"Fifteen minutes to go! Fire the landing flares and group together! Protect one another until your ride arrives at the designated location!" the appointed team leader ordered. Their standard operating procedure has to be quoted repeatedly to ensure that everyone knew what they were going to do.
In a flash, ten blue flares were lit and left on the ground to creates a tower of smoke as a signal for their mothership located up in the space. But this was just a mere call to return, hinted by the land units.
The captain would be the one approving the final number of dropships going down there. If they're lucky, there would be more than enough dropships to bring them back. But once in a while, only half or less than three would be sent down here.
Looking at the number of surviving soldiers down here, it seems that three dropships were the most they could get this round. With about seventy surviving soldiers is struggling to secure this landing zone, there might be less than sixty of them by the time their ride is here.
This number is including those that might miss their ride home.
It might be cruel to some of them, but this was the truth of how the army works. Even if they had ten times the resources, they wouldn't be given entirely to ensure they survive. Their only responsibility is to get them on and get them off.
The soldiers can only rely on themselves to stay alive in the battle.
As all of them were briefed before deployment, the purpose of this flare is known to all of them. The surviving soldiers started to band together as they remain vigilant at their surroundings. The leader would scream to get the remaining people over for groups that had yet to reach twenty or more people.
"Boy! Good job in staying alive. But don't relax. You can breathe as much as you want after getting back into the mothership. Make sure to remain vigilant until you hooked yourself on one of the seats." said the leader with a metal arm and legs.
It seems that his mechanical arm is malfunctioned due to getting damaged in the battle. Electrical sparks were coming out between the wrist and back of his palm.
Based on what he knew from studying diligently in the United Nations Space University, this means the mechanical arm started to get out of control. It will be a miracle if the leader can still hold a gun and fire them within control.
(Hwee...)
Another round of whistling sounds came as they waited for their ride.
To their surprise, the Alien Lifeforms actually decided to attack them while they're about to return to their mothership. Furthermore, this attack is at a larger scale compared to before.
At least over a hundred Luminescents are present in this attack. Following them were two four-legged creatures like a hybrid between a wolf and the Luminescent. Instead of having tentacle-like limbs with a mouth, it has an opening on a leech-like head.
The teeth grown around this opening are like the mouth of a lamprey. Suppose anyone was unluckily swallowed by this monster; it won't take them over a minute to get shredded into pieces by all those teeth.
But the problem is not how efficiently they could kill. It was the size that was a problem here. With a height of slightly over four meters, these shooter lifeforms are like a juggernaut that roams around the battlefield.
"Oh, Shit! How can a shooter lifeform appear now?" another guy who was also the leader of his respective team said. The look of despair is evidently shown on his face.
"We're fucked! The problem here is not one, but two of them are present here! How are we going to get back up there with these things running amok here?" the leader from another group with more than twenty soldiers said.
"We'll have to get them! Nobody will be going home if we don't get the shooter lifeform!" said the leader in Li-Xin's group. It was evident that this monster is terrible news. But for what reason, this was still unknown to him.
"Everyone, attack!" Get over to the nearest one to you and focus your fire on the legs! As long we get two of its legs, the shooter lifeform won't be able to fire the projectile from their mouth!
This explains how the explosion came much earlier, during his fight against a Luminescent Warriors. But the scale between the one earlier and this is totally two different matter.
If these two giants were the ones to attack, it wouldn't be a two meters crater they're creating. It would be like a missile warhead exploding right on this Landing Zone.
Nothing will be left alive if that really happened.
"What are you guys waiting for? Keep attacking! You don't need to save your bullets right now!" said the respective leaders. Out of the three groups of twenty-something soldiers, Li-Xin's group acted alone without the assistance of the other two.
"Fire in the hole!" one of the soldiers tossed a grenade as high as he could at the four meters tall target.
"Stupid fuck! Do you think your strength is enough to keep the grenade up there until it explodes? Without an impact, it would only detonate when it came back to the ground!" the leader with mechanical arm and leg said and dragged that foolish soldier away.
And just like what he said, the grenade detonates after it touches the ground. It was literally a waste of resources and effort. Worst of all, the grenade in the air created a sense of fear amongst the soldier as it stays undetonated.
The moment the timer is up, everyone turned their attention back to their pick-up point. To the soldier's disappointment, the dropship that was supposed to pick them up is yet to arrive.
"Don't tell me... The dropship is not coming because of these two creatures here?" one of the leaders started to lost his faith to return safely to the mothership. The feeling of getting abandoned was more than he could take.
Until...
"You kids down there, get the hell away from the creature. Leave these jobs to the professionals." a word came from above as they started to losing the hope to return safely. Hearing the sentence made the soldiers, including Li-Xin, turn their heads up to look at what kind of professional is arriving on the battlefield.
Five shadows, as big as the shooter lifeform, were coming down with the dropship's support.
"Fucking Yeah! It's the Knights! It's the Knight-Mares!" everyone cheered like they found another reason to stay alive.