The screams of the wounded danced around inside her helmet, the snow fluttering around in the air almost giving their howls a physical form, of course she was focused on the ones who weren’t making any noise and weren’t moving, the ones who’d met their ends in the opening moments of the ambush along another mountain road in Colorado.

Her name was Corporal Samila, a towering Rakiri legionnaire who’s unit specialized in mountain warfare, the perfect little group to send up here and chase the various bands of humans who refused to come down and rejoin civilization. Not that she could blame them, not after everything that had happened over the last twelve years to them.

She felt a tug in her stomach as she looked out at the nine covered forms on the frozen asphalt. She’d known three, three unlucky souls among twelve others who’d been riding in the front APC when an EFP off route mine blew and sent a piece of molten metal moving at nearly two kilometers per second spearing through the vehicle. Her three friends had been ‘lucky’ in that they’re bodies were still intact, the rest had been turned to chop by the hypervelocity spalling or been burned when the fuel cell ruptured. That scene had repeated six times along the line of their little formation, one overturned truck and half the supplies of their little milk run lay out in the snow. But there wasn’t much she could do for any of it now, letting out a sigh she turned back to the controlled chaos of the ambush site.

All around her it swirled, mixing with the growing snowfall that left dry white powder on every surface. Six pods were spread out around the stalled convoy as the contractors and human staff scrambled around their vehicles to see what worked and what didn't.

Her pod was oriented toward the mountainside, the trees hanging heavy with ice and snow, the various tracks from the shooting positions leading off and over a shallow foothill.

“Mar'kes” She said, their pod level COMs cutting out most of the frantic noise that was bouncing between dozens of helmets around them, she took a knee next to the slightly smaller Rakiri.

Mar'kes didn't move, her head still slowly panning back and forth, the attached optic of her helmet down as she scanned for anything that could wreak havoc on the stopped row of vehicles, so far nothing had seen fit to pop up and end itself in her sights. A moment later she spoke.

“Nothing, the damn kashaks slipped off, didn't even try to get their dead and I only managed to get one.” She growled, the younger more brash woman was in a silent rage, she was closer to the three in the lead APC than Samila.

She can smell the trail of another, the snow stained pink.

They enter a box canyon, the trail and fresh prints in the snow lead to it.

The bitch, that's what most of them call the lazy tart in command, sends them forward.

Her attempt at self preservation fails when a high caliber round takes her helmet off above the forehead. Their Sergeant, Keel’sa steps in on reflex from this being the third tart these boys on the mountain had taken out in a month.

Her helmet marks four shooters even as the blizzard sets in again, two of her squad aside from the tart where down, one with flatlining life Sig. The squad is forced to take cover in the surrounding rocks.

The sergeant calls in the gunship. One of the boulder formations up the slope explodes, she can see a figure cartwheeling through the air before landing with a thud nearby.

The three surviving shooters momentarily break contact and her sergeant gestures everyone to bound. One of her squad hits a mine and loses a leg.

Grenades are thrown both ways, a shrill scream echoes from ahead.

She bounds, entering a bit of cover behind a low hill, hes staring back, on his back, his legs shredded and a device in his hands. She can see the raw fear in his eyes before he claps off a charge, he’d been their sapper and three others go off and he vanishes in light and sound. Her next aware moment is against the rocks, her legs are gone below the knees, the fiber suit is screaming into her ears as she rips the helmet off and sucks in cold but mind clearing air.

The sight that greets her eyes is utter chaos. The gunship is spinning over her, the side spouting blue flame before it smashes into the canyon wall. Gunshots not of the insurgent type reverberate up the wall of the canyon, she pulls the helmet back to her head and can hear the alarm in her squad’s voice…. They’re being attacked from behind. A moment later the connection drops and shes alone.

She can see her blood pooling in the snow below her and feel herself starting to slip, the crunching of the ice next to her brings her back. Her eyes look up into an armored face plate, a power armored figure in black and white paint crouches down next to her. As she feels herself starting to slip off again another armored figure vaults in, her last waking sensation being her suit being cut into.

The ambush had been successful but they hadn’t anticipated the response being so swift, they had expected the snow storm to cover them… but someone was apparently getting fed up with their efforts on US 40. The first pass of the dropship got two of their number, reducing them to clumps of white winter clothing and seared flesh. They scattered some of them with heavier kit shot back, the clanks of rifle fire pinging off the metal structure reaching them even through the wind as they bounced from tree clump to tree clump.

