Hyperion city: The front lines.

Lieutenant Allen fired desperately into the onrushing hoards of beetles. Less than five minutes ago they seemed to have abandoned their previous restraint and were just throwing themselves at his position in massed waves, and they were rapidly chewing through his stockpile of ammunition.

"The M-7's running dry sir!" Corporal Wheeler yelled over the din of battle, his voice tinged with panic as the machine gun tore through the advancing enemy wave.

"I'm out! of rounds!" The squad sharpshooter reported, his voice echoing down the stairs from the second floor as his weapon's last magazine fell to the ground, empty.

"Frag out!" Called Sargent Howards, a moment later a blast ripped into the charging enemies. "Well, that's the last of the frags."

The M-7 whined pathetically in the background as Corporal Wheeler paled. "M-7's dry sir." They reported quietly, casting his eyes around the room as he desperately searched for more.

Lieutenant Allen looked around the dusty foyer, no tricks he could really pull here, no ingenious traps... His ammunition was spent, his troops were exhausted. He had no way out but forwards, and the basement was suicide. He looked at his men, they were his charges, his soldiers he exhaled and then he looked into their eyes. Old, young, brown, blue, and green... their eyes told him all that he needed to know. Tired yes and some were bleeding from scrapes or cuts, others had burns from enemy near misses from those damnable plasma rifles, the horrid things scorched their uniforms, blasted off limbs and left superheated patches of ground where they hit.

His men were battered, hungry, tiered, trapped... but they were not broken. He could see it in those eyes of theirs, they were hard, cold, angry eyes. Those were not the hollow eyes of broken men, they sparkled with life, they burned with rage and they danced with a fury that would not be denied.

"Sarge, looks like you got your wish." Lieutenant Allen said grimly. "FIX BAYONETS. If we're going out, we'll take as many of these motherfuckers as we can with us to hell."

The Sergeant laughed, pulling out the weapon and almost reverently slotting it into place underneath his weapons barrel. All around him Men did the same, taking a short moment to perform an action that dated back to times before even the rifle itself had been invented.

Hyperion city: The front lines, Ruk encirclement

"Ground leader, the enemy force has ceased firing..." The nervous Ruk adjutant reported to his commanding officer.

"Stopped firing...?" The Groundleader asked slowly. "Perhaps they are hatching some sort of plan..."

"Groundleader its possible that they simply ran out of ammunition... they have already nearly destroyed half of an entire cohort!" The adjutant replied, rubbing his forelimbs against each other nervously. "the damage they have inflicted in the past few minutes has been catastrophic."

The groundleader mused on this, thinking about it for a moment before coming to his conclusion. "Agreed... send in the eighth." Groundleader clicked

"T-the entire cohort Groundleader...?" the adjutant asked in shock, flicking his vestigial wings. "b-but that's-"

"Overkill? yes, I know that. the Groundmaster has demanded the obliteration of the enemy force here as quickly as possible, I shall not be found lacking." The Groundleader said looking down at his adjutant. "any questions?"

"no Groundleader," the Adjutant whimpered, "I shall comply."

Hyperion city: The front lines

Stukov grimaced as the phantom pain wracked his limb, but he continued forwards at the head of his men. Allen had reported contact by an old office building, and then his communications had gone silent. Now it was becoming obvious why. The telltale hissing crackle of plasma weapons was getting louder and louder, and it sounded like there were possibly thousands of the enemy located ahead.

Cautiously Stukov spread his troops out, he'd reinforced his spearhead and waited for the rest of his men to catch up, forming up his full force of infantrymen, from what had once been a full division of over ten thousand men, he now only had a crippled, under-strength brigade of barely a thousand. Once again he cursed the bombardment that had taken so much from so many, even with their bomb proof bunkers the American guard contingent had in fact fared worse, the grim Irony had not been lost on the colonel that the defenses intended to shelter them had instead been their ultimate undoing.

