the report came through his helmet. A dozen adjutants and guards clad in powered armor walked beside him, advancing step by step.
The soldiers swept their surroundings, using the thermal imaging systems in their armor visors to track every slight disturbance among the foliage. As the elite among Ryk's forces, their visors were also equipped with precision anti-cloaking modules.
Since the Terran Confederacy's human armies had never deployed large-scale cloaking systems, mass-production of anti-cloak equipment had been deemed both unnecessary and costly. If not for Augustus's foresight—equipping every battalion-level and higher command with tactical anti-cloaking optics to counter the Confederacy's Ghost operatives—then for the present-day colonists, any invisible enemy would have been nearly invincible.
Even so, the detection range of this equipment was limited, allowing Ryk's soldiers to spot enemies only within their direct line of sight—leaving fatal blind zones beyond it.
Holding his Chief Petty Officer sniper rifle, Ryk could almost hear the sound of his own heartbeat. He suddenly recalled the moment he first held this weapon—he was a human psionic with Level 5 psionic aptitude. When he focused intensely, the passage of time would slow.
In Ryk's perception, even the sway of leaves had become sluggish, yet his thoughts remained razor-sharp. He listened carefully to the soft rustle of branches and the faint shuffling that occasionally came from the grass within the dense jungle.
Ryk kept thinking—if it were him, from where would he launch the attack?
Suddenly, Ryk jerked his head upward, looking toward the sky. To his right front, atop a tree resembling a banyan, stood a vague humanoid figure. Judging from its long dreadlocks and the gleaming crimson eyes, it was likely the same kind of creature as the one they had previously killed.
It clung to a slanted branch with one arm tensed around it, while the other hand held a crimson blade of light about 1.5 m long. Its feet were braced against the thick trunk, poised like an eagle ready to dive.
"Ten o'clock—on that tree! At the treetop!" Ryk shouted immediately.
Sensing that Ryk had spotted it, the creature leapt from the tree, the crimson cape behind it billowing in the wind.
The surrounding soldiers of the Revolutionary Army opened fire at once. However, the nail bullets capable of tearing through an adult's body bounced harmlessly off upon impact—a circular energy shield deflected all damage.
Amid the rattling gunfire, it advanced with graceful steps, moving effortlessly as it sliced off the head of the nearest soldier, then swept its blade horizontally, cutting a lieutenant clean in half. A shower of scarlet blood fell from the air like rain.
The powered armor shattered like brittle clay.
Ryk, utterly calm, fired one precise shot after another with his battle-honored sniper rifle, aiming straight for the creature's head, while his loyal subordinates charged forward without hesitation, firing as they placed themselves between their commander and the enemy.
The alien creature carved its way forward, cutting down twelve Revolutionary Army soldiers in powered armor, then cleaved Ryk's adjutant Phillip in two with a single stroke. It was almost unstoppable—until a grenade round struck it, sending it stumbling to the ground.
It had clearly underestimated the power of human weapons and placed too much faith in its own shield.
As the alien creature roared in a strange tongue, Ryk could only guess, judging by human standards, that it was cursing.
At the same time, Ryk fired several more rounds into its face until it stopped moving.
"Can you speak English?" he asked, his voice dripping with hatred, toward the dying creature.
The alien creature clad in black armor was clearly on the verge of death.
The creature had not worn a helmet, and it had paid the price for that mistake.
Under the bright afternoon sunlight of Bel'Shir, the humanoid form in black armor slowly dissolved into countless scarlet motes of light—like innumerable red fireflies or grains of sand scattered by the wind, rising upward with a breeze that brushed through the leaves and bushes.
To Ryk and his Revolutionary soldiers, such a scene was nothing new. Every time they believed they had slain one of these monsters, its body would dissolve into drifting light-dust. The scientists and scholars among the colonists even suspected that these alien beings were not carbon-based lifeforms at all—their form of existence might well lie far beyond human comprehension.
"Watch above your heads and under your feet. These Bel'Shir bastards can come from anywhere." At the moment his adjutant was decapitated, Ryk Kydd had already prepared himself to die.
Before him lay more than a dozen Revolutionary soldiers whose bodies had been sliced apart by blades. His adjutant, Philip, had also been brutally slaughtered. The sight was unbearable—even for a hardened commander like Ryk. The corpses lay scattered across the grass in dismembered heaps, like a pile of codfish shredded by an industrial cutter.
Ryk looked only once, then turned his gaze away, forcing himself to stay focused on the path ahead. There was no time to think about how many people would mourn the fallen.
The Korhalans had once been among the most prosperous of the Terran Confederacy's colonies. But ever since they had chosen to rebel against Confederacy rule, the word "calamity" had been forever bound to their name.
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