A spaceship came into view on the horizon, reflecting the harsh sun’s rays back onto the planet. Kubul pulled down his goggles, the sun’s intensity was enough without the reflection glare off the ship too.

It had been 15 years since the last re-supply, but this was the capital ship of the Krogans along with transports. It would seem a meeting with Hector was due and there’d be plenty of questions, the transports meant they must be planning to colonize another planet and that would mean requiring the hunter’s deadly planetary battalions.

Deadly due to a lifetime of war on the home planet Eden, Kubul was always proud that the two different factions trained together united under his command. It wasn’t always that way, Kubul sat on the edge of the cliff and took out his cooled drink, a caffeinated smoothie of local fruits and thought back to those days and what ultimately led to the end of the war. The memories were always hard to forget.

Dead bodies were strewn everywhere, decapitated limbs, skulls with fletchette rounds lodged into them pinning them to trees. Silence… concussion? Movement on the left, a man heavily augmented emerged from behind a tree and levelled his rifle, roll, the first burst of bullets thudded into the ground milli seconds after Kubul managed to roll. Expecting to be taken out by the time he got up he looked up to see his attacker falling backwards, a flying dagger between the eyes. A fellow hunter ran across, dislodged the crystallized knife, and hit a power button, it lit up and the hunter rolled into cover whilst letting the knife loose, straight through three bodies and armor, they all collapsed.

The hunters might not be sufficiently armored due to preferring stealth, but their weaponry was deadly. They had preferred to create weapons based on knives, darts, arrows, crossbows and the like for hunting large game. One arrow could travel clean through a handful of Bison and if lethality needed to be improved, they could be customized with explosives. Never had they expected to actually have to use the weapons in a war, but Kubul made sure to always be prepared for the un-expected. Sound was slowly coming back, bullets whistling and explosions nearby sowing confusion with his concussed responsiveness. The fellow hunter provided support, it was Kaaba and he was issuing retreat orders to the platoons, only to their trained eyes could the next barricade of support be seen, constructed to blend in with the environment, cloaking camo material draped across the defenses, they jumped over and waited for the final push.

Due to the Krogans having orbital space superiority the hunters had to keep to jungles and underway passages to navigate and direct their war against the Krogan’s, to operate in the open was to invite death from above. Kaaba gave Kubul the look, one which he was use to seeing which meant "why the fuck were you on the front lines again".

Despite the risk to his life and the impacts it could have on morale if he died, he found it extremely difficult to command from the back. They were only given 2 minutes to catch their breath and armored men were zig zagging tree to tree with the odd armored walker, the walkers were specific to this terrain as tanks were unable to penetrate the jungles density.

"Fire!", the order was whispered by Kubul into the communication channels and what looked like jungle density suddenly erupted with crystalized arrows and fletchettes being fired at a blistering rate. Men dropped, walkers toppled, arrows also had proximity mined heads so as the second wave of men moved in, they were unwittingly walking into a freshly laid mine field of their dead. More explosions, screams and limbs flying. The final wave of krogans were defeated… for now.

Kubul shook his head from his reverie and muttered "Damn fucking resources!".

"Excuse me Sir, Hector has been cleared for landing in 2 hours’ time we need you back now, I’ve got a skimmer to take us".

Kaaba knew it was better to pretend he hadn’t heard the leaders’ mutterings than ask for him to elaborate. Resources as always were contended and this is what drove the wedge between the factions initially and drove them to war, for what good that achieved. It was only destruction on a huge scale that was able to bring peace and a new era of prosperity…

To be continued…