Tyger got up while rubbing his head. His vision was blurry until he returned to focus.

Inside the van, donuts and frosting covered his armor. Pink boxes with donut crumbs were all over his legs too.

After he got up, he brushed himself off and stepped out of the van. It would be a while till he could wash the frosting off his suit.

“Tyger!” Rila’s voice shouted.

She rushed up to him while the others followed her from the hover jeep. “Are you alright?”

Tyger rubbed his head. “I am fine. I got a little bump on the head.”

Red smiled. “I guess your noggin is harder than an egg.”

Tyger smiled back. “Our bones are genetically made to be strong. It would take a moon to crush me.”

Jage laughed. “I wish!”

Tyger looked around. “Where is the admiral?”

“I think the ride messed up his stomach.” Jage pointed his finger at Patterson. The old man was vomiting in a wastebasket near the street.

Good grief. . .

Far behind the traffic, wrecked vehicles and fallen rocks were blocking the entrance of the tunnel. Smoke was drifting out from the cracks in the rubble, and arms and legs were sticking out near the smashing vehicles.

Although the starbase didn’t reach his team, many people lost their lives during the impact. If the city warned them sooner, maybe most of them would have escaped.

“Oh, crap!” Patterson shouted as he pointed his finger up.

A giant black cloud was spreading above the city. It was so big; it blocked the sun, turning the sky dark.

Tyger soon realized it wasn’t a cloud at all. He could barely see black dots, flying around within the cloud. They were making loud buzzing noises, echoing through the cold air.

“There are so many!” Rila shouted. “Are they all ships?”

The black cloud grew larger and larger, but it was moving down toward the city.

“We need to take cover!” Tyger shouted.

Red approached a manhole and pulled the lid off it. “Down there!”

Patterson looked at the hole. “Oh, hell no! I will not go down into another sewer-”

The buildings at the top exploded within the black swarming cloud. Pieces of debris and bodies of unfortunate victims fell down.

“Ah hell! Me first!” Patterson jumped into the manhole and splashed at the bottom.

After his team jumped down, Tyger hopped down as the debris rained down around him.

Inside the dark tunnel, they could hear everything crashing down from above. Explosions, crying people, and violent winds. It was like a giant tornado was ripping the city apart.

“How long do we have to stay down here in this river of shit?” Patterson shouted.

“Quiet!” Tyger opened his ears.

The violent noises slowly stopped. Maybe the attack ended.

Tyger climbed up the ladder and pushed the manhole lid up. After he climbed out of the manhole, he dropped his mouth.

All the buildings had fallen down, and some were still standing up, only in half. Rubble covered the streets too. All the vehicles laid in ruins, and bodies of civilians laid among them. Smoke and fire were ablaze in the background while ash was in the air.

Up in the sky, the dark clouds drifted away, letting a little sunlight shine across the ruins. Tyger could see the planet size alien spacecraft, fully in view in the sky. It appeared like a giant moon which was about to collide to Bellona. It only stayed up there, probably in orbit.

Monstrous. . .

Patterson and the rest of the team climbed out of the manhole. Their mouths dropped at the devastating site.

“Oh, my god! They destroyed everything!” Patterson cried.

“Why are they doing this?” Rila asked.

From the sky, a cocoon-shaped pod landed on the other side of the street like a fallen meteor. Five ant soldiers jumped out and looked around. When they spotted the Star Cats, they fired their cocoon cannons.

“Take cover!” Tyger and his team raced toward the center of an intersection where a pile of cars surrounded a pit.

They leaped into the pit and fired back at the enemy. More pods landed behind the enemy as they marched toward Tyger’s team.

Tyger spotted a pod crashed nearby, close to his team. He pulled out a grenade and tossed it into the pod as the doors opened. The pod exploded before any bug soldier got out.

More and more ant soldiers marched from their landings and marched toward the cats. There seemed to be a hundred, but more kept landing.

“There are too many of them!” Jage shouted as he kept firing his light gun.

Maya tossed two energy balls at one ant and exploded. “Their numbers are increasing at an accelerating rate. We will not last in this position.”

Patterson ducked behind a car and pushed his com-link. “This Admiral Patterson! I need extraction in Bay City now! Is anyone alive?”

“We copy you, sir!” an officer’s male voice shouted from the com-link. “We will send you a rescue shuttle to locate you!”

“Thank you!” Patterson crawled toward Tyger. “A rescue shuttle is coming to pick us up now!”

Tyger blasted an ant down before it reached him. “We can’t stay in this position for long! There are too many targets here!”

“Then where the hell can we find a safe position for the extraction? I’m getting ants in my pants!”

Tyger ducked from a green blast and growled. “I am not sure!”

Far behind the bug army, another pod landed, except it was bigger, almost half the size of a skyscraper. It cracked open like an egg as an eighty-foot tall spider crawled out. Blue armor plates covered its body, and two big energy cannons were mounted on its back.

Red dropped his mouth while staring at the giant alien creature. “Now that is one big ugly mother fu-”

Before he could finish his sentence, the spider blasted a building down into pieces. It crawled to another street.

“We will need a bigger gun to take that thing out,” said Jage.

Tyger narrowed his eyes. “We have to move now!”

Rila stabbed a bug and pushed its corpse off her sword. “Where can we go?”

Tyger looked around until he spotted a sign that said ‘Eden Park Stadium.’ Below the title, an arrow was pointing the way.

“To the baseball stadium,” he said. “It better be there.”

“I hope the Seal Doves are playing there too,” said Red with a grin.