Free Warlord's Invasion (Starfight Book 1) by Lee Guo Page A

Kubersly also exploded as alien incendiary rounds smacked into it.
    Hard neoplastic debris flew everywhere, much of it bouncing off his carbon armor, throwing Kubersly forward. He almost lost his footing but then managed to stay upright. His helmet sensors could hear things besides the crackling of burning plasticrete or the bouncing of alien flesh and gore on the walls. He heard the loud footsteps of the first alien who was running through the corridor behind him towards the T, probably way past the dead woman. It was about to charge around the bend to fire at Kubersly at the earliest opportunity the moment it gained line of sight, now that the surprise ambush from its friend had failed.
    Kubersly rushed towards the T and dove out into the open. He fired his rifle the moment he saw the alien, still running towards him.
    The alien wasn’t more than ten meters away, its body massive in Kubersly’s scopes. He could not miss, nor could the alien, but it was Kubersly who fired first—his bullet traveling at a speed faster than the alien could press the trigger on its rifle. The armor piercing bullet entered the alien’s armored head and Kubersly saw everything that happened afterwards in slow motion, even before he fell onto the floor from his dive.
    The alien’s head bubbled as shockwaves expanded from inside from the penetration of the round, not its incendiary explosion. These shockwaves broke every tissue in the alien’s torso before the miniature deuterium chamber inside the armor piercing round detonated. The plasmaball blew the alien’s head into a thousand pieces, as well as opened up the neck and upper torso. Fire, armor, yellow blood and flesh expanded in every direction, some of it hitting the walls and others bouncing off Kubersly’s armor.
    How had he seen all of that in slow motion?
    By the time he finally hit the floor due to his corner bending dive, he realized that he must have once again experienced what most war veterans and sportsmen called the Zone, where all the senses become extremely alert and everything is experienced in miliseconds.
    Was it a purely a human ability? Or did the aliens have it as well?
    He knew one thing. As long as he had it, it would take an army to stop him.
    He got up, his breathing hard, and knew he would live to fight another hour. The hospital was crackling with fired-up aftereffects of explosive rounds, but he was still alive— and as long as he was, the aliens had one more member of the human race to resist whatever they intended to do.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
     
    Fourteen hours later
    December 14 th 3986 AD
    Planetary Defense Command, Meerlat
    Operation Room…
     
    I t had been fourteen hours since the ground invasion began. The sun had fallen on one hemisphere of Meerlat and had risen on the other half. Over forty thousand military, paramilitary, and civilian police members had died resisting the alien ground forces. Most of them had perished in the cities. God knew how many civilians had perished. The alien footsoldiers were numerous, in the millions, while their tanks and air assault vehicles dominated the streets and the skies.
    Every building that Streit’s battalions had put a resistance in had been contended by the aliens. Many were still in contention.
    By the tens of thousands, they had died, but by the tens of thousands, they had also destroyed the enemy. Streit estimated that his infantry troops had killed over 50,000 alien troops through the streets and building battles. Was it all for nothing if the eventual result was the same? He estimated that in less than a day, Streit’s remaining 20,000 or so troops would be dead, their bodies having found forever martyrdom in the buildings and streets of Meerlat’s colonial cities.
    The moment he saw the exoskeleton armor and infantry technology of the aliens, he had known this was one battle he could not win. Had thousands really perished for a lost cause? What would the aliens have done to his troops had he chose not