"You know your squads, you know your objectives, and you know what to do," Avery spoke calmly through the speakers of everyone in the 501st. Prince Tarble, as capable of a leader as he was, undervalued the effect of a speech. Just a few words to get the soldier's heads in the game. "Look out for the squads on your left and your right and we'll all return from this mission. Prince Tarble picked you all personally because he thought you were the kinds of badasses that can crack a Shield World. Let's see if he was right."

Cator, an old friend, thumped him on the back as Avery concluded his speech. There was some clapping behind him in the sizable shuttle with enough room for just over a thousand soldiers. There were a few shouts, giving him shit but Avery just stared ahead, looking at the bulkhead doors that would turn into a ramp. He tried to picture what the planet would look like on the other side, trying to imagine the battle that would be waged.

Avery had fought for the Cold-force, now Frieza-force, for near two hundred years. The short years he had fought under Queen Teach had been the bloodiest. To the point that Avery stopped bothering to remember names and each mission he expected that he would be dead by the end of it. With her, Avery learned to expect a meat grinder. With Prince Tarble, Avery found that he didn't know what to expect. Even when Prince Tarble had shaped the plan with their help over two years, Avery felt like he had no idea what he was walking into.

"Do you think they'll perform?" Cator questioned quietly, standing behind him as he clutched his laser rifle like it was his firstborn child. It was top of the line tech that the entire unit was outfitted with, at least those that used guns, but Cator improved his to the point that any planet with a legal system would have banned the weapon.

Avery saw one of the new recruits shift where they stood, pretending that she wasn't listening. Avery didn't know her species, but she had the ability to make two copies of herself - complete with duplicating the tech and weapons she wore. He had her assigned to his personal squad.

"They had better. Otherwise, we're all dead," Avery responded, watching her stiffen at the news. Cator let out a small huff, at that, not believing him for a second.

"Eh, I doubt that. Prince Tarble is getting crazily strong. I bet he could bail us out himself like he did last time," Cator dismissed. Avery didn't feel the need to tell him that he had been quoting Prince Tarble.

"Like last time?" The new recruit asked, deciding to stop pretending that she hadn't been listening. Despite the growing tension in the ship as they all waited for the door to open, Cator, in a loud boisterous voice, explained why exactly they placed so much trust in Prince Tarble. Enough trust that they went along with this utterly insane plan.

"About two years ago, we took out a production planet called Rench. But we got stranded there when our fleet had to bail out. That's not important - what is, though, is that Prince Tarble figured out that the Reach was gearing up to wipe us out. So, get this, Prince Tarble fought the entire planet solo," Cator said, earning a few cheers from the other members of the Old Guard 501st. "Hundreds of Scarabs, entire armies with a grand fleet firing down at him. And he wrecked their shit for hours."

Cator was exaggerating, but not by much.

"You're full of shit," Vas spoke up, a troublemaker even amongst the notable troublemakers. "I'll give it to you that the pipsqueak is a tough nut, but I've seen production worlds. No one is fighting that alone."

Cator just smiled, "Oh, not only did he fight them, but he did it while fighting a Champion Class Scarab. Ended up killing it too with this massive attack that punched a hole through the fleet's defensive line in orbit. While cut in half."

"Yeah, you're full of it," the first recruit, Canda if Avery recalled correctly, seconded, earning a chuckle from him. He preferred silence before a battle, but this wasn't so bad either, Avery thought to himself.

"Am not! Avery, you were there, back me up," Cator demanded.

"He wasn't cut in half," Avery, making both women shoot Cator smug looks. It was amazing that no matter what species the fairer gender all possessed that Look, almost as if it were a universal constant. "Just mostly cut in half. About… eighty percent, or so. Wait- his shoulder was cut up to, so make that ninety percent. I've seen the scars."

Vas made a face. It was no secret that she wanted to take a shot at Prince Tarble. It was just a matter of when. "Scars?" She questioned, looking to poke a hole in his story.