The dropship vanished for a moment before returning to a high position overhead but it had ceased shooting… that meant they were watching and guiding a couple of pods toward their position. The blizzard began to pick up, vision dropping bit by bit but the group of humans knew at least their enemy was in the same boat, white out screwed with their thermals as well. That didn’t matter much for the pair keeping up at their tail end, a burst of the statically pops of laser fire tearing through snow filled air and a single scream announced their situation.

The boy in the lead, a twenty something who’d fled up here during the start of the invasion, raises a fist and starts gesturing. They’re in the mouth of a box canyon, boulders and stands off to either side…. In the very least the dropship can’t see them right now so they spread out, he knows they have a few LAW tubes, grenades, and a single SAW with hot loaded green tip. Everyone else had some kind of 308 rifle, the only thing that would do something to the Shil armor. Checking his own, an M-14, he sets up in the hollow between two boulders and looks back down the path… and waits. He knows the girl has probably already laid the claymores and that they’re going to want to draw them in.

The first group has to be their pointmen, their shape and movements marking them as Rakiri, their movement on all fours practically confirming it… they’re tracking them. He can feel his nerves now, biting through even the numb freeze of his hands as he pulls the rifle in a little tighter. His painted phospor sight slightly glowing as he drops it on the lead of the three. He knows behind them is probably another three or four pods, how many will they manage to take?

SAW man opens up first, four quick bursts that dance across the bodies of the intruding Rakiri at eighty yards. One locks up out in the open and he drops his sights on her, three quick shots and one finds the neck joint sending a spout of something into the air before she drops. Then a piece of rock next to him explodes, splinters cutting into his white mask, he can feel the quickly cooling blood on his face before he shifts his aim. Shes less than thirty yards from him, next to a tall pine, he can see her finger move as another golf ball sized piece of rock turns into shrapnel. He feels the sting of sharp rock into his arm as he steadies his aim. Three more 7.62 NATO AP rounds smack into her helmet, the Rakiri drops like a rock. He knows the third one is out there somewhere and starts to displace when she comes over the top of the boulder at him, fuck she flanked. He spins his rifle up, buying himself a moment as she tangles with it but feels the bite of claws into his side…. God that hurt. But it was enough time to get the bowie out, with adrenaline and pain throbbing in his head he drives it into the smaller Rakiri’s neck and side. He can hear her yowling through the helmet as she tries to drive her own natural blades deeper but hes struck bone and arteries first that he can feel the result of coating and soaking his gloved hand. Suddenly the tip finds something hard and he presses with everything in his arm and twists, something crunches and the four hundred pound alien turns into a pile of still meat and barely manages to twist out from under. He can feel blood pulsing from his side and a cold that has nothing to do with the temp start to seep into his limbs. He does the best he can with his own kit and pilfers whatever he can from the corpse as the SAW barks every few moments. Then everything shook as the claymores clapped off in sequence, bleeding out or not he needed to move and shoot.

There was a cloud of white floating up from the trees that flanked the path into the canyon, he could see a few unmoving bodies in flexfiber there, but others picking through with rifles up. As he came out from around his cover a tree behind him exploded as a reminder the snow fall fogged rather than completely masked as he felt the two feet of fall bite into his face after he dropped. The SAW chatter on a long full auto burst brought his mind back into the situation and he forced himself to crawl to a stand of trees before pulling himself up to look.

The rounds where annoying or alarming enough for the Shil to keep to cover, he guessed they had no more Rakiri to send up. They where putting whatever fire they could on Shane but he kept returning it. Then he saw Liz pop up, the woodstock and blunderbuss like barrel of her ancient M79 in her hands. BLOOP! He managed to blink before the 40mm round landed in the chest of a bold Shil who’d stretched herself around a rock to fire, the blast blowing her apart. This seemed to enrage the pod, the other two survivors braving the SAW’s suppression and beginning to methodically pick apart Liz’s stand of spruce as she dropped back into the snow.

It was his turn now as he pulled the M-14 up, letting the sight settle of the back of the neck of the farthest out Shil. Recoiled thumped into his shoulder as the AP round found the seal, she dropped and the singular survivor spun in his direction. Her rifle ‘fired’ and the tree in front of him, the one he was using for cover, exploded throwing him back. Bloody now and with a face full of splinters hes down his rifle, its remains glowing white in the snow as it hisses and melts.

