'What just happened?' the watch on my left wrist blinked and vibrated.
'One of the four IMRs just got destroyed. There was a long deep cut on the middle of the body part.' I responded the message.
'Aliens? Major General Girsang has just also received the same report.' my watch blinked and vibrated again, giving out another message that supposed one of the soldiers from the Alpha Team had also reported the event to their Commanding General.
'Most likely, sir. We will have to exercise maximum caution from here on out.' I replied.
Shortly after then, one of the Special Forces Command soldiers from the Alpha Team took out something that seemed like some sort of a digital camera. He took it out as he approached us and the destroyed device, and apparently he used the camera to take a picture or two of the long deep cut mark and to send it to the Army Base. If I were to assume, their Operation Commander, Major General Girsang wanted to see the mark on the device.
However, when he was finished I suddenly heard a brief tree-branch cracking sound somewhere in the distance. In reflex, I readied my submachine gun and aimed directly towards the direction of where the rest of the Alpha Team men were, because that was exactly where the sound was coming from. Apparently, Billy and the rest of the others also noticed the sound as they were also aiming their firearms towards the same direction.
"Travis, I think we should…" Billy said in a very low voice as he was still aiming his submachine gun.
"Hold our position here. Not moving at all…" I responded to him in the exact same manner.
"Agree…" he replied as he shook his head once to the three Special Forces Command men nearest to us, implying that he suggested them to also hold their position.
We waited for around one minute, and then another, until few more minutes passed while there was still nothing else happened again. The atmosphere around me was indeed tense, although I did not sense that any of them especially Billy to be scared. I could only imagine how much tenser it would be on the rest of the other Alpha Team members' side. After a few more minutes of alert, they seemed to begin to lower their alerts. At the same time, the Bravo Team and Charlie Team also began to continue to regroup with Alpha Team.
'ARGHAGHKK!!'
Suddenly, one man was almost instantly incapacitated due to a slash wound caused by what looked like a beam blade coming out of nowhere. I could not see it clearly as I was quite far from the rest of the other Alpha Team, but I did not need to be standing at any closer to know for sure that the beam blade I had just seen was the very same as it was shown of the footage.
"Get down!" I shouted, as I brought myself down to the slope ground and put myself to prone position.
Billy and the three Special Forces Command soldiers followed me almost instantly, in order to lessen the chance of also being hit by the beam blade that seemed to attack aimlessly at anything that it could cut, or even slice. Just then, the second, and then third and fourth man also fell victim to at least two other beam blades that also suddenly occurred out of nowhere in the air. I was so startled at the realization that there were actually multiple stealth aliens waiting for the right moment to slaughter us, and it made me nearly forgot to try to bring them down using my firearm.
'THUB THUB THUB THUB THUB THUB'
'PANG PANG PANG PANG PANG'
In that moment, everyone began to fire their firearms towards where the beam blades were. Although it did not come as a surprise for me, it still felt extremely devastating to know that our fired rounds seemed to give absolutely no effect whatsoever to any of the beam blades. However, with that in mind I could now be completely sure that it was of the very same technology that was used by the alien commander three years before in Chicago. Since both of the blades' technology was the same, whatever they were that currently wielded it must be a creature not from this world.
It really came as a surprise for me when the beam blades suddenly gone and vanished again. I breathed deep and hard as I looked around the surroundings for any signs of the aliens' presence. I believed I must have waited for at least three minutes after there were no branch-cracking sounds or unseen footsteps, or even a whooshing sound in the air before I braced myself up and began to get up from my prone position. Billy followed shortly after, and so did the three Special Forces Command soldiers.
We slowly and carefully approached the rest of the other Alpha Team men as we also kept our alerts against our surroundings. Although I could keep my mind clear and not buzzed after what had just happened to the whole team, I still felt my heart pounded harder and faster as I took each step closer to the rest of the other Alpha Team men. When we had finally caught with them, I took a quick glance and counted the casualties, and found out that there were seven men incapacitated because of the sudden attack. There were also three casualties from Charlie Team, but thankfully none of them ten were dead.
"Astaghfirullah…" Billy muttered with a low voice.
At first, I really did not want to look at the injuries of the fallen men. However, since I had to help stopping the bleeding of the two men from the Alpha Team together with Billy, I ended up looking at their wounds. The first man I helped had a long straight cut on his back, probably as long as close to twelve inches. One of his other comrades came to him and gave him an emergency aid, which was to stitch close the wound. Of course, the man was groaning in pain during the process but the good thing was he did not faint from loss of blood, which made us a little relieved.
