The city burned in waves of fire and thunder.
Jets streaked overhead, their afterburners shaking the night sky. Helicopters rattled the air with streams of tracer fire, the buzzsaw roar of miniguns cutting into the endless tide. Bombs slammed into the alien mass, carving glowing craters into the swarm.
Ethan ran block to block, scanning anything he could lay his hands on cars, lampposts, fallen girders, even sewer grates. His gauntlet hissed with nanite mist, each scrap of metal groaning as it reshaped into new constructs.
[Construct Tally: 84 Scouts | 198 Workers]
[Tier Advancement Progress: 13% → 18%]
He exhaled raggedly, his lungs burning. Still not enough.
A roar of explosions drew his attention. He glanced skyward, visor flashing white from the bombardment. For a moment, the tide seemed thinner, black waves reduced to rippling streams.
"Maybe…" he muttered to himself. "Maybe they can do it."
But then the thought hit him like a blade: Even if ten thousand get through, that's ten thousand too many. Ten thousand bugs in the city center is tens of thousands dead.
His HUD pinged. Automatons feeding him live updates from the frontline. Ethan gritted his teeth and rasped into the commlink.
"Follow the general's orders for now. Hold the line. Contain them."
The automatons obeyed without hesitation, movements sharp, precise, alien.
---
The human army pulled back street by street, fire lines disciplined and brutal. Soldiers ducked behind sandbags and flipped cars, muzzles glowing red from endless bursts.
"Keep firing! Don't let the bastards spill into the side streets!"
"Reload! Reload! MOVE!"
Tracer fire lit the dark, carving through waves of Skitterlings. Yet, for every alien that fell, more crawled over its corpse.
A bomb fell short slamming into a line of automatons. Fire washed the street, bodies torn apart in the blast.
"SHIT! We hit them!"
"Hold fire! Hold fire!"
But Ethan's constructs didn't falter. The survivors staggered, armor blackened, limbs cracked but they pressed forward in silence, ripping into the swarm with claws of alloy and fire.
Soldiers exchanged wary looks.
"They don't even care they're getting hit…"
"Jesus Christ… they are fucking tough."
"Yeah, and what happens when they turn on us, huh?"
---
At command, General Harrison stood over a holographic map, his jaw locked tight. The frontline blinked red across half the city grid.
"Sir," his adjutant said quietly, "if the bombardment continues another two hours, projections say the swarm will be annihilated."
The general didn't answer at first. His eyes tracked the glowing dots the automatons spreading like veins through the streets. Coordinating. Hunting. Building.
Finally, he muttered, "We're bleeding one enemy only to birth another."
"Sir?"
Harrison's voice dropped to a growl. "What happens when those machines turn their claws on us? One invasion at a time is bad enough. Two? Humanity won't survive."
The adjutant swallowed hard but didn't reply.
---
Ethan vaulted a shattered wall, gauntlet pressed to a collapsed crane. Sparks hissed as nanites swarmed the rusted steel, birthing three more workers who rose and thundered off without waiting for orders.
His HUD flashed. [Construct Tally: 92 Scouts | 204 Workers]
Screams erupted nearby civilians trapped in a subway entrance. A cluster of Skitterlings clawed at the barricade, tearing through the doors.
"Workers scout priority intercept NOW!" Ethan roared.
Five automatons peeled from formation, slamming into the Skitterlings with mechanical fury. Claws clanged against chitin. Screams turned to sobs as families inside realized they weren't about to be devoured alive.
A soldier stumbled up beside Ethan, eyes wide.
Ethan didn't even look at him.
---
Back at command, new reports flooded in.
The adjutant's voice was tight. "Sir, satellite feeds confirm the worst. Additional swarms are breaching in South America, Africa, and the Pacific. Multiple crash sites across every continent."
The general's hand clenched to a fist. His mind flashed back to the classified report.
Mars.
