I used this to set the mood in the concept paper of "Incident", a game I was working on. I always wanted to expand it to a complete, self-contained story, but never got around to it.

Just shortly after the Terran fleet had landed on this strange planet called Yena with its beautiful but treacherous jungles, its vast and wild oceans, ferocious animals and thought to be primitive intelligent life, Malcolm Dawson had been appointed commander of Charlie Base, situated close to the perimeter of the main metal ore field on Yena's prominent continent.

The Terran settlers, the refugees, the last remnants of the fifteen billion people that had once inhabited planet Earth, had marveled at the impressive beauty and the immense abundance of resources they found on Yena. They had started to shuttle equipment down, to set up the first military bases and settlement camps, and to explore their new habitat. They had also come into contact with intelligent alien life, the Yenarians, but having seen their primitive technology and calm, religious, and portly lifestyle, they had quickly been neglected as not even a nuisance, something that could simply be disposed of should it ever become necessary. What a mistake...

Commander Dawson pushed his thoughts aside and observed through his digital binoculars how the Yenarian armies closed in from virtually every side, how new warriors and peculiar siege machinery appeared at the horizon. The war factories at his base had been producing light and medium tanks, turret-mounted guns and a few light bombers of the Prometheus class for a few weeks already, ever since Intelligence reported of expected Yenarian aggression, and the other bases had been informed as well, but the sheer size and determination of the enemy army still took Dawson by surprise.

Dawson sent one of his aides to have the last of the gigantic mine caterpillars retract into the protection of the closed laser barrier gates and another one to have the base shield generator be checked and manned around the clock. After so much carelessness and ignorance, he did not want to take any more risks. The future of the last few million Terrans was at stake, the wellbeing of those that had been selected to escape certain death on devastated planet Earth, and the thought of the responsibility that was his almost let Dawson's heart skip a beat.

The typical heavy Yenarian rain clouds rolled in with the evening, glowing in bright violet in the last rays of dusk. Rain would soon beat down on us, Commander Dawson thought, just like those Yenarian man-eaters will do soon, too. It would be a completely different enemy than fear and desperation had been during the last few years, one that could be defeated, but one much more deadly also.

* * *

Only hours later, shortly before dawn, the humid night was filled with screams and swears, both familiar and completely alien, with yellow, red, and blue muzzle fire, the rumbling of tanks and siege guns. Dawson could hear heavy gun shells falling to the ground all around him, could see batteries of soldiers move into the battle, eager to fulfill their orders and to protect Charlie Base. Dawson and his staff of officers busily gave orders, some to advance on this flank, others to give support in that area of the battlefield. A squadron of Prometheus bombers raced over the base, scorched the earth in the center of attacking monsters' army and turned the horizon into a sea of ravaging flames.

The battle was running quite well, Dawson thought. With their current equipment and situation, it should easily be possible to defeat this menace, or at least to slow the herd of barbarians until reinforcements arrived from other bases.

But then a frightening chanting started, voiced by robed and veiled Yenarians at the very other side of the battlefield. And, slowly, the earth started to shake. The quake grew stronger and soon could not be ignored. The Terran batteries fell back, irritated. What unknown weapon was being used here, Dawson asked himself, what evil magic was being worked?

As if from just one throat, thousands of Yenarian warriors joined into the chanting, turning it into one brutal, forceful battle cry, preceding what could well be the final assault on Charlie Base.