July – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Colonel Mikhail Mannuki’ili
Mikhail
A mortar exploded next to them, spraying them in the face with dirt. A man … no woman … screamed. Glicki!
"Fall back! Fall back!" The order came over the radio.
Mikhail rushed to her side, cradling her in his arms. Her green, prayer-like grasping arms were held close to her chest, trembling in pain.
"Glicki," he said. "You're going to be okay." He touched along her green exoskeleton, which had taken the brunt of the shrapnel. Green blood seeped out of the joint of one of the four legs she used to walk.
"I'm okay," she chirped out of the voice translator. "Good thing we come with built-in armor."
Another mortar exploded, slightly further away. He shielded her with his wings as debris rained down upon them.
"Can you walk?"
She tried to move her leg and screamed in pain. Mikhail examined the wound. She was bleeding profusely. An artery had been hit. If he could tie it off, she would make it. Unfortunately, insectoid physiology was notoriously difficult to tourniquet. He had to get her out of here before she bled out.
"Major Mannuki'ili?" one of the other soldiers asked. "What do we do?"
He looked to the men and women in his special operations group, six of them. One was Angelic like him, the others were Mantoid. All fine soldiers. His sensitive ears could hear the Sata'anic lizards creeping through the underbrush on either side of them. Shay'tan wanted this planet, and he was going to take it from them.
Mikhail looked first to his wounded friend, and then to his special forces team. Although the same height as him and slender, insectoids were heavy. -Too- heavy for an Angelic to fly out of here, not even with the stronger wings granted to him thanks to his Seraphim blood. Although Mantoids had wings, they were more suited to long flying jumps rather than the true flight Angelics were capable of. With her leg in such condition, Glicki couldn't fly. The Sata'anic lizards blocked their escape. There was only one thing they could do.
His eyes met Glicki's green-gold compound ones. Glicki nodded. She knew what he needed to do, and she agreed.
"We complete the mission."
Tucking Glicki into a low point in the dirt with a tourniquet around her wounded leg, he covered her with brush, and then signaled his remaining team to fan out through the underbrush. It was time to hunt. Clicking the Cherubim meditations for stalking prey, he pressed his wings against his back and crept up behind a squadron of lizard-people trailing a rumbling tank. His team was vastly outnumbered. He was about to even those odds. It was not to his pulse-rifle he looked to now, but a silent one. His knife. He crept up on the first lagging lizard soldier, the man's tail bobbing from side-to-side with a bayonet strapped to his tail. With sharp claws on both their hands and feet, as well as their fangs, Shay'tan had bred them to do their best fighting up close and personal.
Just the way the Cherubim had taught -him- to fight…
Clutching his knife in his hand, Mikhail crept up silently behind him and slit his throat.
Mikhail's eyes shot open. He sat up, his wings slamming against the wall as he reached for the knife he could almost feel in his hand and came up empty handed. He hyperventilated until he recognized he'd fallen back asleep in Ninsianna's room. Downstairs, the drone of voices reassured him everything was fine. A dream. It was only a dream.
The lizard people! The Sata’an must be the demons Ninsianna foresaw invading her homeworld, but with so many memories missing he couldn't understand their motivation. He must prepare his adopted people for the battle to come.
Chapter 83