First Contact Fallout

faster and passed him by. An hour after that he began picking up others to the left and right at great distances, all of which were seeming to converge on the same rendezvous point.
6 hours later the sky was full of ships as he slid into hovering position alongside the others as they waited for more to arrive. There was an armada of small craft here, few of which had any real aerial weapons, but most looked to be small to medium troop carriers of some sort, and those nearest him were not full, which he confirmed via Ikrid as they began passing inquires back and forth without using the comm channels.
Nobody knew what was going on, only that Garuva had issued attack orders. This wasn’t a defensive maneuver, they were actually going to counterattack the invaders, and many like Li’nikka were saying it was about time and eager to make the assault. When the time finally came they moved out in waves, making a river of small craft flying just above the surface and tracking towards the enemy lines.
Li’nikka could see what was going ahead through their tactical link, and as a few scattered Zak’de’ron units tried to intercept them 4 Vindendi Zen’zat fighters pulled out of the group and quickly engaged. As far as he knew there weren’t any Vindendi left on the planet, but the fast and agile attack craft made quick work of the interlopers and circled back into the group where they disappeared in the armada that was altering course at the last moment to disguise their true target.
They swung wide of the main fortifications in Bonnk’ann where the Zak’de’ron were the strongest and instead bypassed them to head towards the ghost town of Tu’vannak. The enemy still possessed it, but the once 3 million population that lived there were now either dead or evacuated. There was no one there to save, and very few enemy to target, yet that’s where Garuva was sending them.
When they got closer Li’nikka got additional orders, including turning over control of his craft to another ship after he set down in the very heart of the decimated city that was showing a bit more activity than he had thought. There were enemy units scattered around that had to be destroyed, and he was assigned to hunting them. When his wave of ships flew over the city boundaries they broke up, each going to separate locations, and his was an isolated building top where he disengaged from his Pill’ew and dropped a dozen meters out of the underside doors after releasing control of it to the armada.
The ship remotely flew off without him as he got waypoint information and zonal hunting parameters. Apparently the Zak’de’ron had been using this ghost town as a supply depot, and they hadn’t left very many units here to guard it, given that their army was nearly as depleted as the Era’tran’s was. Li’nikka was to search out and destroy the defending units while other teams took and repaired existing city defenses that the Zak’de’ron had overlooked, some of which were simply out of power.
They were going to hold portions this city, steal the Zak’de’ron’s useful supplies, and torch the rest. The Zak’de’ron had left them vulnerable and now they were going to pay for that mistake, making Li’nikka wonder why they hadn’t launched this type of attack sooner.
Then he realized as he looked off the rooftop at the hundreds of craft flying around the city that the Era’tran were leaving a lot of places underdefended in order to make this assault, just like the city he’d been previously assigned to. But going on the offensive just felt right. They were calling the shots now, not moving in response to the Zak’de’ron, and here and now, at least, they were in a mismatched fight in their advantage, and it had been a long time since he could remember having that luxury.
Li’nikka ran to the rooftop access and moved down through the building using his Ikrid and Lachka to kill enemy infantry scattered inside through the walls before they could even see him coming. Once he cleared the site he moved on to his next waypoint and began hunting mechanized units in a specific zone that was all his, which would give him more of a challenge, but the large walking machines were no match for an Era’tran one on one, and he welcomed the chance to get his claws on something larger than infantry.
With all the units roaming the air overhead he had good intelligence as to where the enemy was and was not, but there were still overhangs and damaged buildings offering some cover, but he got to his first target within 8 minutes of leaving his landing site and immediately took fire from its two shoulder cannons. The quadruped machine stood slightly taller than him, and was easy to knock down, though its height gave it a big advantage hunting Zen’zat on the ground.
But he wasn’t Zen’zat.
Li’nikka fired on it from multiple weapon ports on his armor, seeing the hits disappear into its shields as the walker’s fire likewise disappeared into his, but he wasn’t going to fight a ranged match. He took off running, and lowered his head at just the last moment as the walker tried to sidestep out of the way. He headbutted it in one of the four knee joints and wrapped his thick arms around the legs as they both went to the ground…and after that the poorly designed anti-infantry walker had no chance against his melee skills.
Mak’to’ran watched the attack unfold from Garuva’s war room. The map of the city was too massive to fit in there, so he had to keep zooming in and out as he monitored their progress. Resistance was light, as expected, but already units from other locations were grouping up to mount a counterattack to his counterattack, but they