"Saiyans like their scars," Avery explained with a shrug of his shoulders. He didn't really get it, but he never fought anything that could give him a scar in the first place. "They'll heal the muscle beneath, but they always leave the surface damage. It's a pride thing. Showing off that they lived in a fight against something strong enough to give them a scar. The deadlier the wound, the prouder they are."

The one that cut Prince Tarble's torso nearly in half was a nasty one. By the time he hit his adolescence, or whenever he became interested in women, Avery had credits that Prince Tarble was going to start going shirtless. Like a woman's Look, guys doing stupid shit to impress a girl was also a universal constant.

Before Vas or anyone else could make a comment, the red light that washed over the shuttle suddenly flashed green. Any trace of the good cheer and chatter vanished without a second. Avery's grip on his gun tightened, every muscle in his body tensing before he sprung forward, moving before the gate had even opened.

The fliers moved out first, but he was the first foot on the ground of the 501st, sprinting down the rampart as he took in the battle. The saiyans and a few others had flown outside of the shuttles to make sure that they had landed, so the Shield World was already a battleground. There wasn't a speck of green to be found anywhere, and the full gray planet was designed for battle. Systematic cover, chokepoints, sniper perches, and places that offered cover for heavy artillery.

A space elevator dominated the skyline. One of the few things that were taller than a few stories. The gravity was light, slightly less than the galactic standard, so the elevator was oddly slender compared to the ones back on Rench. The sky was golden, but not naturally. The energy shield that was meant to keep out invaders was up, giving the sky a segmented appearance. But all of it paled in comparison to the fight that raged in the distance - Scarabs flooded towards their position, more than Avery ever wanted to see in a single location, but the reactionary wave was held back by Prince Tarble and his mother.

That fight was beyond him. Not that it mattered because he had a mission to accomplish.

"On me," Avery spoke to the three thousand soldiers under his direct command. "Our target is the space elevator. We punch through everything that tries to get in our way!" Avery shouted as he pushed up to cover, pointed his rifle, and spotted the first enemy combatant. The Saiyans were major attention grabbers, so the Reach troops scrambled to react, and they paid for it with their lives.

Avery's gun bucked against his shoulder, his railgun firing an electromagnetic slug that punched right through the energy shield to the Reach soldier, painting the two soldiers next to him with his blood. They recoiled, horrified, and not a second later Avery's shoulder slipped back into its socket and he fired again. This time, he reduced an enemy's head to a fine mist.

"Twenty-two, push up hard to the right! Vas, lay down covering fire," Avery ordered as he advanced the line. In response, the fliers circled overhead. Vas, for all of her attitude, proved that she could follow orders. Lightning gathered on her hands before she dropped the mother of all lightning bolts on an enemy squad position and reduced them to nothing. Letting the twenty-second unit advance with little trouble.

The three thousand troops were divided into a hundred man units with the last ten being specialized units. Fliers, magic users, and tech support. 20-25 were tech support, with 26-30 being magic support, and Prince Tarble had prepared well for the invasion. The twenty-second unit took up a flank, and liquid metal surged into the shape of a massive gun that laid waste to the enemy before the 501st. Avery continued to advance, spearheading the approach, his arm dislocating for a split second each time he pulled the trigger, and while he was no Saiyan, he had adapted to that pain decades ago.

"Twenty-six, hot-drop!" Avery ordered as his unit punched through the Reach line like they were barely there. The element of surprise, their tech, and their diverse soldiers paved the way towards the space elevator that was little more than a hundred clicks out. In response to his words, a bright green flame appeared before him and Avery jumped through it, landing behind an enemy squad. They didn't notice him, or his personal five, or seven, squad until they were all dead.

Avery could feel the flow of battle in a way that only a grunt could. He felt where their advancing flow was being held back by a stone of the Reach's defense, and as the commander, it was his job to remove those stones.

"Scout, Scout, Scout!" Cator shouted, "North-East, three-fifty!" Instantly, Avery's gaze darted to the Scout class Scarab. It wouldn't even be a warm-up for a Saiyan, but that Scout was an army killer for grunts like him.

