No sooner had Nova's words fallen than alarm sounds rang out inside the helmets. The sky was filled with countless tumbling drop pods, slowing down before hitting the ground at 50 km/h. Each impact was more powerful than any bomb, shockwaves sweeping hundreds of meters.
Dozens of drop pods landed around the ridge. Crouching in terror as a deep red sandstorm howled towards them.
Thank Rex for choosing this 700-meter mountain peak. The metal-rich hills withstood the brunt, covered in gravel but unharmed in the armored air supply.
As the shockwaves passed, Rex shouted, "Get up!"
Wilkins calmed down again, raising his rifle, aiming at a bio pod.
Undamaged in the landing impact, the thick pod split open under the flickering beacon. The silhouette of a monster appeared.
Seeing its shape, Wilkins yelled, "Sarge, we need bigger guns!"
A beast ten meters high and seven meters long had already crawled out. Their infantry weapons simply couldn't hurt such a monster!
"Damn, it's a Lascielian bio-beast!" Rex shouted back. "Armor piercing rounds, shoot it, send it to hell!"
Against such mutated monsters, standard equipment was useless, even Wilkins' 19 mm sniper rifle.
As the panels opened and micro-launchers unfolded, they raised their left forearms together.
Small but powerful bombs, similar to explosive rods, violently struck the tall bio-beast.
"Boom!" "The shells pierced the monster's skin about ten centimeters deep, then exploded almost simultaneously."
In interstellar conflict, such massive creatures remain a mysterious opponent. The ferocity of the tearing and shattering high explosive shells left only some irregular raindrop-like traces on their surface.
The enraged monster showed almost no signs of death, madly roaring as it charged up the slope.
"Its eyes, Wilkins!" Rex shouted, seeing their rockets had little effect.
In the heavy footsteps, Wilkins grabbed his rifle, the combat optics and targeting system locking onto the beast's volcanic-sized eyes in a second. He aligned the grapefruit-colored glow in the crosshairs, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger. Child's play for an A-grade military sniper like him.
The armor-assisted tracking and enhanced optics made capturing such a huge, lumbering target trivial for a boastful man.
The .19 caliber bullet erupted from the barrel at 2,000 m/s, power-boosted to negate threats over 2 clicks away.
The kinetic energy bullet pierced deep into the creature's ocular cavity, the delayed fuse explosive filler detonating in an instant, blowing the pre-fragmented casing outward in a devastating hail of shrapnel.
No ocular organ could withstand such trauma - the crimson sphere ejected a vile pus.
"Raaaargh!" An agonized roar echoed as the maddened bio-beast lowered its head, charging faster. Really furious now.
Of course, it still had three normal eyes left. Losing one barely slowed the dominator.
Wilkins looked on in frustration as the ultra-dense eye bones somehow remained intact, wondering what arcane bio-engineering made the creatures so hardy. He struggled to steady his breathing in disbelief. He lined up the second vulnerability in his sight again, breathed out, and squeezed the trigger.
At that moment though, the frenzied behemoth was bloody mad, some basic self-preservation instincts warning it of Wilkins' attack. The creature reared up with supernatural speed, the bullet meant to pierce its brain instead tearing open a clenched fist-sized black pockmark on its armored neck scales.
"Damn, mutated turtle shell?!" Wilkins cursed. Inhaling as he reacquired the remaining crimson eye.
But before he could fire, the beast had run out of his shooting range.
"I can't hit it!" Wilkins roared. He charged out from the cover, spraying left and right with his rifle.
"Can't get a shot on it anymore!" Wilkins roared, bursting out from cover, spraying with his rifle left and right.
"What the hell is this?!" came Rex's bellow over comms.
"Can't shoot from that position of advantage!" Wilkins panted into the mic. "The beast's moved out of my line of fire!"
"Get back here now!" Rex yelled. "I had you up high to observe approaches from all the monsters, not one direction!"
"It's out of range! Sniper ineffective - request change of plan!"
Rex frowned, the soldier wasn't wrong - standard weapons were useless against these gene-beasts. If a few more crested the ridge those mutated monsters would tear them apart.
Rex wasn't a by-the-book officer, quite the opposite. Flexibility was the reason his squad survived. And today's fight, with those creatures spilled loose, had entered a white-hot phase. Even an A-grade sniper couldn't contain them alone - they needed more firepower than this.
Rex knew their only hope now was to run. His mind raced as he bellowed "Sprint to me, men!"
His trio burst from cover, forming up in standard bounding overwatch behind Wilkins, sprinting over 700m of hillside towards where the beast had last been glimpsed, at 10 o'clock. The uneven slope gave them a chance to break out into more rugged terrain that might hamper the monster's pursuit...
The orbital distance between Halo Star and Krypton was amenable but the thin atmosphere led to extreme weather - 58°C peak temperatures plunging to -30°C nights. So between the hemispheres, ferocious hurricanes would form from the stark high and low temperatures, eroding the land into jagged, serrated terrain.
Without protective gear the surface conditions could kill them within hours - hence all landing troops had at least tier 5-6 equipment and physiques.
Nowadays among the populace, Tier 5 mastery marks the elite: every punch hurls boulders of 600 kg 15 meters away, every sprint bursts 20 meters. Then, through years of specialized training and cutting-edge powered armor, the military further enhances these prodigies into walking engines of destruction.
Tier 5 squads can crush battalions of lower ranks. Their exoskeletons and talents make them nearly unstoppable on most battlefields. But here on Halo Star, they have met their match against these towering gene-beasts...
However, against these mutated gene-beasts their technology and skills are outmatched, requiring thunder armor or high level skill talents to defeat.
At least the exoskeletons massively empower tier 7 and below squads, easily keeping pace at 20 km/h across uneven terrain for pursuit.
Two minutes later, they spotted the injured monster furiously clawing up an almost vertical scree slope. These metal-rich stones made hard by eons of storms could rival alloys forged a century ago.
The beast possessed astounding strength, its icy talons gouging out tons of debris with every casual rake - using pile-driver force akin to gargantuan mining machines to burrow into the cliffside. Cascades of rocks constantly collapsed before it, until an impromptu scree path formed, leading precariously upwards...
Rex stared at the monitors, pale faced. Thank heavens today he forsook any notions of defensive action - else they would surely perish here. His gaze towards Wilkins held new respect.
The others looked to Wilkins as well as they fired off more armor piercing rounds, driving the creature back. But lacking resupply, their limited ammunition could only inflict harm, not kill them.
An opening came nonetheless - Wilkins calmly raised his rifle, squeezing off two shots in smooth succession.
An agonized roar followed as it lost every eye on the flank.
Crazed with pain, the monster did not yield one inch, instead redoubling its assault on the cliffside with mammoth fury. The entire cliff face cascaded down like rainfall, boulders weighing hundreds of kilos forcing the squad to dodge the brutal barrage.
The unit, once facing imminent death, now maintained level heads amidst the creature's onslaught. Wilkins swept his rifle in steady arcs, firing off hyper-concentrated beams to intercept the most threatening rocks, detonating them into fragments mid-flight.
Rex was at a loss against the unrelenting monster. With stone shrapnel flying around them he gritted his teeth and bellowed "Full burn Arms of Wrath! Blast this bastard dead!"
It was a desperate gambit, unlikely to accomplish more beyond surface damage. Yet their options were limited on how to halt hundreds of enraged, nigh-invincible tons of gene-beast. If he did not act swiftly, they would undoubtedly perish...