Alarms blare inside a Varot military base. Located atop a small mountain plateau, it is merely one of several thousand located on Veter’s surface. Hundreds of tall, skinny, ferret-like Mallali run through the halls, squeaking and chirping at one another as they don combat armor and weapons. Despite Veter’s role as an industrial world responsible…
Admiral Rodriguez quietly leaves the Mallali compound. When the underground elevator conference room opens, the guards outside check to see who’s exited, only to find nobody inside. While gigantic question marks appear above their heads, the completely invisible Terran swishes past them as if they were idiot lemmings unable to see a cliff’s edge looming…
For a split-second, time seems to hang as the blood of every Mallali leader turns to ice. Before them stands a tall alien lacking any fur on its limbs. The creature’s masculine appearance and strangely shaped head, with a sunken-in snout, a mostly-flat face, and only a bit of fur atop its head, gives all…
A brilliantly decorated room, filled with priceless artifacts and treasures recovered from the Ancient Precursors, rests hidden underneath the Galactic Assembly Hall. High-tech projection emitters lay inside the walls, all of them capable of simulating objects with weight and presence. Two golden chandeliers provide light, though multiple backup lights sit embedded in the ceiling above,…
Admiral Rodriguez and his three accompanying Kraktol officers make their way through New Pongi, pausing every so often to take note of the capital city’s varying degrees of economic disparity. Huge 20-foot fences separate the slums from more affluent areas, but the poor and the rich often live only a stone’s throw away from each…
Recruit Stormjaw, a purple-scaled male, deferentially allows the superior Kraktol females to take the lead. As a matriarchal species, the female crocodilians often stand a full head taller than their masculine counterparts. Their bodies, better built to withstand the rigors of combat, allow them to take on countless other sentients in brutal melee brawls. Especially…
Half a day passes. Jason Hiro and his remaining allies tentatively gather together to assess their situation. In total, they find that of the three million allied humans, monsters, and scattered demons who joined together at the start of the Stormbringer War, less than half a million remain. Of those who survived, some four hundred…
Small fires burn throughout the ruins of Hero City. The once-brilliant sights of the Pyramids no longer line the horizon. In their place, only shredded metal and molten bricks remain. A smell of death pervades the air. Jason Hiro consoles Blinker as she continues choking out sobs. The emotional wounds they’ve both suffered have completely…
Tarus II. My home for the past six years. A world where I matured into a man. A leader. This planet has been the place I lived the longest, aside from Earth itself. It carries countless memories of mine. And now… it has suffered irreparable damage. The demons attacked humanity. They used every method at…