The scientists had been screaming for weeks, demanding the government go public. The rover's last transmission drowned in static, then an image. A sea of chitin stretching to the horizon, towers of insects as tall as skyscrapers. And now Mars was nearly lost, its surface crawling with an infestation that would never stop.
And then the asteroid. They thought it was just a rock. Until it accelerated.
Until it hit Earth.
Now the swarm was here.
And so were the machines.
---
The bombardment reached its crescendo. Explosions thundered like the heartbeat of a dying world. The swarm shattered under bombs, shells, and relentless automatons tearing them apart street by street.
By dawn, the black tide was thinning. Only fragments of the swarm remained, scattered through alleys and side streets.
The automatons spread like wildfire, hunting them down, ripping them apart before they could regroup.
Civilians peeked from their hiding places, trembling.
A mother clutched her son as a scout vaulted overhead. "What are they?" she whispered.
The boy's eyes were wide with something between fear and wonder.
"I... I don't know," he said.
---
The city smoldered in dawn's half-light. Smoke curled like black serpents into the gray sky, carrying the stench of oil, blood, and burnt chitin.
Ethan stood atop a shattered overpass, armor scorched, visor glowing faintly as his automatons stalked the ruins below. Scouts vaulted from car to car, claws clicking, while workers dragged carcasses into neat piles to be incinerated.
The battlefield was theirs now.
Boots crunched gravel behind him. He didn't turn. His HUD had already marked them General Harrison, flanked by two guards.
"Impressive," the general said at last, his voice hoarse from smoke and sleeplessness. "Never seen anything fight like that. Not even our own boys."
Ethan didn't answer. His respirator hissed faintly in the silence.
Harrison stepped closer, eyes narrowing on the gauntlet, then the barbed plating of Ethan's suit. "Who are you?"
"Doesn't matter," Ethan replied flatly.
The guards bristled, one reaching instinctively for his rifle. Harrison held up a hand. "It does matter. You walk into my battlefield with an army of machines we don't understand. I need to know who commands them."
"I do," Ethan said, finally turning. His visor reflected the general's weathered face, the faint glow hiding his own features. "They're mine. My property. For self-defense."
The words hung heavy in the smoke.
The general's jaw worked. "You're telling me those… things… belong to you? That you've unleashed an army of war machines on U.S. soil, and I'm supposed to accept it's all private property?"
Ethan's tone didn't shift. "Unless there's a law against a man defending himself, I'm within my rights."
One of the guards muttered, "Self-defense? That swarm would've overrun the city if not for them."
Harrison's eyes didn't leave Ethan's visor. "Rights or not, you've put me in a corner. My men don't trust you. Hell, I don't trust you. But I can't ignore what you've done tonight."
He gestured toward the ruins, where automatons dragged alien husks into burning heaps. "Without them, we'd be corpses. With them, we've got a fighting chance. Which means I need to know if you're willing to fight with us."
Ethan was silent for a long moment. His gauntlet pulsed faintly, feeding him tallies.
[Construct Tally: 101 Scouts | 221 Workers]
[Advancement Progress: 23%]
"Say what you mean, General."
Harrison drew a slow breath. "Most countries already did it. Nuked the crash sites. Moscow, Sahara, the Pacific trench. Burned the bastards in fire." His gaze hardened. "But some got through. And they're breeding. Numbers are climbing faster than we can track."
The wind shifted, carrying the acrid stench of charred insects.
"If you don't work with us," Harrison continued, "we'll be drowning in another wave within days. And we won't survive it—not without your machines."
Ethan's voice was low, resolute. "Then we fight together."
The general studied him for a long time, searching the dark visor for any trace of humanity. At last, he nodded once.
"Fine. But understand this." His voice sharpened, iron over gravel. "You might think those things are your property. But as of today, they're fighting under my command. You step out of line if they ever turn on us I'll burn this city to ash with you in it. Nukes included."
The automatons below let out a chorus of metallic screeches as they tore into the last of the Skitterlings, like a vow of allegiance or a warning.