"Vas! I got a gift for you!" Avery shouted, watching as a bolt of lightning slammed into the Scout, causing an explosion. The Scarab wasn't dead, missiles streaking out of its backpack as it formed a plasma gun with what was left of its chest and its remaining arm. Lightning detonated the missiles before they struck anyone, making those black holes form, but the Scarab got a shot off. A massive torrent of plasma the size of his body raced towards his squad's position and, for a second, it was all that Avery could see.

Then a green flame appeared between them, so close that they could touch, but when the plasma should have washed over him, it instead flowed through the hole in space.

"I owe you Narra," Avery said, barely pausing as his fraction of the 501st continued their mad blitz towards the space elevator. Blasts of lasers flashed through the air, his sky units doing good work from above. In the background, he noticed something beyond the field of battle. Streaks of light that marked the sky as small dots lined up with the segmented golden sky.

Predictably, Narra didn't respond. She didn't seem to do well with thank yous. But, all the same, Avery resolved to buy her a stiff drink provided that they both survive.

Avery's shoulder slammed into cover as he was forced to stop for the first time since the invasion kicked off. A flash of light seemed to glow brightly in the distance, prompting Avery to shout, "Get down! Shockwave!" His squad ducked beneath the same cover that he did. An explosion seemed to rock the planet all the way down to its core, the shockwave hitting them a few seconds later. It was like someone shot a gun by his ear while punching him directly in the stomach, but other than that Avery was fine. The others suffered worse but not as bad as they would have standing in the open.

"Advance!" Avery shouted, standing up and lining up his shots. The railgun bucked against his shoulder, each time he pulled the trigger an enemy alien died. Lightning and ice from an ice flying alien washed over the enemy's defensive positions. Using his scouter, Avery judged the distance between them and the space elevator. Less than ten miles out. They needed to get closer.

"Twelve, terrain denial," Avery shouted, seeing a fire alien press his hands to the ground and the synthetic hard plastic melted, reduced to goo as the heat spread forward. Avery heard aliens scream as they were caught in the melted sludge, burning to death. Having been set on fire more than once, Avery took aim with his rifle as he rushed forward to seize the opening and fired mercy at the burning enemy.

The orders flowed from his mouth like water, clearing the stones from their path. Yet, as the enemy reacted, more stones appeared until it felt as if their assault had slowed to a crawl. Lasers pinged off his energy shield, a HUD on his scouter telling him their status. Avery accepted the shots, releasing devastation in return and butchered the enemy before him. The Reach aircraft deployed, tying up his fliers and a portion of his support. The numbers of defenders grew more numerous as the Reach deployed in full.

Despite their initial success, they were fighting to take a Shield World. There were billions on this planet, all combatants, all willing to defend it until their final breath.

The space between them was filled with laser and plasma fire, so thick that without his energy shield, not even Avery would dare to stick his head up. His railgun bucked, punching through cover as he had pyro to continuously deny it to the enemy. Despite the Reach numbers, the 501st continued to advance. Only their progress was now measured in inches as they felt the full weight of the Reach start to press down on them from all sides.

In the distance, Avery saw Prince Tarble fight a horde of Scarabs. Vanguard and three Champion Scarabs leading the way. A dozen of them clumped together as Prince Tarble darted around, moving at speeds Avery didn't even try to follow, forming an utterly massive plasma cannon that was aimed at the Prince. It fired a torrent of plasma and despite being so far away, Avery would swear that he felt the heat of it warm his face.

Prince Tarble barely paid it any mind, a Riot Javelin forming in his hand before he launched it at the sky scrapper sized torrent of dark blue plasma. Despite only being a drop in what should be an ocean, the torrent of plasma exploded outward as the Riot Javelin surged forward. The plasma splashed outward, landing on cover and soldiers alike, some of it splashing so far that Avery watched it vaporize a squad he had been aiming at. Then the Riot Javelin slammed home into the barrel of the massive plasma gun and an equally massive explosion rang out.

Avery ducked underneath his cover, feeling the heat and the shockwave washing over their position. While he was down, he heard Cator chuckling before he elbowed Canda.