The second man that I helped had the similar wound to the first man. However, instead of at the back, his wound was at his chest which made me rather worried if the cut reached one or even few of his organs, especially since I noticed that he seemed to be in much more pain compared to the first man. Since the first priority was none other than to stop his bleeding first, the same soldier who stitched close the first man also gave the same aid to him. After he was done, I strongly suggested him to evacuate him for the next aids at an emergency department. Billy also agreed with me.
"We cannot continue to move on with wounded and injured men…" I told Billy as I began to reach for my watch.
"I agree. I will go and tell one of them to reach out for Major General Girsang and to ask if there are any changes of plans in this operation." Billy responded just before he approached another man.
Right after I assisted in giving emergency aid, I immediately sent another message through my watch to explain what had just happened to Commodore Quentin. As I had expected, he seemed to be also completely shocked to the incident based on the responding message. He also mentioned that he had not received any words from the Commander General, which was something that I recognized to be strange since Billy had told his colleagues to contact the Commander General immediately.
I decided to approach and ask Billy on why they had not contacted the Commander General yet, to which he immediately told me that they had a serious problem in contacting the Army Base just then. I was completely left speechless on what to do next, while at the same time I also knew full well that even if I were to contact Commodore Quentin again about the current situation, it would definitely not be his, or rather E.X.T.I.R.T's part in deciding any changes of plans in the whole operation.
Just as I had thought about it, another thing occurred to my mind as to the most possible reason behind the sudden problem in their communications system. It reminded me of the first night after my arrival in Chicago Military Base three years before, when suddenly all high technology equipment met various technical problems very shortly before the sudden invasion.
If the reason behind the current communications problems was due to the aliens' interception, then it would make sense on why I had no problems at all in contacting Commodore Quentin since the form of my communications system was through an analog watch and an obsolete communications system. However, my heart suddenly pounded hard and fast again as it immediately came to my mind that if it was indeed true, then there was a really high chance that in a very short time every of the Special Forces Command's high technology equipment, especially the wheeled IMRs would be destroyed by the aliens.
"Move! Move away from the robots!!" I shouted to the Bravo and Charlie Team as I rushed to their direction after I realized that the aliens could destroy the devices at any second then.
'GA-BOOOM'
I could not be sure whether I had finished my words just before or after another wheeled IMR was destroyed right in front of my eyes. As if the aliens were not satisfied by the destruction of half of the devices, the third and the fourth IMR also exploded shortly after the destruction of the second one. That time, approximately half of the Charlie Team was wiped out in the explosion instantly since there were numbers of them standing by near the third and the fourth IMRs. Four
"No… no, no…" Billy muttered to himself as he was rushing to the second IMR which was just a few feet away from where I was standing.
As Billy stopped right in front of the destroyed second IMR, he immediately seemed to be looking for something inside the robot. I asked him what he was doing, to which he responded that the IMRs also had the feature to record everything that it had seen and encountered. The recordings would then be saved and stored inside a chip which was located inside the robot, and could be extracted from the middle part of its body. However, since the chip was very sensitive to physical damages, a couple of scratch would be enough to destroy some of the recordings.
It turned out that not only the part was scratched badly, but it also had a longer and deeper cut than the first one. I immediately asked why he did not rush for the third and fourth one, to which Billy said he did not bother going to the rest of the other two since the explosion that big would definitely have destroyed every components inside the robots.
"These aliens are smart." Billy said as he clenched his teeth. "They knew exactly what they were doing…"
Apparently, the aliens probably decided to eliminate our presence right away there, since another beam blades attack occurred again and no longer made non-fatal casualties – another three men from Bravo Team was incapacitated, all killed on the spot. Realizing that we had then entered their slaughtering zone, I forced myself to give out an order to split up.
The whole Bravo and Charlie Team exit the original dropping point and red zone while more than half of the capable Alpha Team assisted them by bringing the wounded and killed men out from the red zone. The rest of the others, including me and Billy were only four Alpha Team men entered the red zone deeper with a very tense and pressing atmosphere filling our surroundings. As we kept on rushing deeper, I could feel the very same shivers on my spine as it was back in Chicago…