Captain Atsáli Rhinocerotidae was of a long line of soldiers, tracing his lineage back as far as the middle of the age of the Many Wars. He was genetically engineered to be a perfect specimen: tall, muscular, cybernetically enhanced and stoic. He was present in over four hundred large-scale battles and had nine thousand confirmed human kills and fifteen thousand Artiman eliminations.
Since there weren't too many conflicts in the Council Territories and in recent times, Atsáli had been idle for quite some time and, at some point, the decades started to blur together.
He had just turned one hundred and ninety, was the captain of an entire company of genetically modified super soldiers and could have retired whenever he wanted, but he always felt as though the galaxy was teetering on the age of something epic.
A war of countless worlds and fires that swallowed suns.
He understood he was simply looking for excitement, and it eventually came in an order that instructed the fleet he was a part of to head to a sector of lost space, which held a supposed ancient relic.
The alleged ancestral home of Newmankind.
Atsáli didn't get why it was so important, but he had no choice in the matter, so he shrugged in response, thinking it was just some busy work.
However, even he, a hardened soldier, couldn't hide his dread upon seeing what the organism named Scalpel was capable of.
All of his achievements were spread out across an extended lifetime, yet Scalpel had killed exactly ten thousand people in far less than a fraction of the time.
And this excited Atsáli to no end.
Of course, he was happy that a challenge had finally appeared.
Humans were far too easy to kill, and he didn't count the Artimen.
This presented a whole new opportunity.
Ever since the Scalpel massacre, the soldiers of the Humanity United Military Forces had been hard at work going over the data they had on Anoona's children.
They had spent almost an entire year trying to find weaknesses or strategies they could use against the monsters, but nothing was enough.
A specialised version of the Dove spaceships had been developed to counter Anoona's Hawks, but this just meant that they had been made lighter and a little more manoeuvrable.
A new type of Artimen had also been developed, but they had been deemed unsafe for use since it was too dangerous to have, what was essentially a nuke, walking in line with Newmen soldiers.
The HUMF had to rely on good old-fashioned brute force, which is exactly how Atsáli liked it.
Victory would be determined by those who were brave enough to step into the maw of the beast and cleave it open from within.
The time eventually came for a joint offensive effort by the pseudo fleet that now orbited the Earth, and Atsáli found himself on one of the two hundred ships that made their way to the moon.
"Alright, boys. I've led you into many hells in our time together. The great fires of MSW-235 to the frigid tunnels of Raya-1212." Atsáli grinned at his hundred men as they sat in one of the many briefing rooms on the HU Fallstar.
Each of them just as hardened and eager.
Even in the face of the losses taken during the initial bombardment, they stood unfazed.
"But this… this might be where we cut our names onto the overlong hide of history!"
His men all grinned back as footage was projected onto the board behind him, showing the now hazy moon. Its surface obscured by the same interference that was hiding the truth of the Earth.
Atsáli turned to face the digital projection and crossed his arms.
"I predict the nukes will fail. Anyone wanna put money on it?" He raised a brow at his men, half of whom shrugged while the others got rowdy.
"No need. There's no shot those monsters aren't hiding some sort of planetary defence system!"
"But they're just bugs!"
"90 Credits says the nukes detonate on target!"
"500 says they don't!"
Atsáli eyed his men with a cocky grin before scoffing.
"100 000 credits say the nukes don't reach anywhere near that ashen nest."
Silence followed, which only widened the captain's smile.
"You're on, boss!"
And with that, the bets had been made with half of the company betting on the nukes not hitting and the other half betting otherwise.
The total cash pool amounted to 500,000 Credits, which was enough to either purchase a fairly sized apartment on a First-Class ship or a two-seat Short-Range spaceship.
The soldiers then watched as, after reaching the planned distance, the HU Fallstar and its accompanying ships launched three hundred warheads towards the moon.
They were shaped like harpoons and were about the size of a cell phone tower. Weighing over fifty tons each, they had the same explosive potential as 100 million tons of TNT.
They were designed to flatten entire cities and cook them afterwards, being kept by the High Generals in case of emergency.
The nukes held enough fuel to propel themselves at the moon, accelerating rapidly until they reached speeds over six million kilometres per hour.
Under normal circumstances, they would reach their target's surface before they knew it-
Atsáli watched as each of the Nukes was destroyed one by one by an unseen weapon, even though they were still at least two hundred thousand kilometres away.
And while they travelled along wide paths to avoid getting targeted in bulk, something was rapidly shooting them and making them prematurely detonate.
The nukes altered their paths, but something on the moon's surface was accurately tracking and targeting them for destruction.
This presented a terrifying question for a wide-eyed Atsáli.
If Anoona could so easily shoot down fast-moving missiles, then what hope did their ships have?
His heart raced with every bright flash of light that came across the display, and he found himself subconsciously squeezing his fists, as if bracing for some imagined impact.
The lethal lightshow eventually ended, and it was reported that all outbound warheads had been disabled.