"About that story, I told ya? The thing I didn't mention was that Prince Tarble is more than twice as strong than when he held off every Scarab on Rench," Cator pointed out while Canda looked stunned three times over with her identical clones.

Saiyans were on another level, Avery silently agreed. Most of them boasted that their species were the ultimate warriors of the universe, something that every warrior race said about themselves… the only difference was that Avery actually believed the Saiyans.

As if to prove his point, Queen Teach flew overhead. As a very learned response, Avery took cover while shouting, "Support, cover!" Green fire washed over Avery's squad while technological shields protected the other three thousand members of the 501st were protected from a massive ki blast that washed over the Reach's position. With casual ease, Queen Teach punched a hole right through the Reach defensive line. And she did it without any friendly fire. This time.

"Thank you for the assist," Avery said, forcing himself to be polite. The Queen, Prince Tarble's mother… had probably killed more of his men, his friends, than the Reach had at this point. She had mellowed out since Elery entered the picture, but Avery didn't have it in him to forgive her. "But shouldn't you be helping Prince Tarble?"

Said Prince threw himself into battle against countless Scarabs, drawing their attention because he was easily the biggest threat. Or, so they thought.

"Eh, don't worry about it. Tarble has gotten pretty strong, so it's been a challenge to find anything that can push him to his limits. I figured I should let him enjoy himself," Queen Teach dismissed as she casually fired another ki blast that wiped out an entire division of Reach soldiers, letting the 501st punch through fast enough that if they stopped that they would be surrounded.

Avery knew, for a Saiyan, that was probably the ultimate expression of love. Letting them have the most dangerous fights. It screamed utterly backward to him, but aliens were weird.

"You-" Narra's voice spoke up before she cut herself off, apparently not realizing that she was directly connected to a private channel as a leader of a division.

"I what?" Queen Teach questioned, firing yet another ki blast with an almost lazy gesture as she flew above them. Saiyans really were on a completely different level. Above the screams, fire, and death of soldiers below. Explosions echoed in Avery's ears, screams of the dying, and weapon fire serving as a tempo. A familiar melody to him at this point.

"You enjoy this," Narra accused, hate coloring her tone. Despite himself, Avery glanced over to Narra's position - overseeing a gentle slope that allowed her unit to get a good view of the battlefield. Avery grit his teeth and hoped that they weren't about to lose their magic support.

Queen Teach let out a laugh as she switched to an open channel. She might hate her husband for grandstanding, but it seemed that she had a taste for it as well. Ki flowed to her hands as she flew above the battlefield, an open challenge for any to take a shot at her.

"You aliens don't get it," Queen Teach exclaimed as she casually threw a ki blast that exploded some distance away, wiping out a Reach armored division. And before the shockwave and flash had faded, another ki blast floated above her palm. "Our race, the Saiyan race… we aren't like you. We have no afterlife, and our God is a level of strength that every Saiyan hopes to one day obtain."

Queen Teach let out another chuckling laugh, "This? This right here? If we had a place called Heaven, then this is what it would look like!" To punctuate her point, Queen Teach fired a beam of ki that laid waste to the enemy, the Reach vanishing like smoke in the wind underneath the stream of ki. "If I could change anything about it at all, I would be fighting against all of you to get a bit of diversity in my opponents!"

This was why Avery had little trouble believing that the Saiyans truly were the ultimate warriors of the universe. They might not be the strongest race, but never before, not once in all of his centuries of being a soldier, had he ever encountered a race that loved the idea of war so much. That craved conflict so desperately. For monsters like Frieza or the Reach, war and violence were a side product to get a reward. For Saiyans? War was the reward.

Even Prince Tarble, as level headed and collected as he was… Avery had no doubt in his mind that there was a savage smile on his face as he fought against dozens of Scarabs.

Avery put the thought out of his mind as his soldiers reached the space elevator. His shoulder slammed into cover, flanking the door while Cator took the other side of a massive bulkhead door. "We are in position! Technician, follow up. Designated squads, breach in 3… 2… 1… Breach!" Avery shouted as Vas let loose a blast of electricity that punched right through the bulkhead door.