The Ami bunkers had been dead center of the impact, with only roving patrols having survived. Their highest ranking surviving officer was an acting captain named Kallinski, with whom whom he was coordinating his efforts with across the city. Currently Kallinski 's similarly understrength forces were falling back out of the city, moving as quickly as they could to take advantage of Stukov's distraction. They would need the head start the Russian Major gave them in the times to come.

Up against Stukov's overstrength battalion was what appeared to be three full strength brigades of enemy troops, reinforced with light armored vehicles and in defensive positions. Skukov wasn't certain that they could break this, they certainly could not and remain a coherent threat to the enemy. He needed to distract them, to hold them in place, just for a little while longer and if he was destroyed herethen they might manage to spread out far enough... he needed a way to pull some of the enemy formation out of position.

Then, the Beetles made a mistake. An entire third of the enemy formation lurched forwards towards the crumbling Wright and Son office building, and Stukov smiled. This... this was a fight he could win. Silently the Major tipped his hat to the men inside the building. This was just the chink in the armor he was looking for.

"After this is done, assuming Lieutenant Allen is still alive, I'll be getting that man a drink." Stukov said with a laugh. He heard an insectile battle screech fill the air as the beetles charged, it sounded something like a hissing cockroach really, In response, the building roared back at the creatures, and moments before they reached the doors, they slammed open as a makeshift battering ram made from a heavy, wheeled teak reception desk smashed them open, followed by the dark uniformed american troops wielding their rifles like spears.

Stukov stared for a moment in silence before he closed his eyes they were doomed, those idiot Americans They were charging an enemy armed with automatic weapons while weilding spears... still, it was a perfect distraction everything really he needed it to be. Their attack was loud, flashy, dangerous looking and blatantly obvious, but both best and worst of all, it was going to be too costly in lives to appear to be a mere diversion. With a heavy heart, he gave the order to open fire, this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Maybe it would be in time to save some of those poor stupid American bastards.

Hyperion city: the front lines, Ruk encirclement

Groundleader was initially not worried, the force he had thrown at the human scouts was so overwhelming it was humorous, then all of his light vehicles had exploded. All two dozen of the light assault walkers that the Groundmaster had equipped him with had been methodically targeted and engaged by salvos of what reports stated was large bore infantry portable chemical cannon fire in such massive quantities that they managed to overwhelm their shields and attack the vulnerable light armor of the walkers themselves, which caved like a pinata to a Louisville slugger to the hundred and forty millimetre high explosive anti tank shells.

Then and only then had the enemy infantry exposed itself, raking his momentarily stunned forces with devastating automatic weapons fire before they could respond. In response, Groundleader had attempted to pull back forces from the eighth legion, but they were apparently all engaged with the Human's infantry and unable to withdraw. Groundleader doubted that, it was likely politics at work rearing its ugly head again, the leader of the eighth was notorious for these things. However, that decision on the master of the eighth's left Groundleader in a bit of a precarious situation. His troops were being ripped apart, his armored support had been smashed in an instant by those infuriating infantry portable cannons, and retreat had been explicitly stated to not be an option by Groundmaster himself.

He had to hold the Humans off until Groundmasters artillery was unpacked and prepared, with that thought in mind he set to work. The only thing he could do was set about organizing his men's defense and hold out until the eighth legion finished wiping out the last of the stubborn defenders from the building, then he could swing them up along the eastern flank and catch them in a pincer formation between the eighth and seventh, assuming that he could sort out all of the chaos. First, he rotated up fresh reserves from the rear of his formation, they would form the backbone of his formation since they were were mostly intact and their command structures were still fully functional, he would need them to hold out for long enough to organize the rest of the forces again.

Next he set about re-consolidating the mess that was the mixture of two legions at once with both legion masters apparently missing and a third of their troops not even knowing what had happened to their officers or squads. He had to re-coordinate these forces, and quickly or his formation would fall into chaos.

