I could feel my heart beating harshly against my ribcage, could hear the blood screaming in my ears, could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body. My L.E.W felt heavy in my hands as I kept it poised to shoot. My armor was light and allowed a wide range of movement, but it was supposed to be encredibly durable. I hoped so, since we were heading deeper into a jungle in order to find the enemy base. This planet, Gaia - a rogue planet in between the Milky Way and Andromeda - used to be claimed by us, the Galactics. The Spire had launched a full-scale assault and had taken over Gaia, as well as several other rogue planets claimed by the Galactics. It was our job to reclaim it.

I kept one eye on my commander, and another on the surrounding area, looking for something that might jump out and try to attack us. I've never been out here before. I'm from Earth, originally, but thanks to my enlisting with the Galactic Army, I've seen several planets from all over the Milky Way, and now I'm leaving the galaxy for the first time.

My commander pauses, and raises a hand. I tense up even more than before, listening closely. The commander had heard something. A series of beeps suddenly penetrated the thick forest. The sound surrounded us. Four high pitched beeps, over and over, closing in on us.

Then it happened.

Weapons' fire came from all directions. Bright neon lights that could burn a hole in your skin shot from the trees. Screams of shock and then pain came up from my team. I just stood there, shocked. I wanted to move, but I couldn't shake myself out of it. I just stood there, holding my gun, not sure what to do.

"Lieutenant Song! Get your moving!" my commander shouted as he shot wildly at the trees. I looked around, and saw that those of my teammates that weren't on the ground in pain were shooting as well. I thought it was pointless, as we couldn't see what we were shooting at. Suddenly, a flash of light came at me, directly aimed at my head. I ducked, adrenaline on overload, and pressed the trigger on my L.E.W. A burst of bright blue light shot from the muzzle of the gun, and collided with a tree, setting it aflame.

I continued shooting, aiming for where I saw the neon lights emerging from the trees. I heard a cry of pain, and saw my commander fall flat on his face. He'd been hit in the back. Which makes sense, since they were firing from all sides.

"Get back-to-back!" Lieutenant Commander Jameson shouted. He was second in command. Or first, now that the commander was dead. I did as he ordered, backing up slowly, firing with the rest of my squad out towards the trees. I felt the backs of the others up against mine, and spared a thought of how at least now our backs were protected.

I shot, trying to hit in between the branches of a tree, but the burst of light hit the tree instead. It went up in flames. I heard a roar as another tree went up in flames. The trees were too thick! We were hitting more trees than anything else!

Suddenly it hit me. We were hitting the trees that surrounded us. They caught on fire. Fire spreads. We were going to end up setting ourselves ablaze, or at least get ourselves trapped by the fire!

"We need to stop shooting!" I shouted.

"The you talking about, Lieutenant?" Jameson asked over the cacophony of weapons' fire and crackling fires.

"The fires, sir!" I responded. "We're gonna end up burning ourselves alive if we keep setting trees on fire!"

"Well, I'm open to suggestions!"

I didn't have time to respond. Faces started to appear in between the trees. They were closing in, readying for the final blow. I could barely see them through the adrenaline rush and the thick forest, but I shot at them just the same. More trees caught fire. The smoke choked me, and restricted my vision further. Panic started to replace the adrenaline fueling me.

"What do we do, sir?!" Ensign Kim, a young man on his first assignment, called in a panicky voice.

Jameson heaved a ragged breath. He dropped his gun. "Surrender." he said in defeat. No sooner than the word left his mouth that he was shot straight in the chest.

"Grich'ki Mok Daite." I heard The Spire command. My heart froze. That one phrase is the only bit of Spire Tongue I know. We all know it. It means, "Kill the men."

The Spire is kind of chivalrous in that it is incredibly polite and respectful towards women. Whenever The Spire took prisoners, they always gave the same order. Kill the men, take the women prisoner. No woman that has been taken prisoner has ever been seen again. There were all kinds of rumors surrounding what happened to them. Given The Spire's views on women, meaning they are to be respected and revered as the creature that creates all life, it seemed unlikely that they would kill the women. A popular rumor was that the women were sold into ual slavery, but that also seemed a bit odd since women are supposedly very well treated in The Spire. But maybe that only applied to Spire women, was the reasoning behind that rumor.

I spun around. I wanted to do something, anything, to protect the rest of my squad. But as I turned, I saw them all fall like dominoes. They all had holes in their chests. I was alone. I stared at the men's fallen bodies. I felt detached in my chest, like someone had unplugged my heart from the rest of me. This wasn't from grief over the men who had just been shot. In all honesty I barely knew any of them, even though we've served together for five and a half years. This was because of fear. Overwhelming fear. What was going to happen to me?

I heard the rustle of leaves parting to let some of The Spire through. I forced myself to look up. I saw three of them standing in front of me at the edge of the fallen bodies. I was surprised. I was raised on the tales of the inhabitents of The Spire being ugly, twisted and gnarled old things, hunched over and brown with angry slits for eyes. I was told they looked like old willow trees, with long limbs, so thin they bent with the wind, with long silverish hair. They were supposed to be tall, too. The women are supposedly around five foot ten on average, and the men even taller. Their voices were supposed to be grating, harsh, like sandpaper on your ears. But these aliens looked nothing like that.

I supposed that kind of made sense. The Spire did take up a whole galaxy, so it made sense that I'd see an alien that looked different from the ones I was told about. Like with the Galactics in my galaxy. We had thousands of races in our alliance, and they all differed from each other. Jameson was actually half human-half Bajoran.

These three aliens were about my height, maybe a few inches taller. These three were men - I'm assuming - and had short black hair. Their lips were a dark purplish-blue, and their eyes were pure icey blue except for a pitch black pupil and a thin black rim surrounding the iris. Their lashes were luxuriously long and were pure white. Their eyebrows were pale icey blue. All the defined ridges of their faces were highlighted with blue and flecks of purple and black, such as their cheekbones and their nose ridge. Their eyelids were light purple. I wasn't sure how much of that was cosmetic. They wore black combat boots and a black jacket that reached down to their knees. Their pants were also black. The only skin showing aside from their face was their hands. Their nails were slightly blue-tinted, and they had a pattern on the backs of their hands made out of streaks of dark purple and blue.

I dropped my gun. I was either going to go with them, or I was probably going to die. And my self-preservation instinct wasn't about to let me shoot myself. Besides, I thought in a forced attempt at optimism, maybe it won't be so bad.

"You will come with us." the one in the middle said. His voice was soft, melodic, slightly accented. I nodded. Two of them came to stand next to me, and we followed the one in front through the flames and into the trees. I looked behind me at the bodies of the rest of my squad, knowing that I wasn't going to see another human face for a long time.