"I'll make sure none of my boy's troops kick the bucket," Queen Teach informed them and Avery didn't know if he felt thankful or worried as he entered the space elevator. He took point, Vas floating above to deliver electric devastation onto the soldiers that got in their way, Canda and Cator covering the flanks while Technician bought up the rear. "He has high expectations for you all. So you'd better meet them."

"That woman is scary," Canda muttered more to herself than to the squad as they made a rapid advancement through the hallway. Defensive turrets poked their heads out to take potshots at them, the occasional shot pinging off their energy shields while they more than returned what they took in damage.

The stench of burnt corpses, metal and, plastic-filled Avery's nose. A familiar stench that he never quite managed to go nose blind to. His railgun continuously bucked against his shoulder as they sprinted through the hallway, moving like a rapidly advancing wall of gunfire.

"She's actually mellowed out considerably," Technician remarked, echoing an earlier thought. So he wasn't the only one that noticed. "Or, rather, she holds back because she knows Prince Tarble would disapprove. Left," Technician called out, his face practically buried in a hologram. Their squad turned left, plasma washing over Avery's shield.

His energy shield stopped the plasma's kinetic force, making it wash over him, but the ambient heat was enough to flash burn his skin. Another familiar wound to him. He was just glad that he was the one that took it instead of the others.

"Grenade!" Cator shouted, and a moment later the torrent of plasma ceased, letting his skin heal over from the burns. Avery saw the damage - like someone had taken an eraser and wiped away a small circle. A blackhole grenade. Another gift from Rench, a mission that just kept on giving. "Avery, get your ass up!" Cator continued, grabbing him by his arm and hauling him to his feet.

"Are you okay?" Canda questioned, three of her faces looking worried.

"Regenerator," Avery dismissed the concern, tasting charcoal as they continued running down the hallway, his armor glowing a bit from the cooling heat. "Tech, how far are we?" Avery asked, taking aim with his railgun at a squad of Reach soldiers. They were dug in, just not prepared for a massive lightning bolt that slammed into their cover. Before they had even realized what happened, they were dead and his squad continued down the hall.

"Not far - a node is near," Technician said as the came upon a fork in the road. "Right," he explained. This time, far more carefully, Avery rounded the corner and prefired. One shot tore through an alien, destroying his plasma gun and his arm. The ensuing explosion knocked the rest of the squad on their ass in the compact hallway, letting Canda fire at the exposed soldiers. With three guns firing in perfect unison, she made quick work of them.

"It's here!" Technician exclaimed suddenly, coming to a stop, looking at a random panel on the wall. He wasted no time waking forward and placing a small device on the wall. A moment later, the metal of the wall became translucent, revealing a hub of wires and circuitry.

"What's here? What are we doing, exactly? I thought we were here to kill as many Reach aliens as we could?" Vas asked, lightning cackling at her hands as she took up a position facing one end of the hallway.

Avery tapped a button on his belt and the belt itself surged forward. Metal flowed over the ground, expanding and shaping itself until it settled on a WW shape. The high points touched the ceiling, while the low were low enough that they could jump over them. More importantly, it gave him and Canda some cover from the shots that the Reach were sending them.

Reach soldiers took up position down the hall, using hardlight shielding to give them some cover. Just not hard enough to stand up to his railgun.

"I'm uploading a virus into the Reach's systems," Technician answered as his hands moved in blurs, typing out commands.

"Won't the Reach be all over shutting you out?" Vas questioned, almost sounding bored as she and Cator held up the other send, using the portable cover.

"Oh, they are. Except that they're defending all of the wrong targets," Technician explained, a savage smile in his voice. Avery didn't know the story, but Technician seemed to take personal pleasure in ruining the Reach's day. "They're keeping me out of arsenals, production centers, food and water sources. Everything that they would need for a drawn-out siege."

Vas fired off a massive bolt of electricity at the Reach troops, vaporizing them. "If you're not hitting those targets, then what are you hitting?"