Unfortunately for groundleader, all that organizing put out a lot of signals, and while they were not completely certain where he was exactly, Stukov's command team could figure out around group of tents he was in. To Stukov well... the high explosive squash head shells for the recoilless rifles were just begging to be used...

Groundleader was on the radio with the newly appointed ninth legion master when his tent, as well as nine others were struck by two one hundred and forty millimetre HESH rounds. He never even heard the thunk of the recoiless rifles over the crackle of his own plasma weapons fire before he was spread across the landscape.

Hyperion city: the front lines

Lieutenant James Allen roared as he shoved the makeshift teak battering ram forwards, the desk smashing into an unlucky beetle and crushing it to death as the wheels broke, before sliding forwards on the creatures juices and smashing into another. For a moment the beetles were stunned, were these idiotic things CHARGING them? They froze in shock for just a split instant, and that was all the time the charging US home guard troops needed. Then the humans were on them. Howling like banshees, screaming curses and roaring out their hate to the heavens.

At the tip of the spear, right behind the battering ram itself, was Lieutenant Allen, leading the first recorded mass bayonet charge since the end of the Union War.

The M-15 bayonet was a very simple tool in the standard guardsman's otherwise very complex kit. A mono molecular twenty five centimetre blade coated in carbon fiber with a one handed rubber grip, it was considered primarily for use as a knife or other survival tool, but it still was an utterly lethal weapon in close quarters battle.

The monomolecular bayonet hacked effortlessly through armor, weapons, flesh and chitin, as though it wasn't even there. This property became readily evident to Private Samuel Hale as he hacked off a beetles horn and then slashed them diagonally across the body letting it drop to the ground, instantly dead. Hale grinned like a ferral beast as he saw Siller swing his entrenching tool like a hammer and smash a beetle in the eye driving the shovel deep into its brain, with Siller cackling madly as the beetle dropped to the ground, twitching and spasming in it's death throes.

To his left, Sargent Howards impaled a beetle the old fashion way, a quick stab a brutal twist then yank it out of the corpse and repeat. The third beetle's body didn't want to drop from the NCO's weapon, so the Sargent simply booted it off and went back to stabbing. The confines were far too close for their plasma rifles, so the beetles had to fight them with whatever they had on hand for that, it appeared that they mostly used their natural horns, and mandibles for that, although some appeared to be armed with a form of short club which one of them used to beat Wheelwright to death with. Hale had liked Wheelwright...

"You motherfucker," Hale snarled, lifting his weapon as he charged into the rapidly devolving melee, "I'm going to put your ass in the damn ground!"

Hyperion city: the front lines, the melee.

Ruk Legionary Cak Dan heard one of the natives screaming, he turned and blocked one of their lethally sharp knives, he'd seen one cleave straight through Vau Kap's head and then watched the wielded twist and punch THROUGH his carapace with little more effort than it took to poke a hole in wet paper. Cak swung his club and watched them parry it with the body of their weapon, then they shoved back and struck Cak across the face with the butt of the rifle. Cak tried to tackle the Hue-man to the ground so that he could bring his mandibles or horn to bear, for a moment it looked as through he would dodge, but then he did something that Cak did not understand. He moved back into his path.

The veteran legionaire realized why too late as the monomolecular weapon the native carried punched straight through his armor, his carapace, his body, and out the back, Cak's own strike in turn had let him lock his mandibles around their throat and bite their head off.

As Cak died he realized something that horrified him... they had let themselves die just to take him with them... what kind of enemy was this...?

Hyperion City: Hyperion city starport

Pioter gasped as the massive blast door finally opened just enough for them to squeeze through, they were inside.

"lets go." Nathan said shouldering his rifle.

"I still wish... we were going... for the terraformers." Gasped Pioter.

"well Pioter, when you next see a shooting star, then maybe you can ask it to grant it for you." the Sergeant growled. "Now move!

we don't have any time to waste."

"Yes Sergant" Pioter said steadying his breathing.

They had work to do, and if they understood the chaos they were overhearing on their radio, they didn't have much more time to do it.