Author: David C. Nutt

The planet our scouts discovered was a rare gem. A ridiculous amount of water, precious metals, base metals, and millions of acres already producing food. Just one small detail- already inhabited.
We began with psyops- sending films of our weapons in action on other worlds against other less developed species like themselves- early atomic age, just starting colonizing a few of their planets, rock throwers and spear hurlers compared to us. We parked our fleet in orbit, 12 ships of the line, including one carrier. A decent sized strike force.
Orbital bombardment was light because, well, we wanted the real estate. No good coming all this way if we make it a cinder. We’ve got colonists to feed and pockets to line, so it was time for me and mine to shine: the Infantry, ground pounders, you know…grunts.
They didn’t make it easy. Our ride down was nasty. No energy weapons but lots of junk in the air- tons (literally) of shrapnel, plus hunks of garbage metal and the odd exploding satellite. Out of a neat 500 landers, we lost close to 30- a few carrying our heavy ordinance.
Their cities were deserted as we expected. Some light fire, snipers but our shields deflected it. Then it happened. They brought down two buildings on top of us. In less than a minute we lost over half of the soldiers in our area strike force. Just by attrition, I was left in command. We got the word from above to withdraw so I gave it.
Coming out was a nightmare. They flung 100 meter size chunks of concrete and debris at us. With all our technology, we had no defense. Sheilds and plasma weapons can’t help you when the enemy drops a rock the size of a barracks on you. Worse, the wide open spaces, hard packed earth on our way in, they flooded and it was now knee deep mud.
Then the girders hit us. Construction girders slamming into our ranks from all sides, skewering whole detachments. By the time we cleared the mud fields, less than half of our remaining ground force in this sector was left. Then came the nets.
Steel cables thrown over us by rockets, pinning us all down. Then their forces came out. They had primitive body armor and only one kind of weapon, what they called shot guns. Some of my troops tried to fight back, cut the nets with our plasma cutters, but they were too fast. Their ground troops were on us. Where we surrendered they put a small flag down and collected us later. Where we didn’t, and tried to fight, muzzle up to our visors and BLAM! Just another KIA.
When they got to me they noticed my rank. They called over one of their officers. “Have your troops surrender and you will all be treated humanely.” I sent the word out. My unit, what was left of it, was now out of the fight. I didn’t know the word humanely, but we were treated better than we expected.
We’ve been here now for almost a year. They’ve long since boarded our fleet with the drop-ships we used to land. They have all our technology and managed to improve most of it.
And what they’ve done! It’s more than our people can handle- 2800 ships they’ve managed to make outnumbering our mere 800. More than we can handle.
More than sticks.
More than stones.
More than just our broken bones.