High-lord Gynegg, commander of the venerated 21st legion, victor of the scarlet war and master of war of the Soleen people was the most decorated and esteemed commander this side of the galactic core, and yet he could do nothing but laugh at the cowardice of these ‘humans’.
The fledgling empire had laid claim to a world that had been claimed by the emperor of the Soleen, and now they had only a small token force to defend the pathetic colony they had so rudely placed down on the emperor’s land.
And now, the token force wouldn’t even fight with dignity!
Gynegg overlooked the neat ranks of glittering warriors that made up his legion. It was the finest fighting force ever to be seen by the galaxy.
Three hundred thousand legionaries were to face off with less than three hundred human planetary defenders. It was a joke, really, but Gynegg had been ordered to slaughter every monkey on the planet’s surface as a show of force.
Well, the emperor would get his will made reality, as was always the case.
Gynegg draws his long plasma-saber, a true sign to the greatness of his office, and orders the legion to march.
They’re going to level the human city to the ground. There will be no survivors.
The trumpets blare out their mighty tunes, and as one the Soleen legionaries begin their march, blades clattering as they are bashed towards their armor.
It is a deafening, frightful sound, and Gynegg can only imagine the despair of the humans.
The battle will be short, but Gynegg will savor every moment of it.
There’s a loud crack, as of thunder, and a legionnaire’s head explodes in a flash of purple goop, and a second is thrown off his feet, chestplate horribly deformed.
What was this sorcery?!
“All legionnaires double the pace! The humans are using some sort ranged weaponry!”
The idea that such would be the case was preposterous. What sort of species could do such a thing?
In all his years as commander, and in the hundreds of battles he had fought, never had he seen any species fire a weapon at range with the accuracy enough to be fatal.
Sure, there were the musketeers of Yannog, but they relied on their troops forming extended lines and firing a wall of bullets in the direction of their foe, and a single musketeer was harmless.
He shuddered with the memory of long-past battles. The cowards of Yannog still made him feel ill.
He was glad he had exterminated them to a man.
There’s another crack, and another and more legionnaires fell. No, they’re definitely using some sort of ranged weaponry.
But as the first legionnaire took a step into the human city, there was a loud beep and a dozen legionnaires were consumed in a bout of shrapnel.
But such small losses were negligible. There were hundreds of thousands of legionnaires, and scarce more than a handful had fallen.
The glittering host flows forth as a tidal wave of silver, an advance punctuated by more and more explosions.
Gynegg strains his eyes, attempting to see the front lines. The troops advance unhindered, but there was not a human in sight.
From Gynegg’s point of view, the city seemed empty, save for the legionnaires.
More thunder, more explosions, more dead legionnaires.
Then, at a hilltop on the far side of the town, a smattering suddenly breaks through. Gynegg can see dozens of legionnaires die, and soon another source of the smattering appears, and a third.
Gynegg can then hear whistling in the air, and great formations of his troops are consumed in fire, or showered in shrapnel and displaced earth.
While Gynegg watches, there’s an unceasing whistling, and hundreds upon hundreds die. Not one allowed to approach their enemies. Not one allowed to show the Humans why the soleen are considered the greatest soldiers in the galaxy.
The casualties climb, yet the humans don’t cease their dishonorable behavior.
“Sound the retreat!” Gynegg bellows at his lieutenant. As much as it shames him, he needs to fall back and regroup. The current tactics were useless against the foul, cowardly apes.
As the signal for retreat is sounded, Gynegg can hear a soft whirring in the wind.
He spots a white aviator device, probably a scouting drone (as used by his own people), though the lack of a antigrav device confounded him.
How did it even fly?
He watched the thing, as suddenly streaks of white extend from its hull, striking into the Soleen landing craft with force enough to knock Gynegg off his talons.
When his vision has returned to him, he can clearly see that each of the landing craft that they had used to get onto the planet was obliterated, all that remained was smoldering husks.
Gynneg was agape.
How was this possible? The humans were using weapons unlike anything he had ever seen or heard off, and his mighty legion was being decimated.
The infernal whistling and the ungodly thunder never stopped, and when dawn arrived the next morning a mere thousand of the mighty host remained.
The survivors were worn, hungry and distraught.
They had been crushed, and never once had they even seen the humans.
“Raise the white flag! We surrender!”
“Hey George, look at this!”
Sgt. Pharrel hands the binoculars over to his fellow mortar operator.
“The lizards are raising the white flag!”
Pharrel points over at the host, where a wounded and worn warrior, who up close would be near twice the size of any of the Planetary Defense Soldiers.
“I’d be damned. You know, it’s strange. It’s like they never encountered mortars, machineguns, mines and snipers before. Did we even get any wounded?”
“Yeah, Jimmy shot himself in the foot.”
The two soldiers grin at each other.
“I guess we won, then.”
The battle for XX1632-3 was a decisive victory for the humans, and was the first battle Humanity had fought on the ground against an alien invasion.
It was there that they learned that Humanity might not be the strongest or the fastest species out there, but they were the only ones who had mastered ranged ground warfare.