Atsáli held his breath, dreading the next transmission, and his heart fell when it came.
[This is Lieutenant Commander Hale reporting from the bridge. We've picked up multiple contacts emerging from the interference field on the Earth's Moon—twenty-five of what appear to be First-Class ships, ten Second-Class vessels and five hundred Short-Range fighters. They predicted trajectory falls in line with our current position, so all hands have been ordered to assume combat-ready status.]
Atsáli could hear the fear in the Lieutenant Commander's voice, but he understood very well the grip that fear could have on a soldier, so he turned to his men, who all wore stiff expressions.
"You heard the Lieutenant, ready up!"
His men immediately broke into action, marching into their barracks and strapping into their gear.
Before this whole situation with Anoona began, Atsáli's men were considered the peak of combat effectiveness.
They wore air-tight suits that could protect them from bullets up to 50. And could carry up to five hundred kilograms each.
They were efficient, lethal and feared as the Cyborg Corps.
But now they were up against a threat that eclipsed all the advancements that defined them.
It was enough to make Atsáli feel sick, but he kept his nose raised.
The Fallstar and accompanying ships could have turned to flee, but that would have allowed the enemy to get too close to the fleet.
They had to stand their ground and fight.
And die.
Atsáli wore his helmet, hiding the twisted grin that adorned his now sweaty face.
His heart was beating so fast that his diffusers had to work harder to reduce his adrenaline levels, but it felt so good.
Better than killing someone weaker or killing a robot.
Atsáli led his men to one of the Fallstar's hangars, where they would be stationed.
They stood before their captain in neat rows, allowing him to take a good look at them.
"Come now, don't look at me like that. You make it seem like we're gonna die." He grinned, but for once, his men didn't chuckle back.
Atsáli scoffed, crossing his arms.
"Are we really gonna mope around all day?" He asked, his own throat tightening with dread and fear.
The silence of the hangar didn't help, and the shaken eyes of his men were the last straw.
Atsáli paced back and forth, fighting back the tears they couldn't see.
"Fuck…" He let out a quivering breath.
"Kaleido!"
"Sir!" His vice-captain chirped.
"Anyone who survives today gets a million credits, remember that! With 250k for every one of those freaks you can kill!"
That old glint in the eyes of his men returned as they began plotting their survival and victory, but this just made Atsáli roll his eyes.
"As always, the best way to motivate you greedy bastards is money."
"What can we say, Cap?"
"The beers ain't gonna pay for themselves!
"You made us this way, boss!"
Atsáli shook his head as a smile graced his face.
He relished in this moment, while counting the seconds he had left.
.
..
The enemy ships were like obsidian needles, aimed at the forces of the Newmen.
Atsáli saw their approach via a display in his HUD.
A few of their smaller ships flew ahead as a vanguard, and they would be intercepted by the redesigned Doves.
The Short-Range ships began their clash with long-range munitions, which both sides managed to avoid, but when it came to close-quarter combat, the enemy ships were far more agile, and their damned shields kept the Doves from doing any significant amounts of damage.
Several Doves were shot down with every minute that passed, prompting the HUMF to send out more, but they couldn't keep sustaining such heavy losses, so the First-Class ships launched some of the heavy ordinances at the ongoing dogfight, aiming to eliminate the enemy ships, even if it came at the cost of a few unmanned Doves.
Several large explosions followed, and the scanners showed that they were able to destroy a handful of the enemy ships.
However, just as the tempest roared its loudest, the sensors detected something exiting one of the enemy's First-Class ships.
Atsáli's brow knotted upon seeing that it was one of Anoona's children, a Beta Class one and the one who was called Thunder.
He who claimed to be among the strongest of her brood.
He brandished a dark, great spear and had several spearheads tied to his waist.
The Beta raised his spear and almost immediately, gargantuan sparks appeared around him.
The ongoing reports on Atsáli's HUD stated that the electrical signal around him was rapidly rising and had already reached a reading of a billion volts.
An order was then given by the High Generals to fire every weapon at him, and what followed was a hail of bullets, plasma and light.
However, visible through all this was Thunder, who stood unfazed in the blackness of space.
The kilometres of lightning around him melted any metallic projectiles, and his own shield seemingly deflected the beams of energy that managed to get through.
After charging his spear to a degree that seemingly satisfied him, he launched it at the detachment of ships, and Atsáli flinched even though the spear harmlessly passed through all of them in the blink of an eye.
What followed, however, was a storm of lightning that tore through fifty of the ships closest to the Fallstar.
Everyone helplessly watched as their turrets were stripped from their housings by gargantuan lightning bolts that tore into the ship's disabling key systems.
Fortunately, ships were designed to be like Faraday cages, meaning very few losses were reported, but the ships had been functionally disabled.
And in this chaos, Anoona's fleet closed in.
Thunder, with an outstretched hand, recalled his spear and turned to the other ships, some of which were in the process of slowly turning to retreat.
But Atsáli knew it was too late.