"And ruin the surprise? You'll see soon enough," Technician responded, glee in his voice as he locked the Reach out of their own systems. Doing things this way had its own share of problems simply because the Reach having those things like endless supplies, or production centers deep within the planet to turn out more crap for them to destroy.

"It's done," Technician said, taking a step back and retrieving the device. "They're not getting past that firewall, and if they ever do, it'll be far too late."

"Too late for what?" Vas insisted over the sound of gunfire. If Technician answered then Avery didn't hear it in favor of tapping down on his scouter.

"The primary objective has been completed," He informed all the squads that were in range. A dozen or so that were in the space elevator with them. "How's the secondary coming?"

"Charges are in place," several squads reported instantly. Enough to complete the secondary objective. One squad didn't report in at all.

"Begin extraction," Avery ordered, pressing his belt buckle again as the cover began to shift. The cover behind them capped off the hallway, making it so that they only had to worry about one direction. Vas cleared the way with a lighting blast that clouded over the hallway with smoke, masking their rapid retreat.

Bodies on top of bodies piled up as his squad withdrew from the space elevator, but getting out was easier than getting in. Before long, his entire squad withdrew from the building, walking into a battlefield that was waged outside. His 501st drew up a defensive perimeter around the space elevator, preventing reinforcements.

In the minutes that he had been inside, booths sides dug in and it became a slugging match between the two sides. The Reach undeniably had the numerical advantage, likely a million to one. The 501st, however, had plenty of soldiers that were worth a million Reach soldiers.

"The bombs are in place - Narra, begin extraction," Avery ordered. In response, green flames appeared before every soldier, spreading until they were all connected. On the other side of the flames was the army that belonged to Queen Teach. A portion of it, rather, that was teleported here not long after the 501st landed to secure a foothold. The 501st wasted no time rushing through the green fire towards relative safety. Avery, and his squad, were the last ones to rush through.

The Reach flooded over the abandoned defenses, like water over an overfilled cup. Avery watched them for a moment, waiting for them to damn themselves, then he pressed down on the detonator. The charges in the space elevator fired off, the blackhole explosives deleting the structures supports while the power systems overloaded. Before they could be killed in the following collapse, Avery stepped forward through the flames and arrived inside the foothold.

Turning around, he watched the space elevator collapse in itself, the rubble and dust cloud washing over the thousands at the base. Thousands fewer that they would have to deal with. Only a few billion left.

But, the job wasn't done. Not yet. The hundreds of thousands of Frieza-force soldiers dug themselves in, repelling the Reach reactionary force. The sounds of war echoed in Avery's ears as the 501st rejoined and reinforced the fight. Here, they would dig in and hold out until the Reach exhausted themselves. Then, they would move on the offensive.

"Vas, look up," Avery ordered, prepping his rail gun as he marched forward to rejoin the fight. Vas obeyed, and even Avery glanced up to see the light show. The segmented sky of Reach satellites slowly melted away to become a solid golden sky as millions of satellites activated. Frieza-force satellites.

The same golden color as the shields that were meant to protect the Shield World from damage. Avey didn't claim to know what they were, but anything short of Frieza wasn't going to get past them. And now, that same shield that was pointed outward was now pointing inward.

"What…?" Vas trailed off, not understanding what she was looking at.

"We usurped their control of the planetary shield network that was meant to prevent invasion. Because of that, the Reach thought it was of little importance, making it a rather undefended target. Now, not even the Reach ships can get in to reinforce the planetary armies with orbital bombardments," Technician explained and Avery smirked as realization dawned on Vas.

"With that secondary network pointed inward, the defense shield serves as a cage. To quote Prince Tarble, 'The Reach will be trapped inside the cage with us.' Avery quoted, a pleased grin on his face as his shoulder hit cover.

With neither side with anywhere to run, it was going to become a slugging match. Billions against a million.

But, despite every odd, Avery liked their chances.

The next chapter is currently available on my Pat re on, so if you want to read it a week early, all it takes is a single dollar in the tip jar. Or, for five dollars, you can read the chapter after that two weeks before its public release! I hope you enjoyed!