There's another thump and the offending Shil is sent sprawling… but two more pods press in behind them. Their rifles up and the snow hissing as invisible focused light reached out. He heard a loud yowl as the SAW suddenly stopped its cyclic bark, hit? Or out of ammo? He peeks and can see them pressing up in a line, he reaches into his coat, noting how wet it feels, before pulling out a green object. The pin is pulled and he throws it the thirty yards toward the pressing line and it breaks them for the moment giving Liz the time she needs to pop off another grenade of her own. It catches one in the chest, blowing them apart and spraying the rest with blast pressure. The area around Liz suddenly erupts in blue as she goes flying from the position in a shower of blown timber and rock. Another six flow through the slack fire and more wood explodes around him as he drops to cover.

The door retracted and lifted upwards as the dropship swept above the frozen mountain meadow, at forty feet above the deck he stepped out into the air. It was a sensation that was one part dread and one part thrill as his stomach lifted up into his throat. The exosuit oriented itself automatically and fired its jump jets, the landing was still somewhat of a shock but it wouldn't shatter his legs. He heard a series of thumps around him as the rest of Cobalt dropped in around him, his breath rushing in his ears as the sounds of automatic weapons fire and the hiss of laser return in snow carried down from upslope.

“Cobalt One, all Cobalt shooters, press up, they don't have much time!”

He knew this wasn't sanctioned, they weren't supposed to show themselves yet, they couldn't afford the Shil getting wise so goddamn early. But they also couldn't leave a bunch of kids their own age to the tender mercies of the legion, not after what they'd watch them pull off on their way down from orbit. They were supposed to be scouting possible sites for terrestrial operations, instead they where forming up into a skirmish line. He could already feel the quick sliver sensation of the AI reaching out through the electromagnetic spectrum, its demons dancing on electromagnetic waves and looking for any easy ways into the hostile COM net.

His combat exosuit kept him just on the nice side of comfortable though he could still feel the occasional chill as something conductive allowed it to find its way inside. He cursed as visual range across the spectrums was starting to drop as the snow grew thicker. Snow coming down more and more as the flakes swirled and danced in the darkening dusk air.

On the aug-real HUD five other markers popped in and out of existence as his suit's COMs swapped between laser and EM, they read Cobalt One through Six. He was two, his brother and the one who'd decided on this little act was one. His Shil'vati brother by marriage was three, and their recent addition, a terrifying Erbian hare, was four. Behind them, five and six, where a pair of Marines, using heavier kit in the form of exo carapaces, both had remained silent about the little detour but so far were letting Cobalt One run the op. Maybe they didn't like the idea of those kids getting killed or worse either. Then again where did that leave them?

His thoughts got filed away as the first red contacts popped up on his HUD, their thermal signatures oozing into sight some fifty yards out in the blizzard. The malicious intelligence that dwelled within their combined COMNET finally found a gap in their cyberwarfare suites and slithered into the Shilvati network that linked the formation ahead of them. The first thing she did was freeze all life signs and then scramble the COMs, they wouldn't even get to scream for help.

Cobalt One fired first, his plasma rifle barking from the hip with the strange plastic slap they were known for. The bolt crossed the distance faster than a neuron could fire, a small hypercompressed bolt of hydrogen moving at nearly nine kilometers a second. The lagging Shil'vati legionary didn't even get to realize she'd been fired upon. Her flexfiber suit slowing the screaming piece of metallic density ionized gas enough for it to bloom inside of her body. Hearing and looking at demonstrations of total body disruption were one thing, seeing it first hand on a target was another. The flexfiber bulged and blew out as steam, carbon ash, and gristle splashed the snow and her destroyed form simply flopped to the snow covered ground in a messy boiling pile.

Cobalt Two and Three fanned out to the left and Cobalt Four slipped in behind the lead as they split their line into a pair of files with the two Marines holding back.

-They press forward, plasma rifles flashing off into the white every few moments as they press into the back of the near-platoon sized element of Imperial troops.

-The Shil are stretched out, climbing up a mountainside having depleted a lot of their ability but the knowledge that the quarry had been cornered pressed them on.